z, in comments:

"CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. "

See also my forthcoming paper: "Chickens do not lay eggs, because they have been observed to hatch from them".

Well it was only a matter of time before Myriam added the tunicates. Let me say that it has become crystal clear to me today what is occurring. This whole battle pits the protostomes vs. deuterstomes. The protostomes must rise up and defeat the evil empire and unjustness that is deuterstomes.

To refresh your memory or bring you up to speed, the deuterstomes are basically a superphylum that possesses the echinderms, urochordata, chordata, and hemichordata. What do these groups share in common? First, they are extremely uncool and to cheer for them makes you uncool. Second, during the development of organism when they're nothing but a clump of cells (actually a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula), the first opening (blastopore) to develop in the hollow sphere is the anus. Ewwwh, ass first! Typical of a deuterstome. Third, the cells also dived radially (cleave) and are indeterminate (the cells don't know what the want to be when they grow up).

In the cooler group, protostomes (basically every other invertebrate phyla including the molluscs). The mouth forms first, cleavage is spiral, and cells are determinate. In others words, they got they're shit together. So, so much better.

To be clear...deuterstomes=Axis of Evil. They are evil doers who threaten our very freedom. To vote protostome is to vote for justice, democracy, and freedom.

Climate Change, Humans, and the Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth:

What caused the woolly mammoth's extinction? Climate warming in the Holocene might have driven the extinction of this cold-adapted species, yet the species had survived previous warming periods, suggesting that the more-plausible cause was human expansion. Testing these competing hypotheses has been hampered by the difficulty in generating quantitative estimates of the relationship between the mammoth's contraction and the climatic and/or human-induced drivers of extinction. In this study, we combined paleo-climate simulations, climate envelope models (which describe the climate associated with the known distribution of a species--its envelope--and estimate that envelope's position under different climate change scenarios), and a population model that includes an explicit treatment of woolly mammoth-human interactions to measure the extent to which climate changes, increased human pressures, or a combination of both factors might have been responsible. Results show a dramatic decline in suitable climate conditions for the mammoth between the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene, with hospitable areas in the mid-Holocene being restricted mainly to Arctic Siberia, where the latest records of woolly mammoths in continental Asia have been found. The population model results also support the view that the collapse of the climatically suitable area caused a significant drop in mammoth population size, making the animals more vulnerable to increasing hunting pressure from expanding human populations. The coincidence of the collapse of climatically suitable areas and the increase in anthropogenic impacts in the Holocene are most likely to have been the "coup de grâce," which set the place and time for the extinction of the woolly mammoth.

What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?:

Forty-two thousand years ago, during the last glacial advance of the Pleistocene epoch, woolly mammoths thundered across the frozen steppes of the Eurasian continent. The huge beasts thrived on the arid tundra of the last ice age, having adapted to temperatures that would chill the toes off any hairless ape. Yet, by the middle of the Holocene epoch, 6,000 years ago, the glaciers had retreated and the Eurasian woolly mammoth was on the verge of extinction. They were ultimately done in, say David Nogués-Bravo and colleagues, by climate change--with a helping hand from humans.

Exposure to War as a Risk Factor for Mental Disorders:

While large-scale national psychiatric epidemiologic studies have been conducted in Western industrialized nations [1-3], studies in the Arab world have generally been limited to smaller populations [4-6]. In addition, while exposure to war as a risk factor for the development of mental disorders in military populations has previously been described [7,8], the effect of war upon first onset of a range of mental disorders in civilian populations at a national level has not been explored.

Chile's Neoliberal Health Reform: An Assessment and a Critique:

* The Chilean health system underwent a drastic neoliberal reform in the 1980s, with the creation of a dual system: public and private health insurance and public and private provision of health services. * This reform served as a model for later World Bank-inspired reforms in countries like Colombia. * The private part of the Chilean health system, including private insurers and private providers, is highly inefficient and has decreased solidarity between rich and poor, sick and healthy, and young and old. * In spite of serious underfinancing during the Pinochet years, the public health component remains the backbone of the system and is responsible for the good health status of the Chilean population. * The Chilean health reform has lessons for other countries in Latin America and elsewhere: privatisation of health insurance services may not have the expected results according to neoliberal doctrine. On the contrary, it may increase unfairness in financing and inequitable access to quality care.

