Posts
May 18, 2013
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2:20 PM | Red and white greater Swiss mountain dog
Alll of the Swiss mountain dogs, except for the St. Bernard, are black and tan dogs with white points as their standard color, but every once in a while a recessive red and white pup is born into one of their litters. Here’s a very good page on the history and foundation of the Swiss […]
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2:09 PM | Back in action
Miley’s back in action now. She almost pulled a fleeing squirrel off a tree yesterday.
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Quick post here. Jenna Lang in my lab has a post at microBEnet about the recent workshop that the Software Carpentry folks ran at UC Davis: Software Carpentry comes to UC Davis! | microBEnet: The microbiology of the Built Environment network. It was a major success. For those who don't know Software Carpentry's mission is is to build basic computing skills among researchers. From their web site:
Software Carpentry helps researchers be more productive by teaching
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Note: This entry was originally posted here on 27 February 2011. With all of the recent wonderful news regarding the publication and analysis of the Utricularia gibba genome and the implications of the evolution of its minimal genome, I thought it worthwhile to repost this entry and remind ourselves the other ways in which bladderworts are amazing and interesting. See elsewhere (here is ok) for coverage of the genome research or read the paper!----"Hi." Trap of Utricularia inflata, clearly
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3:03 AM | Jewel Beetle Field Guide Update
Good news! Field Guide to the Jewel Beetles of Northeastern North America is finally shipping! If you pre-ordered a copy of the book and you live in Canada, you should be receiving the book any day now (if you haven’t already). If you don’t live in Canada, don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. To [...]
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1:17 AM | A sighting
I had Miley out this evening, and I was taking photos of her as usual, when she got tensed up about something: I looked over to my right, and there, about 100 yards away, a black form was moving through the tall grass. It was slinking along at slow speed. I never got a good […]
May 17, 2013
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10:23 PM | Friday links round
Vintage plant genetic resources videos Wrong on the Internet: Bogus USA Spider Chart Riroriro Testing the utility of trait databases When Are Nomads Not Really Nomads? (Efe Pygmy Ethnoarchaeology) Please don’t smoke the tomatoes! The relationships among fame, impact and research quality Botanical Wednesday: Twisty Quotes of choice
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8:41 PM | GPS Training for Summer Fieldwork
WOOSTER, OH – In preparation for the summer field season, some Wooster Geologists are being trained on new GPS equipment. We learned the importance of thoughtfully crafting a data dictionary prior to heading to the field. Features and attributes were entered into a database that helps us organize our data as we collect it. For [...]
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I see these magnificent shells littered on the ground – in the woods, on lawns, everywhere. It’s the shell of the Giant African Land Snail. In Tanzania, they are native – living in terrestrial habitats or on land. But back in the United States they are an invasive species. Not only do they devour vegetation of most [...]
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"So why are we behaving like this?" asks Martin Wolfe of the Financial Times."A second reason is opposition to any interventions in the free market. Some of this, no doubt, is driven by narrowly economic interests. But do not underestimate the power of ideas. To admit that a free economy generates a vast global external cost is to admit that the large-scale government regulation so often proposed by hated environmentalists is justified. For many libertarians or classical
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6:22 PM | Tacky is as tacky does
Garden gazing balls (even when the size of the one in Millennium Park), plywood cutouts of some one bending over in their garden, and, yes, especially, garden gnomes are tacky, as are plastic ducks and deer. Sorry, that's just the way it is. Not even the fact that after 100 years the Chelsea Garden Show is allowing celebrity decorated garden gnomes to be auctioned for charity changes the fact that they are tacky. You have to take a large hop, skip, and jump to get from
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Every few years a group of ecologists or evolutionary biologists experiences existential angst about the decline of natural history knowledge. This angst is wholly justified when many biologists no longer take the time to experience how the organisms they study actually live in nature. At best (and this is better than most), many biologists run off to the field for a day, stop at a bridge over a stream or along a forest trail, quickly collect their samples, and then run back to the lab to
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2:36 PM | Are they still there?
