Science
pharyngula | May 19, 2006
Human milk is potent stuff. The Greek for milk was gala, and as you might be able to see if I hadn't had to reduce this Tintoretto so much, the galaxies were created from the spray of milk from Hera's breasts. Modern astronomers might quibble with that explanation of the origins of the extrasolar universe, but what do I know...I'm a biologist. I'll stick to biology now, and with that, here's a short summary of the biology behind mother's milk.
A recipe:
Carbohydrates
Lactose
7.3 g/dl
Oligosaccharides
1.2 g/dl
Milk Lipids
Triglycerides
4.0 %
Phospholipids
0.04 %
Proteins
…
razib | May 18, 2006My attempt to solicit a narrow and eminent list of evolutionary biologists for my planned attempt at rolling my own quizilla at some point in the future really got out of control. On the one hand, the discipline was too broadly construed. Biases creep in. On the other hand, the category was too narrow in that many scientists contributed to evolutionary biology without being evolutionary biologists (most trivally G.H. Hardy). Since many readers of this weblog are highly credentialized in some particular field, I invite all to:
1) State a category where you know your shit (e.g., "evolutionary…
oracknows | May 18, 2006Enough, already!
Over the last couple of days, we've had Signs You Might Be an Intelligent Design Critic.
Next, we had You May Be an Intelligent Design Supporter If...
Just remember who got the ball rolling with these silly Jeff Foxworthy-inspired lists way back in January 2005 and updated it shortly after landing here at ScienceBlogs.
Alright, I'm a little envious. I wish I had thought of this list. I guess, though, I'll console myself with the fact that I do have one "You might be an X if..." sort of list to my credit.
And, I have to confess, I found a couple of these amusing, such as, "…
pharyngula | May 17, 2006I'm going to link to a post on Uncommon Descent. I try to avoid that, because I think it is a vile harbor of malign idiocy, but Dembski has just put up something that I think is merely sincerely ignorant. That's worth correcting. It also highlights the deficiencies of Dembski's understanding of biology.
Dembski makes a strange argument for ID on the basis of a certain class of experiments in developmental biology.
For example, consider how SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) works. You take a mammalian egg (which "just happens to be" a HUGE cell, very easy to experiment on). You take out…
pharyngula | May 17, 2006
Whoa, it's been a while since I've said anything about my infatuation with cephalopods (since, like, the last post…). Let's correct that with a nifty paper I found on octopus suckers.
Here's a typical view of a tangle of octopus arms, all covered with circular suckers. The octopus can cling to things, grasp prey and other objects with those nifty little discs, and just generally populate people's nightmares with the idea of all those grappling, clutching, leech-like appendages.
Octopus suckers are actually beautiful little tools, though, with a fair amount of sophistication in their…
pharyngula | May 16, 2006Seed has started this thing they're calling "Ask a Science Blogger," in which we're supposed to take provocative questions and answer them here. You know, like those ice-breaking party games, supposed to get the social bonding thing going, foster unity, etc. Only thing is, they don't quite get the idea yet—they're asking the science bloggers to come up with questions to ask the science bloggers. "What's that?" I say, "why not cut out the middleman and not ask the questions that nobody's asking that we're being asked to answer? Saves time."
That's too mean-spirited, so let's turn it around in…
pharyngula | May 15, 2006How do we know how old things are? That's a straightforward and very scientific question, and exactly the kind of thing students ought to ask; it's also the kind of question that has been muddled up by lots of bad information (blame the creationists), and can be difficult for a teacher to answer. There are a great many dating methods, and you may need to be a specialist to understand many of them…and heck, I'm a biologist, not a geologist or physicist. I've sort of vaguely understood the principles of measuring isotope ratios, but try to pin me down on all the details and I'd have to scurry…
oracknows | May 14, 2006Let me just take this opportunity to welcome one of my favorite evolution bloggers, Jason Rosenhouse, over to the ScienceBlogs fold. I've been following his blog for many months now.
Go say hi to him at his new location at EvolutionBlog, and don't forget to update your bookmarks (which reminds me, I'll have to update my own blogroll; there are some out of date entries there and I've been meaning to clean it up anyway). I sincerely hope Jason's transition goes more smoothly than mine did.
In case you weren't aware, there will soon be several more bloggers joing Jason and us here at…
pharyngula | May 14, 2006Here's a controversial topic to discuss, especially for a science blogger.
Science is overrated. This is my contention.
Last night in chat I evidently hit a nerve by (perhaps not so) casually suggesting that maybe it's not the end of the world that fewer and fewer American students are going into the sciences.
