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razib | March 28, 2007Ass in Space was basically souped up Tabasco Sauce. In other words, it sucked!!!! I have nothing more to say about this lame excuse for a "hot" sauce....
cmcclain | March 27, 2007
Alviniconcha hessleri (Mollusca: Mesogastropoda: Provannidae)
When you think of hydrothermal vents, what comes to mind first? Is it the gushing black smoke out of a chimney? Perhaps you envision the enormous tubeworms with their red velvety plumes sticking out of their white tubes. Some may even be familiar with the dense swarms of blind shrimp. What may not come to mind are big hairy snails!
Description Alviniconcha hessleri was discovered and described almost 20 years ago (7) and is a mesogastropod in the family Provannidae (14). It is named both after the submersible Alvin ("Alvin's…
petnoyer | March 27, 2007Did you ever want to write a letter to the Pope, but you didn't know what to say? Well, here's your chance to write that letter. Sea turtle advocates did all the work for you, and they vastly improved your only likely chance of an audience. Your voice will be one of thousands calling upon His Excellency to stop the slaughter of our oceangoing innocents during the Lenten season. The Baja California Sur environmental group ProPeninsula is engaged in a letter writing campaign to His Excellency Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican asking him to remind Catholics everywhere that sea turtles are not…
grrlscientist | March 27, 2007When twins are born, they are either the product of separate eggs that are fertilized by separate sperm (fraternal twins) or they are the result of one egg plus one sperm that divided to produce two babies (identical twins). However, a set of twins has been discovered that is very likely unique: they are the result of one egg and two sperm that gave rise to two babies.
In short; these twins have identical maternal genes and different fraternal genes.
Already toddlers, the twins were discovered because one of the twins was discovered to have sexually ambiguous genitalia, with both ovarian and…
integrityofscience | March 27, 2007Last week, Tom the Dancing Bug introduced us to a parallell universe, where Al Gore never won the Best Documentary Oscar. Click below for the full cartoon.
cmcclain | March 26, 2007Sunday night, cocktail in hand, I prepared myself for an anticipated 3 hours of glorious nature footage. The flash website, the advertisement at the top of this very webpage, and Peter Etnoyer managed to bolster my fervor for Planet Earth. Less than a year ago, at the Deep-Sea Biology Symposium, BBC representatives revealed a few of the excerpts from the series-a shark engulfing a sea lion, ispods swarming a food fall, and birds of paradise in stunning displays of mating ritual. Three hours later, I added this to my ongoing list of anticlimactic experiences. At least the cocktail(s) were…
pharyngula | March 26, 2007Go on over to his place and leave a birthday greeting, and be sure to check out the multimedia collection of good wishes.
We wondered what we could do to express our appreciation, and had a hard time figuring out what would be appropriate … until a student asked to borrow one of my copies of The God Delusion because he couldn't find one anywhere in town. Instead of giving Dawkins a present directly, the Myers family is donating a copy of his book to the local library, where we hope some receptive minds will discover it.
petnoyer | March 25, 2007 My understanding of what makes a good children's book changed dramatically about 15 months ago, when my baby daughter Clara Lynn was born. Before that time, I thought a good children's library would be a mix of Dr. Seuss, Dick and Jane, Sesame Street, and Winnie the Pooh. These were the stories I grew up with in the Seventies. I knew to beware of hypnotic modern characters like Barney and Elmo who could steal your child's mind and win their affections. I pictured myself reading the Hobbit from a rocking chair at nighttime, while my daughter stared lovingly from under a cozy blanket. All that…
cmcclain | March 24, 2007 In case you missed Peter and I discussing this program, here is another reminder. DEEP OCEAN AIRS TOMORROW NIGHT ON THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL. The series is from the BBC. Last year at a deep-sea meeting a BBC representative presented some of the video. Even in its unformatted state, it was truly marvelous. As I recall, a segment shows Giant Isopods swarming a food fall. There will also be excellent footage of coral/sponge meadows on Davidson Seamount here off the California coast. Having seen some of this video and diving on the seamount with ROV's, I can say you will not want to mist this.…
grrlscientist | March 24, 2007The purple milkweed butterfly winters on the south end of Taiwan and flies over 600 meters of open roadways to reach its breeding ground in the north. Unfortunately, many of the 11,500 butterflies that attempt the journey each hour do not reach their breeding grounds because turbulence generated by fast-moving cars drags them into traffic or under the wheels of oncoming vehicles. As a result, Taiwan will close one lane of a major highway to protect more than a million of these butterflies, which cross the road on their seasonal migration.
