Are you going to Snowbird? Photo by Al_HikesAZ.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! We’re looking ahead to the Evolution meetings.
• And, at ProfHacker: I review a book about teaching science.
• Maybe! Does your brain know whether you’re reading a piece of paper or a screen?
• Not that we couldn’t do a lot better. U.S. policies for reducing carbon pollution are a scattershot mess, but they seem to be working.
• No, really. Why we should treat science and math literatcy more like basketball.
• With a lot of money on the line. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case that could decide whether it’s legal to patent a human gene.
• So to speak. Even when you have all your publication-ducks in a row, how do you decide which ducks go first?
• Yum! Scicurious review’s Mary Roach’s new book Gulp.
• In a lineage this young, are we surprised? Human origins are turning out to be more of a mosaic than a clean-cut family tree.
• No kidding. For more students to go into science careers, maybe there need to be more science careers?
• Well, Earth-scale-ish. Kepler space telescope finds evidence of not one but two Earth-scale planets orbiting in another star’s “habitable zone.”
• More on E.O. Wilson vs. math. Maybe what he really doesn’t understand is how collaboration works.
• Aww. Zoobooks! The journey to field studies of lions in Kenya starts with a subscription to Zoobooks.

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Math, in the field. Photo by Wanda Dechant.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The resident roller-derby expert discusses metagenomics on the track.
• And, at the Molecular Ecologist: An interview with Julian Catchen, creator of “stacks,” in two parts.
• This probably explains Nowak et al. (2010), eh? E.O. Wilson says “great scientist ≠ good at math”. Math-knowing scientists object variously, and enlist some big names in response. But the most biting critique is, maybe what Wilson says is true—if you’re E.O. Wilson.
• “… could be catastrophic.” White-nose fungus has been spotted in a cave harboring endangered bats.
• Don’t panic. Yet. Reed Elsevier buys Mendeley. Mendeley users are not pleased. But Mendeley staff say it’ll be okay.
• Ditto for other crops, probably. A new emerging threat to biodiversity could be vineyards relocating farther north.
• Good luck! Trying to get through to the anti-vaxxer in the family.
• No, really. Bedbug control via bean-leaf trichome.
• Of course, larger N is going to cost you. Survey of neuroscience papers finds that most studies are statistically underpowered.
• Put on your horn-rims. This new history of eggheads looks pretty great.
• Of course, if you use Mendeley, the auto-import … oh, right. A field guide to “citation download” links on journal websites.

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Bees. Photo by wondermac.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! I describe my latest work with Joshua trees.
• And, at The Molecular Ecologist: Thoughts about fieldwork, and the announcement of Molecular Ecology‘s first genome resources note.
• Gather ye bee-pollinated produce while ye may. Last year, colony collapse disorder took out up to half of the U.S. honeybee population.
• Pretty bad. How bad will tar sands oil be for the climate?
• Faster than a speeding cliff swallow. On the implications of rapid evolution for conservation.
• Evolution swings every which way. The natural history of human sexuality isn’t so much “tragically confused,” as wonderfully complex.
• It’s not worth the effort, apparently. Why haven’t plants and animals evolved sensitivity to radio waves?
• Slogan vs. biology: advantage, biology. Abortion does indeed stop a beating heart—if by “beating heart” you mean a pulsing tube of cells.
• “Nature being what it is, the badass crab struck hard.” How invasive European green crabs are helping restore wetlands on Cape Cod.
• Specifically, snakes. Teaching Medelian genetics with a case study more interesting than Mendel’s peas.

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Yum? Photo by Stephen Downes.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Which came first: the obese chicken, or its obese gut microbiota?
• And at The Molecular Ecologist: A new method for summarizing and comparing microbial diversity; plus new views of hair traps for pikas and aerial drones for landscape genetics.
• Lupins—yum! Prepping new food crops for a climate-changed world.
• Today in counterintuitive juxtapositions. If you removed every ship from the ocean, the resulting drop in sea level would be made up by the effects of climate change in about six hours.
• Not easy even if you do it directly. Measuring the human mutation rate.
• Would it have killed them to consult the family? Henrietta Lacks is still immortal, and still raising questions about research ethics—this time over the public release of the HeLa genome.
• The old-school approach. On tinkering as a research program.
• “… flirts with predatory OA status.” A pretty scathing review of post-publication review at F1000.
• Context matters more than “motivation.” What campaigns against climate change can learn from public health campaigns.
• What is this I can’t even. Targeted advertising based on your genome?

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