You want to dissect my what?! Photo by GAC’63.- I made the cut. The finalists for this year’s Open Lab compilation of online science writing have been announced, along with many deserving runners up.
- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Luke Swenson described how understanding evolution lets scientists estimate the age of an HIV infection.
- It flows! Well, flowed. The Mars rover Opportunity has found gypsum, a mineral that can only form in the presence of liquid water.
- Meanwhile, even further out in space. The Kepler telescope identifies an Earth-sized planet at about the right distance from its sun for liquid water.
- One nucleic acid is not like another. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans can transmit traits to its offspring that aren’t encoded in its DNA.
- See also, graduate school. Medical school as a constellation of brief, intimate moments.
- See what happens when you don’t take source-sink dynamics seriously? Herbivorous insects are evolving resistance to genetically modified Bt corn in the U.S.
- Collaborators! Invasive fire ants may be invasive because they work well with aphids.
- Which pretty much explains HuffPo science writing. Some guy at the Huffington Post thinks science writing would be better if science writers stopped listening to scientists.
- Hehe. Ostrich penises. A new detailed study of ostrich penises improves our understanding of bird evolution.
- Getting warmer. Peak attendance dates at national parks have moved about four days earlier over the last 30 years.
Video of the week, via Open Culture: Robert Krulwich describes behavioral experiments that dissected how ants navigate. (You may remember this as the subject of one of Jason Goldman’s earliest posts.)
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