August 9th notes

• This story about "DNA" being found on rocks from space is really hard to wrap my head around.  The headlines generally seem to be wrong:  They didn't find DNA on a space rock.  If they had, that would have been really amazing.  What they found was molecules that go into building DNA.  Is that even surprising?  Even the official release from NASA is pretty unclear as to why this is so amazing.  Maybe I just don't get it.
• I've also been following this story about the weird orange goo in Alaska.  What they've found now is that it is eggs (duh?), but they really don't know what kind of eggs.  Surely someone is doing a DNA test right?  The weird thing is the eggs were found in buckets and random places on shore as well as the ocean itself.  I could absolutely see that some species that normally doesn't produce a lot of eggs randomly did and they washed ashore.  I don't understand how they would have gotten into the areas that aren't near shore.  Some kind of storm event?
• My interest in analyzing things extends beyond science, believe it or not.  I'm always fascinated by the comments left on internet articles.  The comments from this one, an article about the impressions of two people seeing the last Harry Potter movie without having ever seen anything about the series previously, are particularly hilarious.
• Humans simply overwhelmed Neanderthals with raw numbers.  Poor near-humans.

Home Sick Notes (July 28th)

• Bad Astronomy brought to my attention the discovery of an asteroid in one of the Earth's stable Lagrangian points.  At some point in the future, I imagine these points are going to be valuable real-estate.
• Sport hunting is considered a very minimal impact to lots of North American game species that are in need of conservation (e.g., Lesser Prairie Chickens), but apparently the role of hunting is substantial in highly endangered big cats, and the more you try to conserve them, the more attractive they are to "trophy" hunters.  The authors suggest this is non-intuitive, but this is exactly what I've observed from wealthy people who travel to hunt.  (Palazy et al., 2011, PLoS ONE 6(7): e22424 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022424)
• I've talked about the light:nutrient hypothesis before, and now there's a new paper investigating this in stream biota.
• Hey look!  Canada has become the United States during the Bush era!
• As if it wasn't difficult enough trying to do wetland restoration, there's now evidence that the obvious (that these wetlands are sometimes nutrient sources instead of the sinks we tend to assume they will be) is in fact true.  (Steinman and Ogdahl, 2011, Does converting agricultural fields to wetlands retain or release P?, Journal of the North American Benthological Society)
• If you're like me, and didn't even know wood-grazing fish existed, then this article will probably blow your mind.  (Lujan et al., 2011, Do wood-grazing fishes partition their niche?: morphological and isotopic evidence for trophic segregation in Neotropical Loricariidae, Functional Ecology)
• And finally, my favorite scientific society changed its name a few months ago:  The North American Benthological Society will now be the Society for Freshwater Science (despite Dom Chaloner's excellent article that makes a compelling case for bringing together marine and freshwater disciplines).  I think the last time this was voted on by the membership, the argument was that nobody knows what "benthological" means.  At the same time, ASLO changed from being the "American Society for Limnology and Oceanography" to the "Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography," clearly indicating that keeping the same initials is as important as having a name that doesn't sound ridiculous.

Interesting weekend posts

• When it comes to the bounty of the ocean, the only thing that appears to be capable of causing the collapse of fisheries is human appetite.  As humans, we've managed to eat our way through a massive assortment of marine species.  So it is no surprise that when it comes to invasive species, people tend to put two and two together and decide:  "Hey, maybe we can eat all the invaders to reduce their numbers!" We're there again.  All I can say is that this is a scheme unlikely to be ultimately successful.  The bigger concern is that if create a market where an invasive is worth money, then there is a financial incentive for people to expand the range of that invasive, which creates a new version of the exact problem you're trying to eliminate in the first place.
• The situation in Montana is not good.
• Mist netting birds.  Everyone assumed it was ok...and apparently it is (a grrlscientist review)?  Seems a bit complicated, and the actual paper (pdf) is a bit caveat-ish.  Still, compared to methods used for mammals and herps I think this is pretty good evidence that mist netting is minimally damaging.
• Tetrapod Zoology is dead.  Long live Tetrapod Zoology!
• Not sure how I missed this blog previously, but Highly Allochthonous seems pretty cool.

Interesting stuff (6/29/2011)

• Every day, we seem to learn more about animals that lived tens of millions of years ago.  Including the approximate body temperature of sauropods.  This feeds into the story about dinosaurs being warm blooded or cold-blooded, but to me the real question is how an organism so large kept its body heat down.  
• I think hyenas are really interesting (and apparently so do others).  Did you know they are more closely related to cats than dogs?
• The neat thing about Tet Zoo, is that every now and then an animal comes up on there that is contemporary, and yet I didn't even imagine such a thing existed.  Like a bearded pig.
• A lot of people complain about scientists over-stating climate change (IMO, a lot of people who don't know anything anyway).  In reality, climate models are very, very conservative in terms of the rate at which actual climate change happened in the past.  Apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed this.
• I'm fascinated by cases of scientific fraud and not only is this an interesting case of which I wasn't previously aware, but it reminded me of the Baltimore case (mentioned in the comments of that article).  Which is a case of fraud where the participants were eventually exonerated (sort of), even though everyone (including that commentator) seems to feel like someone was guilty and things aren't quite right.
• I just get the feeling that bugs (the non-technical term) just sprang, fully-formed from the earth.  I mean, there are really old fossils of, essentially, gnats and Hey look.  They had fully functional and sophisticated eyes 515 million years ago.

