ScienceBlogs Select

Parasites outweigh top predators and castrators do best of all [Not Exactly Rocket Science]

Ed Yong none@example.com — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:46:03 -0500

To a science-fiction filmmaker, the concept of being controlled by unseen forces is creative gold, but for the rest of us, it's a fairly unsettling prospect. But like it or not, it's clear that parasites - creatures that live off (and often control) the bodies of others - are an integral part of the world we live in and carry an influence that far exceeds their small size.

Now, a painstaking survey of the residents of river estuaries shows that parasites do indeed punch above their weight, and they aren't slouches in that department either. Despite their tiny size, their combined mass eclipsed that of the top predators in the area and their influence extended wider still. It's a parasite's world and we're just living in it.

Over five years, Armand Kuris and Ryan Hechinger from the University of California, Santa Barbara led an exhaustive census of life in three Californian estuaries. At 69 different sites, they assessed almost 200 species of free-living animals, from high-flying birds to burrowing shrimps, as well as the 138 species of parasites hitching a lifestyle on their bodies.

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Dying for a home [Effect Measure]

revere none@example.com — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:58:00 -0500

A tragedy in Massachusetts is highlighting the terrible strain the housing crisis is taking on millions of former homeowners who are losing their homes:

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Why am I hearing this nonsense from a scienceblogger? [denialism blog]

MarkH none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:02:11 -0500

Who wrote this?

As someone who spends a substantial portion of his professional time teaching medical students, I can tell you that this kind of attitude-that physicians are gods, not mere mortals, and wield power over other human beings that no one dare question-is inculcated in them from the very beginning of medical training. It is an ugly secret of our medical training system. And the more prestigious the institutions where physicians receive their training, the more overweening is this attitude.
Anything that a physician calls a "joke" or "for the patient's benefit" simply is that, and how dare anyone question that judgment!

Surgeons are the worst, they cut people's fucking asses open with sharp knives, and they are basically used to functioning as dictators in the operating room. These leads to the development of attitudes which makes perfect sense in light of the practical demands of surgery. But they do not work well in other areas of life. Put a surgeon in charge of any enterprise that requires leadership through persuasion or consensus, and you are totally fucking fucked.

I know, you guys are saying, Gary Null, or Joe Mercola, or maybe the Health Ranger Mike Adams. But you would be wrong, actually this snarling little piece of anti-doctor slander came from someone within our own community. Not only that, it came from someone who teaches medical students at a major academic university. This is, of course, PhysioProf. Now, if anyone knows me, and what I write about, what I really care about is standards for arguments. As a member of the scienceblogs community, it is understandably upsetting to see a evidence-free rant, based on bigotry, from a scibling that tars a group of people that I know to be some of the most caring, the most thoughtful, intellectual, careful and conscientious people I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

What to do about this I wonder? What solution is there to this problem of such a fool in our midst, spouting such hate and nonsense at others? What can we do about someone who holds medical students and doctors in such contempt, when he himself teaches them daily?

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Why Not? Blogging My D & C [Thus Spake Zuska]

Zuska none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:14:37 -0500

Blame it on Abel, who blogged his vasectomy, and Janet, who blogged her mammogram. Also blame Drugmonkey and Physioprof, who along with Abel, Janet, and others encouraged me to Blog My D&C. Yep. So here goes.

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Tarbosaurus Takes Japan for Lunch [Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)]

"GrrlScientist" none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:06:06 -0500

tags: dinosaurs, Tarbosaurus bataar, paleontology, fossils, Tyrannosaurs rex

The newly unveiled fossil skeleton of the juvenile Tarbosaurus bataar in its protective jacket.

Discovered in 2006, a near-perfect complete skeleton of a juvenile Tarbosaurus find was made available for public viewing for the first time today by the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Science in Okayama, western Japan. This fossil was originally unearthed from a chunk of sandstone in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia by a team of Mongolian and Japanese researchers. The fossil of the young dinosaur is roughly 70 million years old (from the late Cretaceous period) and is the first time that this species has been found "totally intact".

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Why do more Asians have perfect pitch? [Cognitive Daily]

Dave Munger none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:47:50 -0500

Several recent large-scale studies have confirmed a curious finding: Asians are much more likely to have "perfect pitch" than non-Asians. Perfect pitch, more properly called "Absolute pitch," is an extremely rare phenomenon, but it's several times more likely to occur in Asians than in others.

Studies have found that only 1 in 1,500 to 10,000 individuals possess absolute pitch. Part of the ability's rarity is due to the fact that it's really a combination of two abilities: pitch-memory -- the ability to remember what a pitch sounds like, and pitch-labeling -- the ability to name a pitch (A, B-flat, and so on). Pitch labeling can only come through training, but pitch memory does not require training.

So does the Asian advantage come from pitch labeling or pitch memory? Many people, even those with very little training, are able to remember the pitch of familiar songs. Daniel Levitin, for example, has found that most people can sing their favorite songs at pitches nearly identical to the popular versions played on the radio.

