A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: biology

Jan 05 2013
Mark Twain, probably

“Are you also opposed to the wheel because because it is marketed by the big auto companies?”

“Are you also opposed to the wheel because because it is marketed by the big auto companies?”

Mark Lynas:

I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

So I guess you’ll be wondering – what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.

Really great piece.

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Dec 30 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Approval for gene-modified salmon spawns controversy

Approval for gene-modified salmon spawns controversy

Sara Reardon, New Scientist:

Fast-growing salmon have cleared another hurdle in an upstream battle to be the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption. After a long and possibly politically motivated delay, federal regulators have released preliminary documents declaring the fish safe to eat and environmentally harmless.

Their safety precautions seem extensive but it’s also the case that living things have an intense, deep-seated need to reproduce. We’ll see what happens.

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Sep 24 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Bees Plan Routes to Minimize Travel Distance

Bees Plan Routes to Minimize Travel Distance

As part of our continuing coverage of bees, I’d like to bring to your attention some research by folks at Queen Mary, University of London, as summarized by Virginia Morell for ScienceNOW:

Bumblebees foraging in flowers for nectar are like salesmen traveling between towns: Both seek the optimal route to minimize their travel costs. Mathematicians call this the “traveling salesman problem,” in which scientists try to calculate the shortest possible route given a theoretical arrangement of cities. Bumblebees, however, take the brute-force approach: For them, it’s simply a matter of experience, plus trial and error, scientists report in the current issue of PLoS Biology. The study, the first to track the movements of bumblebees in the field, also suggests that bumblebees aren’t using cognitive maps—mental recreations of their environments—as some scientists have suggested, but rather are learning and remembering the distances and directions that need to be flown to find their way from nest to field to home again.

So this isn’t some major natural algorithmic discovery or, as Wired put it, “BEES SOLVE TRAVELING SALESMAN PROBLEM” (fuck Wired), but it’s a pretty cool find that bees will in some way remember distances and plan routes to minimize travel.

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Jul 12 2012
Mark Twain, probably

New papers deal huge blow to NASA-backed finding on arsenic-based life

New papers deal huge blow to NASA-backed finding on arsenic-based life

John Timmer, Ars Technica:

NASA scientists had found evidence that life on Earth could rely on alternate chemistry, one that replaced the phosphorus used in many biomolecules for a chemical relative that is usually toxic: arsenic.

… Researchers quickly identified a number of holes in the initial analysis, both logical and experimental. Less than six months later, Science published a series of responses to the original paper that raised significant questions about its accuracy. Now, the topic is back in the pages of the same journal. Two labs have obtained the original arsenic-tolerant bacteria and shown that some of the original paper’s conclusions are completely off-base.

It would’ve been cool if the results were validated, but hey: that’s science. The scientific process works, you guys.

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Mar 19 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Scientists Claim Brain Memory Code Cracked

Scientists Claim Brain Memory Code Cracked

ScienceDaily:

Despite a century of research, memory encoding in the brain has remained mysterious. Neuronal synaptic connection strengths are involved, but synaptic components are short-lived while memories last lifetimes. This suggests synaptic information is encoded and hard-wired at a deeper, finer-grained molecular scale.

In an article in the March 8 issue of the journal PLoS Computational Biology, physicists Travis Craddock and Jack Tuszynski of the University of Alberta, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona demonstrate a plausible mechanism for encoding synaptic memory in microtubules, major components of the structural cytoskeleton within neurons.

I had the opportunity to see Dr. Hameroff speak at Google in 2007 — you can view a video of that talk here. He’s an interesting fellow with a lot of very interesting ideas — some of which are (as far as I can tell as a layman) somewhat outside the mainstream.

What I’m saying is: check this out, but take it with a grain of salt.

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Dec 24 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Pigeons match primates in number sense

Pigeons match primates in number sense

Kate Shaw writing for Ars Technica:

Overall, the birds performed about as well as the rhesus monkeys had in the original experiment. Both species are certainly capable of learning a simple mathematical rule, then using that rule in a more abstract sense to handle new values.

Can’t wait for the first avian mathematician.

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