238 posts · 320,227 views
Evolutionary Biology, Life Science, Science Education, Human Evolution, and Stuff.
Greg Laden
238 posts
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- November 2, 2011
- 05:06 PM
- 916 views
Do you take Vitamin E to avoid prostate cancer? Stop. Now.
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
In a recent study, 35,533 prostate cancer-free men in a higher risk age group for prostate cancer in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico were given various treatments of Vitamin E, selenium, and placebo in order to see if claims that Vitamin E and/or Vitamin E with selenium were effective in reducing prostate cancer risk.
8752 received selenium alone - 575 developed prostate cancer.
8737 received Vitamin E alone - 620 developed prostate cancer.
8702 received both - 555 developed prostate cance........ Read more »
Klein, E., Thompson, I., Tangen, C., Crowley, J., Lucia, M., Goodman, P., Minasian, L., Ford, L., Parnes, H., Gaziano, J.... (2011) Vitamin E and the Risk of Prostate Cancer: The Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT). JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 306(14), 1549-1556. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2011.1437
- October 21, 2011
- 12:32 PM
- 937 views
Van Gogh's Cowboy Boys Shakespeare's Pot
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Although one can not be certain, all the evidence points to the fact that William Shakespeare smoked pot. This is not a new story. My good friend and colleague, Dr. Francis Thackeray, who has never smoked pot in his life but who has acted in Shakespeare's plays numerous times, led a research team that put 2 and 2 together and came up with narcotic literary munchies. In Shakespeare's time, land owners were required to grow pot in order to provide fibers for making the rope needed hoist the sai........ Read more »
Harm van Bakel, Jake M Stout, Atina G Cote, Carling M Tallon, Andrew G Sharpe, Timothy R Hughes, & Jonathan E Page. (2011) The draft genome and transcriptome of Cannabis sativa. Genome Biology, 12(R102). info:/
- October 20, 2011
- 03:41 PM
- 947 views
Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas........ Read more »
Wickham, C., Curry, J., Groom, D., Jacobson, R., Muller, R., Perlmutter, S., Rohde, R., Rosenfeld, A., & Wurtele, J. (2011) Influence of urban heating on the global temperature land average using rural sites identified from MODIS classifications. Unknown. info:/
- October 12, 2011
- 06:43 PM
- 1,144 views
The Influence of Late Quaternary Climate-Change Velocity on Species Endemism
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Rapid climate change can cause species extinction. But if a species is highly mobile or wide-ranging, then that effect may be attenuated. And, more rapid climate change would be more serious a problem than less rapid climate change. Therefore, there should be a relationship between species mobility (migration) and the rate, or velocity, of climate change vis-a-vis extinction. This is a nice set of hypotheses which have been tested in a recent paper. The abstract: Read the rest of this post.......... Read more »
Sandel, B., Arge, L., Dalsgaard, B., Davies, R., Gaston, K., Sutherland, W., & Svenning, J. (2011) The Influence of Late Quaternary Climate-Change Velocity on Species Endemism. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1210173
- September 19, 2011
- 08:43 PM
- 1,064 views
How To Do Good Climate Science Instead Of Bad Climate Science
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
In order to do good climate science, you have to understand and control for the sources of variation in the system. In any system that involvs metric change over time, there are four sources of variation: Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Trenberth, K., Fasullo, J., & Abraham, J. (2011) Issues in Establishing Climate Sensitivity in Recent Studies. Remote Sensing, 3(9), 2051-2056. DOI: 10.3390/rs3092051
- September 15, 2011
- 11:25 AM
- 1,250 views
A Very Cool Ancient Crocodile
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
I have never actually seen a snake eat a crocodile or a crocodile eat a snake, but I am pretty sure I've seen a snake planning to eat a Nile Croc. And that was in the geological present.
