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.

◼

Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Original image from NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

• Requiescat. Neil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the Moon.
• This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! The evolutionary history of lizards on Indian Ocean islands and the problems with the Paleo Diet.
• Bees need somewhere to buzz. Cultivating hedges between fields to save pollinators.
• Maybe not as complex as we think. How complex does a brain need to be to become self-aware?
• We’re working for the weekend. Also over the weekend. Download statistics from Springer’s journal archives provide real-time evidence of workaholic scientists.
• Sure, why the hell not? Do people become vegetarians because they’re more prone to disgust reactions?
• This seems like a bad idea. A kennel club is attempting to breed dogs into a recreation of prehistoric dire wolves.
• This seems like a worse one. Engineering a strain of bacteria that will eat plastic.
• This increasing energetic investment will not stand, man. A long-standing hypothesis about human gestation comes into question.
• I’ll have seconds now, please. Although abstemious diets can lengthen lifespan in other animals, they don’t work for primates.

◼

What’s in your mitochondria? Photo by photogism.

• Shutting Todd Akin down, with data. The actual science on prengancy following rape, the weird idea that a particular pregnancy complication could be triggered by unfamiliar sperm, and on the psychology that might lead people to think rape can’t lead to pregnancy.
• Population genetic pollution? Modern populations of North American bison still carry the genetic results of a historical attempt to cross breed them with cattle.
• Woah. Aphids may be photosynthetic.
• Make sure they never prosper. How punishing cheaters may be necessary for the evolution of cooperation.
• “… the pressure to publish has reportedly been a source of stress for Mokoko …” The Onion reports on a study in which a chimpanzee learns to conduct studies on chimpanzees.
• Woah. Aphids may be photosynthetic.
• Meet Trogloraptor. A new spider species found in the Pacific Northwest is so different from known species it’s going to get its own family.
• Probably not. Did komodo dragons grow that big so they could hunt miniature elephants?
• Spiking the green ball. Power companies are starting to worry that electric car owners may all plug in for a charge at the same time of day.
• All it needs to eat earthworms, apparently. A new newly discovered species of rodent has only four teeth.
• Great—now I’ve got a biological clock, too. Older fathers are more likely to pass on mutations to their children.
• In birds and humans. How climate change may increase the rate of West Nile virus infections.
• Peter Abrams. An annotated (and opinionated) bibliography.
• You may upgrade to the companion scent “Complacency” only with written permission from your tenure committee. The new fragrance for academics: DESPERATION.

◼

Cocoa pods on a tree in Uganda. Photo by sarahemcc.

• Meet Homo rudolfensis. New fossil finds establish a previously undiscovered species of early human. See also the report in Nature.
• Ironically, it didn’t involve any dramatic transformations. How insects evolved the developmental process of complete metamorphosis.
• Okay, NOW global warming is an emergency. Half of cocoa-producing countries in Africa may be too hot to grow chocolate by 2060.
• Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean your coffee won’t turn green. Ten ways to spot a modern-day poisoner.
• As simple as 2x + 2 = 6. The last word(s) on the importance of algebra.
• Funniest deadly disease ever? A previously undescribed class of virus is responsible for making snakes tie themselves in knots.
• Not coming to the Discovery Channel any time soon. It’s Cow Week!
• Replication for 10% of first-attempt cost? A new startup will take contracts to try to reproduce scientific results.
• i.e., opiate addiction not cured. Cool science, poorly represented by a press release.
• Certainly not me, anyway. Why we really shouldn’t leave it to individual scientists to do their own archiving.
• Well, that’s something. Increasing use of natural gas has apparently led to a siginficant drop in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

◼

An apt pupil. Photo by thraxil.

