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razib | March 6, 2008John Hawks has everything you need to know. Question: how did this get by peer review?
gregladen | March 6, 2008A team of scientists including Linda B. Buck, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has retracted a scientific paper after the scientists could not reproduce their original findings.
...
In the paper, the researchers described how they produced genetically engineered mice that produced a plant protein in certain smell-related neurons. The researchers had claimed that as the plant protein traveled between neurons, they could map out which neurons in the cortex of the brain received information from which smell receptors in the nose.
In the retraction, published by Nature…
gregladen | March 6, 2008As wolves wander into Massachusetts, we now have a report of the elusive Wolverine being spotted on a research camera in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Camera Spots Wolverine in Sierra Nevada from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- A research project aimed at weasels has turned up a bigger prize: a picture of a wolverine, an elusive animal scientists feared may have been driven out of the Sierra Nevada long ago by human activity.
[...]
cmcclain | March 6, 2008
By random but thankful chance I stumbled upon DiveFilm HD Podcast in the ITunes Store (click here). The podcast features some of the best underwater video footage out there. Sometimes the narration is cheesy but that is what mute is for. The video is again high definition and wide format. Much of the video is so crisp that you will think your looking out a window. Episodes 6 and 4 are a must see. Frequent readers will now I don't get all giggly about about animals with a backbone but Episode 1 with footage of humpbacks is truly specatacular. Some screen shots below the fold.
cmcclain | March 6, 2008Ten years ago Fred Grassle, a marine biologist with deep-sea tendencies, and Jesse Ausubel, program director for Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, started conversing on an initiative to document the biodiversity of the oceans. That program, the Census of Marine Life, started in 2000 with the goal "to advance a major new international observational program to be completed by 2010 to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life." That program lead to the support of several field projects and expeditions (currently over 15), the Ocean Biogeographic Information System…
cortex | March 6, 2008The NY Times group blog on Migraines just posted a really fantastic article by Jeff Tweedy, leader of Wilco (one of my favorite bands), on his chronic migraine condition:
There are a lot of different ways migraines have affected my music, and vice versa: being a musician has allowed me -- for lack of a better phrase -- to rise above the pain from time to time. I've never missed a show because of a migraine. But I've played some really horrible shows and cut them short because there was very little I could do to keep going. I've played shows where I had bucket on the side of the stage where I…
cortex | March 6, 2008Radio Lab delves into the mystery:
Yang and her colleagues put all 49 people, both the liars and the non-liars, into a magnetic resonant imaging scanner and took pictures of their prefrontal cortex. They chose to focus on this area of the brain because previous studies had shown that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in both lying and in antisocial behaviors.
If you could look into this part of the brain, which sits right behind your forehead, you would see two kinds of matter: gray and white. Gray matter is the groups of brain cells that process information. Most neuroscience studies focus…
cortex | March 5, 2008One of the most frequent questions I get when speaking about my book is the MSG question. My talk is about L-glutamate, the taste of umami and veal stock (it makes a little more sense if you've read the book) and, before I get to the punchline, I'm inevitably interrupted by someone insisting that MSG is toxic.* I will now refer all interested parties to this Times article:
Even now, after "Chinese restaurant syndrome" has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people),…
sciencesociety | March 5, 2008On January 30th, the Seed and Schering-Plough hosted the second Science + Society breakfast on Capitol Hill. Entitled "Synthetic Biology: Constructing a Golden Age," the discussion covered the technology behind synthetic bio, the state of current research, and emerging legal and regulatory issues.
Speakers were MIT's Drew Endy and Anne-Marie Mazza of the Committee on Science, Technology and Law at the National Academies.
The talk was moderated by ScienceBlogs' own Carl Zimmer.
cortex | March 5, 2008My article on the Blue Brain project is now online*:
It took less than two years for the Blue Brain supercomputer to accurately simulate a neocortical column, which is a tiny slice of brain containing approximately 10,000 neurons, with about 30 million synaptic connections between them. "The column has been built and it runs," Markram says. "Now we just have to scale it up." Blue Brain scientists are confident that, at some point in the next few years, they will be able to start simulating an entire brain. "If we build this brain right, it will do everything," Markram says. I ask him if that…
cmcclain | March 4, 2008
Unfortunately, Zoologix beat us to the story of Henry the Hexapus. Henry, caught in a lobster pot off north Whales, is the first reported six-legged octopus. The loss of two limbs did not occur from a tangle with some thug octopus but rather results from a birth defect. If you're interested in how such a thing could happen in this beautiful world, PZ has a whole post on HOX genes and cephalopod development that is good preliminary reading. How common are octopod defects? Below the fold is something we like to call Cephalopod Freak Show!
Heptapus: Gledall (1989) "A male specimen of…
pharyngula | March 4, 2008Nerds everywhere will be grieving: Gary Gygax has died. I haven't played the game in a long time, but I had a lot of fun with it in my undergraduate years — if they haven't succumbed to mold and decay, I have the original manuals somewhere down in my basement. I also had a set of miniatures, but those definitely got battered into shapelessness by my kids playing with them (but I win in the end, since my oldest son left a huge collection of his fancy miniatures at my house. Maybe I won't give them back.) My thanks to Gygax and his colleague Dave Arneson for some good old fun times with my…
petnoyer | March 4, 2008
Plastic bags from the stomach of a dead minke whale are making the news in the UK. British newspaper Daily Mail has a story on a whale found dead in the English Channel back in 2002. The animal was initially thought to die from natural causes but an autopsy revealed 2 lbs of plastic bags clogging the stomach. If the whales consume enough bags, their stomachs become full, they stop eating and they starve.
What to do, what to do? The City of San Francisco voted to ban plastic bags recently. Ireland, Uganda, and China are trying to tackle the problem, too. China banned free plastic bags.
Where…
cortex | March 4, 2008I know I just wrote an article on the power of expectations, but this is ridiculous:
In a series of studies in the 1970s and '80s, psychologists at the University of Washington put more than 300 students into a study room outfitted like a bar with mirrors, music and a stretch of polished pine. The researchers served alcoholic drinks, most often icy vodka tonics, to some of the students and nonalcoholic ones, usually icy tonic water, to others. The drinks looked and tasted the same, and the students typically drank five in an hour or two.
The studies found that people who thought they were…
grrlscientist | March 4, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Mendel's Garden
The 24th edition of Mendel's Garden is now available for you to enjoy. I am surprised to see that this is probably the smallest Mendel's Garden I've ever seen -- what happened, my peeps?
grrlscientist | March 4, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Brain Blogging
The 28th edition of Brain Blogging is now available for you to enjoy. I am pleased to tell you that they included a contribution from me, too!
grrlscientist | March 3, 2008
Image: Orthopod.
I saw the orthopedic surgeon this morning and he said that my fracture does not need surgery. I asked to see the x-ray and here's what I saw; the proximal end (the "head") of the humerus was broken off, but still in proper alignment. I'd draw a picture for you, but don't have a scanner to share it, so instead, I'll just describe it for you.
As you can see in the above image, there is a point where the head of the humerus meets the clavicle and scapula to form the shoulder joint. Well, the "round ball" that is at the top of the humerus is broken off. Since there is nothing…