In the geological past, about 60 million years ago (during the "Eocene" a.k.a. "dawn age") there was a rain forest that is sort of the ancestor to modern rain forests, which is now a coal deposit (and thus, eventually, will be part of our air) in Columbia. It has yielded interesting materials, and the latest........ Read more »
Hastings, A.K., Bloch, J. I., & Jaramillo, C.A. (2011) A new longirostrine dyrosaurid (Crocodylomorpha, Mesoeucrocodylia) from the Paleocene of north-eastern Colombia: biogeographic and behavioural implications for New-World Dyrosauridae . Palaeontology, 54(5), 1095-1116. info:/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01092.x
- September 9, 2011
- 01:09 AM
- 1,208 views
Coming to terms with the female orgasm
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
I think I know why science does not understand the female orgasm. It is because science excels when it breaks free of context, history, human complexities and anthropology, but when a topic requires one to grasp context, history, human complexities and anthropology, then science, especially the hard sciences, can fall short. Also, the nature of the female orgasm is a comparative question, but human sexuality is highly (but not entirely) derived; It is difficult to make a sensible graph or tabl........ Read more »
Zietsch, B., & Santtila, P. (2011) Genetic analysis of orgasmic function in twins and siblings does not support the by-product theory of female orgasm. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.08.002
- September 6, 2011
- 02:58 PM
- 1,222 views
Latest Research Shows That Clouds Do NOT Cause Global Warming
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
The question of whether clouds are the cause of global warming has been settled:
No, they are not. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Dessler, A. (2011) Cloud variations and the Earth's energy budget. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1029/2011GL049236
- September 3, 2011
- 04:22 PM
- 1,296 views
Global Warming: Separating the noise from the signal
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
A small "Signal-to-Noise Ratio" means that there is not enough real information (signal) compared to the background noise to make a definitive statement about something. With a sufficiently high Signal-to-Noise Ratio, it is possible to make statistically valid statements about some measure or observation. This applies to a lot of day to day decisions you make in life.
Climate change denialists understand this principle and they use it to try to fool people into thinking that "the jury is still........ Read more »
Santer, B., Karl, T., Lanzante, J., Meehl, G., Stott, P., Taylor, K., Thorne, P., Wehner, M., Wentz, F., Mears, C.... (2011) Separating Signal and Noise in Atmospheric Temperature Changes: The Importance of Timescale. Journal of Geophysical Research. DOI: 10.1029/2011JD016263
- September 2, 2011
- 09:53 PM
- 1,270 views
CloudGate: Denialism Gets Dirty, Reputations Are At Stake
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
There has been a major dust-up in the climate denialist world. A study published in late July made false claims and was methodologically flawed, but still managed to get published in a peer reviewed journal. The Editor-in-Chief of that journal has resigned to symbolically take responsibility for the journal's egregious error of publishing what is essentially a fake scientific paper, and to "protest against how the authors [and others] have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions" taking to ta........ Read more »
Spencer, R., & Braswell, W. (2011) On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sensing, 3(8), 1603-1613. DOI: 10.3390/rs3081603
- August 10, 2011
- 01:02 PM
- 1,175 views
125 sq km of ice knocked off Antarctica by Tsunami
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
The Honshu tsunami of March 11th (the one that caused the Fukushima disaster) caused the otherwise stable Sulzberger Ice Shelf to calve giant hunks of ice. Climate scientists call this "teleconnection." I call it a big whopping bunch of whack knocking off a gigunda chunka stuff. Either way, this is important and interesting. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Brunt, Kelly M., Okal, Emile A., & MacAyeal, Douglas. (2011) Antarctic ice-shelf calving triggered by the Honshu (Japan) earthquake and tsunami, March 2011 . Journal of Geology, 57(205), 785-788. info:/
- July 29, 2011
- 03:34 PM
- 1,378 views
On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
According to a newly published paper in the journal "Remote Sensing" the Earth's atmosphere releases into space more heat than climate scientists had previously estimated in a way that effectively removes concern about fossil CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Spencer, R., & Braswell, W. (2011) On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sensing, 3(8), 1603-1613. DOI: 10.3390/rs3081603
- July 28, 2011
- 04:32 PM
- 1,261 views
Archaeopteryx Falls from Bird Family Tree Again
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
A proposal has been made to remove beloved Archaeopteryx from the bird family tree and push it over to some non-avian dinosaur subtree. This is not the first time that the ancient species has had its position on the tree of bird life threatened, but this time it may be for real. The proposal is reasonable.
