Vintage theaters: charming. Vintage attitudes about women’s roles: unprofitable. Photo by Minette Layne.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: Results from a reader survey on peer review and anonymity.
• And at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The science-y joys of Twitter.
• Well, barring massive global environmental changes. Hummingbird diversification is still going strong after 22 million years.
• Ow. A graduate student studying bees has run a side project on the worst parts of the body to get stung.
• Preach. “The words ‘in my opinion’ are not themselves some kind of rhetorical vaccine. They can, instead, be the pathogen.”
• Remember that chemical spill in West Virginia? People nearby are still drinking bottled water.
• Role, modeled. Why queer scientists need to come out already.
• Well, the females are, anyway. Trilobite beetles are the freaky critter of the week.
• It adds up. Movies that pass the Bechdel Test for inclusion of women make more money.
• Oops. Two multi-million dollar, decades long studies of longevity don’t replicate each other’s results.
• Apparently it’s the K-Pg boundary now. An up-close look at the the geological remnants of the dinosaurs’ destruction.

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Photo by tomopteris.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! How a creationist teaching introductory microbiology at a public university is a symptom of the adjunct crisis in academia. And see also.
• And, at The Molecular Ecologist: Collecting natural history data with a little help from the Internet.
• As in, 10^-35 seconds after. The detection of gravitational waves has revealed the state of the Universe almost immediately after the Big Bang.
• Hmm. Are women underrepresented in STEM majors because they’re worried about their grades?
• Okay, then! Water has been discovered in the Earth’s mantle.
• Natural selection: it works. Corn rootworm populations are well on their way to evolving resistance to genetically-engineered Bt corn.
• Laugh, then run like heck. The absurd era when the most terrifying land predator was a great big bird.
• For, you know, a given value of “practical.” Inside the insane multinational collaboration to build a practical fusion reactor.

Video of the week: Joe Hanson on the evolutionary history behind human endurance running, a topic near and dear to my heart.

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Off to the races. Photo by @Doug88888.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: The 2014 update to the Next-Generation Sequencing Field Guide is (finally) online.
• Maybe! If we can resurrect extinct species, will we take less care to prevent extinction in the first place?
• Kinda looks like it! If we can go on prophylactic antiretrovirals, will we take less care to practice safer sex?
• Look out, amoebas of the world! A 30,000-year-old virus has been resurrected from Siberian permafrost.
• Oof. Ken Ham claims that his debate with Bill Nye helped raise enough funds to build his next pseudoscience theme park.
• Hmm. Google is getting into the genomics business.
• “We need silver buckshot.” How we can feed 9 billion people without destroying the planet.
• A new crowd-computed project will study the role of climate change in specific weather events.
• But good luck figuring out your caffeine dosage. Coffee is actually not that dehydrating but can boost your workout.
• Just not the ones we fish for. We’ve been undercounting the global fish population by a factor of 10.
• Keep your eyes on the baseline, people. When Arctic sea ice was at a record low last year, this year is bound to look better.

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You might want to plant your own tomatoes, this year. Photo by rachelandrew.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Ack! My alma mater hired a young-Earth creationist to teach introductory microbiology!
• And at The Molecular Ecologist: A pair of literature reviews aim to separate local adaptation and isolation-by-distance.
• Starting with an actual definition of “sustainable.” Envisioning the sustainable future.
• Shady. How urban trees keep things cool.
• Yow. The three-year drought in California is going to obliterate your local produce section; here’s what the state is doing to improve its water infrastructure.
• Laugh so you don’t cry. Cartoon illustrations of extinction in action.
• 100,000 mammoths sounds like a bloody mess to me. On the (apparently pretty real!) efforts to undo some of those extinctions.
• Algebra is a post-modernist plot, you guys. Seriously, get your act together, Arizona.
• But, you know, the deli is great. Whole Foods runs on a whole lot of pseudoscience.
• Wha? Did early childhood obesity rates really drop 43%? Or is this what happens when you don’t correct for multiple comparisons?
• The whole damn universe is waiting for us to invent warp drive. NASA’s latest announcement from the Kepler mission identifies more than 700 new exoplanets.

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Photo by Micah Sittig.

• Not-bad news, everyone! North American honeybees might be having a rough time of it, but they’re not actually declining.
• Plant milkweed. How herbicide-resistant crops are starving monarch butterflies.
• But not for the reason you’d think. Mammals that use noxious scents for defense tend to live alone.
• Baseline, shifting. Fifty years of fishermen’s photography shows the shrinking standard for a big haul.
• The genetics of gay: Excellent coverage, and kinda weird coverage.
• But is it a … wait for it … significant improvement? Rethinking the p-value.
• Probably. Improbable things are less improbable than you think.
• Look out! One secret of the success of “crazy ants” is their resistance to fire ant venom.
• Sounds familiar. The psychology of putting off writing work.

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