Beerquake. Photo by dongga BS.

Boy, did I ever pick the right time to visit North Carolina. If only there were some sort of widely-available medium through which working geologists could explain what shook up the East Coast on Wednesday …

• Darwin and Boyle were way into dice-playing. Biology and chemistry are more than just extra-complicated physics, because they deal in randomness.
• Introducing Ms. Homunculus. Scicurious discusses a new map of brain regions activated by stimulation of the vagina.
• Mad science in a good cause. A proposed new treatment for malaria would work by microwaving the patient.
• Maybe what they need is a well-written Wikipedia page? People who grew up with Internet search engines don’t know how to use them effectively. (See also.)
• One thing’s for certain: there’s more taxonomizing to be done. A new study suggests that taxonomy isn’t endangered after all; but see also.
• The “underwater view” will haunt my dreams. Lampreys really, really hate the smell of rotting flesh.
• It comes in pints! The new Sam Adams Boston Lager Glass (TM) may not be the paragon of beer-containment that it claims, but it is the latest in a long history of cups, beakers, and tankards.
• Defining a new adaptive zone for evolutionary ecology. The observation that anoles living in different micro-habitats had different body types, and that those body types might be related to life in the micro-habitats, was first published fifty years ago.
• That burbling sound is “Thus Spake Zarathustra” playing underwater. Now dolphins are using conch shells as tools.

Finally, from a compilation of timelapse videos of plants, here’s climbing morning glory. Tropisms in action!

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Is that a tennis ball in your pocket, or asymmetric hypertrophy of your iliopsoas? Oh. It’s a tennis ball. Photo by Steve9091.

• Quick, tell Coach Schtitt to change up the drills. Something about the athletic demands of tennis leads high-level players to develop asymmetric bums.
• Nothing revolutionary comes easy. Engineering grain plants that can host nitrogen-fixing bacteria would be an historic breakthrough for agriculture, but it won’t be simple.
• Try not to forget. Memory really doesn’t work the way most people think it does, in a lot of important ways.
• Like my relationship status with “food miles.” Even when you do the math, figuring out what lifestyle choices are most sustainable is complicated.
• But even so … It’s pretty clear that biking to work is the greenest choice available.
• Fitness measures are harder to get than you’d think. A large-scale experiment in Nebraska will finally directly test the hypothesis that light-colored mice are better camouflaged on light sand dunes.
• Oops. Pheromone-based traps for Japanese beetles not only don’t work, they attract more beetles.
• Question left begging: which is scarier, a brown recluse, or MRSA? Lots of reported spider bites might actually be soft-tissue bacterial infection.

You must admit, it doesn’t look comfortable. Photo by Soller Photo.

• A movable feast. The neurochemical explanation for those viral videos of dancing squid sushi.
• Or, you know, don’t fragment the habitats. To offset the effects of habitat fragmentation and help natural populations adapt to changing climate, just add gene flow.
• The knight’s burden is a heavy one, literally. Was medieval chivalry undone by the sheer weight of knights’ armor?
• Coming soon: age-defying low-iodine diets. Axolotls are neotenic salamanders, meaning they become sexually mature without developing the “adult” characteristics other salamander species typically have—unless you dose them with iodine.
• Reviving, not revived. After being fished nearly to extinction, the Atlantic cod population—and rockfish, and haddock—may finally be reviving.
• We traded guts for brains. Compared to other mammals, humans have unusually big brains for our body size, which means that we also have rather odd bodies.
• And we’re not talking about “Tag” body spray. The African crested rat deters predators by slathering itself in poison.
• These congratulations will not be withdrawn later. Retraction Watch completed its first year of following up on post-publication reviews and refutations this week—well done!

This organic breakfast may not be “chemical free,” but it could change your brain. Photo by lauren glanzer.

Special congratulations this week to Ed Yong, who is officially a full-time freelance writer as of Wednesday. I can only imagine what he’ll achieve now that this science writing thing isn’t restricted to his spare time.

• Please note that “direct” experiments ≠ clearer results. Groundbreaking experiments that would be ethically impossible to conduct.
• Pre-emptive incest? Hermaphroditic scale insects impregnate their offspring just after conceiving them.
• In other words, bugger off, Senator McCain. Why would you want to sample bears’ DNA? Because bears are actually pretty important, for starters.
• No word on whether they also dance quadrilles. Teeny-tiny lobsters buzz to scare off predators.
• The first one alone may cause a spit-take. Four myths about organic agriculture may surprise you quite a bit.
• Or, less likely to draw, anyway. You’re more likely to win at “rock-paper-scissors” if you play blindfolded.
• “Ooooh, changes in grey matter.” Scicurious soft-boils a study purporting to show that eating breakfast changes your brain.
• Population control. When doing observational research on humans, the way you group people into populations may make a big difference.

A queen bee, indicated with a red dot of paint. Photo by reway2007.

• Not so much explanation as warning, really. The intricacies of indirect costs in grant funding, explained.
• Motivation is key. Anoles demonstrate learning ability in an experiment that has them playing find-the-worm.
• Paging Doctor Pangloss? Bats might be most active at night because flying is hot work.
• Long live the queen! The specific protein in honeybee “royal jelly” that makes bee larvae develop into queens has been identified [$a], in part by giving the protein to fruitflies to make “queen” flies.

You probably won’t catch bad eating habits at that cocktail party. As long as you go easy on the canapés. Photo by rocketlass.

Big blogging news this week: Bora Zivkovic and the team at Scientific American have launched a big new network of science blogs, sweeping up a large chunk of my RSS subscriptions, including Kate Clancy, Eric Michael Johnson, Christie Wilcox, Krystal D’Costa, Kevin Zelnio, Jason Goldman, and SciCurious. And just like that, SciAm is the center of the science blogosphere. Congrats to everyone involved!

• When the press release precedes peer review, check your wallet. A whole series of studies proposing that behaviors from divorce to overeating are “contagious” via social ties may be bunk.
• Hoisted on their own statistical petard. A study of dinosaur morphology data using statistical methods invented by Creationists ends up confirming descent with modification.
• Solution: either more funding, or fewer deaths. US Federal funding for research into solutions to infection by drug-resistant Staphylococcus comes to less than $600 per MRSA death.
• Darwin was polite even in pencil. Robert Krulwich examines Charles Darwin’s marginalia.
• They’re elephants with wings! Why you should never piss off a crow.