biology
evolgen | January 14, 2007
Hang with me here on this one.
Marlowe's Cousin Shakespeare's Sister responds to a criticism of Nancy Pelosi with a little bit of feminist satire (reproduced below the fold): "No woman in the history of politics has used her womb like Nancy Pelosi.". Shakes (I think that's what the cool kids call her) Photoshops a woman's naughty bits complete with symbols of the evil liberal agenda -- pink triangles and rainbows (we're guessing she couldn't find any good pictures of sequins or ruby studded pinky rings).
What really got me about the feminist pussy, however, is what she included in place of…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2007
An oak leaf in the photographer's backyard in Connecticut in October 2006.
It had rained that morning, so the leaves were all shiny and their colors were just outstanding.
The photographer says, "I had never thought of oaks as having great fall color, but it turns out I was wrong."
Image: miz_geek.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to…
grrlscientist | January 12, 2007I absolutely loved this book, Brazzaville Beach, by William Boyd (New York: Perennial, 1990). Even though the book was published 16 years ago, I cannot understand how I could have missed it. But thanks to my friend, Coturnix, who sent the book to me, I had the priviledge to finally read it, so I include a review of it here. Not only is the prose surprisingly rich and evocative, but this book is probably one of the best examples of the new genre, LabLit -- short for Laboratory Literature -- which deals with real-life scientific themes without being science fiction.
This interesting story is…
tfk | January 12, 2007Gavin Sutter had no problem describing "What I Did Over the Summer" when he started 2nd grade. In July, the eight year-old Californian went on a fossil dig in Nevada with a local museum team. His mother found the antler of an early deer, others found rodents, canids, rhinos, turtles and mustelids.
Little Gavin filled a gap in the fossil record. The teeth and bones shown here represent a three-toed horse, two more toes per foot than horses use today, and fewer than the ancestors of all horses had.
The description in news articles doesn't include a genus name or even a clear description of…
grrlscientist | January 12, 2007
One of the Arizona desert tortoises, Gopherus agassizii that the photographer is a care taker of. It is probably Aphrodite.
Image: Mark Newton.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: tortoise, reptile, nature, zoology
tfk | January 12, 2007Bald Eagle to Be Taken Off Endangered List:
Seven years after the U.S. government moved to take the bald eagle off the endangered species list, the Bush administration intends to complete the step by February…
The delisting, supported by mainstream environmental groups, would represent a formal declaration that the eagle population has sufficiently rebounded, increasing more than 15-fold since its 1963 nadir to more than 7,000 nesting pairs.
Bald eagles were hurt badly by DDT, and continue to be at risk from mercury pollution, which concentrates in the fish that they eat.
As it happens, the…
razib | January 12, 2007Jason Rosenhouse has a nice post on the rate of mutation within the genome. David plumbs the depths of J.B.S. Haldane's 2s. Peromyscus posts on the ladies looking for possible "extra-pair matings." A**man posts on short guys.
scientificactivist | January 12, 2007The U.S. Office of Research Integrity announced this week that it has found a former postdoc in Gerald Schatten's lab, Park Jong Hyuk, guilty of research misconduct for falsifying images in a manuscript on deriving embryonic stem cells from cloned rhesus monkeys. Although the paper had not yet been submitted for peer review, this is more bad news for Schatten, who has been dealing with the fallout from being a senior author on one of the papers later determined to have been fabricated by discredited South Korean researcher Hwang Woo Suk.
The AP reports:
The latest university probe showed…
revere | January 12, 2007There once was a nice tidy story about why avian influenza viruses infected birds and human influenza viruses infected humans and pigs were the "mixing vessel" that brought them together so they could reassort their genetic innards. It went something like this. The avian virus can only attach to and thus infect cells that have a specific kind of receptor on their surface. The receptor was a terminal sialic acid with a particular linkage to the underlying cellular glycoprotein (for more on this see our four part primer on glycoproteins beginning here). For birds the linkage was designated α2,…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2007
A southern alligator lizard, Elgaria multicarinata.