Glenn Shellenberg and Sandra Trehub realized that pitch memory might be the best way to uncover differences between Asians and non-Asians. They asked 70 kids, age 9 to 12, all living in the Toronto area, what their six favorite TV shows were. Half these kids were Asian and half were non-Asian. Then they played two different versions of each show's theme song: one accurate, and one shifted up or down by two semitones (so if the original melody was C - D - E , the new version might be be D - E - F-sharp). The child was asked which was the correct melody -- the one they heard on TV. Here are the results:

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History in the genes [Gene Expression]

Razib none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:28:53 -0500

I've posted a fair amount about the new field of historical population genetics. Some of the most popular mass-market books in genetics deal with this field, for example Spencer Wells' Journey of Man. On the other hand, there's a lot of sloppy overreach on the part of some practitioners, especially due to the excessive reliance on uniparental lineages; the unbroken female and male lineages (mtDNA and NRY). Nevertheless, in specific narrow cases where hypotheses are being tested they can be very illuminating.

For example, here is a question: do the mixed-race populations of the Caribbean exhibit any evidence of descent from the indigenous pre-Columbian populations? This is an open question because it was in the Caribbean that the first and most extreme die-offs of native populations occurred when exposed to Eurasian pathogens. The short answer seems to be yes, some indigenous ancestry does persist into the present.

This was first confirmed in Puerto Rico, Reconstructing the population history of Puerto Rico by means of mtDNA phylogeographic analysis:

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Chilinger: if you assume that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas then increasing it doesn't warm the Earth [Deltoid]

Tim Lambert none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:23:06 -0500

A new paper by Chilingar, Khilyuk and Sorokhtin is up to their previous standard.

Here's the abstract:

The writers investigated the effect of CO2 emission on the temperature of atmosphere. Computations based on the adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect show that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in cooling rather than warming of the Earth's atmosphere.

Wow! How did they come up with that? Here's their calculation:

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Fireweed [Aardvarchaeology]

Martin R none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:21:38 -0500

On my evening walk, while listening to a Skepticality interview with secular humanists Mel Lipman and Lori Lipman Brown, I took some pix of fireweed growing in weird places. (That's Epilobium angustifolium, Sw. rallarros, mjölkört, "railroad man's rose", "milk plant"). The plant propagates by wind-borne seeds like thistledown, and they can apparently sprout anywhere. Some were growing out of a crack in a vertical cliff face.

Others appeared to have been planted on Mr. Kight's, my ground-floor neighbour's, balcony.

As it turned out, he had simply left a little planting soil with his gardening tools in a large pot, and the fireweed had come along and made the most of the situation. Blooming there for the benefit of Mr. Kight.

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PZ goes too far! [Dynamics of Cats]

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:30:52 -0500

PZ, you bastard!
Now you have gone too far.
Some of us do try to teach our children proper reverence, and what do you do?

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Does lead exposure cause decreased brain size? [Greg Laden's Blog]

Greg Laden none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:15:00 -0500

A recently published study seems to indicate that adult brain volume is reduced in individuals with significant lead exposure during childhood. While this study may lead to important findings linking lead to reduced cognitive function, it is important to note that observed effect is very small, very hard to link to specific outcomes, and may not exist. But it is worth a further look.

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A new juvenile Tarbosaurus [Laelaps]

Brian Switek none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:56:30 -0500

The skeleton of a young Tarbosaurus. From the LiveScience article.

Poor Tarbosaurus. Even though it was a top predator during the Cretaceous most people have never heard about it, the theropod from Asia being a poor man's Tyrannosaurus. (Some people think that Tarbosaurus = Tyrannosaurus, but I side with those who hold that they are distinct.) Still, even though it is not as famous as it's North American cousin it is still pretty cool that the recovery of a nearly complete skeleton of a juvenile Tarbosaurus has just been announced. Discovered two years ago in the Gobi Desert the fossils have now been prepped, revealing a young dinosaur only about 7 feet long.

This skeleton, head thrown back and tail arched up in the classic opisthotonic posture, is going to be important in the current debates over dinosaur growth rates and tyrannosaurid diversity. In terms of the latter there has been a resurgence in debate over Nanotyrannus and this specimen will likely be marshaled as evidence for and against the existence of such a "pygmy tyrant."

The skull of a young Tarbosaurus. From the LiveScience article.

For those unfamiliar with the current argument some paleontologists support the idea, based upon skulls and teeth, that there was a second, "pygmy" genus of tyrannosaurid that lived alongside the larger predator. In his book Rex Appeal, for instance, Peter Larson argued that the smaller predator was a hypercarnivorous specialist, more analogous to a flesh-eating cat than the bone-crunching hyena analog in Tyrannosaurus. Larson cites a number of what he identifies as Nanotyrannus teeth found around the skeletons of well-preserved prey animals like Triceratops as evidence, yet this correlation does not necessarily mean there was another kind of tyrannosaurid around, especially if young Tyrannosaurus had somewhat different habits than their parents.

