- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Can we make the future more prosperous and healthy by steering evolution?
- And, at The Molecular Ecologist: A genomic scan for adaptation that probably misses a lot of the genome.
- Hope Jahren makes the trend personal. A raw testimonial to the risks women can face in science.
- Here’s hoping. How the People’s Climate March aims to reframe the climate change debate.
- Old-school sci-fi optimism. About, of all things, a consumerist apocalypse.
- Wow. A new genetic discovery will revolutionize wheat breeding.
- Can’t say I’ll miss them. Artificial sweeteners may screw up metabolism by changing the gut microbiome.
- Guess it’s preferable to plain old politics. The case for political science.
- Your bright point of hope for the week. Alison Bechdel is awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant, which is a perfect reason to go read her comics.
- Yum! The scientific method explained via cookies.
Author Archives: jby
The Molecular Ecologist: Fishing for genetic signals of adaptation
Adult Atlantic salmon. (Flickr: Matt Hintsa)
Over at The Molecular Ecologist, I discuss a new paper that exemplifies how we’re going to be studying the genetics of adaptation in the age of high-throughput DNA sequencing—even if it doesn’t quite live up to that promise. It’s a study of adaptation in Atlantic salmon, whose lifestyle makes them uniquely suitable for a particuar sampling design:
Salmon hatch in freshwater rivers, and spend at least their first year in that environment before swimming downstream to the ocean, where they develop into reproductively mature adults. When they’re ready to mate, they migrate back from the ocean, up the river where they hatched to spawn at the site of their birth. Those major migrations and the transitions between freshwater and salt-water are likely to be major selective events for salmon, and they offer convenient times to catch and study salmon from roughly the same age-cohort: when they migrate downstream to the ocean, and when they return to their birth-river.
By taking genetic samples of juvenile salmon on their way out to sea, and then adults on swimming upstream to breed, you can test for genetic changes—adaptation—that has occurred over the course of the fishes’ life in the ocean. And that’s exactly what the authors of this paper did—go read the whole post to find out how it worked.
Proposed: A new gender-parity benchmark, you guys!
So Science, that lovable institutional behemoth of scientific publishing, has just produced a list of “top 50 science stars of Twitter” that manages to contain, by my count—I’ve triple-checked—four women. Eight percent.
Looking at the list, it hit me:
Seriously, though, I was in a gay bar this weekend with a better gender ratio than @sciencemagazine’s Twitter list: http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2014/09/top-50-science-stars-twitter#full-list
—@JBYoder, 7:50 AM – 17 Sep 2014.
I hereby propose this as a new, painfully minimum standard for gender parity: If I passed more women on a trip between the dance floor and the bar at the Saloon last weekend than are present in your speaker roster, reviewer panel, or unasked-for list of notables, you’re doing it wrong. In the interest of establishing this as a rigorous benchmark, I plan to immediately embark on a systematic survey of gay bar gender ratios, starting Friday night; interested collaborators should contact me through the usual channels.
Meanwhile, see the totally meaningful list of awesome animals Tom Houslay offers in the spirit of Science, and the big special issue on diversity in science just released by that other beloved institutional behemoth of scientific publishing, Nature.
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: The key to a secure global future is evolution
A mountain vista in Colorado, with trees killed by pine beetles in the foreground. (Flickr: John B. Kalla)
Over at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense, I discuss a big new review article on all the ways understanding evolutionary biology will be critical for human health and development in the next hundred years:
The long list of authors, led by Scott P. Carroll and including Ford Denison, whose lab is just down the hall from my office at the University of Minnesota, explicitly connect evolutionary principles to global goals for sustainable development. These include the reduction of both “chronic lifestyle” diseases and infectious diseases, establishment of food and water security, clean energy, and maintenance of healthy ecosystems. Carroll and his coauthors divide the applications of evolution to these problems into cases where evolution is the problem, and those where evolution may offer the solution.
I’m going to be citing this paper in every grant application I write for the next decade, I suspect. Go read the whole post, and download the original article from Science Express.
Stuff online, disappearing shorelines and thoughtful fingertips edition
(jby)
- Nickel-and-dime misgovernment. How local governments, especially small ones, are way worse than the Feds—and how they’re shaking down their poorest citizens with court fees and traffic fines.
