Category Archives: linkfest

Science online, hermit crab hand-me-down edition

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Got anything in a size 6? Photo by Vanessa Pike-Russell.
  • Gushing no more? No, the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is not going to release a giant, world-killing methane bubble. Reality is bad enough. BP spent the week putting a new cap in place over the well, and … it seems to be working. Which still leaves an enormous cleanup to complete, and begs the question of why they weren’t prepared to do that 88 days ago. As always, Dr. M. at Deep Sea News is your one stop shop for oil spill news.
  • More kinds of herbivores = less plant damage. Organic farms support more evenly distributed communities of plant-eating critters, which turns out to be good for the plants. (The EEB & flow)
  • Of course, then they’re stuck with last year’s model. When they find an empty shell that’s too big for them, hermit crabs wait for a larger crab to come along and claim it, so they can occupy the cast-off shell. (MattSoniak.com)
  • Any evidence of recent vuvuzela-induced selection? A mutant form of a single gene is associated with temperature-dependent hearing loss. (Code for Life)
  • How to get MSNBC to notice a paper about protein structures: Claim you’re answering an age-old philosophical riddle that you’re not, actually. (MSNBC)

Which came first, the silly scientific hype, or the flimsy excuse to run a Muppet video? Trick question; they’re the same thing.

Science online, not so pristine anymore edition

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I’ll start with the online science meta-news: The ScienceBlogs PepsiCo saga achieved a preliminary resolution yesterday, when Science Blogs pulled the PepsiCo blog. Many SBers who left in protest, however, are apparently not returning, including Brian Switek (of Laelaps) and Rebecca Skloot. Skullsinthestars has taken on the public service of tracking departing SBers, which include some of the biggest names on the site. Carl Zimmer compiles his own list, and adds some scathing remarks. David Dobbs gave his reasons for not returning, Martin Robbins of the Lay Scientist neatly summed up the issues of reader trust and respect for individual writers underlying the fracas, and Curtis Brainard weighed in at the Columbia Journalism Review. No word yet on coverage by On the Media, but I’m still hoping.

Say it ain’t so, Glacier National Park. Photo by jby.

Meanwhile, in actual science news:

  • Still gushing. As of today (Friday), it’s been 81 days since BP broke the Gulf. Yet another projection of long-term surface dispersal of the oil suggests the U.S. east coast is in trouble. At Deep Sea News, Dr. M rounds up the latest news and Allie Wilkinson flies over the slick with the Coast Guard. Meanwhile ProPublica digs into BP’s horrendous safety record and foot-dragging on compensation and cooperation with scientists.
  • Missed this earlier. BlagHag reports on Portland and Evolution 2010.
  • I’m confused. What about spinach? A new study of bone structure suggests Neanderthals were totally pumped, with “Popeye-like forearms,” possibly because of a highly carnivorous diet. (Discovery News)
  • Well, it doesn’t look its age. New fossils reveal that multicellular life is at least 2.1 billion years old, more than three times as old as previously thought. (ScienceDaily)
  • This just makes me sad. Environmental pollutants, including pesticides, are extensive at national parks—with particularly bad levels at Glacier and Sequoia. (Conservation Maven)
  • It works for cpDNA, anyway. A new method for extraction and amplification of DNA from plant tissue may make life simpler for lab rats like me. (Uncommon Ground)
  • Cichlids do it wherever they can. Since colonizing a volcanic crater lake in Nicaragua—as little as a century ago—a population of Midas cichlid fish has evolved into two distinct forms, with marked dietary differences. (NeuroDojo)
  • Dudes should not wear corsets. Because they may cause you to grow a bone in your penis. Really. (scicurious)

And, as a video-based closing thought, here’s footage of a cuckoo chick evicting the other eggs—and chicks!—in its adoptive nest. The initial, um, cuckholding is captured here

Science online, #evol2010 hangover edition

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Between the all-day conferencing of Evolution 2010 and the fact that car trouble stranded me in Kennewick, Washington, almost exactly halfway between Portland and Moscow, I haven’t done enough online reading to justify my usual end-of the week roundup. I will, however, note a few things:

And, lastly, bluebirds are still frickin’ spectacular photo subjects.

Photo by kevincole.

Science online, Portland-bound edition

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Just two days after I get back to Moscow from that Santa Barbara, I’m off again to Portland, for Evolution 2010. As in previous years, I’ll try to post daily notes about cool talks I see at the meeting, and maybe some photos of Portland, where the weather is allegedly going to be warm and sunny. In the meantime, here’s what’s been going on in the science blogosphere this week:

Never again? Photo by Vern and Skeet.
  • Still gushing. Earlier this week, BP removed the containment cap on the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher following a mishap with an underwater robot, but it’s back for now. Internal documents suggest that, early on in the disaster, BP knew a lot more oil was flowing than they told the federal government. Hydrology experts are considering how existing flow control structures might be able to use the Mississippi River itself to protect coastal wetlands from oil.
  • Reconsider that sashimi. An environmentalist group is petitioning to protect bluefin tuna, which spawn in the Gulf of Mexico, under the Endangered Species Act. (NY Times)
  • Meanwhile, in even longer-running fossil fuel disasters. In Pennsylvania coal country, underground mine fires burn unchecked. (SEED Magazine)
  • Walk like a man. A newly-discovered fossil of Australopithecus afarensis—the same species as “Lucy”—has a ribcage more like a human’s than an ape’s, suggesting that it stood upright. (A Primate of Modern Aspect)
  • Why did the moose cross the road? Larger mammals with broader home ranges and lower reproductive rates are at greater risk of becoming roadkill. (Conservation Maven)
  • No word about preference for rock’n’roll, though. Attitudes about sex are better predictors of attitudes about drug use and religion than “abstract political ideologies.” (Blag Hag)
  • Wait, there’s software to do that? You never know when the Methods section of an otherwise obscure paper is going to turn up something useful. (NeuroDojo)

And now, a video of aggregating ladybugs.

Science online, southward bound edition

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I’ll take the high road, you take the low road … Photo by gwgs.
  • Still gushing. The Deepwater Horizon well is still not contained. Wednesday BP agreed to set aside $20 billion for an independent reparations fund.
  • Got ’em coming and going. Even if they escape being soaked in oil themselves, seabirds are at considerable risk of eating oil-soaked prey. (Deep Sea News)
  • Me, I just turn left by default. Given a choice between a southern route and a northern route of equal length, people will choose the southern route—apparently because it feels easier. (Wired Science)
  • Who doesn’t want a view of the park? The conservation benefits of protected land can be offset if nearby real estate becomes popular. (Conservation Maven)
  • This is why I’m not a neurologist. Remember all those papers based on fMRI brain scans? Yeah, apparently we’ve only just discovered what fMRI scans actually mean. (Neurotopia)
  • Looking for an open alternative to MatLab? Try Python. (U+003F)
  • What is “forty-two,” Alex? IBM’s next advance in artificial intelligence centers on teaching a supercomputer to answer “Jeopardy” questions. (NY Times)

This week’s video from BBCEarth: David Attenborough says “boo” to a sloth.

Science online, phylogenetically distant edition

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Louisiana Fish and Wildlife staff rescue an oil-coated pelican. Photo by The News Hour.

As of Thursday night, the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher is capped, but still gushing—and new reports suggest even more oil than previously thought has escaped. Plumes of oil are spreading under the surface of the Gulf. Reports from the American Birding Association are pessimistic at best. On the bright side, an environmental law expert told NPR earlier in the week that criminal prosecution arising from the spill will be “a slam dunk.” Southern Fried Science has compiled the best online sources for oil spill news, including this salty primer on oil containment with booms. I’d add ProPublica’s excellent coverage to the list—and you should go hear ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten tell Terry Gross about BP’s dismal safety record in case you feel your outrage flag.

In non-catastrophic science news:

  • Darwin was right. Again. Confirming a prediction made in The Origin of Species, a recent study shows that bacterial strains are better able to invade cultures of distantly-related strains than closely-related ones. (The EEB & flow)
  • Surprising it’s not higher, really. A survey of marine biology papers suggests that about 25 percent of literature citations are “inappropriate”—but apparently considers citing review articles “inappropriate.” (Neurodojo)
  • Because men are shallow, whatever our orientation. Gay men are 50 percent less likely to be obese than straight men; the reverse is true for women. (Slog)
  • Really, it’s a shame to waste so much neck. Contrary to the current prevailing thinking among paleontologists, at least one sauropod species seems to have used its long neck to reach high-up foliage. (Dinosaur Tracking)
  • Somewhere in here is an episode of Star Trek. Unlike males, female jumping spiders will fight to the death in confrontations over territory—especially if they’re almost ready to lay eggs. (EcoTone, Wired Science)
  • Accidental complexity in the genetic code. Introns, snippets of non-protein-coding DNA interspersed within protein-coding DNA, may have originated as “selfish genes” in our bacterial ancestors. (Wired Science)

This week’s video: BBC footage of aphids’ peculiar lifestyle.

Science online, short work-week edition

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Make mine a double. Photo by Ballistik Coffee Boy.
  • Not as obvious as it seems. Computer modeling suggests that giraffes are much worse swimmers than other ungulates—which suggests that giraffe populations should be easily isolated by water barriers. (Tetrapod Zoology)
  • Guess it’s time for that second cup. Regular coffee drinkers need their morning dose of caffeine just to achieve the baseline alertness of non-coffee-drinkers. (Yahoo! News)
  • Jet-setting dinos. New fossils show that ceratopsian dinosaurs (the group including Triceratops) had a wider range than previously thought, colonizing the landmass that would become modern Europe. (Smithsonian.com)
  • No carbon-free lunches. A new analysis of plant communities’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide suggests that managed landscapes like cropland may emit more of the greenhouse gas than they absorb. (Conservation Maven)
  • They still haven’t explained why Justin Bieber is so popular. As with biological evolution before it, the study of cultural evolution is advancing as scientists develop methods to directly experiment with cultural transmission. (A Replicated Typo)
  • More bad news. Computer simulations suggest that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, now in its sixth week, will probably spread to the Atlantic by the end of the year. (Wired Science)

Here’s video of one scenario from the oil-in-the-Atlantic study.