Although the current argument was initiated with the description of Nanotyrannus in 1988 the debate really took off with the discovery of the juvenile tyrannosaurid "Jane." Some argued that this dinosaur was a Nanotyrannus and others that it represents a young Tyrannosaurus (which, I must admit, I am more in agreement with), the arguments having been carried over into the recently published symposium book Tyrannosaurus rex: The Tyrant King. Why is the new Tarbosaurus juvenile important? A major factor in the Nanotyrannus debate is development; what exactly did Tyrannosaurus look like when young? What were it's body proportions? Did it have more teeth? What explanation is there for these differences?

Such questions can only be answered with the discovery of well-preserved young specimens, the new skeleton being such an example. Yet the young Tarbosaurus will not seal the debate. If Tarbosaurus is indeed distinct from Tyrannosaurus then we shouldn't expect their ontogeny to be exactly the same; even if the new specimen helps us understand the development of Tarbosaurus we can't say that it would have been exactly the same for Tyrannosaurus (although general trends might be able to be identified and compared to see how the group in general grew up). It is a fascinating find, most certainly, but given the state of things I can see a new round of arguments by those who would like to see Tarbosaurus ascend to the Tyrannosaurus throne and those who want Nanotyrannus to be removed from it.

[Hat-tip to Greg Laden]

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The Confusion About the Social Security 'Crisis' Is Economists' Fault: More on Sizzle [Mike the Mad Biologist]

Mike none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:02:16 -0500

One of the topics I discuss on this blog is the idiocy surrounding Social Security--despite all of the hype, Social Security is not DOOMED!! (To make a longish explanation short, every year for the last fourteen years, Social Security has been predicted to become insolvent in 32 to 36 years. 'Insolvency' will only occur if the economy underperforms on an unprecented scale--including the decade surrounding the Great Depression--for several decades. In that case, a very modest increase in the payroll tax will cover all necessary payouts. There is, however, a general budget crisis that the Social Security surplus is used to reduce*.)

So whose fault is this?

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Q&A: Riccardo Ricco and Epo Abuse [Pure Pedantry]

Jake Young none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:56:18 -0500

People have been asking me about Riccardo Ricco, the Italian cyclist who was thrown out of the Tour de France for testing positive for the hormone erythropoietin (Epo), so I want to do a little Q&A about Epo detection and abuse.

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The WPost on Science, Politics, and the Miserly Public [Framing Science]

Matthew C. Nisbet none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:19:15 -0500

As I like to say, when it comes to science debates, the public is far more likely to be miserly in reaching a judgment than fully informed. Most citizens are cognitive misers relying heavily on information short cuts and heuristics to make up their minds about a science controversy, often in the absence of knowledge. The fragmented nature of our modern media system magnifies the problem of a miserly public, introducing the "problem of choice." Absent a strong preference for the really good science coverage available, citizens can completely avoid such information, paying attention instead to just entertainment media or their preferred ideological source of news.

As a result, in order to effectively engage the public, scientists and their organizations need to adapt their communication efforts to the realities of human nature and the media system. This means recasting, or "framing," their communication efforts in a way that remain consistent with the science, but that connects a complex science issue to something that the intended audience already understands or values. (For more, see this recently completed book chapter, The Scientist cover article, the essay at Science, and this journal study.)

I didn't invent these principles, I adapted them from more than sixty years of research in political communication and public opinion, applying them to science debates. In this context, when it comes to understanding what makes for effective communication strategy, there is nothing essentially unique about science from election campaigns or other political skirmishes.

The Washington Post, in an article today, spotlights this rich body of research in the social sciences, interviewing various political scientists who have been tracking levels of political knowledge in the electorate. As they note, levels of political knowledge were very low in the 1950s and they remain so today, despite increased levels of education and orders of magnitude increases in the availability of political news and information.

One of the political scientists I often cite is Samuel Popkin, author of the seminal The Reasoning Voter. He argues that in many cases it is quite rational for citizens to cut down on their information costs by relying heavily on character cues, ideology, and other heuristics in reaching judgments about politics. As a result, effective political strategists and candidates understand how to adapt their message to this reality. Here's what Popkin has to say in the WPost article:

How much credit do we give our most precious resource, the American brain? Is it half-empty or half-full? Americans "don't sound the way the high priests of culture want them to sound," says Samuel L. Popkin, author of "The Reasoning Voter," who tends to give voters more credit rather than less. "They use their own language. They process a lot more than they can recall in interviews. They have a lot better sense of who's on their side and who isn't than they're often given credit for."

Four other political scientists review this aspect of human nature and public opinion in a new book titled "The American Voter Revisited." As the WPost article recounts:

Four years ago, Lewis-Beck and Jacoby and two other political scientists decided to take on "The American Voter" once more. They used the same methods to crunch the data and even organized the book the same way. (They had to eliminate the chapter on the agrarian vote, though, because there aren't enough farmers left anymore for a usable sample.)
"The American Voter Revisited" is chock-full of depressing conclusions, couched in academic understatement. In-depth interviews conducted with 1,500 people during the two most recent presidential elections revealed that the "majority of people don't have many issues in mind" when they discuss voting, Lewis-Beck says. Sometimes they say they're attracted to a candidate because "I just don't think we should change parties right now." They tend to inherit their party allegiance from their parents, and those beliefs tend to stay fixed throughout their lives, he says.

