These will distract you from getting into mischief while I’m airborne: the Royal Society has released some free science games. I’m heading out the door, no time to play, you tell me if they’re any good.
The results of a world-wide analysis of violence against women reveals that it’s common, it’s widespread, and it’s serious.
Three in ten women worldwide have been punched, shoved, dragged, threatened with weapons, raped, or subjected to other violence from a current or former partner. Close to one in ten have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner. Of women who are murdered, more than one in three were killed by an intimate partner.
These grim statistics come from the first global, systematic estimates of violence against women. Linked papers published today in The Lancet and Science assess, respectively, how often people are killed by their partners and how many women experience violence from them. And an associated report and guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, along with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council in Pretoria, estimates how often women suffer sexual violence from someone other than a partner, gauge the impact of partner and non-partner violence on women’s health and advise health-care providers on how to support the victims.
We’re thinking beings, and we’re aware of the problem (although a lot of people are in denial) — we ought to be able to change this behavior. And speaking as a biologist, it would be an interesting change, shifting the intra-specific social dynamics in powerful ways that would affect the course of our future evolution. Come on, who doesn’t want to do an experiment on our own species? Especially one that reduces fear and increases security?
(via August Berkshire)
Wasn’t it nice of Obama to say a few words about the environment yesterday?
President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project from Canada to Texas should only be approved if it doesn’t worsen carbon pollution.
The $7 billion pipeline has become a contentious issue, with Republicans touting the jobs it would create and demanding its approval and environmentalists urging the Obama administration to reject it, because it would carry carbon-intensive oil from Canadian tar sands to the Texas Gulf Coast.
"Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation’s interests," Obama said in a speech on climate change at Georgetown University. "Our national interest would be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution."
So of course the Keystone XL pipeline will be immediately shut down, because of course building a leaky, fault-prone pipe full of toxic sludge across the country to further feed our appetite for burning carbon based fuel will exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.
You mean he hasn’t shut it down?
I’m betting he’s going to wait for some industry-funded committee to issue a piece of paper with a few token concessions, and then announce that his requirements have been met: “Why, yes, we’ve got this big dirty pipe gurgling petroleum into the nation’s fuel tank, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to burn it.”
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Gang, don’t try this at home. I’m a trained professional, so I can get away with it, although I do face extreme risk of brain damage.
I am reading two books at once. OK, that part isn’t too scary, I’m actually just alternating between the two — an hour with one at lunch time, an hour or two with another before bed. I trust you all are able to do this, no problem.
It’s the pairing that is the killer. In one corner, I’m reading the marvelously detailed, juicy, thought-provoking The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity
Some would say I’m mad to do this; others would say the shock of the combination will drive me mad. They are both right, I fear.
I’m only a few chapters into each so far. The Erwin & Valentine book is terrific — a bit dense and technical, but full of the right stuff. I’m learning a great deal; it starts with material I’m not at all familiar with, the geochemistry of the pre-Cambrian. The point is to set the stage, to explain the environment in which the Cambrian explosion will occur, and also most importantly, to explain how scientists know what the world was like between a billion and 500 million years ago.
It also discusses real controversies and real science. For example, there was a world-wide shift in ocean and atmospheric chemistry during this period: was it primarily an abiotic process, or did the expansion of bacterial forms and the emergence of multicellular life contribute significantly?
We haven’t even gotten to the fossils yet, let alone the biology! I’m appreciating the education, though — the story simply cannot be understood without this background material. It’s also fueling an interest in, of all things, geology. I may have to read more about this subject.
The Meyer book, on the other hand…maybe it’s best that I am reading it in conjunction with some real science. The contrast is jarring and enlightening.
The first bit of this book is an extended whine about how no one understood his last book, Signature in the Cell, which was another gloppy bit of tripe from a mediocre mind with a magnificent ego. That book was entirely about the origin of life, he says, and how it’s impossible to create new information with undirected processes; everyone thought it was about how undirected processes can add information to existing organisms, but it wasn’t, and this new book about the Darwin’s Doubt and the Cambrian explosion is the one that is going to show that’s impossible, too. So he begins by repetitively reciting the same bogus assertions he made in his previous book.
The type of information present in living cells — that is, “specified” information in which the sequence of characters matters to the function of the sequence as a whole — has generated an acute mystery. No undirected physical or chemical process has demonstrated the capacity to produce specified information, starting from “purely physical or chemical precursors”. For this reason, chemical evolutionary theories have failed to solve the mystery of the origin of first life—a claim that few mainstream evolutionary theorists now dispute.
