You’re not hydrated—you’ve got two empty halves of coconuts and you’re banging them together. Photo by Minette Layne.

• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Sarah Hird reports on a workshop, The Ecology and Evolution of Host-Associated Microbiota.
• And at The Molecular Ecologist: Making maps with R.
• Applying sports psychology to an academic career, part I and part II—and further thoughts on that theme.
• Prepare for a whole week of Friday Weird Science. Scicurious gets ready to blog the Ig-Nobels.
• Endangered species, catfish, and—gasp—American ginseng. What a DNA barcoding study found in dietary supplements.
• Bird brains. The only thing that drives Creationists crazier than fossils is fossils of feathered dinosaurs.
• The stuff from the tap still wins. Running the nutritional—and hydrational—numbers on coconut water.
• Maybe if they drink enough coconut water? Could humans become photosynthetic?
• Splitters v lumpers, round eight thousand. The arguments, pro and con, on whether to split genus Anolis.
• Convenient. Turns out that many of the most-sustainable and least-mercury-laden fish species are also better for you.

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These two mammalian species evolved bigger brains via changes in the same gene. Photo by Sagolla.

• You say “tomato,” I say “pomato.” Yes, you can make a plant that grows a whole fruit salad.
• Time dilation is just the start. Your new guide to the weirdness of special relativity.
• Objections biological, and non-. Evolutionary psychology takes a drubbing in The New Yorker.
• Sure, why the hell not? Shiny! Are these structurally-colored berries “the strongest iridescent [color] in nature?”
• Convergence: the smart thing to do. Selection on the same gene is associated with the evolution of larger brains in both primates and cetaceans.
• Oops? A study of “spin” in popular science coverage traces the hype back to the abstracts of the original journal articles.
• “Blame” is such an unscientific word. The full picture on the connection between a father’s age and his childrens’ risk of autism.
• Peer pressure works. Experimental evidence from the 2010 U.S. election shows that Facebook can prompt people to vote.

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Organic strawberries. Photo by VancityAllie.

• In case you missed it. I’m starting a new blogging gig, and here’s my inaugural post.
• We’re finally done calling it “junk DNA.” Or are we? A user’s guide to the user’s guide to the human genome.
• Science ruins everything. Adorable kid cavorting with marmots isn’t really that special.
• Not so much a golden, as a gold-plated, ring. Tenure isn’t as great/terrible as you’ve been told.
• Worse than we thought. Jonah Lehrer’s journalistic misdeeds, enumerated.
• In which a debate arises … organically. A new study finds that organic vegetables aren’t any more nutritious than non-organics—but is that the right question to ask?
• Who says it’s compromising? More on the question of whether women’s wider pelvises are a compromise between locomotion and childbirth.
• A Christian perspective. Why it doesn’t make sense to say you “believe” in evolution.
• Because Bob knows, you can’t just ask. Using a Markov model to determine whether your prof’s in a romantic relationship.
• Money talks. How Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was immediately politicized, even though she didn’t do any politicizing.
• If they’re monogamous Finnish farmers. Do human women have an evolutionary conflict with their mothers-in-law?
• In llamas! Researchers identify a component of semen that may help induce ovulation.
• Sampling matters. A new study of kids raised by lesbian parents studies actual lesbian households, finds out their kids are doing great.

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