• So. Freaking. Cool. NASA successfully landed a car-sized, nuclear-powered, laser-equipped exploratory rover on Mars—for a fifth of the cost of the 2012 Olympic Games.
• Meanwhile, in the life sciences. Thousands of ecologists converge on Portland, Oregon for the Ecological Society of America meeting. Check Dynamic Ecology and EEB & Flow for coverage.
• What is the difference between wheelchair racing and cycling, when you think about it? The line between human athletic achievement and technological advancement is fuzzier than you might think.
• Next: NOM announces that pupil dilation is a “lifestyle choice.” A new approach to testing sexual orientation measures pupil dilation. See also good discussion by Scicurious and Deborah Blum.
• Yet another microbiome. Examining the bacteria living on the surface of plant roots might be as informative as examining the ones living inside plant roots.
• Commitment to innovation? Apparently the fundamentalist textbooks for Christian schools are now opposed to set theory.
• FACT: Wearing a bike helmet all day = 80% reduced risk of death by meteor. How to clearly explain risk, with an illustrative story.
• Because we only think they think they’re people. Why it’s important to avoid anthropomorphizing when discussing the sexual habits of non-human animals.
• Cool! Google Scholar will now identify new articles for you to read based on your own publication list.
• That … sounds like a problem. Some of the world’s most important food-producing regions are living on non-renewable water.

◼

Save your Starbucks card, and have a cup of ocean instead. Photo by nicadlr.

• You say potato, I say Solanum tuberosum. When does specialized vocabulary indicate specialized subject matter, and when does it indicate obfuscation?
• Not such a fine line, actually. When does the failure to mention contradictory evidence become a lie of omission?
• Spoiler alert. The ending of The Dark Knight Rises is not very realistic.
• Guess which group is leaner. A (small) study of daily activity in tribal hunter-gatherers finds they expend about the same amount of energy as people living “modern” lifestyles.
• Quelle suprise. That study on gay parenting that interviewed almost no gay couples? A new review suggests it probably shouldn’t have passed peer review.
• Or, the biology of personal tragedy. On the causes, and consequences, of a pregnancy that doesn’t end in a birth.
• “It makes a duck’s back look like a sponge.” A new anti-bacterial coating works by being really, really slippery.
• Immodest proposals. As long as we’re giving up on algebra, why not ditch reading, too?
• Not an “Onion” headline. Caffeine pollution reported off the coast of the northwestern U.S. (Also other places.)

◼

Sally Ride. Photo by WikiMedia Commons.

• She defied gravity. Sally Ride, the first female U.S. astronaut—and only queer astronaut?—died this week. See also, also, and also.
• Quiet, honey! Hungry bats zero in on the sound of flies mating.
• I think yes. Do evidence-based teaching methods need to start addressing motivated reasoning?
• Is anyone surprised? The geometry of herd responses to a predator suggests sheep are selfish.
• Sure, why the hell not? Is open-access on the verge of “disrupting” academic publishing?
• War on facts, round infinity. Government-funded research did, in fact, create the Internet.
• Isn’t this like making Solo cups out of steel? Shark teeth are covered in fluoride, which may mean they never get cavities.
• It’d be … kinda gross. If Spiderman’s anatomy more properly paralleled a real spider’s.
• You’re doing it wrong. Pronouncing “Muller’s Ratchet”, that is.
• Gooey suicide bombers. In one species of termites, aging workers end their careers as suicide bombers.

◼

This is a cashew fruit. No, but really. Photo by Joe Athialy.

• Mazel tov! Jeremy Fox has left the Oikos blog to start his own site, Dynamic Ecology.
• Puts my Evolution 2012 hangover in perspective. If you thought conferences were exhausting and stressful, try attending one with migraines.
• This is a problem. But we knew that, right? It’s (way) easier to illegally download a copy of Science than it is to use the subscription access system.
• Meet the “nocebo effect.” When the social and psychological cues surrounding medecine make you feel worse.
• “The Air Force wanted to reassure people that it was OK to use atomic weapons …” Part of the reason five men agreed to stand underneath a nuclear explosion.
• Although disseminating Newsweek cover stories doesn’t help. No, the Internet is not making people crazy.
• Sure, why the hell not? Is it possble that papers in high-profile journals collect more citations because of greenbeard effects?
• It’s more interesting than that. Oxytocin isn’t a love drug.
• Huh. Cashew “nuts” aren’t the part of the cashew plant that inspired people to cultivate cashews.
• Best new thing ever, or maybe this month. Randall Munroe has launched an xkcd spin-off devoted to answering bizarre hypotheticals with real physics and math: like pitching a baseball at lightspeed, the odds of getting a perfect SAT score by guessing, and the prospects of a Yoda-powered generator.
• Woah. Images of lightning within a storm that wrapped around Saturn.

◼