A few days ago, a reader posted this blog post in the Blog Reader’s Group. It talks about black water dogs in Newfoundland, but instead of calling them St. John’s water dogs, as I do, it is referred to as a Cape Shore water dog. After a careful search on the Googles, I found that […]
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Synopsis: A talk on new ancient DNA results at the Biology of Genomes conferenceElizabeth Pennisi reports from the Biology of Genomes conference at Cold Spring Harbor, New York: "More Genomes From Denisova Cave Show Mixing of Early Human Groups". The article describes a talk by Svante Pääbo about new results from Neandertal DNA, as well as new analyses of the Denisovan genome. It has lots of details for those interested in these topics, but the article is paywalled, so I can only share a
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From Sarah: Why are honeycombs hexagonal, anyway? From Devin: How many papers have you reviewed in the past year? And, more important, how many review requests have you turned down? From Jeremy: Most U.S. states have pretty lousy state birds. (Everyone who picked Northern Cardinal, I’m looking at you.) Here are suggestions for much better […]
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In the journals Almany, G.R., Hamilton, R.J., Bode, M., Matawai, M., Potuku, T., Saenz-Agudelo, P., et al. 2013. Dispersal of grouper larvae drives local resource sharing in a coral reef fishery. Current Biology 23: 626–630. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.03.006. Using genetic parentage … Continue reading →
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Finally, what I know you've all been waiting for: the six shortlisted young people's science books have been selected and are now in the mail to hundreds of children across the UK who will select the winner of the 2013 Royal Society's Young People's Book Prize!Are you a scientist who was inspired by a children's book to pursue your passion? As a member of this year's panel of judges, I freely admit that I am jealous of children today – jealous because when I was a child, I had nothing close
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Congratulations! To the winners of the first ScienceSeeker Awards.It was only logical. How DNA barcoding may be making (one of) the capabilities of Mr. Spock's tricorder a reality.I'm shocked. Shocked! Pest control company distributes guide to "USA spiders" including species not found in the U.S., misinformation about toxicity.For a given value of "fame." Towards a mechanistic theory of fame in science.Perspective. Why barns are traditionally painted red, in the most ultimate sense.Cool. Land
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12:18 PM | A week of links
Were the Victorian’s cleverer than us? Patrick Rabbit pulls it apart. Kevin Mitchell has a shot at the new eugenics. Razib responds. Read the comments on both. Peter Singer critiques conspicuous consumption. The example is similar to one Robert Frank uses in Luxury Fever, but I still like it. Gender identity and relative income within [...]The post A week of links appeared first on Evolving Economics.
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11:24 AM | Outside
I have spent the better part of my life outside., I don’t mean “outdoors.” I mean outside. By that distinction, I mean something very different. By “outdoors,” I mean out in elements. By “outside,” I mean something that one might call detachment, but some might call alienation or ostracism. I never really fit in well. […]
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8:51 AM | Teaser 1
A little taster for a post coming up in a short while. There may be a couple more. Unless you write in your millions to beg me to stop. The lights of a descending jet glimmered in the distance as … Continue reading →
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What do watch hands, quackery and cancer share in common?This week's element is radium, which has the atomic symbol Ra and the number 88. Radium is a dense silvery-white alkali earth metal that rapidly oxidises to black when exposed to air. Radium is rare; only four isotopes of radium occur in the wild, and these are found in uranium ores. All isotopes are highly radioactive and the isotope with the longest half-life is radium-226 (a decay product of uranium-238), which has a half-life of 1601
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I was doing research on another topic, and ran across an obituary of Phillip Tobias that I hadn't seen: "Phillip Tobias, SA's great scientist and human being, has gone back to earth". I thought this direct quote from Tobias worth sharing:
In a society in which the question of race has come to loom as largely as it does in South Africa, there is, I believe, a positive duty on a scientist who has made a special study of race to make known the facts and the most highly confirmed hypotheses about
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May 16, 2013
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8:52 PM | GoPro Passes Grizzly Test
Ever imagine what it would be like to stare down the mouth of a grizzly bear? Well, thanks to Brad Joseph and his GoPro, you can find out. Just look at those teeth and claws! Plus, bonus footage of grizzlies catching fish!
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Hydraulic fracking is quite an issue just now in Lincolnland. One of the key issues is how much water must be used to fracture deep sediments. This is one of those things where industry wants to pretend the resource is free, the water is free, without an environmental cost. It would be nice if there were an alternative to using water to fracture those deep sediments. Then came this idea. Plant red buds, lots of them over the sediment you wish to
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3:47 PM | Are We Alone?
Usually, this question is asked about extra-terrestrial aliens. “Are we alone in universe?” It’s understood that we are alone (as sentient species) in our solar system (with the provision that I make allowances for dolphins, chimps, and some other species on Earth). But are we alone in our local cluster? Our galaxy? Our universe? I’m [...]
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11:29 AM | Why race as a biological construct matters
My own inclination has been to not get bogged down in the latest race and IQ controversy because I don’t have that much time, and the core readership here is probably not going to get any new information from me, since this is not an area of hot novel research. But that doesn’t mean the [...]
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10:35 AM | These skulls are for talking about
Bored? Looking for things to do? No, me neither. But have some fun and look at these skulls — then identify them (taking care to note your identifications in the comments below). And then… … see if you can go that extra bit further and say something especially interesting*, since there’s lots of neat stuff going [...]
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#Solidarity4Wilmot prevails. Thank you! Charges dropped against Kiera Wilmot. Yes! And YES!! Anyone else doing backflips? This news, combined with her full expulsion from school (for next year) being over turned makes me very, very happy for her. (Though I’m thinking ahead – would returning to Bartow High School be in her best interest? Others [...]
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What role has aggression played in human evolution? Can scientists predict who might be more aggressive?
