Wilkins is about to review a new paper on sociobiology by Wilson and Wilson, but he hasn’t quite done it yet. I’ll be looking forward to it, though.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Wilkins is about to review a new paper on sociobiology by Wilson and Wilson, but he hasn’t quite done it yet. I’ll be looking forward to it, though.
We had a seminar from Marco Restani of St Cloud State University yesterday — he’s a wildlife biologist who talked about Tasmanian Devils. Just a little tip: don’t ever invite wildlife biologists or conservation ecologists to give talks. They are the most depressing people in the world, and they really make it hard to hide away from the ugly realities. This talk was no exception: the Tasmanian Devil is in big trouble, and is facing at least two major threats, each of which may be sufficient to wipe them out. And just looke at that guy! He’s adorable! How can you let them go extinct?
Since I took Cell Biology last year, the Telomerase Gene has been an object of curiosity to me. Manipulating this pathway could slow down aging. On the other hand, it could be used in the opposite way to fight cancer. I do understand that this raises the ethical issue of how much we are supposed to tamper with. Then again, tampering is what we do as scientists, climbing mountains because they’re there.
I’ve been looking at this article for a paper I still haven’t started for Biochemistry.
Is any one here doing work with telomere regulation? If so, I’d like to here about it.
Here I am, rooming with that space case, Phil Plait, and what should appear on the astronomy photo of the day but a cosmic cephalopod, a picture of Comet Holmes that has a resemblance to a cartoon octopus.
Perhaps this is a sign of reconciliation? That the savage enmity between two science blogs shall be soothed? That the ferocious competition between the best science blog on the web and the blog that tied with a junk science site shall be at an end? That disparate disciplines can find common ground in the beauty of the natural universe?
Naaah, I hope not. The rivalry is too much fun.
Ladies, there are people who want your menstrual blood. It contains stromal cells, which are a multipotent adult-stem-cell-like population that might be a useful source of fairly plastic, proliferative cells. This distant possibility has prompted one company, C’Elle, to offer to collect, test, purify, and store these cells for you. As they say, these cells “may potentially provide phenomenal life saving treatments and customized therapies in the future“…so you should stash away a supply in cryogenic storage, just in case someone comes up with a use.
There is some serious science here, and Attila Csordas summarizes some of the interesting properties of these cells, but the approach is just weird. This can’t be called fraud — throughout their web site, they plainly admit that there is no practical, applied use for these cells right now, so they aren’t attempting to mislead at all — but they also can’t give a good pragmatic reason why anyone should pay to have their menstrual blood stored away.
That’s right, pay. Fees range from $499 for a single collection, to $1599 for a quarterly collection, with an additional yearly fee of $99-$199 for cryostorage. Yow. And you’ve just been throwing those tampons and pads away, not realizing that that is sludgy red treasure between your legs, and that you ought to be putting it on a high-tech pedestal and preserving it for a lifetime.
We guys are feeling left out, I assure you. I’m hoping we find a multipotent adult stem cell type in mucosal epithelia, so that we too can pay a premium price to honor the potential in our mucky secretions. If there isn’t a company doing this yet, I should start one.
I think I’ll call it “B’ooger™” (pronounced “boo-zhay”, of course).
Later, we may expand to serve a discriminating and exclusively male clientele with “Smeg’ma” (“smay-mwah”). There’s gold in them there slimes!
Here’s a cool idea: pick a color palette for your website by sampling photomicrographs. There are some nice color samples there; I think I’d go with something along the lines of a DIC image of a zebrafish embryo, which would have lots of blues, a few weakly saturated yellows, and an occasional flare of gold from the birefringence. Time for a site redesign! If I had any time, that is.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but we’ve got a serial spammer in the comments. This twit, calling himself Peter Moore (also known as Ken DeMyer, or Kdbuffalo, as he was known on Wikipedia before being banned there), is repeating himself over and over again, asking the same stupid question, never satisfied with any answer anyone gives him. Forty nine insipid comments in three days is enough.
I will answer him one last time. Any further attempt to spam multiple comment threads with his demands (and this alone makes him an ass: an incompetent, unqualified hack like Moore is in no position to make demands) will result in his immediate banning.
The scienceblogs team seems to be forming a united front on at least one specific issue: in support of research in the face of animal rights extremists. This is prompted by the case of a researcher in drug addiction whose home was vandalized by domestic terrorists, and who has written an op-ed defending the use of animals in research.
I said at length what I think about animal research several years ago, in our biology discipline’s policy statement on dissection. It’s pretty darned simple: we can’t figure out how something we don’t understand works without studying the subject. We can’t learn more about cells without studying cells; we can’t learn more about animals without studying animals; software simulations and thought experiments do not substitute.
My latest column for Seed is now available online. It’s an abbreviated summary of how vertebrates make segments (so it’s illustrated with a fly…), with special emphasis on the global and clocklike mechanism we use.
We’ve got a question going around: it’s been a good year for Europe in the Nobel Prizes, so what does it mean for American science? Are we slipping? Is there a European bias?
