Photo by Brian Koprowski.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: #Evol2014 in tweets, and how “Markov chain” methods estimate tricky probability distributions.
• And, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: The first post in an in-depth series on the evolutionary claims in A Troublesome Inheritance.
• By nineteenth-century standards, anyway. Charles Darwin, anti-racist.
• Please. Here are some ideas that scientists would like you to stop repeating.
• And not all universities pay the same. How much universities pay for scientific journal subscriptions.
• Because no one should put up with it. Some possible responses to crazy sexist shit.
• Under existing law against gender bias. LGBT employees may already enjoy legal protections in the U.S.
• Ugh. Male professors are less likely to hire women than female profs—and especially if they’re highly successful male professors.
• Cities stink. And that can confuse pollinating moths.

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This is a spacecraft NASA wants to build. Photo by Mark Rademaker.

• Unscientific adaptationist claptrap of the week. No, the human skull didn’t evolve to be punched.
• Write it down, maybe. Your semi-regular reminder that humans are animals, too.
• Good news! A new pesticide derived from spider venom might be safe for bees.
• By cheating. Apparently a chatbot kinda, sorta passed the Turing test.
• It’s genes! It’s environment! It’s genes and environment.
• Pour one out for Growly. How we decided to use pepper spray for protection against bears
• Yeah, it’s not going to be good. Randall Munroe puts projected global warming in perspective.
• Looks oddly familiar. NASA’s long-shot warp-drive team unveils a mocked-up faster-than-light spacecraft.

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Hey there, Eugene. Photo by NASA.

• More on Wade’s folly. His pathetic response to critics; there are no primary colors of humanity; we should look beyond culture and genetics to politics; Wade conflates science with fantasy; and laugh so you don’t cry.
• Well, maybe. Are hurricanes with feminine names deadlier than hurricanes with masculine names?
• Ow. The scientific value of viral face-plant pratfall videos.
• A good start, anyway. The EPA unveils a new plan to cut carbon emissions.
• Your dose of hope/despair for the week. A new study aims to predict academic promotion from publication records. Well, kinda.
• Um, thanks? Icthyologists honor the Indiana University sports teams in naming a blind fish with a neck anus.
• Endless forms, &c. Here is a wasp with a zinc-tipped “drill bit” on its ovipositor.
• Perspective check. How humans are collateral damage in microbial arms races.

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Photo by Kate Ter Haar.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Why evolutionary biologists should be excited about the pot genome.
• And at The Molecular Ecologist: Molecular Ecology‘s top reviewers for 2014 and my review of A Troublesome Inheritance.
• Because why wouldn’t you? Figuring out how many habitable planets you can have in the same solar system.
• I take my landfills black, thanks. You can test for groundwater contamination from a landfill by looking for artificial sweeteners.
• Hmm. A lot of Americans who tell pollsters they don’t “believe” in evolution understand how it works anyway.
• There’s a Methods section for that. No, you shouldn’t have to ask scientists to explain their methods before you try to replicate their results.
• Because of course? The brains of gay men who are parents look like straight mothers and straight fathers in a functional MRI scan.
• Sneaky! This fish glows in a color that it’s predators can’t see.
• I’m choosing to believe that I did, anyway. Did humans evolve bigger brains at the expense of muscle power?

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Photo by Minette Layne.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: Help build a repository of methods for estimating genetic differentiation in R.
• I guess we were overdue for one of these. A new book digging for genetic differences between human populations doesn’t deliver the evidence, misinterprets population genetic results, and seems really to be an exercise in justifying pre-existing prejudices.
• Surprise! Insurance executives, not doctors, are making the big bucks in health care.
• Ugh. College students with rich parents and lousy SAT scores are more likely to graduate college than the poorest kids who score 1600.
• Wow. The closest living relative of the giant elephant bird is the kiwi.
• Yes, take the stairs. For greater fitness, make your life harder.
• Keep it down! When predators are nearby, anoles bob their heads more gently.

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Photo by Martin LaBar.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The evolutionary significance of pollination syndromes.
• Because so do antibiotics. Bacterial antibiotic resistance genes predate the medical use of antibiotics.
• Paging Dr. Asimov. How to program ethics into autonomous technology.
• Culprit still at large. A twelve-thousand-year-old extinction event in North America probably wasn’t caused by an asteroid impact.
• Baby’s first password. Superb fairy wrens avoid feeding cuckoo chicks by singing to their eggs.
• Actually, it makes things simpler. Gay marriage from a database engineering perspective.
• Say goodbye to Florida? Some big Antarctic glaciers have melted past the point of no return.
• Slimming the death toll. To prevent birds from crashing into windows, paint on some vertical stripes.

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Photo by Bo Insogna.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Chipmunks have no respect for species boundaries.
• And, at The Molecular Ecologist: Pleiotropic genes experience stronger selection.
• AM radio, not the wifi/cell phone frequencies. Man-made electromagnetic waves screw up birds’ internal compasses.
• Mind that cologne. The scent of male researchers screws up mice’s stress responses.
• Joshua trees miss giant ground sloths. Across the Americas, trees are growing fruit for seed dispersers that went extinct millennia ago.
• Alarming! Here is a bird that fakes other species’ alarm calls to steal food.
• To the extent that single cells do that. How a paramecium poops.
• Meta-debunking. It turns out we don’t know how many people are killed by falling coconuts.
• To grow (ugh) Arabidopsis. NASA wants to send a greenhouse to Mars.

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