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Xu, X., You, H., Du, K., & Han, F. (2011) An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of Avialae. Nature, 475(7357), 465-470. DOI: 10.1038/nature10288
- July 27, 2011
- 06:53 PM
- 1,257 views
The Origin of Wine
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
With Julia spending the summer and most of the fall in The Republic of Georgia, I've been thinking about various political and historical aspects of that country, and one of the things that is claimed to be true is that wine was first invented there. Recently, someone asked me (always ask the archaeologist esoteric stuff like this) where wine was first invented. And, recently, we scored some Concord Grapes, which are native to North America (presumably thanks to some bird a long time ago) as opp........ Read more »
Myles, Sean, Boyko, Adam, Owens, Christopher, Brown, Patrick, Grassi, Fabrizio, Aradhya, Mallikarjuna, Prins, Bernard, Reynolds,Andy, Chia, Jer-Ming, Ware, Doreen.... (2011) Genetic structure and domestication history of the grape. PNAS. info:/
- July 27, 2011
- 05:34 PM
- 1,157 views
Why shrews are interesting
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
It has been said that our most distant primate ancestors, the mammal that gave rise to early primates but itself wasn't quite a primate, was most like the Asian tree shrew, which is neither a shrew nor does it live in trees. This is, of course, untrue. When the average American sees a shrew native to the new world scurrying past, he or she usually thinks of it as a form of mouse. Which it isn't. (In fact, there are no "mice" native to the new world, but even if we give our hypothetical obser........ Read more »
BUCHLER, E. (1976) The use of echolocation by the wandering shrew (Sorex vagrans). Animal Behaviour, 24(4), 858-873. DOI: 10.1016/S0003-3472(76)80016-4
- July 26, 2011
- 06:14 PM
- 1,186 views
The Pre-Clovis Debra L. Friedkin site
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Butter Milk Creek is a Texas archaeological site and an archaeological complex located rather symbolically a couple of hundred miles downstream from the famous Clovis site in New Mexico. It is the most recently reported alleged manifestation of a "pre-Clovis" archaeological presence. The most important thing about this site is probably this: It is well dated (though the dates need to be independently verified or otherwise run through the gauntlet of criticism dates of important sites are alway........ Read more »
Waters, M., Forman, S., Jennings, T., Nordt, L., Driese, S., Feinberg, J., Keene, J., Halligan, J., Lindquist, A., Pierson, J.... (2011) The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas. Science, 331(6024), 1599-1603. DOI: 10.1126/science.1201855
- July 13, 2011
- 05:32 PM
- 1,332 views
Brain response to facial expression in autistic individuals and their siblings
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Siblings of those diagnosed with autism are more than 20 times as likely as members of the general population to also have autism. Some of these siblings also show evidence of autism-like but less marked cognitive and social communication problems. This suggests that autism has either an environmental cause typically found in all siblings during development or childhood or a strong heritable component, but there is not a known genetic link or a well established biological marker. A biological ........ Read more »
Spencer, M., Holt, R., Chura, L., Suckling, J., Calder, A., Bullmore, E., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2011) A novel functional brain imaging endophenotype of autism: the neural response to facial expression of emotion. Translational Psychiatry, 1(7). DOI: 10.1038/tp.2011.18
- July 8, 2011
- 12:35 PM
- 1,307 views
How Do You Get Sexual Orientation and Gender in Humans?
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Humans appear to have a reasonable amount of diversity in their sexual orientations, in what is often referred to as "gender" and in adult behavior generally. When convenient, people will point to "genes" as the "cause" of any particular subset of th is diversity (or all of it). When convenient, people will point to "culture" as the "cause" of ... whatever. The "real" story is more complicated, less clear, and very interesting. And, starting now, I promise to stop using so many "scare" quote........ Read more »
Moore, C., & Morelli, G. (1979) Mother rats interact differently with male amd female offspring. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 93(4), 677-684. DOI: 10.1037/h0077599
- May 23, 2011
- 03:03 PM
- 1,228 views
Extinction rates have NOT been over-estimated
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
There are several things that cause extinction, but ultimately it is always the same: The last individual (or small number of individuals) of a species die. That may sound like a trivial explanation for extinction but consider what happens when you work backwards from that tragic moment in time. Well, you have more individuals in a population that was once much larger but was reduced in size somehow, which then dwindled to the last few, the last one, then zero. But how did that small populat........ Read more »
He, F., & Hubbell, S. (2011) Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss. Nature, 473(7347), 368-371. DOI: 10.1038/nature09985
- May 2, 2011
- 11:21 AM
- 1,233 views
The vaccination does make the baby cry, so why do it?
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
It seems like every time I take Huxley (now 18 months old) to the doctor, the following things happen: 1) Somebody says "Well, he won't need to get stuck with any needles for a long while now .... his next scheduled immunization is [insert phrase indicating 'a long time into the future']"; and 2) Huxley gets stuck with some needles.
The last time, a few days ago, was especially bad. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Chen, S., Anderson, S., Kutty, P., Lugo, F., McDonald, M., Rota, P., Ortega-Sanchez, I., Komatsu, K., Armstrong, G., Sunenshine, R.... (2011) Health Care-Associated Measles Outbreak in the United States After an Importation: Challenges and Economic Impact. Journal of Infectious Diseases. DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jir115
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