Notes for March 12th, 2010

• Feral pigs are becoming an increasingly severe problem further north. They used to extend into Oklahoma, but now they've been found across Kansas and Missouri. Getting rid of them is complicated: Letting hunters kill them might be effective, or it might just increase their numbers as outfitters begin actively bringing hogs into the state. As a result, hunting them is banned in many places (KS included) and hunts to eradicate them are done by government agencies. By the way, I would love to be one of the guys shooting these things from a helicopter.
• Conservation Maven, discussing a paper on delimiting the boundaries of invasive species. The lead author held a postdoc (or assistant prof position?) in one of my advisor's lab, which doesn't mean the paper doesn't sound really interesting in its own right. Of course, it's behind a closed door for some of us.
• Eigenworms. Pretty cool paper quantitatively describing the motion of a worm (C. elegans). Which is actually more interesting than you might think.
• An interesting discussion about the difficulty in controlling invasive species spread by the horticulture industry.
• This blog on the most absurd published papers deserves a special mention: National Center for Biotechnology Information, Rolling on the Floor Laughing. A few highlights.