Maternal effect genes are a special class of genes that have their effect in the reproductive organs of the mutant; they are interesting because the mutant organism may appear phenotypically normal, and it is the progeny that express detectable differences, and they do so whether the progeny have inherited the mutant gene or not. That sounds a little confusing, but it really isn’t that complex. I’ll explain it using one canonical example of a maternal effect gene, bicoid.
We have received most excellent news from Seed: notice that challenge bar to the left, where I (and many other science bloggers) are asking you to donate to public education? We’re doing great—my challenge has gathered over a thousand dollars so far, all to help out teachers and schoolkids—but now Seed has announced that they will match the total donations, up to $10,000. Double your money!
I’ve set a goal of raising $2000 for teachers, but I’ve got a dozen projects listed, and they’re going to need more than that if all are to be fully funded. If I hit the goal, don’t stop—you can keep contributing. Janet has a list of the other participants, too, so if you want to spread the joy around some more, check out the others.
Oh, and everyone should shout out, “Yay, Seed!” right now. It’s the right thing to do, even if it startles other people in the office or coffee shop.
I’m sorry, BigDumbChimp, but you’ve been beaten to this discovery: God Hates Shrimp. It’s old news. It’s also wrong in its emphasis. I read Leviticus…
Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
…and what I see is that God hates cephalopods, the bastard.
Darksyde has a summary of the science panel in which he says nice things about us speakers…but I’m sure that what everyone will want to see is the link to a transcript of Wes Clark’s speech.
Anderson RC (2006) Results of the giant Pacific octopus census in Puget Sound, 2000-2005. Tentacle 14:35-36.
This photograph and more are available at Sky and Sea Photography.
Maybe I was too hard on Harun Yahya. As Wesley writes, plagiarism and theft are common practices among creationists—it’s even encouraged.
Authors such as George Macready Price and Henry M. Morris assembled many of the arguments together in various books. And, as I said, nobody cares if you steal it. In fact, others will be confused if you provide complete references and trace back claims to sources. That just isn’t done as a matter of course in this field, and, of course, it pays to pick up the social gestalt of your new career.
When among knaves and fools, do as they do.
Here’s a gorgeous educational site, The Virtual Fossil Museum. It has a nicely organized set of fossil galleries, all intended for use by the education community, and all appropriately credited. This is the way it is supposed to be done.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way creationists do it. Here’s a case of creationists caught red-handed in blatant theft.
Browsing the funny pages this week, I see some hope that cephalopods will eventually displace talking cats from their preeminent spot in the comic pantheon.
I think this one has to be for Chris…
The scienceblogs crew is pushing a new charity for the next few weeks: an outfit called DonorsChoose, which collects funding requests from teachers and tries to match them up with people willing to pass along a few dollars. They have a long, long list of teachers looking for help in their classrooms; what we sciencebloggers have done is picked a subset of the requests that each of us like and grouped them into a challenge. My challenge contains a dozen science-related requests, and now my job is to beg you, the readers of Pharyngula, to take a look at them and if you can, kick in a few dollars to help them out.
If you look to the sidebar on the left, you’ll see a status bar showing how close we are to funding those requests. It’s at a pathetic 0% right now, but it would be nice to see it fill up.
I said that a lot of us here at scienceblogs are doing this; Janet has a complete list, so if you’d rather help out one of the other blogs meet their goal, please do. All that matters is that teachers get help, not which of us helps out.
Also, there will be a random drawing at the end of our efforts, and donors have a chance of winning various small tchotchkes. Again, Janet has the details, including the list of fabulous prizes.
Lots of stuff about the intersection of science and politics in the US today—here are three things to read over breakfast.
Bruce Sterling suggests that American science is experiencing creeping Lysenkoism, and reports that “the Bush administration has systematically manipulated scientific inquiry into climate change, forest management, lead and mercury contamination, and a host of other issues.” He predicts a rather grim end for our science and science policy.
Before long, the damage will spread beyond our borders. International scientific bodies will treat American scientists as pariahs. This process has already begun in bioethics, meteorology, agriculture, nuclear science, and medicine, but doubts will spread to “American science” generally.
It’s not a happy piece. Read it anyway.
Chris Mooney is surprised at the longevity of the critiques of Republican “science”: he says that “a similar pattern–ignore experts, favor ideologues–has been followed by the administration on any number of other science issues, ranging from global warming to the morning after pill,” and seems most impressed by the fact that these problems are being pointed out, over and over again. Where Sterling sees looming disaster, though, Mooney sees some hope: not everyone is blind to what the Bushites are doing, and science policy is becoming an important issue.
But now I realize something more: These questions are proof positive that those who are worried about the politics of science nurture their concern within a much broader context. These Americans are thinking: As science goes, so goes the nation. On some level, the science community has always known that. What’s new is that now, we have a heck of a lot of company.
Now we just have to get all that company motivated to campaign and vote.
Darksyde discusses an bill to protect scientific whistleblowers, people who come forward to politicized, ideological tampering with the science coming out of our premier federal research institutions, like NOAA. As he says, “Once again, the GOP preferred to ignore reality and opt for wishful thinking”: it was killed by the Republicans. The author of the bill, Rep. Brad Miller, (D-North Carolina), was online responding to comments, if you’d like to hear straight from the source.
I think Mooney is right, that the public can see the damage being done to our reputation and the erosion of America’s science and engineering skill set, but there’s the obstacle—as long as the Republicans are in power, we’re not going to be able to slow the destruction.