- If we’d just spend the money. There’s a system in place to mass-produce an anti-ebola drug.
- It’s almost as though conventional wisdom is just Baby Boomer projection. Apparently millennials read more books than their elders.
- Or, the only thing that got me through yesterday. A brand remembers September 11.
- Because this is totally what’s holding us back. The legal complications of mining asteroids.
- Going down. Thanks to erosion and rising sea-levels, there’s a lot less Louisiana than you might think.
- Pretty slick. A plasmid that gives bacteria genetic code to fix nitrogen also helps them mutate to better work with a host plant.
- And yet they’re no help with my writer’s block. Receptors in your fingertips are thinking about what you touch even before they tell your brain about it.
Stuff online, conservation and consternation edition
Photo by Clint McMahon.
- For now and the future. Fifty years of wilderness protection in northern Minnesota.
- Not feeling the fucking love. A soft-pedal profile of I Fucking Love Science, and its emphatic counterpoint.
- Visibility! A new site devoted to the personal stories of LGBTQ scientists.
- Maybe a bit? Is ecology explaining less than it used to?
- Maybe not different “species,” though. How one bacterial symbiont split into two without ever leaving its host.
- C’est vrai. On immersion-learning a foreign language, and the meaning of learning.
- Government bureaucrats over corporate bureaucrats. Make government smaller and more efficient by hiring more workers instead of out-sourcing.
- And he ought to feel like one, by now. Hope Jahren sure has an asshole for a colleague.
- Best unintended consequence ever. A socialist utopia is no place for pickup artists.
- Robert Moses versus humanity. The man behind the worst public planning choices of the 20th century.
- As in everything else. American inequality applies to diet quality, too.
- Antonin Scalia is a horrible, horrible person. Exhibit A.
Stuff online: Missing links and vital webs edition
Photo by Tambako The Jaguar
- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: Have you taken the Iced Budget Challenge yet?
- Eat your heart out, Tiktaalik. A semi-amphibious fish demonstrates a possible origin of four-legged vertebrates when it’s raised on land.
- With some 400 new ones! A huge new illustrated list of every bird species on Earth.
- Be nice to spiders. If you like not starving, that is.
- Because, let’s face it: friends are scary. No one wants to talk about controversial stuff on social media.
- Brilliant. The Oxford don who takes on Internet assholes.
- Losing ground indeed. ProPublica visualizes the disappearing Louisiana coast
- And, the other flood: The HIV crisis in New Orleans.
- Qui custodiet … A cop beaten by other cops finds out what happens to innocent people beaten by cops.
- Cliches are the things we say without thinking about them. On Michael Brown’s humanity.
The #IceBucketChallenge, with a twist
I was nominated in this viral fundraising scheme you may have heard about, and I did it my way.
Requiescat: Richard Attenborough
Richard Attenborough died Sunday, aged 90. Most of my generation probably know him best for Jurassic Park, but I’ve always favored his role as the mastermind of the Great Escape:
Stuff online, rare genetics and bees edition
Photo by Danny Perez Photography.
- Essential reading on Ferguson: Jamelle Bouie’s detailed recounting of the events following Michael Brown’s killing, and just how much it would take to make things right; Ta-Nehisi Coates on the historical historical context; Dahlia Lithwick on the laundry list of constitutional violations in law enforcement responses to the protests.
- And, if you want to help: Chip in to provide classroom supplies for teachers in and around Ferguson.
- Self-diagnosis works, with enough research. How an extreme athlete found the single genetic variant responsible for her two rare genetic disorders.
- Evo-bollocks of the week. No, PMS isn’t an adaptation to prompt women to find more fertile partners.
- Innovation! South Africa’s new surveillance drone will be piloted by humans.
- Yep. On hunting for a faculty job while not straight.
- Steve Rogers isn’t your grandfather. Or, turning to the history books to understand Captain America.
- Less-bad news on bees. They’re doing better in cities.
- All in the game. The democratic melodrama of The Wire.
- No word on how many of them would pay to never again hear from ResearchGate. Nature surveys scientists’ social media habits.