Life Science
2016 Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology Winners Announced!!
Posted by Dr. Dolittle on April 21, 2016 I am very excited to report this year’s awardees from the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology Section (CEPS) of the American Physiological Society! The New Investigator Award is given to a young investigator who has made contributed significantly to the field of comparative and evolutionary physiology. This year’s awardee is Casey Mueller from California State University, San…
“This is the worst coral bleaching episode in Australia’s history”
Posted by Greg Laden on April 20, 2016 
Corals are ocean-dwelling invertebrates in the same phylum as jellyfish. Corals are tiny and create an exoskeleton that is fixed to something hard, like the remains of previously existing corals. So these organisms build up a geological stratum, a reef, beneath the surface of the sea, often close enough that parts of the reef are…
213-228/366: Kid-Light Photo Dump
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 17, 2016 
As promised in the last catch-up post, a set of pictures less devoted to cute-kid shots. 213/366: Zone Defense The Pip has been making one of his preschool teachers draw superheroes for him. At some point, he cut these out with scissors (or possibly made Kate cut them out), and hung them up in different…
Friday Cephalopod: Somebody’s been watching The Shawshank Redemption a few too many times
Posted by PZ Myers on April 15, 2016 The guards should have known. Inky had just been biding his time, planning patiently. And then he scurried down a sewer pipe late at night, to freedom! If I’d been guarding him, I would have been suspicious of that poster of Ursula from The Little Mermaid that he’d requested, too, and would have regularly checked…
Well-Manicured Wastelands
Posted by Wesley Dodson on April 14, 2016 
On Pharyngula, PZ Myers doesn’t just want cut your grass—he wants to tear it out by the roots and leave it to rot in the sun. He quotes J. Crumpler on The Roaming Ecologist, who calls lawns “sterile, chemically-filled, artificial environments […] that provide no benefits over the long term; no food, no clean water,…
Antarctica: Seal Wrangling: the Weddell Seal Research Team
Posted by Vince LiCata on April 14, 2016 One of the cowboy science teams (or cowgirl science team – see photo) that I was able to spend some time with at McMurdo Station is the Weddell Seal Research Team under the direction of Dr. Jenn Burns of the University of Alaska. This multi-faceted science team spends virtually every single day during their field…
Teach Biology? We want to learn about your use of computers in the classroom
Posted by @finchtalk on April 13, 2016 Computers, biological data (molecular sequences, structures, and other data), websites, and databases are integral to modern research. Innovations like precision, or personalized medicine, expect a certain level of patient participation, and our future food and environmental sustainability will require that society can access a multitude of computer-based resources. Thus, higher education has an important role in…
Bovids Of The World
Posted by Greg Laden on April 13, 2016 
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are 143 species of bovids. The Animal Diversity Web is a bit less precise, indicating that there are “more than 140 extant and 300 extinct species.” That second number is highly questionable because today there exist sister species that are so similar I doubt they could be told apart…
Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Unusual job interview perils
Posted by PZ Myers on April 12, 2016 We had a job candidate pass through today. They were from New Orleans. The phrase “crawfish boil” came through on the interview. Now guess what I can’t get out of my head?
At Festival Expo 2016, Discover Why the Department of Defense is a National STEM Leader!
Posted by carlyo of USA Science & Engineering Festival on April 9, 2016 As the nation’s largest federal employer of scientists and engineers, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has always been at the forefront of innovative and groundbreaking science and technology. DoD scientists and engineers have played a leading role in some of the world’s most advanced and life-changing technological breakthroughs, including the Internet, the Global Positioning…
