I suppose I should have expected this. I thought it might be fun to see what the databases had to say about turkeys. So, I queried the NCBI databases, found a taxonomy reference, and started clicking related links to see pictures of the different species. Why? Because it would be ...
Then you need to head over to The Oyster's Garter and read Miriam Goldstein's incredibly funny post about the problems of male sea squirts. Apparently, if you're a sea squirt, the size of your sperm is related to your environment and mostly the number of other sea squirts in your ...
Conflicts between predators like cougars and coyotes and human companions like pets and small children are becoming more common as people move into areas that used to be wildlife habitat. The Seattle Times has a great story this morning about biologists in Washington who are studying cougars to learn if ...
'Tis the holiday season and, according to ancient lore, the time when miraculous events are most likely to take place. One of those well-known and miraculous events of ancient days was the birth of a son to a young girl, who, although she was married ( Okay, I'm not sure ...
"Digital biology," as I use the phrase, refers to the idea of using digital information for doing biology. This digital information comes from multiple sources such as DNA sequences, protein sequences, DNA hybridization, molecular structures, analytical chemistry, biomarkers, images, GIS, and more. We obtain this information either from experiments or ...
Part I. The back story from the genome record Together, these five posts describe the discovery of a novel paramyxovirus in the Aedes aegyptii genome and a new method for finding interesting anomalies in GenBank. I. The back story from the genome record II. What do the mumps proteins do ...
A reader from the UK sent me these lovely photos that he took of a jellyfish and asked for my help in identifying it. Unfortunately, while I'm pretty good with bacteria, plants, and tropical fish, my taxonomy skills don't go much farther unless I have a sample of DNA. These ...
Charles Darwin was so fascinated by beetles he paid people to help him build his collection. The Coleopterists Society and the Smithsonian Institute want to help kids explore the wonders of beetles, too. They're providing grants for kids, in grades 7-12 to work on beetle biology. Applications are due by ...
It's true. Chimeras are out and walking among us. These aren't quite the chimeras that RPM is obsessed with, but they're certainly bothersome to some. From Genome Technology Online, we have a report that James Derr, at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine, wants to sequence the genome from a ...
This morning I had a banana genome, an orange genome, two chicken genomes ( haploid, of course), and some fried pig genome, on the side. Later today, I will consume genomes from different kinds of green plants and perhaps even a cow or fish genome. I probably drank a bit ...
You can get a jump on the Darwin Day festivities. Once again the Alliance for Science is sponsoring an essay contest for Darwin Day. If you download their suggestions for good essay writing, you can get your essay done over winter break and have a good crack at winning on ...
write your Senators and Representatives about saving the Endangered Species Act. But, first read what Mike Dunford has to say. Mike describes the changes that the Bush administration has proposed in great detail and consequences for wild animals. Greg Laden has posted on this, too.
I read about this in Science and immediately had to check it out. Instant gratification on the internet is such a wonderful thing! The Ed Kravitz lab has made movies of fights and even put them on the web for your viewing pleasure. You can see the following fly fights ...
Her name is Flora and she is a single parent. Born in Miami, Flora moved to Chester, UK, as a toddler. Now, she's almost 8 years old and starting a family, all on her own. Literally. Four eggs have hatched and another eight are ready to go. Yet, Flora has ...
Your canopy is disappearing, you're likely to freeze. NASA's Earth Observatory reports that over 1,110 acres of forest were illegally logged, during the past four years, in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in central Mexico. Monarch butterflies travel here from all over the United States and Canada. Images from the ...
It was a -1 tide on Sunday and great entertainment for people and birds. We got there about lunch time. We found two moonsnails. Lots of moonsnail egg cases. Some moonsnail food. Anenomes everywhere. And at the end, we had quit being crabby. And everything was clam.
Yes, that's right, another Medicine 2.0 blog carnival has been posted for your enjoyment. And the host, Ivor Kovic, has done an amazingly creative and interesting thing with images from all the past hosting places..., and well, you just need to go see it yourself.
I found it in the MeSH database. Really! Looking for a quick answer? Don't ask a scientist It doesn't take long to realize that scientists can spend countless hours debating the meaning of words. Our very own ScienceBlogs is a great example, just look at the many ways we can ...
Every year people adopt pet dogs, cats, birds, and other creatures and take them to their local veterinarians for all the usual vaccinations and exams. The usual vaccinations protect your pets from diseases like rabies, distemper, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, and Feline Leukemia. But it's not just pets that get protected ...
I used to get e-mails from relatives that were filled with cute pictures of kittens and puppies. It's luck they didn't know about this site: http://www.zooborns.com/ These are the some of the absolutely cutest baby pictures I have ever seen! I hear Raffi songs in my head when I look ...
Sexual attraction is all in your brain. At least if you're a nematode. Ricardipus has a great image if you want to see a nematode picture. I always thought worms were hermaphrodites (both male and female) but the story, as usual, turns out to be a bit more complex. Researchers ...
tags: We don't have the sorts of wild kingdom experiences in Seattle, that they have in Alaska, but we do see nature taking its course, from time to time, right out on our city streets. This morning, while walking the dog, I heard a gawdawful noise coming from around the ...
What do malaria, sleeping sickness, yellow fever, and dengue virus have in common? Sure, they're all tropical diseases, but there's something else. All of these diseases have some kind of insect vector. image from the Public Health Library tags: , At one time, I thought it was merely a matter ...
We always enjoy home science experiments and it was fun the other night to learn about a new experiment we could try with our teenage daughter and an iPhone. As it turned out, the joke was on us. My husband is an enthusiastic fan of the iPhone store. Last night ...
Yesterday morning I was sitting at conference table, downing coffee to keep my eyes open, when I heard someone say that it's springtime now and the snakes are waking up. Well, those kinds of statements at the breakfast table do have a way of getting my attention. I turned sideways ...
Some maggots have gotten good press lately because of their helpful ability to clean out wounds by consuming dead tissue. Screwworms however; also known as Cochliomyia hominivorax, will never be welcomed in an operating room or anywhere else. USDA Agricultural Research Service These are the creatures of nightmares. During part ...
Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to respond to a specific thing. Most of the vaccines we use are designed to prime the immune system so that it's ready to fight off some kind of disease, like whooping cough, polio, or influenza. Some vaccines can have more specialized functions ...
The Galápagos islands rank high on my list of places that I really, really, really want to visit. But for many reasons, it's always looked like a trip to the Galápagos would be at least a decade or two away. Now, I'll be able to go in January and so ...
A loose spider on a space station. Apparently the missing orb-weaver spider is gone from it's cage and can't be found anywhere. And for the record, I don't know what kind of spider is in my photograph. It's a spider that lives in Fairbanks, AK. From the Telegraph: It was ...
In the effort to help us define a few basic concepts, PZ started out by giving us a nice simple definition of a gene, but as he, rightly noted: I tell you right now that if I asked a half dozen different biologists to help me out with this, they'd ...
Sucrose Molecules of sucrose tore apart in their bellies letting glucose course free in their veins. Luckily for us, a system evolved long ago to capture that glucose and minimize it's potential for damage. Removing sugar from the blood and sequestering it in liver, fat, and muscle cells, minimizes the ...
