evolution
oracknows | June 14, 2010I've had the immense good fortune to have trained and ultimately become a physician-scientist during a time when the pace of discovery and the paradigm changes in science have occurred just over the course of my career in medicine and science has been staggering. microRNA, the shift from single gene studies to genomics, the development of targeted therapies, the completion of the Human Genome Project, these are but a few examples. Of course, arguably the Human Genome Project is the granddaddy of all of the huge changes and paradigm shifts that has occurred to revolutionize biomedical research…
grrlscientist | June 13, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature, environment and behavior books and field guides that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "…
sa smith | June 10, 2010Im glad this reader was persistent in poking me with this Q, its a really good un!
Dear ERV--
I always thought that ERVs were some of the best evidence for evolution, but I always wondered if there was an additional aspect to the story that is not usually told. I imagined that different strains of viruses have existed at different times over the last few million years, so if some of the ERVs we share with chimps (or other animals) were caused by retroviruses that HAVE NOT existed since modern humans evolved, this would really put the nail in the coffin to some of the Creationist arguments…
laelaps | June 10, 2010
"Dinah", a young female gorilla kept at the Bronx Zoo in 1914. From the Zoological Society Bulletin.
Frustrated by the failure of gorillas to thrive in captivity, in 1914 the Bronx Zoo's director William Hornaday lamented "There is not the slightest reason to hope that an adult gorilla, either male or female, ever will be seen living in a zoological park or garden." Whereas wild adult gorillas were "savage" and "implacable" beasts which could not be captured (a photo of a sculpture included in Hornaday's article depicts a gorilla strangling one man, brandishing another about with its other…
pharyngula | June 7, 2010
Jonathan Sarfati, a particularly silly creationist, is quite thrilled — he's crowing about how he has caught Richard Dawkins in a fundamental error. The eye did not evolve, says Sarfati, because it is perfectly designed for its function, and Dawkins' suggestion that there might be something imperfect about it is wrong, wrong, wrong. He quotes Dawkins on the eye.
But I haven't mentioned the most glaring example of imperfection in the optics. The retina is back to front.
Imagine a latter-day Helmholtz presented by an engineer with a digital camera, with its screen of tiny photocells, set up…
grrlscientist | June 6, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
sa smith | June 4, 2010Long interspersed repetitive elements (LINEs) make up a HUGE portion of the junk in your genome.
They dont have any mystical, magical, purposeful functions.
They arent ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for anything, and technically, they cause trouble when they happen to plop themselves upstream of a gene and are thus negatively selected against, but I digress...
LINEs are kinda relatives of retroviruses that got trapped in our genome. Our genome doesnt really have an efficient way of cutting them out, though our genomes do try to keep LINEs quiet via epigenetics, and usually LINEs are totally non-…
ddobbs | June 1, 2010
In reverse order:
5. Â David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists.
"I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist." This sparked some lively action in the comments.
4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes.
A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails. 
3. A walking tour that lets you See exactly where Phineas Gage lost his mind
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2. "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size
We're constantly told -- we writers are, anyway -- that people won't read long stories. They're hard to sell to editors,…
sa smith | May 31, 2010I got a giggle from reading Larry (and then John Hawks) talking about time travel. Kinda. I mean, people using science to look back in time, and orient themselves in that different era to such a degree they can gain information about said time.
Scientists arent just guessing when they estimate when humans and chimpanzees split into different species, or where/how 'new' species like Ardi and Teh Hobbit fit into the tree-- they are using two totally different arms of science figure out how species were oriented millions of years ago. We have estimates from fossils and how old they are and…
gregladen | May 31, 2010I have about ten favorite species of tree, and one of them is the corotú. Why? Because of one of the most interesting plant-animal interaction stories of recent times. The story, complete with extinct elephant-like creatures and a real Sherlock Holmes science theme can be read, along with some great images, at A Neotropical Savanna: The Corotú and the Gomphothere.
Did you ever wonder how all those old, large, beautiful trees get there? Along city streets, in an arboretum, someone's yard, or a public park? Well, one example of how this happens will be the Australian National Arboretum…
cagapakis | May 31, 2010I love this quote from the XKCD blog:
The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I've ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I've spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.
Many scientists try very hard to de-emphasize this complexity, trying to reduce "human nature" down to parts and genes and behaviors that can be explained by evolutionary mechanisms, by hormones, by genetics. It's not nature vs. nurture and it's not just male and female, it's nature and nurture and infinite variations along a culturally and biologically mediated gender continuum. By…
grrlscientist | May 30, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
clock | May 29, 2010A fascinating discussion with John Hawks and my Scibling Christina Agapakis about synthetic biology and other related topics - worth your time:
laelaps | May 28, 2010
Color-coded diagram of a small bone bed containing at least twelve individuals of the Permian synapsid Suminia. From Frobisch and Reisz (2009)
When I hear the phrase "early human relative" I cannot help but think of an ape-like creature. Something like Sahelanthropus fits the bill nicely - it may not be a hominin but it is still a close relative from around the time that the first hominins evolved. That is why I was a bit puzzled to see MSNBC.com parroting a story written by the Discovery Channel which proclaimed "Early human relative predates even dinosaurs"! Was this another fossil that…
emjohnson | May 27, 2010 New research finds chimpanzees follow prestigious models when learning new tasks. Monika Thorpe / Creative CommonsIf one were to play psychiatrist to the natural world, most human beings would be committed for our certifiable obsession with other peoples' behavior. We compulsively examine, study, appraise, size up, and scope out what those around us are doing and then gossip with others about what we've seen or heard. New ideas or behaviors are especially compelling and will often have cultural critics discussing them at length, whether they're tribal elders or the United…
ddobbs | May 26, 2010
David Sloan Wilson, an atheist himself, has a few things to relate to 'angry atheists' like Richard Dawkins.
I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist. One of the things that infuriates me about the newest crop of angry atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, is their denial of the beneficial aspects of religion. Their beef is not just that there is no evidence for God. They also insist that religion "poisons everything", as Christopher Hitchens subtitled his book. They are ignoring the scientific theory and evidence for the "secular utility" of religion, as Ãmile…
grrlscientist | May 23, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…
awild | May 20, 2010Biologist Henry Hespenheide sends along this shot of several ant-mimicking beetles and their Cephalotes model:
What I take from this image is just how important the appearance of a narrow waist must be to successfully pulling off the illusion. These mimics differ considerably in body proportions, but they have all managed to paint a fake waist on their elytra.
pharyngula | May 19, 2010Their project in bacterial evolution in the lab has reached the milestone of 50,000 generations.
Andy Schlafly has still got nothin'.