Life Sciences
tsmith | January 28, 2008 An ongoing outbreak of Salmonella associated with turtles has now sickened more than 100 and caused a quarter of that number to be hospitalized:
Cases have been reported in 33 states, but mostly in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Most of the patients have been children.
No one has died in the latest outbreak, which began in August. But some patients have experienced severe symptoms, including acute kidney failure.
The most common symptoms reported to the CDC included bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever and vomiting. The median age of patients was 7 1/2 .
More after the…
tetrapodzoology | January 27, 2008
Keeping promises isn't always easy, but - following what is hopefully a forgiveable hiatus - here we get back to that short series on obscure island-dwelling, recently extinct animals. It started with a map of the Caribbean. Then we got through (some of the) island otters and canids, and then more of the canids... the good news is that here we have that long-awaited, much-asked-for 'titan-hawks and monster pigeons' article. The bad news: I got carried away on the titan-hawks and other raptors, and the pigeons will have to wait, sorry...
It now seems that big raptors were important predators…
gregladen | January 27, 2008The loss of sight in cave dwelling species is widely known. We presume that since sight in utter darkness has no fitness value, the mutation of a gene critical to the development of the sense of sight is not selected against. Over time, any population living in darkness will eventually experience experience such mutations, and these mutations can reach fixation.
Astyanax mexicanus: Top is the surface, sighted form, bottom is the cave-dwelling, blind form. From the Jeffery Lab.Beyond this, we may hypothesize that a mutation "turning off" sight could be beneficial. By definition, an…
grrlscientist | January 26, 2008tags: rodent, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
An unknown (to me) species of rodent
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
gregladen | January 26, 2008I'm serious. You can't see this post until you put down your coffee and make sure your airways are clear. Then you can click on the heading and laugh, and cry, and everything...
This is a repost of an item from my old blog.
OK, I think this is fake, it can't be real. This was spotted on Pharyngula, and PZ Myers is a smart guy, but maybe this time he was fooled.
I'm talking about the "Twin Citeis Creation Science Association 2007 Home School Science Fair" planned for February 17th and 18th.
Here is the link if you want to see their site.
The following are my favorites form a list of 114…
evolvingthoughts | January 25, 2008
Reacting to Jerry Coyne's guest blog on The Loom, Brian Switek at Laelaps discusses, among other things, the objection to Darwin's theories that Huxley put forward, both in personal correspondence and in print:
The only objections that have occurred to me are 1st that you have loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting 'Natura non facit saltum' so unreservedly. I believe she does make small jumps--and 2nd. it is not clear to me why if external physical conditions are of so little moment as you suppose variation should occur at all--
Darwin indeed used that phrase, which…
laelaps | January 25, 2008On November 23rd, 1858, T.H. Huxley wrote one of the most famous letters in the history of science to Charles Darwin. While the letter is perhaps most widely known for Huxley's staunch support of On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection against the opposition both were sure would come out against the book (Huxley opining that "I am sharpening up my claws & beak in readiness."), the letter also contains another important quote. As much as Huxley was taken with Darwin's book, he did have some reservations about one aspect of Darwin's idea that came up over and over again;
The only…
grrlscientist | January 24, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, neotropical ants, Cephalotes atratus, parasitic nematodes, Myrmeconema neotropicum, tetradonematid nematode, evolution, coevolution, fruit mimicry
A neotropical black ant, Cephalotes atratus,
infected with the newly described parasitic nematode,
Myrmeconema neotropicum.
The ant's infected and swollen abdomen does not actually take on a red pigment.
It becomes a translucent amber. With the yellowish parasite eggs inside and a touch
of sunlight, it appears bright red.
Image: Steve Yanoviak, University of Arkansas.
In the first known example of a parasite…
laelaps | January 23, 2008Modern geology is dictated by uniformitarianism as proposed by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology, a book that rightly displaced the "armchair speculations" of catastrophists.
In nearly any book about 19th century science, Charles Darwin, paleontology, or geology, the name Charles Lyell shows up at least once, even if only to state his connection with the idea of uniformitarianism. This important concept, often summarized as "the present is the key to the past," has often been described as triumphantly kicking catastrophist explanations out of geological science, researchers like…
grrlscientist | January 23, 2008tags: Speciation in Birds, Trevor Price, book review, evolution, birds
The question of what is a species and how they arise has generated numerous discussions and tremendous controversy throughout the decades. This interest is more than academic, as any bird watcher will tell you since the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) routinely splits one species into two or lumps two species into one, thereby wreaking havoc with many birders' "life lists"; that master list of species seen that is kept by each birder. More than once, I have heard birders question the validity of one or another of the…
tsmith | January 23, 2008 Though there still may be some lingering doubt about the cause of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of plague, the pathogen behind the outbreaks that have taken place in the last 150 years or so is much less ambiguous.