Notes for July 8th

• Happy Birthday Sis!
• This isn't exactly a wonderfully fun story.  
• Squirrels are actually pretty interesting.  Although we typically think of invasive species as annoying and frustrating, there's something sorta amazing about a species that can be this successful.
• Humans where in Europe a lot longer than previously thought.  Or maybe just a lot earlier?
• I'm just going to repeat the title of this article and then gasp in terror:  "Gallbladder removed through mouth in new-" (stops to vomit, deep breath).  Ok, so actually that's probably a good thing, but judas monkeys!

Notes for July 7th

• More about perennial grains.  I agree, it would be great if we could have them.  I don't know why we don't.  
• A fairly interesting look at the food preferences of man-eating lions (obviously, they don't only eat people).
• Ants with worms...broadly speaking ants with mind-control worms.
• Holy cow, I can't believe this is a problem.  Because of some unexpected storms, a hydro plan in the Pacific NW was making so much power that other facilities in the region had to shut down (gas and coal plants).  I'm not a huge fan of hydro because the impoundments associated with them are usually bad for streams, but some strategic use of hydro is certainly going to be helpful.  In this case, they have so much power being generated that they don't know what to do with it (literally).

Notes for July 1st

• 2.1 billion year old multicellular life.  At least, it looks mutlicellular, hard to tell really.  But wouldn't early multi-cellular life essentially just be unicellular organisms stuck together and liking it?
• Quantum effects at the macro scale.  Although very interesting, I was expecting a lot more 'macro' effects from the reddit headline "Dartmouth researchers describe one example of the microscopic quantum world influencing--even dominating, they say--the behavior of something in the macroscopic classical world."
• Fundamental differences between big and small animals mean that King Kong was probably a lot slower than depicted in that Peter Jackson movie.  Or here in reality, dinos were probably slow.
• Why warm your eggs with body heat when you can use thermal springs?

Notes for June 29th

• The evolution of cats is interesting, even if the image accompanying the article doesn't make any sense.
• Generalists go extinct too.  Not sure I really buy the idea that they might be less like to.
• Allen's rule is about the length of extremities in tropical and temperate animals.  Apparently there's now some evidence that temperate/cold weather animals have shorter limbs (or at least, shorter beaks).

Notes for June 28th

• Tet Zoo talking about turtles.  I ended up going through about 10 old Tet Zoo articles on turtles.
• Interesting bit of detective work to try and determine how the Stellar's Sea Cow went extinct.
• Genetically engineered salmon are on their way.  Take a look at the picture accompanying the article.  No wonder the industry is investigating this.
• Small mammals eating dinosaurs.  Presumably after they are dead.

Notes for June 25

• Yes.  Confirmation bias is real.  Or am I only seeing evidence for it because of...confirmation bias?  Uh...down that path lies madness.
• I'm not sure what to make of the absence or reduced abundance of sunspots.  Does this mean something?
• The strange and somewhat wonderful story of a man who woke up with a stroke, and without the ability to read.
• The world of information is a jungle.  I like that metaphor.  At least I'm not the only one who occasionally misses something amazing.

Notes for June 24th

• Road kills are really hard on certain species.  Especially those with low reproductive rates.
• That whole komondo dragon and bacteria story is still interesting, even with venom playing a major role.
• Interesting question:  Why did dinosaurs have all those horns and spikes and armor and etc.? 
• Interesting info about influenza and how swine and human interactions are likely to preserve certain strains far longer than would otherwise occur.
• A planktonic trilobite.

Notes for June 23rd

• Birth control pills fueled the sexual revolution, but who could have envisioned at the time that they would also fuel a pervasive problem to fish sexuality.  Come to think of it, a lot of people probably saw that coming.
• White-nose syndrome is really going to end north American bats if it continues at this rate.  That's not an exaggeration.  And now it's extended into Oklahoma, a huge range expansion.
• Chimpanzees are not nice.  Not at all.
• Tamarisk is bad news.  They take over riparian areas and don't provide much habitat for almost anything. Except, apparently, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, an endangered bird.  Apparently the benefit of tamarisk to this bird is enough for the USDA to quit attempting to control it. 

Notes for June 22

• I'm constantly hearing claims on reddit of really high rates of inaccurate paternity.  This fits with reddit's general attitude towards reproduction and male rights issues.  However, I've never seen any actual evidence.  This article nicely sums up the available evidence, and seems to fit much more closely with what my expectations would be.
• The fight aging website may deserve some detailed attention at some point.  For now, I'm mostly just interested in naked mole rats and their invulnerability to cancer.
• The outlook for polar bears.  The data is a little tricky, but the outlook is not particularly good.
• Finally, don't mess around with Steamer Ducks...especially if you're another duck.

