An important rule of evolution is that species lose adaptations they aren’t using. Cave fish have eyes that do not work because they live in an environment without light. Crocodile icefish blood has lost its hemogloblin because they live in oxygen-rich water where they don’t need the protein to transport oxygen throughout their bodies. Kiwis, chickens, and ostriches have wings but can’t fly. Humans lack the gene to make Vitamin C, forcing us to get our ascorbic acid from dietary sources.
This happens because when a trait isn’t in use, natural selection does not discriminate against mutations that break the trait. For example, when an individual carribou is born with a mutation that gives it bad eyes, it gets eaten by a lion, but when a fish in the total darkness of a cave gets bad eyes, they are just as likely to survive as the fish with working vision; in fact, they have a slight advantage for not having to put resources into building and maintaining eyes that provide no advantage.
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I used to provide a daily list of links on this blog of science stories I found interesting. I gave that up and took down the link-posts to focus on my personal writing, but I still share links through social media. Here’s my favorite science stories of 2011.
Space
So Long Space Shuttle
Credit: Trey Ratcliff
NASA finalized the retirement of the Space Shuttle program with the announcement of their final resting places, with Washington DC, Los Angeles and Orlando getting real shuttles for their museums and New York getting the wooden training vessel (Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!). NASA also unveiled the Space Launch System (SLS) next generation of manned space explorations vehicles that will (hopefully) be taking us to Mars. Along the same goal, the Mars500 completed its 17 month simulated mission, complete with isolation and delayed communications as a partial proof of concept that humans can survive the trip to the red planet.
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Maize tassel with anthers emerging
Credit:
CIMMYT
In 1968, Dr. Paul Ehrlich predicted a population explosion on planet Earth would result in mass starvation in his book The Population Bomb. While millions die each year of starvation, Dr. Ehrlich’s dire predictions did not come true. Many critics of environmentalism often cite Ehrlich’s failed predictions to attack anyone who raises concerns about environmental sustainability, but most of them gloss over the reason why Ehrlich was wrong which was his failure to account for human innovation. Ehrlich completely failed to factor in the work of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution, which saved over a billion people from starvation with irrigation infrastructure, hybridized seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides.
Last month, the Earth’s population hit seven billion, raising questions once more about sustainability as millions are threatened with starvation in Africa, conflicts arise over water, and major fish stocks collapse. We are pushing the limits of what the Green Revolution’s science has granted us as far as a sustainable global population. We need a second scientific revolution to increase the global food supply, and our best hope for that revolution is in Genetically Modified (GM) Foods.
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Pascal’s Triangle, Odd Numbers Highlighted
One of the great joys of being human is our incredible powers of pattern recognition. Our brain’s ability to manifest meaningful associations out of the complex morass of sensory stimuli perpetually assaulting us is a cognitive expertise into which computers are only just starting to venture successfully. It’s what allows us to recognize faces, raed wrdos wtih smrelcabd ltretes, identify with our fellow humans, and compartmentalize the sounds, tastes, and sights around us.
The number 11 has always been my favorite whole number. Ever since I was a kid, I appreciated the way the first nine multiples of 11 are numbers that mirror the tens and ones places (in a base-10 numbers system): {11, 22, 33, 44 … 77, 88, 99}.
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Shonisaur vertebral disks arranged in curious linear patterns
Credit: Mark McMenamin
I admit it. I knew better when I posted the story about the kraken lair to my Facebook for my less scientifically literate friends to awe and wonder at. I could tell from the scant evidence provided in the press release that there really wasn’t anything there but a collection of bones from 45-foot-long ichthyosaurs mysteriously piled together at a site in Nevada. To infer the bones were gathered together by a gigantic ancient cephalopod whose soft tissues left no trace in the fossil record was an admirably imaginative idea, but I knew this extraordinary claim didn’t pass the Sagan Standard’s “extraordinary evidence” requirement. As Samuel Clemens best expressed it, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact.”