Chromosomal Gene Movements Reflect the Recent Origin and Biology of Therian Sex Chromosomes:

Our sex chromosomes have profoundly differentiated since evolving from an ancestral pair of non-sex chromosomes (autosomes). In this study, we first show that X chromosome-derived retrogenes (genes that arose as duplicates of "parental" X-linked genes) are specifically expressed during the meiotic and postmeiotic stages of spermatogenesis, thus functionally replacing their parents during, but also after, the process of male meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI). We then show that the "export" of retroposed gene copies from the X chromosome started rather recently during mammalian evolution, on the eutherian ("placental" mammal) and marsupial lineages, respectively. This suggests that MSCI--the main driving force for this out of the X gene "movement"--originated around the separation of these two major (therian) mammalian lineages, approximately 180 million years ago. Given that MSCI was likely triggered as soon as the proto-X and -Y chromosomes ceased to recombine (an event that marks the origin of these sex chromosomes), our data also support the recent notion that our sex chromosomes and those of other therians emerged, not in the common ancestor of all mammals, but--probably rather late--in the therian ancestor.

Teenaged Dome-skulled Dinosaurs Could Really Knock Heads, Virtual Smash-ups Show:

After half a century of debate, a University of Alberta researcher has confirmed that dome-headed dinosaurs called pachycephalosaurs could collide with each other during courtship combat. Eric Snively, an Alberta Ingenuity fellow at the U of A, used computer software to smash the sheep-sized dinosaurs together in a virtual collision and results showed that their bony domes could emerge unscathed.

Squid Beak Is Both Hard And Soft, A Material That Engineers Want To Copy:

How did nature make the squid's beak super hard and sharp ---- allowing it, without harm to its soft body ---- to capture its prey? The question has captivated those interested in creating new materials that mimic biological materials. The results are published in the journal Science.

Sensors For Bat-inspired Spy Plane Under Development:

A six-inch robotic spy plane modeled after a bat would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time.

Hormone That Controls Hunger And Appetite Also Linked To Reduced Fertility:

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that in-utero exposure to the hormone grhelin, a molecule that controls appetite and hunger and nutrition, can result in decreased fertility and fewer offspring. Ghrelin, the so-called "hunger hormone," is produced in the stomach and brain, induces food intake, and operates through a brain region that controls cravings for food and other energy sources. Ghrelin decreases the HOXA 10 gene that is involved in developmental programming of the uterus. The HOXA 10 gene determines how the uterus will develop in adulthood.

Small Desert Beetle Found To Engineer Ecosystems:

The catastrophic action a tiny beetle is wreaking on the deteriorating Chihuahuan desert will be revealed in the April edition of the Royal Entomological Society's Ecological Entomology journal.

Armed Beetles Find A Mate, Whatever Their Size:

One species of armed beetle is proving that size doesn't necessarily matter when it comes to finding a mate. The creature uses what might be considered rather persuasive 'pulling techniques.'

Candidate Models


Plausible Accuracy


Dolores Labs Blog


StupidFilter


GraphJam: Pop culture for people in cubicles.


PSD Blog

The latest edition of Encephalon is up on Of Two Minds

Carnival of the Green #121 is up on Conserve Plastic Bags

While we're on the topic of animals that act like humans, consider this very sad, very famous case: Nim Chimpsky. Raised to be a human boy, when the funds ran out and Nim got to the age equivalent of a five year old boy, he was sent off to live with other chimps. Imagine that you are a five year old boy and get put into a cage with chimps...

And despite Nim's handlers' published opinion, it seems he did use ASL for communication, as have other chimps more humanely looked after.

First, note the time stamp on this post. I have just now succeeded in getting Minnow to sleep and have sat down with a cup of tea and tomorrow's lecture to prepare. It's going to be a long short night. And I'm already tired.

I'm tired because for some inexplicable reason, Minnow couldn't sleep last night between 3:15 am and >5 am. And when Minnow can't sleep, neither do I. This afternoon as I tried to start writing tomorrow's lecture and preparing this week's lab, I was overcome by exhaustion and I broke down and bought a bottle of Coke. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect I'd have to say that the caffeine passed right through to the breast milk and that the stimulant effects were longer lasting in the toddler than the mother. (Someone else can check PubMed, kellymom suggests that this is in the realm of reasonable.) Now, I'll have to stay up quite late to finish the work for tomorrow and I'll be more likely to resort to caffeine to get through the day....hence, the vicious cycle of the title.

But there's another vicious cycle at work here too...and that's the unrelenting stream of preparations that accompany teaching 4 days a week with a new prep. I am *so* ready for the semester to be over and some of that supposed flexibility and freedom in an academic's life to seep down to me. At the very least, when the semester ends, maybe I'll get a wee bit more sleep.

But for now, the lecture writing awaits.

The latest edition of Encephalon, the carnival of neuroscience, is using Paris Hilton as a theme, I think because the contrast is so great. It still hurts to read it.

I did find Jennifer Ouellette's pocket biography of Ramon y Cajal an excellent corrective, at least — balance the photos of a 21st century airhead with the tale of a 19th century genius of neuroanatomy.

tags: kitsch, tacky midwestern shit, ball of twine