Simply rebutted: random peptides exhibit catalytic activity. There’s a process that starts from “purely physical or chemical” precursors and uses the information defined by the sequence of amino acids to produce a naturally selectable function. And I’m sorry, but what is an example of a non-physical, non-chemical process in biology?
Are we done yet?
Of course not. Meyer is going to drool out a few hundred pages of drivel that will only convince the gullible, the ignorant, and the already dedicated creationists. There is not one bit of substance in the book so far; just rehashed Intelligent Design creationist talking points. This “specified information” of which he speaks is undefined and unmeasurable — it’s the phrase they flap at anyone who challenges their claim of have concrete evidence against evolution.
Meyer then dives into more misleading statements, such as that the Cambrian biota just erupted abruptly into the fossil record, with no precursors — surely you don’t expect a creationist to explain the geological and biological context of the pre-Cambrian/Cambrian, as Erwin and Valentine do? That would take work and knowledge, which Meyer lacks. Nick Matzke at the Panda’s Thumb has torn into the superficiality and wrongness of Meyer’s arguments already — go read that if you want to see ID arguments taken down a notch.
Otherwise, wait a bit and somewhere in my looming frantic schedule I’ll be reading deeper into The Cambrian Explosion…and I see that the next section is titled “The Record of Early Metazoan Evolution”. I think I’ll trust Ervin and Valentine’s competence over Meyer’s religiously driven ignorance.
If this combo does not hurl me down the stairs of madness into the abyss of total chaotic brain-scrambling, there’s a third book gazing ominously at me from the bookshelf. I’ve been asked to consult with Tony Ortega, who runs an anti-scientology website on a public evisceration of Scientology: A History of Man
Misandry, polyandry, whatever. I know it’s some kind of -andry. Hordeling Ron Sullivan and her partner in crime Joe Eaton have been spending a lot of time in the San Joaquin Valley of late, and Joe has a new post up on Ron’s blog riffing on their recent frequent sightings of Swainson’s hawks. It turns out that the hawks engage in behavior that completely undermines the traditional institution of marriage as Gahd intended:
Polyandry, it seems, is not that unusual in buteos and related hawks. It’s more or less standard for the Galapagos hawk, which genetic studies indicate is the Swainson’s closest relative. (The i’o or Hawai’ian hawk is also near kin. Swainson’s is typically a long-distance migrant, with most of the population traveling from the North American plains to the Argentine pampas every year. You can see how accidental colonization of remote islands might happen.) Polyandrous mating groups also occur in the more distantly related Harris’s hawk. The advantage? Male raptors often provide prey for their incubating mates and nestlings. A female with two male providers would have a better chance of successfully fledging her brood.
The MRAs were right all along: it’s all about the child support. How dare those ladyhawks go against biology? Don’t they understand about gathering berries?
Anyway, it’s a good post by a longtime favorite natural history writer. And the post title proves that Parentheses Matter.
Speaking of people writing good stuff at the Coyot.es Network, we’ve added two new blogs over there: “InyoOwnWay” by Owens Valley biologist Mike Prather and “Miracle or Mirage?” by renewable energy maven Patrick Donnelly-Shores. We’ve got another new addition pending once she answers her email.
Cystic Fibrosis is a serious genetic disorder caused by the inheritance of a defective transporter protein. It leads to an accumulation of mucus and fluids in the lungs that can cause progressive scarring and damage to the tissue, and eventually loss of so much lung function that respiration is inadequate, and the victim dies. It’s a terrible disease, and it’s in the news today because a ten year old girl just received a lung transplant to deal with CF.
If you want to learn more or do more, read the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation website. That’s a reasonable source of public health information.
But do not read the Guardian Express.
The Guardian Express has published an article that suggests lung transplants aren’t the best option for CF. I just want to say…lung transplants are a last-ditch effort when no other recourse is available; nobody would suggest casually getting a transplant when other precedures are available for amelioration and maintenance. You get a lung transplant when your lungs are on the verge of failing to function.
So this article is talking nonsense from the title onwards. And then you discover why they’re arguing against transplants.
The problem is, after receiving a lung transplant, the new lungs do not have CF, but Cystic Fibrosis still exists in the sinuses, pancreas, intestines, sweat glands and reproductive tract, which may find their way to the new lungs eventually.
