evolution
gregladen | November 15, 2007I wish I had time right now to explore this, but you don't need me when you have A Blog Around the Clock covering it so fully. Go read about the cool new (old) dinosaur.
pharyngula | November 15, 2007Clive Thompson wants us to simply redefine the "theory of evolution" as the "law of evolution". This is possibly one of the worst ideas I've heard yet for overcoming the problem of the colloquial definition of theory. It is not correct. The theory of evolution is a whole collection of ideas describing complex phenomena; it is not reducible to the kind of clear and simple mathematical description we associate with scientific laws. When somebody asks me what the ideal gas law is, I can say PV=nRT; when someone asks me what the law describing the gravitational attraction between two bodies is, I…
sporte | November 14, 2007Students at Soldan International High School are participating in an amazing experiment and breaking ground that most science teachers fear to tread.
Soldan students, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, are participating in the National Geographic's Genographic Project. Through this project, students send in cheek swabs, DNA is isolated from the cheek cells, and genetic markers are used to look at ancestry.
Genetic markers in the mitochondrial DNA are used to trace ancestry through the maternal line and markers on the Y chromosome can be used to learn about one's father.…
mikethemadbiologist | November 14, 2007ScienceBlogling Razib comments on Republican rising star Bobby Jindal's "very weak understanding of evolution, or, a purposeful misrepresentation" (bold Razib's):
...the whole article [by Jindal] is an illustration of the reality that extremely intelligent people can also be very ignorant. I have no doubt that Bobby Jindal has a world class mind; and he certainly succeeds and excels at any task which catches his attention. It seems clear to me that when it comes to science & religion he is out of his depth. His characterization of those who disagree with his own religious views is…
neurotopia | November 14, 2007Here we see the consequences of social promotion; no, not the practice of advancing students who haven't demonstrated competency in their subject matter, but of inappropriately advancing a concept that hasn't attained scientific credibility.
When said concept, in this case Intelligent Design, is shown to be scientifically vacuous, we send it back to the drawing board. We don't push it along into textbooks and classrooms.
"All of us are smarter than one of us," Hamm said.
In the case of a schoolboard filled with creationists, clearly this does not hold.
razib | November 13, 2007NOVA's documentary about the Dover Creationism case, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, aired tonight. If you don't have a TV, or missed it and don't have a TIVO, etc., you can watch it online on the 16th.
oracknows | November 13, 2007Today's the day, everyone.
I haven't mentioned this before, but the documentary on the trial over the teaching of "intelligent design" creationism in the classroom in Dover, Pennsylvania two years ago is set to premiere on your local PBS station tonight at 8 PM. The Nova documentary, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, already has the Discovery Institute up in arms because from all reports thus far (and indeed from the content of the documentary website, which presents fossil evidence and a detailed discussion of evolution) it is uncompromising in its viewpoint that ID is not science…
oracknows | November 13, 2007Yesterday, inspired by a post by fellow ScienceBlogger Martin, I had a little fun discussing the evolution of "alternative" medicine (a.k.a. "complementary and alternative medicine" or CAM), specifically speculating about the possible selective pressures, positive and negative, that have influenced the course that its evolution took. Essentially, the discussion centered around whether, by its very nature CAM undergoes negative selective pressure for having as little effect as possible, positive or negative, a point I found somewhat, but not entirely, convincing. Although the post inspired a…
loom | November 12, 2007
I agree with Phil that it's a good term. In fact, when I have to talk about intelligent design, these slides are how I illustrate its evolutionary roots.
oracknows | November 12, 2007I wish I had thought of this one, but I didn't. However, I never let a little thing like not having thought of an idea first to stop me from discussing it, and this particular idea is definitely worth expanding upon because (1) it's interesting and (2) it combines two of my interests, alternative medicine and evolution. I agree with parts of the idea, but it's not without its shortcomings. Indeed, I'd very much welcome any of the evolutionary biologists who read this blog to chime in with their own ideas.
Fellow ScienceBlogger Martin Rundkvist over at Aardvarchaeology has proposed a rather…
evolvingthoughts | November 11, 2007
Following on from my previous post "Are species theoretical objects", I want now to discuss what the status of species as phenomenal objects is.
Some recent papers by Ingo Brigandt and Paul Griffiths (see refs), a view has been developed for some core concepts of biology - gene and homology - in which the theoretical status of these ideas is challenged. This view treats the concepts as referring to either obervational or operational objects or properties, just as I have suggested that species does. Brigandt has suggested that these objects or concepts are "units of explanation", and he and…
evolvingthoughts | November 10, 2007
I've been so busy reading and assimilating the latest issue of Biology and Philosophy I forgot to let you all know about it. It's a special issue on Homology, edited by Paul Griffiths and Ingo Brigandt. A discussion group has now been set up at Matt Haber's blog The Philosophy of Biology Café.
