In “web time” a few years is a long time, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that BBC news has redesigned their website again. But they have, and I was.
They seem to have fit more whitespace in, which I think I like. But there’s still a heavy use of flash. Boo. Can an iPad user get some love?
I’m sure that by now you’ve seen the rampant political cartoons wondering where global warming went. These are excusable, and even amusing, in that they point out the irony that global warming may cause cold temperatures.
But today the New York Times has an article on the subject: “Climate Fight is Heating Up in Deep Freeze“. While justifiable, I suppose, as “news” to report on, the arguments it presents are inane.
The idea that a large snow storm disproves global warming is argument from example at its best. It’s comparable to stating that because one large company failed capitalism has been proven wrong. All hail Marx and the socialist revolution! Read more…
This is really cool:
How much life could you find in one cubic foot? That’s a hunk of ecosystem small enough to fit in your lap. To answer the question, photographer David Liittschwager took a green metal frame, a 12-inch cube, to disparate environments—land and water, tropical and temperate. At each locale he set down the cube and started watching, counting, and photographing with the help of his assistant and many biologists.
From: One Cubic Foot — Photo Gallery — National Geographic Magazine.
Have you ever told someone you would call at ten o’clock, only to realize they thought you meant ten o’clock their time instead of your time? I mean, it’s all good, except you called them at two o’clock in the morning. No big deal.
I have for some time now maintained that we should abolish time zones. When I suggest this I invariably get a response as such: “That’d just be silly, James.”
But stop for a moment and consider if the entire world was all a single time zone. I assert that it would be a simpler place. Read more…
I just finished reading Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin and he spends a lot of time offering examples of how shared structure in animals can tell us about their ancestors. There’s a prime example of this in the news today: alligators and birds share a common lung structure. Specifically, alligators breathe in only one direction, like birds, instead of in two, like mammals. Why is this important?
The researchers believe the similarity in lung structure may explain why some animals were better able to adapt after the extinction, when oxygen levels dropped.
“We know that birds are really good at breathing in hypoxic conditions. They can fly at altitudes that would kill a mammal,” said Dr Farmer.
“Many archosaurs, such as pterosaurs, apparently were capable of sustaining vigorous exercise. Lung design may have played a key role in this capacity.
“That’s been a puzzle, why do birds have these very different lungs? But now we can date it back to the common ancestor of birds and crocodilians.
From the BBC article. (See also NewScientist.)
There are too many good insights in this article to quote them all:
Whatever else Texas may have going for it, teaching religion in science class is inexcusable, whether or not it’s dressed in the deceptive language of intelligent design. My (very) conservative Catholic grandma believes that evolution and faith are compatible. Plenty of people do. That’s because they are compatible. The evolution vs. creation debate is less about that issue than it is about cultural dominance in general. It’s just one battleground chosen in the ongoing culture wars.
Needless to say, you should just go read it:
When the overwhelming scientific consensus points to evolutionary biology as the explanation for life, Christians have two choices. They can say that this is consistent with their religion (God created everything including the field of evolutionary biology); or they can attempt to subvert the overwhelming consensus to fit their own narrative. Conservative institutions like, say, the Catholic Church have chosen the former over the latter.
I never returned to my stated confusion regarding the new tetrapod fossil footprints. The original BBC article was particularly unclear regarding the dates. The following is from one of many articles which explain this:
Tiktaalik lived around 375 million years ago, although even older elpistostegids, dating back to 385 million years, have been found.
But trackways found at a disused quarry at Zachelmie in the Holy Cross Mountains of southeastern Poland have thrown the timeline and the elpistostegids’ role into question.
In a paper released by the British weekly journal Nature, a team led by tetrapod sleuth Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, Sweden, report the finding of a dozen distinctive “hand” and “foot” prints from a creature that lived around 395 million years ago.
I’ve returned from holiday travels—and the subsequent craziness at work—and have just about caught up with life. To make up for my absence, enjoy this article from the Daily Mail Online.
© Reptile and Amphibian Ecology International and/or Paul S. Hamilto
A gecko so small it can perch on top of a pencil has been discovered along with dozens of new animal species in Ecuador’s threatened rainforest.
BBC News reports on “footprints of the first fish to walk on land“:
Researchers in the science journal Nature say the discovery of the footprints of a crocodile-like creature has led them to rethink our understanding of the evolution of life.
They don’t really say why exactly this is making them rethink things (no dates, etc.) I would be skeptical if the first fish on land had feet rather than fins, but maybe that’s the point.
NCTimes covers a new paper by Richard Lenski on the “Evolution Of A Beneficial Mutation”:
In other words, the other 11 populations may have evolved through different beneficial mutations to the same outcome, in terms of increased survival. If that is true, then there would be no evolutionary pressure in the 11 populations to evolve a mutation that would be superfluous or perhaps even harmful.
From the paper itself:
The latter explanation adds historical contingency, such that the likelihood of a particular outcome is conditional on whether some other event has already occurred.
This is essentially what Neil Shubin says in Your Inner Fish concerning the evolution of bodies: that organisms had the DNA to evolve them but weren’t able to until the advent of significant amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere.
When I get a chance to read the paper itself, I’ll try to post my impressions.
