Photo by Arthur Chapman.

• Recently at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Hoatzin gut microbes and multidimensional coevolution.
• Time for a revised version of Jurassic Park? An ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex turns out to have had feathers.
• Not as simple as you think. Video explanations of what a flame is.
• Next time, can we ask someone who’s actually applied to NSF? In which an economist mostly misunderstands the incentives of science funding.
• Monkey curiousity is adaptive. Basic research is worth funding precisely because we don’t know what it’ll be good for.
• Worth a shot. Could science learn how to overcome imposter syndrome from the example of sports?
• Yes, another genome. The stickleback genome helps find new targets of adaptive evolution.
• And there are a few. On the limits to coming out in ecology.
• We don’t need no stinkin’ quarantine. Ant colonies fight infection by spreading it around.

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Hot dog. Photo by stu_spivack.

• Two plus two may equal five, depending on what you’re counting. A series of thought experiments explain why in statistics, numbers need not add up.
• Because of course you were curious. The anatomy of alligator erections, explained.
• In other news, too much food is bad for you. Deborah Blum puts the recent study linking red meat consumption to risk of death in context.
• Teamwork! Pesticides aren’t the sole cause of honeybee colony collapse—but they interact dangerously with other stresses.
• But less likely to be journal editors. Hmm. Women are less likely to turn down requests for peer review.
• And how to cultivate better ones. Author Charles Duhigg tells Steve Silberman how to break bad habits
• Unnatural history. A new kind of museum showcases animals that have been modified by humans.
• My baloney has a first name/ It’s P-A-P-E-R. A new form of processed cellulose—the same plant fibers used to make paper—could replace saturated fat in foods like hot dogs.

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Running! Photo by andronicusmax.

• If you’ve got ’em, use ’em. Eels’ comparatively complex lifecycle may be made possible by extra copies of key developmental genes.
• Yes, it’s real. No, we don’t know why. What science knows—and what it doesn’t—about the runner’s high.
• I don’t think I’d call any crocodilian snout “dainty,” though. The shapes of an alligators’ and crocodiles’ snouts don’t make a difference for the strength of their bites.
• Alas, it won’t produce flour ready-made for Girlscout cookies. Wheat engineered to carry and express genes from mint could repel aphids.
• As if you needed an excuse to build a robotic squirrel. The purpose of ground squirrels’ rattlesnake-repelling tail-waving, tested using a robotic squirrel.
• Because, as we all know, humans stopped experiencing natural selection 20,000 years ago. Is it possible that human speech and music are purely products of cultural evolution, instead of natural selection?
• Less obviously, that is. Fruit flies left to evolve in complete darkness for 1,400 generations change less than you might think.

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Zebra finches. Photo by Lip Kee.

• A whole new meaning for “forgettable.” Is it possible to have sex so good it induces amnesia? Maybe.
• I love evolutionary context! Vaginal microbial communities, in evolutionary context.
• Ack. Tongue-eating fish parasites are more common in over-fished areas.
• More like a sword, really. Behavioral observation reveals the uses of a sawfish’s saw.
• Whatever happened to model rockets? I liked those. In which do-it-yourself biotech becomes a major public health concern.
• Supercoolmicroscopyforunderstandingdeafness? High-resolution microscopy tracks the changes in a zebra finch’s brain cells after it goes deaf.

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When your legs are adjusting to exercise, so is your brain. Photo by eccampbell.

• Brains are more like brawn than we thought. Trials in lab rats show that brain tissue can burn glycogen, just like muscle tissue.
• Ladybuisness with a twist? If vaginal pH can determine vulnerability to infection, should women use acidic tampons, or even douche with lime juice?
• Evolutionary innoculation. A toxic introduced plant has apparently helped Australian lizards evolve resistance to cane toads’ toxin.
• Drowning them out under water. New evidence shows that human-created sounds can interfere with whale song.
• Getting by with a little help from our friends, and our ancestors. Comparing groups of human children, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys solving the same puzzle shows that humans get ahead by collaboration.
• Practical chemistry. Pseudonymous authors point out that it’s not so hard to make cold medecine at home—from crystal meth.

And, via Carin Bondar, a video illustrating evolution using drawings “evolved” by elementary school students.

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Yosemite National Park. Photo by Genista.

• Does this mean I’m a chestnut tree? Winter day length and temperature cues prompt chestnut trees to shut down their internal clocks.
• How something that big be so hard to find? The largest known dinosaurs—contenders for largest animals ever—aren’t all that well known after all.
• The death of Einsteinian physics is greatly exaggerated. Reports of faster-than-light travel by neutrinos turn out to be due to instrumental error.
• Nowhere to go but uphill, and nowhere uphill to go. Alpine chipmunks in Yosemite National Park are losing the evolutionary race against climate change.
• Menu price: $300,000. The first lab-grown hamburger will be ready later this year.
• Get thee to a genome sequencer. Seeds from a 30,000-year-old squirrel cache have been successfully raised in the greenhouse.
• Suddenly, lab-grown meat sounds a lot better. New evidence that drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus has jumped from humans to pigs, and back.
• The ultimate in parental paranoia. To protect against nest predation, female hornbills walls herself inside her own nest.
• The devil’s in the error rate. A new technology for collecting DNA sequence data is almost ready for prime-time.
• How the Pill works. A handy illustrated guide.
• First awe, then snark. Ed Yong encounters blue whales.

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Careful in that dodgeball game—your competitiveness could activate inflammation. Photo by How I See Life.

• Remembering those who went before. DNLee celebrates Black History Month by commemorating the work African American scientists, including zoologist Roger Airliner Young and animal behavior scientist Charles Henry Turner. And look for more stories in the upcoming February 2012 edition of the Diversity in Science blog carnival—or submit your own.
• Climategate-gate. A big leak of documents reveals a conservative think-tank seeking to eliminate climate change from basic science education.
• This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! C.J. Jenkins celebrates Valentine’s Day by making sense of sexual reproduction.
• Advice for prospective grad students. Don’t overlook the possibilities offered by the M. Sci..
• Keep it friendly. Could competitive social interactions promote inflammation reactions?
• It’s protein, Jim, but not as we know it. The biochemistry of life at eighty degree Centigrade.
• Coming soon, to a basement near you? How to stop worrying and learn to track alien crickets.
• Cutest black market ever? The trouble with tiny turtles.
• It can be done! How to succeed on the tenure track without S/Nature papers.
• Their archiving method is a bit … unorthodox. Wood rats as the “librarians” of the desert.
• For you, not so much. But for your dog … The origins and dangers of chocolate poisoning.
• Fact-checking the Dowager Duchess. What “Downton Abbey” got right—and wrong—about the Spanish flu epidemic.
• In case you need a reason for that Friday whiskey-and-soda. The not even remotely market-based way in which an economics Ph.D. finds a job.

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