"For many people," the authors of "Revisited" write, "dealing with political issues is too much of a bother."

"If they know they're Republican and have been happy that way, they'll stay Republican," says another of the book's four authors, Herb Weisberg, who chairs the political science department at Ohio State University. Even for those voters who do rethink their allegiance to a given party -- because, say, the party in power has fouled things up -- "if times get better, they'll get back to where they were," Weisberg says. Their attachment to party is more emotional than intellectual, Lewis-Beck suggests, akin to their feelings for sports teams.

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Amazon Powers Carbon Sink in Tropical Ocean [A Few Things Ill Considered]

coby none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:00:10 -0800

A new study from University of Southern California was just released, appearing in PNAS Early Edition the week of July 21, showing that run-off from the Amazon River powers a large carbon sink in the tropical North Atlantic ocean. New Scientist talks about it here.

According to the press realease, which I will quote at the end of the post, this overturns the previously held view that this area of the ocean was a net emmitter of carbon.

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What's wrong with Steve Jobs? [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:00:04 -0500

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm an Apple geek. The Macintosh is my preferred axe and has been, with few interruptions, since the late 1980s. Indeed, the only time I've used anything other than a Mac is when I've had no choice. The first time I saw one was in 1984, not long after the original Mac was released. My roommate somehow managed to come up with the money to buy one through the University of Michigan towards the end of my senior year. I really liked it right from the start but only got to play with it occasionally for a few months. After I graduated, I didn't even own a computer for several years and hardly touched one. I had entered medical school, and this was the mid-1980s. As amazing as it sounds, we didn't even have e-mail accounts, much less computers to use. How on earth did we manage? Who knows? But somehow we did.

In the late 1980s, I finally got a chance to use computers again while doing a research project in my last year of medical school. It was a Mac SE. Since then, I have used the Macintosh platform more or less continuously, with few exceptions or hiatuses. For example, back in the early 1990s, I was forced to use Windows 3.0 and 3.1 for a while, because that's all that was around in the labs that I worked in. Even so, the first computer I purchased was a Mac LC back in 1990 or 1991, and I haven't owned anything other than a Mac since then. True, there were some times when I was forced to use Windows simply because I needed an application that was either not available on the Mac or whose Mac version hadn't been updated in eons. There were a few times when I was tempted to jump ship, particularly during the "bad years" of the mid-1990s, when Apple lost its way, and its offerings became nearly indistinguishable from Windows boxes. Two of the institutions I've worked in, particularly the one I work in now, have ranged from Mac-indifferent to downright Mac-hostile, where Macs are barely tolerated only because a few high-ranking faculty insist on using Apple products and IT is utterly clueless about the Mac.

All of this is my typical long-winded way of saying that I care what happens to Apple, and I always take notice when people start speculating about the health of Steve Jobs, one of the two original founders of Apple and the man who was most responsible for Apple's resurgence over the last decade. Four years ago, he was unfortunate enough to develop pancreatic cancer, but amazingly, astoundingly fortunate enough that he developed an uncommon form of pancreatic cancer that is highly treatable for cure with simple surgical excision. Apparently he pursued a bit of woo first, but ultimately he underwent the surgery. Fortunately for Jobs, his was a slow-growing tumor, and the delay in surgery did not harm him.

Now, shareholders are concerned about how gaunt Jobs has appeared recently, so much so that apparently it's affecting investor confidence:

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Why should the military get a scarce pandemic flu vaccine before almost everyone else? [Effect Measure]

revere none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:44:39 -0500

The headline said, "Vaccination plan puts health care workers first," but you had to read the article to find out who goes next: the military. This according to the Guidance on allocating and targeting pandemic influenza vaccine released yesterday by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The guidance is premised on the assumption that in the early phases of a pandemic, any vaccine will be in short supply and will need to be rationed. The document gives "strong advice" on how DHHS thinks this rationing should take place, although much is left unexplained. Since the allocation to states will come from a national stockpile, the strong advice will have some weight. Moreover, some of the vaccine will be taken "off the top" for federal government use and this will not be subject to any decisions downstream. And some of the federal allocations appear to us to be highly questionable:

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The Women of MDMA Research [DrugMonkey]

DrugMonkey none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:04:32 -0500

A comment left by a reader some time ago took exception to one of my posts highlighting another blogger.

wow, that is some excellent PR for a grad student to get for free. perhaps you could spotlight a female grad student as well...?

The ensuing discussion planted the idea for this post.

