Reason #1 to vote for Pharyngula

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Really, I wasn’t going to make a big deal of this award, but then Phil had to go and mock the noble name of Pharyngula, and make it all a challenge. Now as a matter of honor I have to try and defeat the Bad Astronomy blog.

I have to do this. If you read that post, it is revealed that Phil has posed nude for the SkepDude calendar. This is a troubling precedent, I’m sure you’ll all agree that we shouldn’t encourage bloggers to let it all hang out in public like that.

Vote for Pharyngula. Unless you want me to pose nekkid.

That’s some tongue

Behold the spectacularly long-tongued glossophagine nectar bat, Anoura fistulata:

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Anoura fistulata feeding from a test tube filled with sugared water; its tongue (pink) can extend to 150% of body length.

This length of tongue is unusual for the genus, and there is an explanation for how it can fit all of that into its mouth: it doesn’t. The base of the tongue has been carried back deep into the chest in a pocket of epithelium, and is actually rooted in the animal’s chest.

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Ventral view of A. fistulata, showing tongue (pink), glossal tube and tongue retractor muscle (blue), and skeletal elements (white).

Across the glossophagine nectar bats, maximum tongue extension is tightly correlated with the length of their rostral components, such as the palate and mandible. Although the correlation holds for A. caudifer and A. geoffroyi, A. fistulata falls far outside the 95% confidence interval. Close examination of tongue morphology reveals the basis for this pattern. In other nectar bats, the base of the tongue coincides with the base of the oral cavity (the typical condition for mammals), but in A. fistulata the tongue passes back through the neck and into the thoracic cavity. This portion is surrounded by a sleeve of tissue, or glossal tube, which follows the ventral surface of the trachea back and positions the base of the tongue between the heart and the sternum.

Unsurprisingly, this adaptation co-evolved with the lengthening corolla of a tropical flower, Centropogon nigricans—observations suggest that this bat is the only pollinator of this particular flower.

I’m sure Gene Simmons would be jealous.

Muchhala N (2006) Nectar bat stows huge tongue in its rib cage. Nature 444:701-702.

Awww

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That’s a baby gorilla holding hands with a worker at the Lefini Faunal Reserve. It’s a touching picture (and there’s a much larger version available if you click on the image), but there’s an ugly story behind it. The gorilla is a “bush-meat orphan”.

“Bush-meat orphan.” That’s a phrase of understated unpleasantness.

For everyone other than Sean Henry, this one is for you

Gaaa…stop chattering on the Sean Henry thread! I set that up as a finely focused exercise in politely discussing his criticism of evolution, not for all that ongoing discussion about whether this is good or bad or complaining at each other about whether your answer is appropriate or chatting about how old he is. About 50% of the replies in that thread have been tossed out because you aren’t paying attention.

So talk about all that meta stuff here, not there, and stop cluttering up the thread, OK?

Except for you, Charlie Wagner. You’ve finally worn out your welcome. Goodbye, and good riddance—for spamming over 20 times, for whining that you have some sort of right to post here, for being an obnoxious, obtuse jerk, you’re finally banned from this site for good.

Old school SF

Medgadget had a Sci Fi contest, and they’ve just posted the winning entries. The results are your usual mixed bag of amateur SF, but since it is a medical gadget site, one of the interesting outcomes is that all of them are focused on science and engineering and medicine, and not so much that other literary stuff. There’s a whiff of nostalgia there—they read like 1940s scientifiction, before that scary contentious New Wave stuff came along.

Anyway, it’s fun writing about science ideas—just don’t go in expecting much in the way of character development or mood.

How to handle creationism (British style)

The UK Education Minister has the right idea. After the pseudoscientific group “‘Truth’ in Science” mailed out teaching plans for creationism to schools in England, it took them a while, but the government has now spoken out loudly and clearly against their nonsense.

The government has already stated that the Truth in Science materials should not be used in science lessons. On November 1, the education minister, Jim Knight, wrote: “Neither intelligent design nor creationism are recognised scientific theories and they are not included in the science curriculum. The Truth in Science information pack is therefore not an appropriate resource to support the science curriculum.” The Department for Education said it was working with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the public body that oversees the national curriculum, to communicate this message directly to schools.

It really is that simple.

Sean Henry, this one is for you

The angry young anti-evolutionist who made that ill-informed video has been complaining in the comments about how rude we all are, and saying that he’s got other, more substantive gripes about evolution that he hasn’t told us about yet.

Well, here’s his chance. Mr Henry can instruct us in what he considers the most damning evidence against evolution, and you all can correct him in an informative, constructive fashion.

I will be enforcing very strict commenting rules here. Be polite or your comments will be axed on sight. No complaining, either; give the young gentleman a chance to state his position. We’ll see if he can put together a coherent argument.

(I am serious, people. Shut your gobs unless you’ve got something instructive to say.)

Minnesota on our minds

Hmmm…there are a couple of regional links that have popped up recently.

The science is in: the Tripoli Six are innocent

Go read Effect Measure on the recent events in the case of the Tripoli Six. This is the story of a team of health care workers who were blamed for an outbreak of HIV among young patients at a Libyan hospital—they’ve been tried in a kangaroo court and face very unpleasant prospects.

Now, in a powerful reply to the Libyan accusations, Nature has published the results of a detailed analysis of the viruses afflicting the children, and the story is clear: the cause of the outbreak was the poor hygiene present at the hospital before the six workers arrived. Here are the major conclusions of the paper:

In 1998, outbreaks of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were reported in children attending Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. Here we use molecular phylogenetic techniques to analyse new virus sequences from these outbreaks. We find that the HIV-1 and HCV strains were already circulating and prevalent in this hospital and its environs before the arrival in March 1998 of the foreign medical staff (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor) who stand accused of transmitting the HIV strain to the children.

The strains present were also traceable to North Africa and at least one was prevalent in Egypt. They also found that the timing was off: the outbreak had begun before the workers had arrived.

We found that, irrespective of which model was used, the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster pre-dated March 1998, sometimes by many years. In most analyses, the probability that the clusters from the Al-Fateh Hospital originated after that time was almost zero. For the three HCV clusters, the percentage of lineages already present before March 1998 was about 70%; the equivalent percentage for the HIV-1 cluster was estimated at about 40%.

Apparently, the scientific evidence which would have exonerated the accused was not allowed in the court. The Gaddafi government continues to live up to its reputation.