Photo by jby.

• Ugh, ick, and blargh. Charter schools are turning out to be a great way to get taxpayers to fund your Creationist pseudoscience classes.
• Silly old bear! Winnie the Pooh, diagnosed.
• They help … if you tell patients they help. On the medical uses—or lack thereof—for the placebo effect.
• On what counts in doing science. That is, experience, rather than genius.
• Eek. Why are academics so vulnerable to online outrage?
• Onward and upward! Even as they get bigger, trees just keep growing.
• “I try hard to avoid having principles because they inevitably lead me to hypocrisy, and aside from that, very little else is accomplished.” Why Hope Jahren won’t be interviewed in Nature.

And, this week, a video (via Kyle Hill): how to get leaf-cutter ants to carry a sign. No, you don’t need to unionize them first.

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Photo by Doug McAbee.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Cave fish in an evolutionary canal?
• Queer in STEM: Covered in a very nice article in this week’s issue of Nature.
• Yum? Pikas are dealing with a warming climate by eating more moss.
• I’m getting a tickle in the back of my throat just reading this. Growing up without vaccines.
• With the second-best headline of the week. The cellular basis of blue petunias.
• This week in evolving E. coli. The surprisingly simple genetics of an experimental evolutionary change.
• Personal, maddening. What happened when a Hawaiian city councilman decided to learn the facts on genetically modified crops.
• Also, why I don’t think I want to ever go to south Florida. How biologists decide which introduced species are the scariest.

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“No, I don’t want a breath mint.” Photo by TexasEagle.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: I discuss why different genetic tests might give different disease risk estimates.
• Congrats! To the authors of articles selected for Open Lab 2013.
• Dolphin, not shark. How to tell the difference between “gray things with dorsal fins in the ocean.”
• “Defensive halitosis.” Tobacco-eating caterpillars exude a toxic fog of nicotine to ward off predators.
• “A recipe for civilizational disaster.” The trouble with TED.
• About 7% funded, with the median P.I. about 10 years post-Ph.D. The depressing, depressing summary statistics from NSF grant funding in 2013.
• Surprise! National stereotypes don’t pan out in formal personality testing.

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Photo by jby.

• Sure, why the hell not? Is the next frontier in human psychiatric genetics the genetic variation within a single brain?
• But no one knows why they look like that. Weird, tiny silken towers turn out to be spider nurseries.
• Eek. Not-very-regulated dietary supplements can lead to serious liver damage.
• Guess my horse has left the barn on this one. Time for online academics to run for the pseudonyms?
• Plus one very important Golden Rule. Richard Lenski’s Ten Commandments of statistical inference.
• Unless you’re not into that anymore. The linguistic research behind that U.S. dialect map.

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Photo by The Tedster.

• This week at The Molecular Ecologist: How realistic are the non-overlapping generations assumed by lots of ecological models? And doing population genomics without a reference genome.
• Inflatable moth-butt feather dusters. They’re not genitalia—but they’re just as important.
• Cryptic variation put to adaptive use. Or, how Mexican cave fish went blind.
• Data science. It’s about the science, first.
• Yay! The FDA cracks down on antimicrobial consumer products in hopes of slowing the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
• Requiescat. The space robots lost in 2013.
• I think yes. Can we make grad school better by training fewer grad students?
• Including the excellent Kate Clancy! Nature picks ten people who mattered this year.
• Ancient DNA sequencing means even a piece of toe-bone contains Us Pleistocene. The new reconstruction of hanky-panky among ancient human species.

And finally, a video I may very well use in class a few weeks from now: some thoughts on how to read science news.

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No big deal for some animals? Photo by Will Clayton.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: An interview with Richard Lenski.
• And, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Should peer review be more subjective?
• Everyone’s all, “why do we need to fund ant taxonomy?” until they’re covered in ants. What that story about “crazy ants” tells us about U.S. science funding.
• Drat. Bone marrow transplants have failed to clear two patients’ HIV infections.
• Also on searches for “is my husband gay”? A new estimate for the size of the U.S. gay population is based on Google searches for porn.
• Deal with it. You are, in fact, the sum of physical things happening inside your own skull.
• Really depends what you mean by “age.” Are there such things as living things that don’t age?
• Vaccinate, please. Measles cases in the U.S. tripled in 2013.
• Not sure I’d call it “scary” so much as “sobering.” The story of Easter Island may be both an ecological disaster and an exemplar of human resilience.
• Data for the masses, but what about interpretation? A geneticist on the case of the FDA versus 23andMe.
• Better than nothing? The FDA finally kinda, sorta moves to restrict agricultural antibiotic use.
• “… it was like an addiction.” How scientists make the transition from lab work to programming.

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It was probably all because Eve’s brain is so different. Photo by Sebastian Bergmann.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! How to get (scientifically) published, in ten rules and two cents.
• Technically, the selfish gene != single-gene thinking, but still. Looking for new language in a world of non-Mendelian genetics. But see also; and then also.
• In twenty easy steps? How non-scientists should interpret scientific claims.
• Want to buy an authorship? Apparently doing that is shockingly direct.
• Bad news gets worse. On funding rates for the NIH.
• Here we go again. No, the fact that men’s brains are detectably different in structure from women’s doesn’t mean the differences are not learned.
• “But anyway, the ants.” This is the best story about invasive ants you will read all year.
• Creationism: bad for bunnies! Based on plans published so far, the creationist “Ark Encounter” theme park is going to be an animal welfare catastrophe.

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Barnacles. Photo by Minette Layne.

• Personal genomics should be “entertainment,” not a “medical test.” The personal genotyping service by 23andMe got smacked down by the U.S. FDA; but it probably won’t slow down the rush to consumer genomics.
• Freaky, but cool. How to cure cancer using altered HIV particles.
• Chemotherapy with a side of probiotics? The effectiveness of some anti-cancer drugs may depend on your gut bacteria.
• “… the reasoning employed here is primitive, at best.” Ow. Yet another evolutionary psychology study mistakes the modern university campus for the prehistoric savannah.

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Is it cold in here? Photo by Ikayama.

• This week at the Molecular Ecologist: Making the jump from postdoc to faculty, part one, and part two.
• Privilege check. An attempt to joke about sexism in science fails badly, and prompts some good discussion about what, exactly, it means to be an ally. Also, one pretty clever new metaphor.
• And blames the students. Classy! One of the earliest champions of online college courses admits they don’t really work.
• How the early air-mail planes crossed the U.S. Guided by lighthouses.
• Broad-minded, our ancestors. Analysis of early human genomes suggest interbreeding with a previously unknown proto-human species.
• Serving in Starfleet is basically a high-prestige hobby. How economics might work in the United Federation of Planets.
• “No, he has no family. He’s perfect!” On the infamous two-body problem.
• No, seriously. Thousands of studies on lab mice might be confounded by chilled mice.
• The “red edge”. How we might detect life on another planet using only light.
• For the umpteenth time. That welt on your leg is probably not a brown recluse bite.
• Oh, Florida. Green anacondas, which can grow to be 20 feet long, seem to be settling right into the Everglades.
• No one can cite you if no one can find you. The calculus of journal prestige for authors who need to get noticed.
• Antibiotics! U.S. states with higher rates of antibiotic prescription have more obesity. The evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria could dramatically restrict modern medicine. Here’s what working physicians are doing to prevent that.

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