Let that sink in. CF is a genetic disease. This article is giving out medical advice, written by an author who thinks genes migrate out of the sweat glands into the lungs.
And what does this author suggest in lieu of a transplant? Oregano oil, yoga, rubbing essential oils on your skin, and herbs.
You may be thinking this all sounds terribly ineffective in the face of a disease that destroys the tissues of the lungs. But you’d be wrong. It’s an emotional disease, believe it or not.
According to metaphysics and those who study the relationship between our emotions and the body have found a correlating belief for nearly every physical manifestation in form. Often these beliefs are passed down to us from our parents and we aren’t even aware we are carrying them. In those with what is known as cystic fibrosis, this could be the case – as more often than not, individuals are born with this condition.
Louise Hay, a famous proponent for linking emotional causes to physical ailments has written several books on the subject (You can Heal your Life; Heal your Body) after healing herself from serious health problems by addressing her thoughts and emotions. The correlation she places for those suffering with cystic fibrosis is that they have a ‘thick belief that life won’t work for them.’ In order to combat or heal this belief, she offers the daily affirmation: “Life loves me and I love life. I now choose to take in life fully and freely.” If this is a condition you or someone you love is dealing with, perhaps it would be beneficial to look at the emotions behind the dis-ease. We are a whole being, not just a body, and when we can address our problems more holistically we have a greater chance at success.
Holy crap … I thought the article was a solid wall of garbage until that point, but when they stoop to victim blaming and telling people that cystic fibrosis is a “choice”, I suddenly find myself sympathizing with those people who believe in a Hell, because I want this person to go there.
But don’t worry! They include a disclaimer at the end!
(Information in this article is not intended to diagnosis, treat or cure and is not medical advice, but rather the researched opinion of the journalist. Please discuss options with your health care professional)
The article is full of medical misinformation and medical advice. The disclaimer fools no one, Stasi Bliss, you ignorant fraud.
It’s not just this one author, though. The Guardian Express regularly publishes tripe, such as this one about “Organ Transplants Cellular Memory Proves Major Organs Have Self-Contained Brains?”.
Organ transplants cellular memory is a premise which exemplifies that our brain is not the only organ that stores personality traits and memories because major organs may have self-contained brains. This is not a new theory because imaginative writers have already written about this concept in the 17th century, which is long before organ transplants were even believed possible.
In our modern culture, cellular memory was first studied in heart transplant recipients when the patients displayed strange cravings, change in tastes, cravings and mild personality. Major organs like the heart, liver, kidney, and even muscles are known to contain large populations of neural networks, which are self-contained brains and produce noticeable changes. Acquired combinatorial memories in organ transplants could enable transferred organs to respond to patterns familiar to the organ donors, and it may be triggered by emotional signals. Science discovered evidence that nervous system organs store memories and respond to places, events, and people recognized by their donors.
When your ideas are supported by 17th century fiction, you have a problem. They do cite one contemporary source: Gary Schwartz, the life-after-death charlatan from Arizona.
In Boring fields the suburbs grow
In Council houses row on row,
A cozy place; and in the sky
The plastic bags still bravely fly
Used once by urbanites below.
We paved the Dead. Short days ago
It lived, sank roots, let seedpods blow,
Ten thousand years, but bid goodbye
to Boring fields.
Dig up the squirrel with backhoe:
On us, the moneyed hands bestow
A coin, a handshake and school tie.
You’ll do no good to wonder why.
We shall not sleep till leaseholds grow
In Boring fields.
When we fired up all cylinders on our majestic fish apparatus today, we discovered…leaks. Nothing tremendous, no sprays of water under pressure all over the place, just a couple of slow, steady, trickling drips. We demand perfection since this will be running 24 hours a day for months on end. So joins are being resealed and retested. Damn science. Damn engineering. Damn plumbing.
Have no fear, we’re just pushing back teleostageddon a few days. But the Daniocalypse will happen! We cannot be stopped now! The device is nearly complete!
Aim a camera at this little guy, and it just has to put on a graceful show.
(via Institute of Marine Research)
This is pretty nifty. I’ve found and lost the snake twice already. Trust me though: it’s there, as plain as day, not obscured in any fashion.
Photo by Jimmy Rickard
Via the Cowboy Team Roping Facebook page.