And still I posted it to Facebook, where it got eight Likes, three comments, and one share. That’s eight more Likes than my link to Discovery’s Faces of Our Ancestors gallery, featuring facial reconstructions for 11 ancestors of Homo sapiens and for which there is plenty of direct fossilized evidence to support their stories.
Stories. We only have a few millennias’ worth of stories from the written and oral history of the human race, but the archeological record is brimming with billions of years’ worth of them. Like detectives at the scene of a crime, archeologists have reconstructed events out of the shared story of our origins to tell engaging tales of our ancestors trials and tribulations.
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“You need to go get rid of 250,000 contractors in the Defense Department, where you can really pick up some small change.” ~ Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, February 16, 2011 on balancing the budget (source)
For 10 years of my life, I was one of those $300 toilet seats or $600 hammers you hear about in the Pentagon’s spending. I was the waste, fraud, and abuse that everyone complains about in government, but up until a year ago, I had no idea just how much my job was costing American taxpayers.
A study by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) found the Government pays IT Contractors nearly twice as much as its own IT Workers.
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This American Life (TAL) is one of the most successful shows on NPR, it started in 1995, has won numerous awards, and one of my conservative friends even described the show as “single-handedly justifying the existence of NPR.” I’ve heard shows from time to time over the years, but a few months ago I downloaded a torrent of every show in the cannon and have been completely hooked ever since. So when I heard Ira Glass’ was coming to Chrysler Hall in Norfolk I jumped at the chance to see him talk about the show, behind the scenes, and how the show is so effective at communicating and connecting with the audience.
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Jump To:
Researching Pregnancy
Pregnancy Lifestyle
Where to Deliver
Labor and Delivery
Our Parenting Choices
What We’ve Learned
Further Reading
Stages of Fetal Development
Credit: NHS Pregnancy Desktop
One of the first things Vicky and I established when we first became romantically involved is that we both wanted to have children. We share a deep love of science and the natural world and wanted to share our sense of wonder with children of our own. At the same time, in our sharing we were hoping to experience the world vicariously through fresh eyes, reliving the thrill of learning and discovery.
When the pregnancy test finally came up positive, we were launched into a whole new realm of learning: reading up on diet, lifestyle, and fetal development. We were also put into an unanticipated tour of various types and standards of prenatal care. This post covers what we learned and what we are continuing to learn about pregnancy and childcare.
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Book Festival Poster
“I cannot live without books.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
I had the great joy of attending this year’s National Book Festival on the Washington DC Mall. With over 100 authors in attendance, CSPAN’s BookTv.org covering the event, PBS Kids, Scholastic, and the greatest library on Earth providing educational materials, this was a fun activity for kids and adults, all celebrating the most important cultural invention in human history: the written word.
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This is the uncensored version of my Science Fiction VS Fantasy piece I wrote for the Science Creative Quarterly several years ago. I’ve also written much more extensively on this topic in the past. This is the abbreviated version with 10% more snark:
I
Fanboy: Hey gang! Did you read The Sword of Shanara? The characters traveled hundreds of miles described in excruciating detail for hundreds of pages, until they reached the ultimate battle between good and evil! Cool huh?
Scientist: Whatever. The characters in Red Planet traveled 48 million miles to Mars, while those in 2001 traveled 369 million miles to Jupiter. Characters in Asimov’s Foundation books travel millions of light-years all over the Milky Way galaxy in routine manner. Isn’t it amazing what people can accomplish when they don’t have to walk everywhere? Thank a scientist for your planes, trains, automobiles, and spaceflight whydontcha.
Fanboy: Yeah, but did you see in The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf fought the Balrog all the way down a really deep hole and then all the way back up to the top of a mountain peak!?!?
Scientist: Big whoop. The adventurers in The Core traveled to the very center of the Earth, fighting technological, natural, and human hazards all the way down and all the way back up to the Earth’s crust again. Characters in Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace fought their way all through the human body in microscopic form.
Fanboy: Ooookay… But did you see all those maps having to do with the Wheel of Time books? It’s a huge continent! Pretty epic, huh?
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