For anyone with a passing interest in global climates, present & past, the UK’s Birmingham University has put out an excellent article looking at the conditions that could have prevailed on a’snowball Earth’. The term ‘snowball Earth’ refers to a time (about 630 million years ago) when our planet was in the grip of a major ice […]
Continue readingYear: 2009
there’s journals, & then there’s journals…
Recently I read an article in the local paper that made me think about the hierarchy of research journals. (The story itself is about a piece of research suggesting that carbohydrates can be addictive & this is why some people can’t stop eating them. This isn’t within my area of expertise & I have yet to […]
Continue readingcomplete neanderthal mtDNA sequenced
Grump grumpity grump – a headline like that & we don’t have full access to the journal (only up to a year ago)…. But anyway – on The Panda’s Thumb there’s a report of a research project which has achieved the full Neandertal mitochondrial DNA sequence. TPT quotes a conclusion from the summary of the paper: […]
Continue readingdarwin, dover, & intelligent design
Following on from the reference to the Dover trial in my last post – this site has a link to the pdf of a review article, which looks at the Dover case & its implications for teaching evolution in the US. It’s an interesting overview of the case & there’s a lot to learn from […]
Continue reading‘academic freedom’ in oklahoma
One of the threads at Open Parachute has had a discussion about the concept of ‘academic freedom’ – the idea that scientists should be free to state their opinions about those areas of science where they have expertise. (This concept isn’t exclusive to scientists, either, but applies to researchers in all disciplines.) It’s probably most apparent […]
Continue readingan early birthday surprise
Say ‘Charles Darwin’ and (after ‘evolution’!) many people would probably say ‘Galapagos’. The tortoises, mockingbirds, finches & iguanas that he observed and collected on the Galapagos Islands contributed to his development of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Darwin noted that there were two species of iguana on the islands – the […]
Continue readingbreaking the species barrier
I’ve just stumbled across a provocative – & thought-provoking – essay by Richard Dawkins. It caught my attention because I’m occasionally asked if there’s ever been a chimp-human hybrid. (The answer, so far, is ‘no’ – well, not since the two species diverged around 6 million years ago.) To Dawkins, the creation of such a […]
Continue readinga most excellent take-down
Over on Respectful Insolence, one of Orac’s specialties is the dissection of various forms of jiggery-pokery/hocus-pocus/pseudoscientific nonsense. This post of his is well worth reading: it takes a recent paper on a purported ‘energy-healing’ technique & explains why what was done is very far indeed from good science. (It’s worth repeating the old aphorism that the […]
Continue readinghow do we recognise ‘culture’?
The ‘human evolution’ achievement standard expects you to be able to discuss trends in cultural evolution. You need to be aware of evidence relating to: use of tools (stone, wood, bone), fire, shelter, clothing, abstract thought (communication, language, art), food-gathering, and domestication of plants & animals. The earliest evidence for culture is the presence of stone tools, […]
Continue readingfifteen evolutionary gems
Here’s a great set of short articles about evolution. Each one’s only a page long, and talks about a piece of research that (as the authors say) demonstrate the ‘breadth, depth, and power of evolutionary thinking’ (Gee, Howlett & Campbell, 2009). My current favourite is the one about the origins of the vertebrate skeleton, but […]
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