Photo by Jvstin.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Devin Drown reviews The Adaptive Landscape in Evolutionary Biology.
• And at the Molecular Ecologist: The carnival of knowing what I know now.
• Surprise? The biodiversity of a cornfield is pretty depressing.
• Handy. Tinkering with fishes’ developmental genes recreates (a bit) of the evolution of fins into digits.
• Of course, winter means wearing more clothes, which harbor lice … Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was stymied not by winter, but by lice carrying typhus.
• It is, as they say, all in your head. The physical reality underlying near-death experiences.
• A mess, but one we need to clean up. Race, poverty, and access to education.
• Inactivated what now? A new therapy for leukemia that uses inactivated HIV to reprogram white blood cells looks promising.
• For all the good that will do. Climate scientists are starting to use alarming talk titles at conferences.
• A crucial question. How well would wine grapes really grow in world of Game of Thrones?

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Mount Saint Helens. Photo by prorallypix.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: What happens when genes move from the mitochondria to the nucleus.
• Oy. Why that immortal jellyfish really isn’t at all. (Plus bonus phylogenetic stupidity.)
• But baking is still a useful skill, right? Why landing a tenure-track job isn’t like baking.
• What part of the brain lights up when you read a thorough skewering? The trouble with neuro-hype — and why a “neuroscience Newton” wouldn’t fix it.
• Also, you need to be a pygmy mole cricket. To jump from the surface of the water, you need spring-loaded paddles on your legs.
• J.B.S. Haldane. What famous evolutionary ecologists would you invite to dinner?
• Pending appropriate funding. NASA’s going to follow up the successful Mars rover with another one launching in 2020 — and maybe someday humans.
• “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” An interactive map of people who died in the Mount Saint Helens eruption.
• Yay? Birds’ nests built with cigarette butts deter parasites.
• As opposed to all the ones he’d smoked before it. How Yassir Arafat might have been killed by a single cigarette.
• Yep. The special awkwardness of the holiday break during grad school.

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Photo by ianturton.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Why science denialism isn’t just about the facts.
• Or we shouldn’t be, anyway. Scientists are not monks.
• Is there a genetic predisposition to believing this? Are humans evolving lower intelligence?
• Depends what you mean by “random.” Are peer review decisions made at random?
• Well, kinda. NASA is talking seriously about building a warp drive.
• No mention of Russian invasions, either. Data visualization back in the day.
• Oy. Time Magazine nominates the Higgs Boson for “Person of the Year,” mangages to completely botch a description of the Higgs boson.
• Bears, ants, chickens. Non-human animals that can count.

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The whale today. Photo by djwtwo.

• This week at The Molecular Ecologist: How to pick a programming language.
• Also, why biologists still speak Latin. How the North American turkey was, indirectly, named after the Eurasian nation-state Turkey.
• Not-bad news, everyone! Americans will, sometimes, vote for better funding of public universities.
• Terrible news, everyone. The climate change prognosis is looking a lot worse.
• No word about the squid, though. How the American Museum of Natural History built a life-size blue whale before anyone involved had actaully seen a whole blue whale, in two parts.
• Yes, there’s oxytocin in nematodes. It’s called nematocin.
• It’s just not as easy to see. Black people do, in fact, get sunburns.
• Tiny pamphlets about abstinence? What do you do when a protected species is about to interbreed itself to extinction?
• Go ahead, break a leg. (Not really.) Raising a baby doesn’t necessarily have to be bad for a woman’s bones.

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Photo by Romain Bochet.

• This week at The Molecular Ecologist: I post some advice about grad school. Think you can do better? Send a submission to the “Knowing What I Know Now” blog carnival.
• Calling in the undersea cavalry. Under attack by toxic seaweed, coral releases chemicals to attract seaweed-eating fish.
• The usual suspects. Antibiotic over-use is on the decline across the U.S., but some states are doing better than others.
• Sounds a lot like “making things for science journals.” Thoughts and musings about making things on the web.
• Try not to throw a tantrum over this one. In which doubt is cast on a “mood disorder” description just before its official appearance in the DSM-5.
• Scratching yet? A slideshow of prehistoric parasites.
• Get ready to fret about your pageviews. Granting agencies are starting to accept web traffic as an impact metric.
• Scientific (or other) writing. A handy guide.
• Yeah, not really. Are we really so suprised that quantiative traits have complex underlying genetics?

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Cape ground squirrel. Photo by Ian n. White.