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DROP THAT CELL PHONE NOW!!!11!!! [denialism blog]

PalMD none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:35:38 -0500

DROP YOUR CELL PHONE NOW!!!!111!
(don't send me the bill for the replacement)

I'm sure others will cover more of the scientific details, but science aside, we should examine why today's statement on cell phones out of Pittsburgh is so ridiculous. Setting aside the lack of data connecting cell phones and health problems, this is horribly irresponsible.

Here's the thumbnail: an alarmist report was released by the UP Cancer Institute's Center for Environmental Oncology. It was apparently targeted at the university community, and stated that despite lack of current evidence, the community should worry about cell phones this instant.

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The evolution of language and biology [Gene Expression]

Razib none@example.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:18:01 -0500

Sandman has a post up, Can There Be A Synthesis Between Cultural And Biological Evolution?, taking off on the PLoS Biology article, Across the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution. Read both. I would add one important point though: linguistic and biological evolution are simply subsets of evolutionary dynamics. That is why Martin Nowak's book of that name, Evolutionary Dynamics, naturally has a section on the evolution of language. Several evolutionarily oriented thinkers have attempted to translate models originally developed for biology into the domain of culture. Cultural Transmission and Evolution and Culture and the Evolutionary Process are two works which I think are good introductions to the field.

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Mt. Improbable? [EvolutionBlog]

Jason Rosenhouse none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:00:10 -0500

There's an interesting discussion going on between Larry Moran and Richard Dawkins. The subject is the title of Dawkins' 1996 book Climbing Mt. Improbable. It started with this post over at Larry's blog. He included Dawkins in his list of good science writers who were nonetheless excluded from Dawkins' recent anthology of science writing. Along the way, Moran offered this thought:

Dawkins is also a master of metaphor but, sometimes the metaphors are misleading and can give an incorrect view of evolution (e.g. Climbing Mt. Improbable).

Personally, I loved the metaphor of Mt. Improbable. We shall return to this point momentarily.

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The end of ignorance [denialism blog]

PalMD none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:57:09 -0500

The folks at bloggingheads.tv ~~whoring for some link love~~ sent me an interesting link. They had a talking heads session ("diavlog"---damn, that's hard to say) between John Horgan and some other guy (sorry, "Some Other Guy"). Horgan is the guy who brought us The End of Science, a book which was more widely criticized than read. I haven't read it either, but after watching him, I think I need to do a little reading. He's a bright guy, and interesting to listen to, but as live chats often go, there were some errors that deserve parsing, not just because they are errors of fact, but because they reveal a certain disappointing line of thought.

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Six Degrees of Scientific Separation [The Daily Transcript]

Alex Palazzo none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:21:40 -0500

I have a favour to ask of all of you. Go and fill in SciLink's Tree of Science (you'll have to sign up to SciLink first). Why? Well it is very interesting to see how different scientists are connected. And on top of that we can settle a longstanding dispute - what is the appropriate Erdos Number for biologists.

You might be asking, what is the Erdos Number? or who was Paul Erdos Number? From an old post by RPM:

Paul Erdos was an extremely prolific and mobile mathematician who has left a legacy in academia in the form of the Erdos Number -- a count of your "academic distance" from Erdos. Anyone who published a paper with Erdos has an Erdos number of one (Erdos, himself, had a number of zero), people who published with anyone with an Erdos number of one have an Erdos number of two, and so on. It's a point of pride for a mathematician or other researcher to have a small Erdos number.

But who exactly? As a cell biologist I would say that George Palade and Keith Porter would be a good start. Another possibility would be Watson and Crick. In any case to figure out the biology equivalent we would need some sort of repository, or even better some navigational network that lets you explore any possible connection. And now we have the perfect application.

I must say that SciLink's Tree of Science is more of a Genealogical tree ... as in "X mentored Y" as opposed to "X coauthored a paper with Y". In fact some connections such as "coworkers" may not be represented in coauthorships. For example, I never published a paper with my coworker Bil, but we are connected in this tree by the fact that we were in the Rapoport lab at the same time. The opposite problem also occurs. For example, I coauthored a paper with Rich Vallee but according to the current version of the tree we are 4 degrees apart. Of course I could link us up directly ...

Here are some other interesting connections. I am
- 3 degrees away from Jeff Schatz (actually this should be 2)
- 3 degrees away from George Palade (although one connection is very small, my current postdoc advisor was a visiting scientist in Gunter Blobel's lab)
- 3 degrees of separation from Gary Borisy
- 3 degrees away from Peter Moore and 2 away from Venki Ramakrischnan (thanks Bil)

Let's take advantage of this user generated content filled application. Plus, it's a great way to kill time in between those long time points.

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Fishing with dynamite in El Salvador [Deep Sea News]

Peter Etnoyer none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:34:17 -0800

In an alarming trend, the practice of "dynamite" or "bomb" fishing has spread recently to Central America. Reports are coming in that hawksbill turtles are being blasted to death by explosive fishermen working in the Biosphere Reserve of the Bahia de Jiquilisco, El Salvador. At least seven turtles have been found dead, according to Michael Liles, Sea Turtle Conservation Project Coordinator for Fundacion Zoologica de El Salvador (FUNZEL).