While Koch and Pasteur ushered in the golden age of microbiology, an outbreak of plague began in China and spread from there. In 1894, while plague was raging in Hong Kong, the Pasteur Institute sent Alexandre Yersin, a physician who had trained with both Pasteur and Koch, to investigate. Yersin was able to access material from a corpse, and inoculated material he…
tfk | January 22, 2008Tony Campolo, generally considered a member of the Christian Left, writes a staggeringly wrong essay on evolution. After rightly dismissing typical creationist complaints that evolutionary "theories contradict their literal biblical belief that creation occurred in six 24-hour days," Campolo jumps onto the Coral Ridge/Disco. Inst. bandwagon, claiming that the "real dangers of Darwinism," lie in "the ethical implications of Darwin's original writings."
After which we get the typical half-literate practice of judging Darwin's 500+ page opus based on a single phrase in the subtitle: "Favored…
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2008
(Yes, it's LOLFeral Pigs)
A recent article in Emerging and Infectious Diseases just made the explanation of the E. coli spinach outbreak much more complex.
When the contaminated spinach story broke, there were a lot of accusations bandied about that this showed that either corporate factory farming was evil, or that organic farming (the farm was organic) was evil* (an aside: by now, it should be apparent to everyone that politicized public health and biological issues are often not discussed rationally or consistently). I'm no fan of corporate farming because the high densities of animals…
grrlscientist | January 21, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Sleeping Flamingoes.
Image: orphaned image [larger size].
People Hurting Birds
A new study, based on the use of "climate envelope modelling", predicts that without vigorous and immediate action against climate change, the potential future distribution of the average European bird species will shift by nearly 550 km to the northeast by the end of this century, will reduce their range size by a fifth and overlap their current range by only 40 per cent. Alarmingly, the atlas shows that three quarters of all Europe's…
grrlscientist | January 19, 2008tags: whale tail, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Tail of an unknown (to me) species of whale,
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
tetrapodzoology | January 18, 2008
Those of you with particularly good memories might recall the little references I've been making here and there to a 'big, personally-relevant publication', and those asides to new papers about pleurodires and enantiornithines. Following horrific delays (caused by amphibians, dinosaur growth rates, ichthyosaurs and conferences) I am, finally, pleased to announce that Cambridge University Press' huge new book, The Crato Fossil Beds of Brazil: Window into an Ancient World (Martill et al. 2007), was published in December 2007 and is now available. If you're interested in Cretaceous anurans,…
gregladen | January 18, 2008There is a discussion on the internet about Junk DNA, that includes a discussion at Sandwalk (Larry Moran's blog) ... I made a comment there about genome size that was responded to by T.R. Gregory. I started to write my response in Larry's Little Box, but realized that it would not fit. So it is here:
Imagine a gene family distributed among all the species in a given taxon. There are several alleles per gene. The gene codes for an enzyme that plays a role in determining cell size. Different combinations of genes/alleles exist to cause cell size to vary such that each species has a…
tsmith | January 17, 2008 Yesterday I introduced criticisms that have been raised against Y. pestis causation of the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks. Today I'll discuss what I see as weaknesses in these criticisms, after the jump.
Selective quoting and interpretation of evidence
First and foremost, a big issue I have with the claims by Duncan and Scott are that they are rather selective in what evidence they choose. For example, they selected several quotes from medieval manuscripts and diaries that suggest that people at the time "knew" it was directly contagious from person to person, and…
grrlscientist | January 16, 2008tags: bat, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Unknown species (to me) of Bat at rest,
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
laelaps | January 16, 2008
Thanks to conservation efforts, gray wolves in various parts of the United States have made a comeback, enough to potentially be removed from the endangered species list, but not everyone is happy that the wolves are doing so well. Indeed, if plans move forward to remove the protected status of wolves in the Northern Rockies region of the U.S., at least three states (Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana) are planning on setting up public hunts with rock-bottom prices for permits, possibly reducing the population back down to 300. Some members of Congress have protested the potential removal of the…