I read that first bit, and you may be shocked to learn that I'm willing to agree. There are some really good arguments to support the position. Science is hard, and it's true that the majority of people aren't going to be able to grasp it. We're oversubscribed and overextended right…
pharyngula | May 14, 2006It's appropriate to have a poem about pregnancy today—so go read Adapted, Not Designed. It's lovely, and I think you can tell from the title that there's another reason I like it.
pharyngula | May 13, 2006
Jerome a Paris has a first-rate overview of wind power on Daily Kos. I'm in a windy part of the world where this form of energy has great potential, and there is much local enthusiasm for wind turbines. Our first one is up just north of town, where I can sometimes catch a peek of it from my neighborhood when the trees aren't all covered with leaves and where we always see it as one of the landmarks as we're driving into town. I think they're beautiful. Coal plants may be less obtrusive when they can be kept distant, but I'd rather see a row of wind turbines on a ridge than a smokestack on…
evolgen | May 13, 2006
The Wannabe Biologists are bragging about all the expensive toys physicists get to play with . . . and break. Philip scratched a 2.5" diameter gold mirror. I guess glass isn't expensive enough for physicists. I don't think I've ever broken anything really expensive. Sure, I cracked some glassware in freshman chemlab -- which I had to pay for at the end of the semester. I've broken my share of vials, and I've even broken a few bottles. But none of those things are very expensive.
The only real expensive thing we have in our lab is an automated sequencer. I've never done any damage to the…
oracknows | May 13, 2006If you want to see how depressingly ignorant about science President Bush's new Press Secretary Tony Snow is, you need go no further than this rant at Bad Astronomy about Snow's assertions about evolution confidently made in obviously complete ignorance about science, what a theory is, what a hypothesis is, or what evolutionary theory actually says.
Depressing. The spokesperson for our President is clueless about science.
drorzel | May 12, 2006A very nice post from Rob Knop, exploring the the role of faith in science:
You may then ask, am I not then taking many of the results of science as faith, since I didn't check all of the experimental results and subsequent analysis myself? Answer: yes and no. It is a lowercase-f "faith", in that I trust the scientists who did the work to have known what they were doing and to have honestly and reasonably done the work. I have also trusted the others in their sub-field to keep them honest, by reproducing the experiments independently and critically reading their work. This is very, very…
evolgen | May 11, 2006Bad Astronomy has a rant up on Tony Snow (the new White House Press Secretary) and his creationist tendencies. I won't linger on the political implications of having an anti-science advocates in our government, but one quote from Snow is so ridiculous it needs to be pointed out:
These little insights give us the basis for admitting both views into the educational system. Evolutionary theory, like ID, isn't verifiable or testable. It's pure hypothesis -- like ID -- although very popular in the scientific community. Its limits help illuminate the fact that hypotheses are only as durable as the…
pharyngula | May 11, 2006Crap. Coturnix tagged me with this beautiful bird meme, and I am the wrong person to ask. I don't get out much, preferring to sit in the lab or the library, so my favorite birds are all in pieces and dead. But OK, since he asked…
Bird digits
Bird teeth
Bird brains
Jurassic bird brains
Bird lungs
Oviraptor pelves (does that count?)
Cretaceous bird embryos
Four-winged birds
Waimanu
And Archaeopteryx, of course.
pharyngula | May 11, 2006Flitting about as I have lately means I've been missing this, that and the other thing. So here's a quick summary.
Tuesday night I was at the Café Scientifique in Minneapolis, where UMM's Timna Wyckoff gave a talk on antibiotic resistance. It was terrific! Lots of good questions throughout, and a mob of conversation afterwards. This is exactly how these events are supposed to go.
I missed Michael Ruse's talk at the UM on Wednesday—I was somewhere in Wisconsin, with a dorm room packed into a car—but I have one email report that he was entertaining but extremely aggravating. Anyone else care to…
pharyngula | May 11, 2006Lots of people have sent me links to this—thanks, all!—and it's the perfect thing to lift me out of the finals week blahs, and it's also just in time for Mother's Day on Sunday: The Devonian Blues.
Every single girl and every little boy
Was born from the clan of the wayward Dipnoi
Don't let the preacher man spoil all the fun
Took a lot more than 6 days to get the job done
Amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and man
All belong to the fish tribe, doncha' understand?
Your momma was a lobefinned fish
My momma was a lobefinned fish
Sing along, everyone!
drorzel | May 9, 2006Woke up, got out of bed
Ran a comb across my head...
8:40: Leave home, bike to work.
8:50: Arrive at work, stow bike in lab
8:55: Download electronically submitted papers to be graded. Determine which students haven't handed papers in yet.
9:15: Change into teaching clothes, review lecture notes.
(Continued...)
9:35-10:40: Teach class on basics of quantum computing, logic gates, supeerpositions and entanglement.
10:45: Let class go five minutes late. Run to bathroom.
10:50-11:55: Second class, review for Tuesday's exam. Answer questions about right-hand rules, magnetic fields, and Faraday's…