The use of explosives is exterminating all species of larvae, juvenile and adult fish, as well as crustaceous, mollusks, sea turtles, and other species of organism living throughout the Bahia de Jiquilisco.

The practice spread from Southeast Asia, where dynamite fishing is common. The blast leaves a crater on the saeabed, and stuns the fish, which are then collected by nets. Corals and turtles are irreparably damaged in the process. This technique (and others) were outlawed in the Philippines in 1986. However, the practice is difficult to enforce and control, because fishermen make their own explosives in bottles filled with fertilizer and alcohol.

J Nichols is asking for your help to spread the word about these regrettable and indescriminate killings. He says "Local government, NGO and university support is strong," but they could use our help raising awareness about the issue. "We are promoting turtle watching as an alternative... once the bomb fishing is under control."

Michael Liles' eyewitness account of the sea turtle destruction and bombing of the biosphere reserve at Bahia de Jiquilisco is pasted below in a letter to local authorities.

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No, no, no, no, no no! [The Island of Doubt]

James Hrynyshyn none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:30:01 -0500

We have to nip this idea in the bud: Shell is reviving the notion of liming the oceans. Why?

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Against Theoretical Archaeology [Aardvarchaeology]

Martin R none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:08:22 -0500

A Trondheim colleague has kindly invited me to head a session at the Nordic TAG conference next May. T.A.G. means "Theoretical Archaeology Group", and denotes a series of annual conferences rather than a defined group of people. The invitation hinted that I might perhaps want to contribute something provocative. After a moment's thought, I realised that my attitude to TAG (Nordic or otherwise) goes beyond provocative: I am simply hostile to it. Archaeological theory, in my opinion, belongs within the context of real specific archaeological research and is useless in an abstract form, which goes against TAG's basic premise. So I declined the invitation, explaining that my message to the conference-goers would be a brief deal-killer: "Go home everybody and do archaeology".

Outsiders often find the term "theoretical archaeology" humorous, evoking an image of scholars building ancient castles in the air, without contact with the gritty grimy reality of the archaeological record. The truth is that theoretical archaeology is indeed pretty risible, but not in that exact sense. The whole endeavour started in the 1960s with attempts to formalise a body of abstract interpretive theory for the discipline. This coincided with a brief spell in the history of archaeology when scholars dreamed of finding out general cultural constants, "Laws of Culture" as it were. In this perspective, theoretical archaeology would be a lot like theoretical physics, striving to formulate universal laws and ultimately achieve a Theory of Everything.

These attempts fizzled. Most archaeologists abandoned all hope of finding cultural constants around 1980 and returned to our standard business of finding out the unique kaleidoscopic non-generalisable details of individual (pre-) historical situations. But theoretical archaeology somehow survived, it even thrived, as an end unto itself. (Thus TAG, whose first conference took place in 1979.) No longer did it in the main aim at making archaeology better: it splintered into a myriad philosophical sects, abandoned the concept of "better", and set out on a trend-driven random walk, existing to produce not better, but more new theory, mainly in the form of buzzwords. The 1980s reaction against the technocratic natural determinism of the 60s and 70s also opened the door wide to all manner of post-modernist philosophisering from the weird fringe of lit-crit and sociology. And thus, today, we have a few Swedish university archaeologists writing about Heidegger and fake ruins in theme parks.

Instead of going to TAG, I'll just set out a few brief points on what I think archaeology should be and do. (These points are controversial only among the minority of archaeologists who work in academe. About 95% of everybody in the world who makes a living from archaeology are diggers at contract archaeology units and have very little reason, time or funding to pay any attention to theoretical archaeology.)

Archaeology is part of the hugely successful, rationalist, empirical, scientific Enlightenment project to find out what the world really is and has been like.
Archaeology is one of the disciplines within this project responsible (in close interdisciplinary cooperation) for finding out what life was like for people in the past.
Archaeology alone takes care of the study of material remains of past societies.
All enquiry that does not concern the life-ways of people in the past and/or does not study material remains is non-archaeology.
All non-rationalist enquiry is non-science and thus non-archaeology.
All impressionist-aesthetic commentary is non-science and thus non-archaeology.
Politics are about values and thus non-science. Archaeology should therefore resist all attempts from inside and outside the discipline to ascribe political relevance to it.

Finally, lest someone accuse me of being inconsistent here, dissing archaeological theory yet writing about it, let me just point out that I wrote this brief blog entry on vacation between two fieldwork campaigns. This is not my job, it's what I do after dinner instead of watching TV.

[More blog entries about archaeology, theory; arkeologi, teori.]

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Repost: Summary statement tea leaves [DrugMonkey]

DrugMonkey none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:45:25 -0500

SciMonkbling Evil Monkey has a post up at Neurotopia (Version 2.0) in which he rails against idiot reviewer comments found in the summary statements. These latter are the written critiques provided by the three (typically) reviewers assigned to a NIH grant application. Applicant complaints about such comments are rampant and YHN as ranted about many such comments in his day. Nevertheless, writing and reading many such summary statements while serving on a study section has provided me with a great deal of additional context that was not obvious to me from my previous experience as only an applicant.
First, go read Evil Monkey's post and chime in with your favorite idiot reviewer comments. Then come back over here and read the following thought I posted over at the old blog a year ago.

