One of the questions that often comes up in my first-year bio classes relates to natural selection and human evolution. Does the fact that modern medical science keeps alive people who in previous centuries might have died, mean that we're countering the effects of natural selection? As you can imagine, this generates quite a lot […]
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migration and ear wax
Last year's Schol Bio paper contained (as is usual) some interesting and challenging questions. One of them was about earwax. More specifically, the earwax phenotypes 'dry' and 'wet', and what their distribution can tell us about patterns of human evolution. (Note to those sitting these examinations: most questions have a reasonable amount of resource material […]
Continue readingessays on our fascination with those who are different
Book Review: The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels by Jan Bondeson Cornell University Press, USA (2004) Paperback: i-xxii, 297 pages ISBN: 0-8014-8958-X RRP: US419.95 It's all Grant's doing, really. If he hadn't picked up on an off-hand comment of mine (relating to vipers in bosoms) & turned that into a catchy blog post, I quite probably […]
Continue readingthe origins of humans lie in a – ahem! – far-fetched hybridisation event?
Or maybe not. The internet is a wondrous place: a source of information, of amusement, and – alarmingly often – of material that elicits a combination of ‘say what?’ and <head-desk>. And a hat-tip to PZ Myers for this particular example…
Continue readingout of the mouths of students
We’ve been trialling some software for on-line paper/teaching appraisals & I got my results back the other day. The appraisal form included open-ended questions where students could give extended feedback on particular issues that concerned them, & I’ve been going through it all so that I can give feedback in my turn, thus ‘closing the […]
Continue readinga little extrapolation is a dangerous thing
The other day one of my friends sent me a link to this discussion of a recently published paper. (‘Published’ in the sense that it’s available through archiv, which I gather means it hasn’t been through peer review.) The actual paper is available here. Basically, the authors claim that life has increased in complexity – […]
Continue readingcloning neandertals – can we? should we? is it true?
The Telegraph has a story on the possibility of cloning Neanderthals, with the fetching headline: ‘I can create Neanderthal baby, I just need willing woman.’ (You can read the NZ version on Stuff.) My first thought was ‘eeewww’. (And, as a friend commented, it’s stories like this that get science a bad name.) Once past that […]
Continue readingstem cells, cosmetics – and unexpected consequences
I’m starting to think about this year’s teaching: what I’m planning, what worked last year & what didn’t, things that need to be revised. One thing I’ll be doing a bit more of is ‘flip teaching’, something that worked well last semester in helping students learn about & gain an understanding of recombinant DNA technologies. […]
Continue readinghow do kids learn about dna?
My significant other is forever telling me that Facebook is a total time-waster. Sometimes I do tend to agree – but also, one can Find Out Stuff! Like the study I’ve just heard about via Science Alert, on how children get information about genetics and DNA – things we might regard as being in the […]
Continue readingmore on mosaics
A couple of days ago I posted a stunning photo of a peacock, and talked a bit about the possible genetic underpinnings of its colour patterns. My friend & blog-buddy Grant then pointed me at the story of a cat that has a similarly amazing colouration. Venus even has her own Facebook page! (I will […]
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