It was sunning itself on railroad ballast near Hood River, Oregon, spring of 2006. Specifically, on the Hood River Railroad, along Hood River, just east of the town of Hood River.
Image: Conrad Frost, Fisheries Biologist.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with…
omnibrain | January 11, 2007Just because it should be posted at least once a year -
Pinky and the Brain go over the parts of the brain - in song!
evolgen | January 11, 2007The post from yesterday was inspired by the news coverage surrounding the paper describing gene expression differences (DOI) between human populations. The original article uses neither the term 'race' nor the term ''Caucasian''. Instead, what would normally be called 'races' are referred to as 'populations' -- aside from the single use of 'ethnic groups' in the title of the paper -- and the population that would be called ''Caucasian' ' is dubbed 'European-derived'.
When we look at some of the news coverage of the article, though, we see different terminology. The Nature news item by the…
grrlscientist | January 10, 2007Have you ever wondered what is the inactivation temperature of the avian influenza virus? How far a flea can jump? How long a royal albatross incubates its egg? How many stomata are on the leaf of a geranium? How many ommatidia are in the compound eye of a dragonfly? If these and other questions keep you awake at night, now you can find the answers that you seek in a new book, Amazing Numbers in Biology by Rainer Flindt (New York: Springer Verlag, 2003). Basically, this delightful book is the Guiness Book of World Records for the natural world.
Even though much of this data has long been…
ksharpe | January 10, 2007
Science education + sixties mod design sense = funkily compelling artwork from the inside of a childrens' biology book.
Captured by Mohawk, a photographer and Flickr user from Liverpool, UK.
(Source)
grrlscientist | January 9, 2007
Moonlit Beach.
Orphaned Image. Please contact me for proper creditation.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: moonlight, beach, nature, geology
omnibrain | January 9, 2007Ohh boy...here we go. From the New Scientist Blog:
An ongoing US experiment to turn "homosexual" rams straight by altering their hormone levels has sparked the ire of both gay activists and animal rights groups. The work is reportedly being carried out at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
I can imagine what groups like Love in action are going to do when they get their hands on this. From wikipedia (this article also highlights other groups like this):
Love in Action, or LIA, was founded in 1973 by John Evans and the…
grrlscientist | January 8, 2007According to a recent news story, two NASA space probes that visited Mars in 1976 and 1977 might have discovered life there, but then killed it, according to a hypothesis presented by Dirk Schulze-Makuch at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle, Washington. This is based on the fact that the probe was only seeking earth-like life;
Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Schulze-Makuch.
That's because a water-hydrogen peroxide mix stays liquid at very…
omnibrain | January 8, 2007Check out this new pilot from PBS. You can watch the episode next Wednesday on TV or you can see it right now right here.
If you want this program to continue show your support by watching and sending your love to the website :)
Here is their press release:
22nd Century
"World Wide Mind"
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
8:00 p.m. EST
Ever wonder what the world is going to be like in the future? Will human life spans increase to 250 years or more? Will your personal computer become smarter than you? Will machines shrink so small they can make repairs inside a human cell?
22nd Century is an…
grrlscientist | January 8, 2007
Woodland Skipper, Poanes melanae,
puddling at a seep in the Deschutes National Forest
on 18 July 2006.
Skippers are ubiquitous. This is a fairly small, compact
butterfly. When a large number are nectaring in a
concentrated fashion, one can hear the fast flutter
of their wings.
Image: Biosparite.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email…
evolgen | January 8, 2007The NYTimes reports on the impending budget crunch at US science funding agencies. The last Congress only passed spending bills for the military and domestic security, leaving nine others at the same level as the previous year. If we take inflation into account, the stagnant budgets result in a decrease in funding of 3-4% for most federal science and engineering programs.
Congressional Democrats do not plant to update the unfinished spending bills, and will extend them in their current state through September. (To learn how to petition your congressional representatives to increase funding…