Now that we're past the new-R01 deadline and heading for the revised-R01 deadline it is time to talk summary statements. Out they come and we start perusing them for clues as to how to revise so as to improve our score. Frequently, one starts tearing one's hair when it seems that the reviews cannot have been done by anyone 1) with a brain, 2) familiar with the science or 3) who actually read the grant.

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Snake segmentation [Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:28:58 -0500

Life has two contradictory properties that any theory explaining its origin must encompass: similarities everywhere, and differences separating species. So far, the only theory that covers both beautifully and explains how one is the consequence of the other is evolution. Common descent unites all life on earth, while evolution itself is about constant change; similarities are rooted in our shared ancestry, while differences arise as lineages diverge.

Now here's a new example of both phenomena: the development of segmentation in snakes. We humans have 33 vertebrae, zebrafish have 30-33, chickens have 55, mice have 65, and snakes have up to 300 — there's about a ten-fold range right there. There are big obvious morphological and functional differences, too: snakes are sinuous slitherers notable for their flexibility, fish use their spines as springs for side-to-side motion, chickens fuse the skeleton into a bony box, and humans are upright bipeds with backaches. Yet underlying all that diversity is a common thread, that segmented vertebral column.

(Click for larger image)
Vertebral formula and somitogenesis in the corn snake. a, Alizarin staining of a corn snake showing 296 vertebrae, including 3 cervical, 219 thoracic, 4 cloacal (distinguishable by their forked lymphapophyses) and 70 caudal. b, Time course of corn snake development after egg laying (118-somite embryo on the far left) until the end of somitogenesis (~315 somites).

The similarities are a result of common descent. The differences, it turns out, arise from subtle changes in developmental timing.

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Freedom is a responsibility [A Few Things Ill Considered]

coby none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:27:53 -0800

The background for this post is The Great Global Warming Swindle and the recent judgement [PDF] by the British media regulator OFCOM regarding complaints of misleading the public and misrepresenting the science. Tim Lambert has a detailed look at the ruling here.

All in all it looks like the ruling was a mixed bag and will provide fodder for both sides of the climate disruption PR battle.

So on to the subject of the post.

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Worthless grant review comments [Neurotopia (version 2.0)]

Evil Monkey none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:28:53 -0500

We've all had that R21 or R03 come back with completely useless comments. Months and months of work, hours or weeks spent in the lab collecting that preliminary data (which is supposedly unnecessary for those R21s). More time spent waiting and waiting. Revisions. Resubmissions. The same useless comments back to you.

Come on. We all know it's a racket. In a tight funding climate, nobody in charge of the purse strings wants to fund a competitor. But they gotta find a way to reject your grant in a way that is completely noncommittal. Hence, weasel words.

Here's my favorite: "The proposed studies are not unique". With this simple, vague statement, any hopes of funding a decent or important project are quashed. Think that study will fill in a crucial hole in the literature? Screw you. Your project isn't unique enough.

"Unique" or "innovative", or other similar words have pretty much whatever meaning the reviewer wants them to have. Or needs them to have. But what does uniqueness matter, really? Some of the most informative developmental neurobiology work, for example, still relies heavily on chick embryo limb bud removal; a technique developed about a century ago, requiring little more than a tungsten needle and a microscope. Apply some simple histochemical procedures (which date back even farther) and a few molecular biology techniques (which are about as ubiquitous as you can get), and you can potentially rewrite our understanding of the developing nervous system. Yet on the surface, standard fare. Sorry bud, your project just got pigeon-holed. I've seen some great grants go down in flames this way, grants that were either conceptual genius or exceedingly relevant to a health-related issue. The most egregious example I saw was an R01 dealing with the potential for soy phytoestrogens (as an unregulated dietary supplement) to affect behavior and pathology in a model of aging and dementia. This grant-- beautifully designed to address a number of questions relevant to the health of postmenopausal women-- scored right at the payline on the first review, just missing funding, but then subsequently triaged on both resubmissions. The payline shifted, the grant got rerouted to another, much more competitive study section, and suddenly the grant was "not innovative".

The best part? You revise and resubmit according to the reviewer's useless comments, and you get the exact same comments back again.

So what's your favorite useless grant criticism?

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Vaccine fearmongers versus Steve Novella [Respectful Insolence]

Orac none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:00:00 -0500

I'm envious of Steve Novella. Well, just a little, anyway. The reason is that he's somehow managed to annoy David Kirby and the anti-vaccine contingent enough to provoke what appears to be a coordinated response to his debunking of anti-vaccine propaganda. For that alone he deserves some serious props.