Notes for June 21st

• Faster than light travel...kinda.  The author of this post asks you to consider dominoes.  If you tip one domino, it slowly tips, and falls into the next, and then into the next, and so on.  However, you could (if you wanted to) run your hand along the dominoes and knock them down faster than they would if you just allowed each domino to fall into the next.  Now, imagine that instead of dominoes, we're talking light.  You could just let the light propagate at whatever speed it normally propagates at (the speed of light).  Or you could impose a greater velocity on it (I'm not sure how).  Does this make sense to you?  If so, let me know, because I'm totally confused.
• There isn't a fossil more odd than Hallucegenia.  Or at least, that was everyone's understanding for a long time.  Flip it over, though, and it doesn't seem so odd.  This is probably a good example of just how much we don't know.
• I see crayfish in the title and I'm automatically interested.  And yes, this is interesting, about how crayfish make decisions about flight or fight.
• More Tet-Zoo awesomeness.  Ducks and Geese.

Notes for June 18th

• Heat stroke sucks.  Apparently it sucks way more than I thought.  This isn't good news for me, as I've experienced this twice.
• A Q and A with a researcher attempting to quantify financially ecosystem services.  Very interesting, and very frustrating.
• And my work just blew up.  So I guess that's it for today.

Notes for June 17th

• One of the big struggles in science is balancing holistic understanding of whole systems with reductionist understanding of particular mechanisms.  Dave Strayer seemed to be talking about this in his book on mussel ecology, and this speech is talking about the same thing in medicine.  I find it far more terrifying when discussed in the context of medicine.
• The difficulty and implications of cryptic biodiversity.
• The process of leasing federal land for solar farms is confusing, and apparently expensive.  But not so expensive that people aren't doing it.  From what I've read, mineral extraction, by contrast, is basically subsidized by the government because it is so cheap to lease land for that purpose.
• Using small mammals to understand why all the big animals went extinct around 12,000 years ago.  Surprisingly, the results are interpreted as supporting the climate change scenario over the human impacts scenario.

Notes for June 16

• Land-locked seals.  Something else I didn't know existed.
• The occurrence of development adjacent to land designated for conservation.  Apparently everyone wants a house that buts up to a 'protected' area.  I suspect most of those people failed to realize what they were getting themselves into.
• The elimination of wolves caused a reduction in beaver dams.  Ecology is awesome, and top predators are possibly the most amazing drivers of ecosystems out there.
• Distribution models....I have a feeling these are about to become the bane of my existence.
• I was looking at the wikipedia page on living fossils the other day and thinking to myself "This makes absolutely no sense."  Glad to see someone else has the same thought.

Notes for June 15th

• I didn't know there was a European bison.  The wisent.  Which explains, I guess, why we call the American bison what we do.  This article, estimating the potential range of the species, made me aware.
• Parasites are amazing, terrifying creatures.  In this study, the authors found that the energy budget of the stream was being driven by parasites.  I think this is a big reason why non-indigenous species occasionally go crazy and become invasive (although most people think of predators causing that [pdf]).
• A somewhat creative program to get more solar panels out there.  The pay-as-you-go model I guess.
• Are wolves ever not the subject of crazy disputes?
• Geez, youtube is the reason kids act stupid?  Really?  ಠ_ಠ

Notes for June 10th

• This is really what scientific reporting should look like.  Source specific, evolving, and full of important details, yet all in one convenient place.  This makes all other scientific reporting on the web look like photocopied newspapers.
• A really old shoe.  Stuffed with grass.  If this were just a hundred years old, it would be trash, but it is 5,500 years old.  Pretty cool really.  However, I guess I don't understand all of why it is cool, maybe I'm just not that up on my archeology.
• The physics of a bursting bubble.  I would not have thought this warranted so much attention.
• Hippo.  Actually pretty darned ugly.  And a hippo killing a crocodile.   And...ok, I could just keep linking to Tet Zoo articles all day or I could just tell you to go read the whole site.

Notes for June 4th

• Jupiter is getting beat up.  But that's kinda cool to see.
• Ever get hit by a golf ball?  Feels pretty hard doesn't it?  Apparently they aren't all that hard when propelled into a steel plate.  Anyone know if this video is legit?
• That sinkhole in guatemala is scary huh?  Apparently "sinkhole" is the wrong word though.  When I first saw this I knew I'd seen it somewhere before.  Turns out it was in the same city.  Yikes.
• Mongoose traditions.  A pretty good name for a punk band, all things considered.
• Big fundamental question in ecology:  How many species are there?  Or, more specifically, how many arthropods?  And how do we know that.
• Although this post lies far outside my typical interests, it is too funny to ignore.
• If you're not interested in reading about how hyenas ate Homo erectus brains...well...this article might not be for you.  (although I do recommend almost everything at Laelaps)