What’s going on in there? Photo by Enrico .

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: My own recent paper on scanning for locally-adapted genome regions.
• Intellectually interesting, politically maddening. The best scientific guess as to how, exactly, IUDs prevent pregnancy.
• Which has a briefer history than you might think. A brief history of peer review.
• Because at some point, you’d like to see the actual organism. On the continuing importance of museum specimen collections.
• This doesn’t bode well for First Contact. We don’t know whether cats are smarter than dogs because cats are really bad behavioral test subjects.
• Afraid of what it’d find. How Republicans are blocking basic research on gun safety.

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Is this man smiling because everyone else in the room is clean shaven? Photo by Mike Mozart.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The life-history evolution behind basketball players’ styles.
• And at The Molecular Ecologist: A new way to look for genetic targets of natural selection.
• Endless forms and whatnot. Here’s an insect species in which females have stick an organ inside the males. But don’t call it a penis.
• The future looks hungry. Famine in the age of global warming.
• “I have a hobby that can kill people.” And that hobby is running.
• The first step towards Hulk-based power generation? Why Captain America’s shield is basically a capacitor.
• “I found friendships had actually strengthened due to my trust. “ On being trans* among academic biologists.
• Frequency-dependent fashion, yes. Selection … ? It turns out beards are most popular when they’re rare.
• Or, as we used to call them, “seeds.” A new movement for open-source (or un-copyrighted, anyway) seeds.

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It was probably about as easy to find photos of bears as it is to find research papers about them. Photo by Barbara.

• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Do sloths benefit from carrying around poop-eating moths?
• And, at The Molecular Ecologist: Readers explain their views for and against anonymous peer review.
• Because non-monophylly. Manta rays aren’t a thing anymore.
• Wow. Actually, Americans are pretty strongly agreed on climate change.
• But mostly: big garbage is still garbage. An itemized list of problems with big data.
• With a little help from William Hamilton’s aunt. A look back on the kin selection controversy.
• And training. Reflections on the biology of marathon running.
• Welcome to Global Change. The North American Plains are being converted to farmland like never before—just as farmers in Minnesota are discovering they need irrigation for the first time.
• Makes sense. The gut microbiome of tropical forest ants shifts with their diet.
• Scientists are people too. And people like bears, apparently.

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Stormy weather ahead. Photo by Elido Turco – Gigi.

• This week, at The Molecular Ecologist An interview with Charles Goodnight, and a poll about peer review.
• And at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! A brood parasite that can actually help its hosts.
• Charming! A new dinosaur species is nicknamed “the chicken from Hell”.
• Folks, we’re really serious this time. The American Association for the Advancement of Science issues a sharply worded new report on the dangers of climate change.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars. What South Florida communities are spending to stay above water for another fifty years.
• It’s kind of a big deal. The original paper that differentiated between consent and informed consent in human-subjects research.
• Neat. Interactive comparisons of human and (simulated) non-human vision.
• Lots of lousy data is still lousy. Why Google’s search-based influenza prediction is failing.
• Or, yeah, both. Was Robert Hooke another Leonardo DaVinci or just history’s greatest scientific asshole?
• It’s not just the parasites’ fault. How malaria is defeating our efforts to eliminated it.
• The signal and the hype. The “data-driven” journalism at FiveThirtyEight isn’t really all that data-driven.

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