You may have wondered why I haven't written much about Amanda Peet giving an interview in which she pointed out that she had looked into the matter and had found no reason to believe that vaccines caused autism or were unsafe. In the same interview, she referred to parents who don't vaccinate their children as "parasites." True, she did later apologize for using the term "parasites" (although arguably it is not that overblown a term to use), but she stood firm in her support of vaccination and pointing out that decreasing levels of vaccination will inevitably lead to the return of vaccine-preventable diseases. Peet's remarks were intelligent and scientifically accurate, in marked contrast to those of another celebrity mother, Jenny McCarthy, whose output of stupid and scientifically ignorant anti-vaccine propaganda is enough to risk an IQ drop of 10 points in just about anyone subjected to her malignant pseudoscientific nonsense.

Enter (predictably) David Kirby. Not suprisingly, he couldn't resist writing a piece for that highly-trafficked repository of anti-vaccination propaganda since day one, The Huffington Post, entitled Amanda Peet vs. the Medical Establishment, that was so hilariously full of logical fallacies and irrelevant comparisons that were so amazingly off-base that arguably Kirby set a new level of dumb even for him. I had ignored it because, well, these days I have to be in a very special frame of mind to be willing to dissect Kirby's blather in detail. Usually that frame of mind involves alcohol.

Steve Novella noticed, and that's when the fun began. His takedown of Kirby's unctuous, self-righteous claim that Amanda Peet was speaking against the "medical establishment" was a joy to behold, especially how he pointed out that David Kirby had a truly--shall we say?--unorthodox definition of what constitutes the"medical establishment." He also pointed out something that would escape most people with only a passing knowledge of this issue, namely how utterly disingenuous Kirby was when he mentioned that "some members" of the IACC (the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee) want "specific objectives on vaccine research" regarding a possible link between vaccines and autism. Of course, what Kirby left out of that statement was that Lynn Redwood, president of the Coalition for Safe Minds, and Lee Grossman, president of the Autism Society of America (Kool Aid drinkers both who believe that vaccines cause autism), had, in a foolish and ham-handed attempt on the part of the NIH to be "inclusive" (and possibly to coopt antivaccinationist), been appointed to the IACC, as I wrote about last year. Moreover, what Steve didn't know but I did was that this was not the first time Kirby had been deceptive in using their presence on the IACC to imply that the committee supported the view that there might be a link between vaccines and autism, even asking, "If the debate over vaccines and autism is over, then why did the Feds appoint two people to this important new panel who will relentlessly push for more taxpayer dollars going into research of vaccines and autism?"

Steve also mentioned the Hannah Poling case, which is apparently what got the antivaccine brigade's attention enough to provoke a response.

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Peppered with Salmonella? [Aetiology]

Tara C. Smith none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:30:00 -0500

Revere once again is the voice of reason regarding latest developments in Tomatogate (e.g., the ongoing outbreak of Salmonella, serovar Saintpaul). Has the source been identified?

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Happy 500 (or so) days for the Science Scouts - a little get together this coming Friday for all you Vancouverites reading Scienceblogs. [The World's Fair]

David Ng none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:58:01 -0500

Just a quick note. Although it's been a while, a few of us are meeting for drinks on Friday night (July 25th) at The Revel Room in Gastown, Vancouver (8pm on). It just so happens that it's about the 500th Day Anniversary of the Science Scouts.

What's this? Well, it's this. Think: science plus badges plus raising a pint in celebration and you're getting close.

If you happen to be in the area feel free to drop by - better yet, let us know by replying to the facebook page.

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New Premedical Curriculum? [The Corpus Callosum]

Joseph j7uy5 none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:44:30 -0500

Harvard Medical School recently completed a review of their required premedical curriculum, culminating with the development of recommended changes. The outcome of this process is reported in an article in the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It's one of their open-access articles:

Relevance and Rigor in Premedical Education
Jules L. Dienstag, M.D.

In recent decades, scientific knowledge has changed dramatically, once-settled scientific principles have been replaced by more sophisticated concepts and entirely new disciplines, and parallel changes have occurred in medical practice and health care delivery. In the face of these new realities, medical school curricula have had to adapt. Yet despite these sweeping changes, including the permeation of most areas of medicine by molecular and cellular biology and genetics, requirements for admission to medical school have remained virtually unchanged for many decades...

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Sizzle? Call for Papers on Documentary Film and Its Impacts [Framing Science]

Matthew C. Nisbet none@example.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:38:02 -0500

Director Randy Olson's Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy has already shaped the agenda and framed the discussion among scientists and the science media, a key impact of a successful documentary film.

I haven't had a chance to weigh in yet on the blog debate that has been raging over Sizzle. Needless to say, it's already one of the most talked about science-related documentaries of the year, even though very few people have actually even seen it. I will be writing a column about the film for Skeptical Inquirer Online, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's something that will likely interest some readers. I'm co-editing a special issue of the journal Mass Communication & Society exactly on the topic that has had so much of the blogosphere buzzing: understanding the forms, functions, and impacts of the many emerging sub-genres of documentary film. Details on the special issue are below.

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