Ecologists are using the lane closure, protective nets…
nisbetmc | March 23, 2007
In conjunction with Earth Day, a number of major survey results have been released on global warming, energy, and the environment. The latest is a survey from Gallup that chronicles American views on energy, and the trade-offs between the environment and the economy. Of note, is the now striking gap of more than twenty points between giving preference as a priority to the environment over energy supplies. Also, below, is charted American views on energy as a problem. Note the startling spike in urgency felt by the public in 2001.
As I detailed in a Science and Media column last year,…
worldsfair | March 23, 2007I've shown this before somewhere in this blog, but since Ben recently put up a post on "unintended consequences" and the use of genetic modification, just thought it worth mentioning that an older piece of mine on Grimace is up at the SCQ.
nisbetmc | March 23, 2007 As I have detailed at Framing Science many times, over the past five years, as Democrats and Independents have shifted their views in support of embryonic stem cell research and policy action on climate change, little or no movement in opinion has occurred among self-identifying Republicans. In part, this is because partisanship acts as a very strong perceptual screen on news messages. However, there is also something else very interesting going on. Republicans appear so resistant to changing their views on controversial areas of science because, as measured in surveys, this group is…
cmcclain | March 23, 2007Today's Saipan Tribune reports on the growing support among Pacific Islands to ban bottom trawling. Palau President Remengassau has been the lead on rallying support for such measures.
During the {Pacific Islands Executive Chief] summit, Remengasau reported that the Pacific Islands Forum and other chief executives at previous meetings had agreed, within the limitations of their political status, to support a temporary ban on deep see trawling. They had also pledged to take a precautionary approach until measures are in place to effectively manage and regulate this damaging practice.
cmcclain | March 23, 2007Both Pictures from Igenious.org.uk
James Six (1731-1793) retired early from business to devote himself to the natural sciences. He is best known for the invention of the self-registering thermometer, first designed in 1780, which recorded the maximum and minimum temperatures reached. It was the most widely used thermometer for taking deep-sea temperatures until 1870. The thermometer's susceptibility to pressure was addressed in 1869 by Dr W A Miller (1817-1870), then Vice-President of the Royal Society. Miller's adaptation of Six's design was made by the instrument maker L P Casella (…
tqa | March 22, 2007
At yesterday's Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing, Senator James Inhofe challenged Gore to sign a "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge." Inhofe's antics are nothing new - the man's been opposed to a reality based reality for years now, and he's pulled plenty of media stunts to highlight his claims about global warming. One more, even one that involves the former Vice President, is hardly newsworthy. In this case, though, the stunt that he pulled is such a classic example of the "no right answer question" that it's worth taking a look at.
Here's Inhofe's "Personal Energy…
grrlscientist | March 22, 2007A delivery truck loaded down with Cadbury chocolate eggs worth an estimated £70,000 ($137,326) was stolen in Staffordshire, UK. The thieves tricked the driver, who had stopped near Lichfield en route from the Birmingham factory to Yorkshire, by telling him his van was losing its load. When the driver got out of his cab to investigate, the men jumped in and drove off with the eggs.
"The amount stolen is a minor quantity on the grand scale of things as we make between 30 and 40 million eggs in our Bournville plant each Easter," said a Cadbury spokesman. But the thieves may end up eating all…
petnoyer | March 22, 2007This Sunday (March 25) the Discovery Channel will be broadcasting the series Planet Earth at 8pm ET/PT. Footage of Davidson Seamount will be broadcast in the Deep Ocean episode at 10pm ET/PT. Expect to see some gorgeous gorgonians and some handsome fly-trap anemones.
Discovery Channel put together a very slick flash website for the occaission, complete with a Google Earth tour, videos, and online games.
Need we ask how this will compare to the incredible Blue Planet series five years ago?
pharyngula | March 22, 2007Because I'm really sick of sharing one with these pigs.
Texas male Dan Patrick is proposing to buy unwanted babies for $500 a head, but only if you promise you were going to abort it if you didn't.
Sleazeball male tries to dope date, gets caught be sharp-eyed female bartender.
Male in pickup truck can't get a woman's attention by harrassing her, so he runs her over instead
Really, they aren't my kind.