• Carefully. How to think about the results of a personal genome scan.
• For a given value of “natural” and “selection.” Has human activity rendered the term “natural” selection meaningless?
• Well, that’s what they say. Behavioral observations suggest that ground squirrels masturbate to prevent sexually-transmitted infections.
• Maybe? A new study identifies dozens of genes associated with inflammatory bowel disease — but will that help IBD treatment?
• Ridiculous. In which a press embargo on one paper prevents reporting on two others.
• For a given value of “genetic” and “modified.” In less-popular election news, California voted down a proposal to require labeling of genetically modified food.
• Wow. Just, wow. Some hard questions — and tellingly vague answers — for James Watson.

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Apparently there’s an election coming up. Photo by KCIvey.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! What if we’ve set the molecular clock incorrectly?
• And at the Molecular Ecologist: The genomes of two flycatcher species may tell us why they’re separate species.
• Hypothesis testing fail. Evolutionary psychologists try to link women’s voting habits and ovulation without actually determining whether the women they surveyed were, um, ovulating.
• Dangerously obvious? A new model links species diversity, niche width, and environmental variation.
• Sure, why the hell not? Is this the best possible imagination of an intelligent dinosaur?
• Tens of thousands of years before Atkins. Cavemen probably ate less meat than we thought.
• Darwinian beard, not-so-Darwinian perspective. Peter Kropotkin was one of the first people to see cooperation, not competition, in the theory of natural selection.
• They’re okay, mostly. How did Hurricane Sandy affect New York City’s rats?
• The graphical case for open access. Data from users of reference-management program Mendeley demonstrate, among other things, a relationship between number of papers collected and national GDP.

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Photo by e-MagineArt.com.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The microbial diversity of human breast milk.
• This week at The Molecular Ecologist. The site hosts an online continuation of the Molecular Ecology Symposium.
• And, post arising. When you criticize a scientific method (or anything, really), are you obliged to provide an alternative?
• [Insert pun about the word “fault”] In Italy, leading seismologists have been convicted of manslaughter for failing to raise the alarm about an earthquake — but how could they have done any better?
• “I … hate everybody and everything.” Charles Darwin has a lousy day.
• My God, it’s full of stars. The European Southern Observatory releases a nine-gigapixel image of the Milky Way.
• Or do you only think there is? Is there a genetic basis to the placebo effect?
• “… cataloging the apocalypse.” On the spread of antbiotic resistance.
• Well, if Scicurious buys it, I’m convinced. Does ritalin make you more vulnerable to peer pressure?

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Cruel and unusual education. Photo by Lee Nachtigal.

• Zeno’s pinkeye. A woman fails to keep her contacts clean, ends up with eyes infected by an amoeba, which is infected by a virus, which is infected by a smaller virus, which is infected by sub-viral DNA particles.
• So that works out even? African spiny mice have fragile skin, but that’s okay—it grows back super-fast.
• Fishing trips. If you do enough different tests, eventually something will come up significant.
• Or, you know, just more funding for all science? Do we need a NASA for the ocean?
• CSI it ain’t. U.S. forensics doesn’t just need better technology; it needs a better scientific culture.
• Let’s teach a chimp sign language, then ask it. Are humans really the only animals with language?
• Oops? A new report from personal genomics company 23andMe suggests that family history may tell you more about disease risk than, um, personal genomics.
• Or developing them. Why more ecologists should consider using model systems.
• The horror! A “former philosophy major” is very upset that his son has to take high school chemsitry.
• Alongside many other computers. The many movie roles of the IBM AN/FSQ-7.

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Be vewwy vewwy quiet. I’m hunting … everything. Photo by Hans Pama.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! An army of cloned wasps demonstrates the importance of host-parasite specificity.
• And at the Molecular Ecologist: Best practices for scientific programming.
• How to be a queer ally — in science! An upcoming Q&A and/or discussion.
• What about “Caution: not actually science”? Guest editor abuses his position to publish anti-feminist screed in a scientific journal. Journal apologizes badly, retracts screed, apologizes again, and then doesn’t mark the paper’s online copy — until someone tweets about it.
• Paging Dr. Pangloss. Researchers shocked to discover that their adaptive storytelling doesn’t explain women’s taste in male body hair.
• It just means you’re a lousy singer. If you can’t sing, it may not be because you’re tone deaf.
• Well, a model Iguanodon. The time Victorian scientists celebrated New Year’s Eve inside an Iguanodon.
• Most specific sample ever? Gay men found to be happier than their straight twin brothers.
• Misremember me, maybe? Carly Rae Jepsen is on to something besides a catchy tune.
• Furry murderers. That study about cats’ nocturnal hunting, as an infographic.
• The reports of Solenodon‘s extinction were slightly exaggerated. The venemous, shrew-like mammal has been rediscovered in Cuba.

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