- But with airplanes. The movement of lizard species introduced to new habitats by human travel follows the classic model of island biogeography.
- From Margaret Sanger to the lie detector. The real origin story for Wonder Woman.
- Perspective. How science should deal with race.
- New fad, new dubious statistics. Yeah, we actually don’t know that human bodies contain 10 bacteria for every human cell.
- What makes the Discworld spin. The powerful creative energy of Terry Pratchett’s anger.
- Part 762 in a series. More ways in which genetic testing is complicating diagnosis.
- Break out the birth control. Because China’s one-child policy was one of the top contributors to carbon emissions reductions in the last decade.
- Garbage in, garbage out. How algorithms just reinforce social assumptions.
Category Archives: linkfest
Stuff online, endless waves edition
- 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.
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.
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.
Stuff online, leftovers and lactation edition
Photo by Joanne C Sullivan.
- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The natural history of Ebola.
- Guess I need a “sunrise lamp.” How to make yourself a morning person.
- Search me. When everyone can have a blog, why does anyone need a comments section?
- Cuisine des perdus. The worldwide phenomenon of recipes that use up food scraps.
- Timing is … well, a lot of things, anyway. When you nurse determines what you get.
- As in, contains actual falsehoods. The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week has abandoned any pretense of education.
- No cable subscription necessary! Build a better Shark Week on YouTube.
- It’s not getting better. The current state of efforts to contain the white-nose syndrome devastating bat colonies.
- Good job, folks! After some 23 million rides, there still hasn’t been even one deadly accident on a bike-share bike.
Stuff online, funny five fingers edition
Photo by Melanie Holtsman.
- This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: The many loci of stickleback speciation.
- Your weekly grammatical rabbit hole. Sussing out the rules of adjective order.
- High five! The molecular development of fingers.
- Taking natural history back to the future. By publishing field reports as preprints.
- Against the Great Man theory of science spokespersons. Or, what comes after Richard Dawkins?
- But the EPA is just an anti-buisness red tape machine. Drinking water bans in Toledo due to a nutrient-pollution-enhanced algae bloom
- Don’t panic. A rundown on why not to worry about Ebola, from an expert in actually-scary microbes.
- Not bad, eh? How Ontario gave coal the boot.
- And sends back photos. A European probe establishes orbit around a comet.
- Hmm. On making the jump from academics to private-sector data science.
- Wow. Genetic chimerism might (might!) promote cooperation in marmosets.
- Almost 300,000. The number of people on the U.S. Government’s “terrorist watch list” with no recognized affiiliation with terrorists.
Stuff online, LED at the end of the tunnel edition
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen … Photo by Antony Storo
- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The vital importance (to a grass) of fungal infection, and the results of a quick poll about that unfortunate Science cover.
- In the form of a “satire” about scientists on Twitter. Your weekly reminder that the failure mode of “clever” is “asshole.”
- Nifty! A cleverly made sponge generates steam in a glass of water.
- Turning the corner? Improvements in energy efficiency and distributed solar panels are starting to substantially impact power demand.
- Mazel tov! Natural Current Events celebrates 200 arthropods identified.
- Sounds familiar. People work harder when they have someone to compete against.
- And it’s not the furry livestock. Why the desert planet in Star Wars doesn’t make ecological sense.
- Sure, why the hell not? Could beaked whales have internal antlers that are only visible to sonar?
- First, do no harm. Why the Tuskegee syphilis study still matters.
Stuff online, untrammeled woodrat guts edition
Still worth it.
- Uncharted territory. How medical research tackles a never-before-seen disorder.
- Muir lives! Evaluating the value of wilderness, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Wilderness Act.
- Take note, Science. The Lancet’s infographic on sex work and HIV risk.
- Worst indigestion ever? If you give a desert woodrat antibiotics, it’s going to want something to eat instead of creosote.
- How are we just getting to this? Accounting for genetic drift in microbial experimental evolution.
- The page is mightier. How the promises of speed reading never quite materialize.