Science online, no layovers edition

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The latest word on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as of the time at which I set the timer for this post to publish (circa 2230, 27 May), seems to be: that BP’s “top kill” maneuver, which would have plugged the gushing wellhead with mud, is not quite working as it ought. Meanwhile, the spill is now officially the worst in U.S. history, and poised to get even messier if it’s not contained by the start of what is projected to be a busier than usual hurricane season. Ugh. In non-oil-related science news:

Migrating bar-tailed godwits can fly 7,100 miles without a break. Photo by jvverde.
  • The small and squeaky shall inherit the Earth. Fossil evidence from a more gradual episode of warming 12,000 years ago suggests that some rodents, like deer mice, will become more abundant as the globe warms. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
  • Got it made in the shade. Coffee farms practicing shade-growing techniques host more bee species, which may mean better pollination of the crop. (Coffee and Conservation)
  • … and boy are my wings tired! The advent of lightweight GPS and more sophisticated tracking methods has allowed ornithologists to directly monitor migrating birds—revealing nonstop flights of thousands of miles. (NY Times)
  • One more reason not to stand right behind a mammoth. A new study tracks ancient levels of atmospheric methane, and suggests that human overhunting of North America’s methane-farting megafauna caused the last ice age. (io9)
  • I know what you’re thinking, punk—only one of those critters is a true bug. Bombardier beetles, cabbage aphids, and velvet worms all employ explosive chemical weaponry as defenses, making them the “ballistics experts of the bug world.” (Ecotone)
  • No evidence of fossilized tartar sauce. Paleontologists have discovered a fossil frog with a fossil fish in its stomach. (Laelaps)

And finally, there’s a new version of the totally creepy Big Dog walking robot—it’s now cat-sized, and somehow more adorable than creepy. Until a pack of them show up to take me away as a slave to our new robot overlords, anyway. (via Anthony Hecht at Slog, who declares it “still creepy”)

Science online, colorful results edition

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My favorite is Adaptationist Green. Photo by Patrick Powers.
  • Good science doesn’t match the sofa. People tend to prefer colors they associate with things they like. Therefore, natural selection is primarily responsible for humans’ color preferences. Wait, what? (Neurotopia)
  • I’m pretty sure that’s what “generalist” means. Invasive plants are no better defended than natives against a generalist native herbivore. (Conservation Maven)
  • Did you mean gesundheit? Google’s method of monitoring flu outbreaks by tracking search terms is almost as accurate as the CDC’s more expensive monitoring program. (Scientific American, but see Virology Blog)
  • From the folks who brought you octopodes wearing coconut shells: Solving a mystery that puzzled scientists since Aristotle, biologists have shown that the female argonaut octopus uses her paper-thin shell to trap air bubbles and control her buoyancy. (Not Exactly Rocket Science, Wired)
  • Insert “1up” joke here. Can playing video games improve cognitive skills? Dave Munger weighs the evidence. (SEEDMAGAZINE.com)
  • There are more than you think. This week’s Radiolab epdisode, “Famous Tumors,” is awesome with a side of neat evolutionary biology. (Radiolab)
  • No lightning involved whatsoever. A team led by Craig “first draft human genome” Venter built a genome from scratch, then inserted it into a bacterial cell and brought it to life. (NPR, NY Times, Wired, Oscillator)

And, in this week’s video, evidence that even something as bad-tempered and grungy as sloths are adorable when they’re young and properly groomed.

Science online, binge-drinking tree shrews edition

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Style over ecological substance? Maybe. But how can you say “no” to that face? Photo by rockabillyboy72.
  • Much like nectar-feeding bats, pentailed tree shrews drink alcoholic nectar from their favorite food plant, and get enough (by weight) to intoxicate a human. (Endless Forms)
  • “Due to its well-known song, the field cricket is a comparatively popular insect species.” Choosing a “flagship species” to promote conservation awareness involves thinking about image as well as ecology. (Conservation Maven)
  • Who knew that sharks like to climb? Undersea mountains are hotspots of biodiversity. (deep type flow)
  • Sadly, no mention of the fact that they ate Joshua tree fruit. Reconstructions of extinct giant ground sloths’ muzzles suggest a diversity of foraging habits. (Laelaps)
  • ArchaeopteryX-rayed. A new scanning technique applied to fossils of the feathered dinosaur reveals new detail. (Dinosaur Tracking)

And finally, via Observations of a Nerd, here’s none other than Douglas Adams discussing evolution and endangered species. (Be advised: It’s an hour and a half long. Worth every moment, though.)