Getting Rid of Tenure

Apr 27 2009 | comment(s)

Mark Taylor, a professor of religion, has observed (in the New York Times) that:

Is "Understanding Science" a Joke?

Mar 20 2009 | comment(s)

John Hawks is not happy with it.

I clicked on this John Timmer story about the new website, “Understanding Science”, directed toward the public and K-12 educators. What I found staring at me was a giant picture of a 27-step flowchart.I’m not going to reproduce it.

It's True, We're all Butt Heads

Mar 20 2009 | comment(s)

Humans belong to a sub-clasification of animals called deuterostomes (or second-mouth). During embryological development there is a period where part of the tissue “folds” back into itself creating what’s called a blastopore. The blastopore, in insects (and other members of the “other” group called protostomes, or first-mouth), forms the mouth. Not so for us and other deuterostomes. Oh, no. Our blastopore develops into the anus. We come out butt first.

For discussion on such phylogenetic fun and sillyness, I stumbled across this tidbit from Greg Morrow:

Slime-Bag Dinosaur: What Science Is, What It Isn’t

Mar 03 2009 | comment(s)

Carl Zimmer discusses his piece in Science. It’s about the 2005 discovery of potential blood vessels from none other than T-Rex. The trouble is that now there are a few scientists who aren’t all that convinced, instead saying that the vessels are in fact just a bunch of bacterial goo!

That’s all fine and dandy, but what I liked was this comment by one of the original authors, Mary Schweitzer

RNA, HIV, and the Origins of Life

Feb 11 2009 | comment(s)

The central dogma of Molecular Genetics is that information flow is unidirectional: DNA to RNA to PROTEIN. That is, DNA holds the blueprints, RNA is the messenger, and Proteins are the constructed functional units of life.

This dogma seems to hold for most of the species on the planet. From bacteria to humans to insects, the central dogma acts as a unifying theory of life’s architecture. But, there are a few key exceptions.

The first is that in some viruses, there is no DNA at all! Instead, they used RNA exclusively for their coding. Among these are the viruses that cause the common cold, flu, polio, and hepatitis. In these, the flow of information is simply: RNA to PROTEIN.