The papers are:
The importance of homology for biology and philosophy by Brigandt and Griffiths, which gives a clear and interesting summary of the issues;
The phenomena of homology by Griffiths, which argues that homology is a phenomenal, rather than a theoretical concept (as I have argued that…
sporte | November 9, 2007Last year I wrote about an experiment where I compared a human mitochondrial DNA sequence to primate sequences in the GenBank. Since I wanted to know about the differences between humans, gorillas, and chimps, I used the Entrez query 'Great Apes' to limit my search to a set of sequences in the PopSet database that contained gorillas, bonobos, chimps, and human DNA.
A week ago, I tried to repeat this experiment and...
It didn't work.
All I saw were human mitochondrial sequences. I know the other sequences match, but I didn't see them since there are so many human sequences that match…
voltagegate | November 9, 2007I had to do it. With the red panda (Ailurus fulgens) at the top of my favorite animals list, I had to know exactly how many folks share enough interest in the firefox to name their toon after its genus name.
So how many Ailuruses are there out there? Seven on the North American servers and three on the European; appropriately, six of them are druids (cat/bear forms). The highest level (and she's leveled in the past few days, so is active) is a 68 feral druid who must have just recently snagged her Staff of Beasts from the Ring of Blood quest series in Nagrand.
If you've kept up with TVG,…
razib | November 8, 2007A few weeks ago I posted about Neandertal red-hair, and offered a note of caution:
Red hair emerges because of a lack of balance between the production of dark eumelanin and red-yellow pheomelanin. When both are down regulated in terms of production one obtains ash blonde hair. I am not totally clear as to why the authors above assume that pheomelanin production would also not be effected....
John Hawks has a massive post up, The "flame-haired" Neandertals where he says:
This is, of course, speculative. Still, if Neandertals were strongly selected for pigmentation variants, we ought to expect…
evolvingthoughts | November 8, 2007
Some things that piqued my interest without triggering a full post:
The readability of this blog is high school level, which is good. That's pretty much how I pitch it:
There's a new species of killer whale in the Antarctic. [HT: Jason]
Toads will mate across species if things get tough. This has also been documented in other species such as ducks.
mikethemadbiologist | November 8, 2007
The Charge of the Light MRSA Brigade
A few months ago, I discussed an article that demonstrated that pigs had ridiculously high frequencies of MRSA. ScienceBlogling Revere discusses another paper about pigs and MRSA. Like the previous study (published by some of the same authors), several of the same conclusions can be drawn:
These are astronomical rates of MRSA, relative to anything outside of a clinical setting--and the Netherlands' MRSA frequency is an order of magnitude lower than the U.S.
One piece of evidence argues for the hypothesis that the use of antibiotics in agriculture,…
grrlscientist | November 7, 2007tags: evolution, politics, education, Kitzmiller, Dover School District, intelligent design, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, NOVA, streaming video
Occasionally, very rarely in fact, I wish I had a television, and this is one of those days. I just received an ad from Kate Becker, regarding a new NOVA program, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" which will air 8 pm on Tuesday, November 13 on your local PBS station (you might have also noticed that they are advertizing this program on this site).
This program documents the war over evolution that came to Dover, Pennsylvania…
neurotopia | November 7, 2007Those crazy folks over at the Alliance for Science are putting up the notice for their 2nd Annual Evolution Essay contest!!! The first contest, while thrown together at the very last minute, turned out to be a success. Five high school students received cash prizes and a slew of autographed science books, plus a year's subscription to Seed Magazine. The first place winner's science teacher also received a cash prize to spend on classroom supplies, and additional teaching materials.
This year, they're getting a jump on things early. The contest doesn't happen until February, but start…
evolvingthoughts | November 6, 2007
The saying that "man is a wolf to man" comes from a saying of Erasmus of Rotterdam, but it is incomplete. The Latin is Homo homini aut deus aut lupus or "Man is either a god or a wolf to man". I'm beginning to wonder if there is a difference between gods and wolves.
Ask yourself this: why did we domesticate wolves instead of cats the way we did? Why don't we have pet tigers? The answer has to do with the social structure of wolves. They have a pack-mentality. Each wolf is subordinate to some other wolf unless it is the alpha male. This instinctual behaviour, typical of the species and its…