It’s been nearly 4 weeks since the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday (this year also marks the 150th anniversary of the publishing of the Origin) and I’ve had some time to reflect. In case you missed it, the bicenntential received quite a bit of popular press, and was accompanied by numerous special journal issues and [...]
OK, officially back from the holidaze now. The next issue of MP should be coming out quite soon, so look out for that. In the mean time let’s get back to blogging.
Journalist Johann Hari has a thought-provoking piece over at Slate. Ostensibly it’s a review of a recent book of American environmental writing edited by [...]
Apparently the blog is working again! Huzzah!
A recent paper in Nature Genetics shows that mutations in two genes tranform an annual plant (Arabidopsis thaliana) that normally grows a few centimeters, fruits, and senesces in a matter of weeks into a perennial – long-lived, large, bushy, and even woody! Their findings are remarkable for a couple [...]
(Part I is here)
There is a used book store here in Bloomington that has piqued my interest for some time. Located on the main square, Caveat Emptor has the appearance of one of those tucked away and little known retail treasures that probably hasn’t changed anything but it’s inventory in 30 years. The owner, seemingly [...]
I was reminded yesterday of an interesting piece of human biology I learned as an undergrad. First, some background:
The gene responsible for Sickle-cell anemia is the poster child of balancing selection. In areas where malaria is common, individuals with one sickle-cell version of the gene and one ‘normal’ version are less susceptible to malarial infection than [...]
As you may have noticed, I’ve been a bit absentee the past two weeks. Nothing earth shattering, I was just preparing for a research talk I gave today for the weekly Brown Bag session here at Indiana. No earth shattering results yet, but they are definitely unexpected. The full explanation is long and technical, so [...]
I saw a lecture by Joan Roughgarden today. Joan is Stanford biologist that written a lot in recent years criticizing sexual selection. A litte background. Sexual selection was originally proposed by Darwin (in this book, I believe) to explain exxagerated ornaments (e.g. the Peacock’s tail) that seemed inconsistent with his theory of Natural Selection. The [...]
At this point, I should just move my posting day to Friday, but then I wouldn’t write anything until Saturday. Oh well.
Some exciting, random, notes:
1) The Solanaceae Source website has been updated and now has all their herbarium collections online and easily downloaded. Since this is the plant family I am interested in studying, it [...]
In her book The Age of American Unreason (which I reviewed here), Susan Jacoby writes about the “just us folks” mentality of contemporary American politics. The idea is that, regardless of how technical an issue is, everyday experience by normal “folks” can somehow provide insight. Folk wisdom is rampant and product of many, often simultaneous, [...]
I realized this morning that I had missed my day again. Oh well, this gives me a chance to talk about politics since it’s the day of the debate. I normally don’t like to write about politics because everyone else does and I have nothing special to contribute, but here I go. Politics, at least [...]