ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 756
May 2, 2015
What Does Chemotherapy Do To Your Brain?
Photo credit:
Brian A Jackson/shutterstock
When some individuals undergo chemotherapy, they notice changes in their memory, concentration and the way they think.
Leafcutter Ants Fight Fungus Infections with Antimicrobials
Photo credit:
Ryan M. Bolton/shutterstock.com
Researchers studying the public health system of leafcutter ants in Panama have discovered that these social insects synthesize large amounts antimicrobials to battle parasitic fungal infections. The findings were published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week.
Meet The Man With Two Full-Sized, Functioning Penises
Photo credit:
iprachenko via Shutterstock.com
Snakes and lizards have what is called hemipenes, which is essentially a two-headed penis. Two penises on one organism might sound pretty wild, but did you know it can occur on humans as well?
Drama Teacher Forum
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May 1, 2015
Darwin’s Pallbearers, Part 2
The funeral ceremony of Charles Darwin at Westminster Abbey, 26 April 1882. This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
In part 1, I explained that to commemorate the 134th anniversary of Darwin’s funeral in Westminster Abbey, April 26, 1882, I thought that I’d say a little about each of the ten men who carried the coffin. (By the way, it was the second of Darwin’s coffins! John Lewis, a carpenter in Downe whom Darwin often employed, constructed a coffin “just as he wanted it; all rough, just as it left the bench, no polish, no nothin.” But the body stayed in it for not much more than a day, when it was transferred to a fancy polished coffin from the Abbey. A recent author—Iain McCalman in his Darwin’s Armada [2009]—quotes the description from Lewis but overlooks the fact that Darwin was buried in a different coffin.) Proceeding in alphabetical order (for no particular reason other than a sense of tidiness), then, I discussed George John Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll; William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire; Frederic William Farrar; and—finally a more familiar pair of names!—Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley. Onward!
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). Often misidentified as the American Ambassador to Britain, Lowell was in fact the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. (The distinction is now obsolete, but then ambassadors represented the head of state as well as the government, while envoys represented only the government.) Educated at Harvard University and Harvard Law School, Lowell was a poet (“The Present Crisis” is perhaps his most famous work) and essayist. He eventually became a professor of literature at Harvard (succeeding his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), the first editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and a coeditor of the North American Review. After supporting Rutherford B. Hayes for president in 1876, he was rewarded with a diplomatic post in Spain, followed in 1880 by his post in England. In 1878, he wrote to Sara Darwin (the wife of Darwin’s eldest son), “I have a great respect for Mr. Darwin, as almost the only perfectly disinterested lover of truth I ever encountered.”
Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avery (1834–1913). As a child, Lubbock was tantalized to be told of a “great piece of news” but disappointed to learn that it was that Darwin was moving nearby: he was hoping for a pony. Still, he befriended Darwin. He studied at Eton before joining his father’s bank; he later went into politics, with the promotion of science education as one of his main concerns. Scientifically, he was particularly interested in archeology and human prehistory—his first book was Pre-Historic Times, As Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865)—and entomology. He lived close to Darwin for much of his life; Darwin’s famous Sandwalk was in a woodland planted in a pasture rented, and eventually bought, from Lubbock. Lubbock was the first signer of the letter to the Dean of Westminster Abbey suggesting Darwin’s burial there. He was raised to the peerage in 1900, taking the title Baron Avery in honor of a Stone Age archaeological site he helped to preserve.
William Spottiswoode (1825–1883). Educated at Eton, Harrow, and Balliol College of Oxford University, Spottiswoode was a mathematician, experimental physicist, and printer—his father cofounded the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode, and he eventually became a partner in the firm. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853 and as its president in 1878; it is probably in his capacity as its president that he was among Darwin’s pallbearers. But he evidently admired Darwin. In a eulogy he delivered at the Royal Academy a few days later, on April 29, 1882, Spottiswoode extolled Darwin thus: “if patience and perseverance in good work, if a firm determination to turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, either for glory or for gain, if a continual overcoming of evil with good in any way constitute elements of greatness, then the man of whom I speak—Charles Darwin—was truly great.” In the following year, Spottiswoode died of typhoid fever; like Darwin, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–1893). Son of a three-time prime minister, born to one of the richest landowning families in England, and educated at Eton, Rugby, and Trinity College of Cambridge University, Stanley (known as Lord Stanley before acceding to the earldom in 1869) gravitated toward politics, serving as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the cabinets headed by his father the 14th Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. There are a variety of tangential connections between him and Darwin—he sacked Robert FitzRoy, formerly the captain of HMS Beagle, from his governorship of New Zealand in 1845; he was a family trustee of the British Museum and as such was assiduously courted by Darwin’s sometime nemesis Richard Owen; and his naturalist grandfather (Edward Smith Stanley, the 13th Earl) supported Darwin’s application for a grant for publishing the zoological results of the Beagle voyage—but it’s not clear to me why, besides his prominence, he was chosen to be a pallbearer.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Like Huxley, Wallace was talented but impoverished and as a result largely self-educated. Instead of joining the Royal Navy, though, Wallace saw the world by becoming a private zoological collector in Brazil and later the East Indies. He started to publish scientific papers and books and to correspond with naturalists—including Darwin, to whom he sent a paper outlining his ideas on natural selection in 1858, which chimed remarkably with unpublished ideas of Darwin’s. Darwin’s friends arranged for Wallace’s paper and extracts from Darwin’s 1844 essay to be presented in 1858, with the Origin following in 1859. Wallace never expressed bitterness about the incident, dedicating The Malay Archipelago (1869) to Darwin and entitling his 1889 book on natural selection Darwinism. Independently of his work on natural selection, Wallace was a remarkably prolific and productive scientist; he is generally considered the father of biogeography.
April 26, 2015
Psychology of the appeal of being anti-GMO
Credit: Blancke et al./Trends in Plant Science 2015
By Science Daily
A team of Belgian philosophers and plant biotechnologists have turned to cognitive science to explain why opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has become so widespread, despite positive contributions GM crops have made to sustainable agriculture. In a paper published April 10 in Trends in Plant Science, they argue that the human mind is highly susceptible to the negative and often emotional representations put out by certain environmental groups and other opponents of GMOs. The researchers urge the general public to form opinions on GMOs on a case-by-case basis, thereby not focusing on the technology but on the resulting product.
“The popularity and typical features of the opposition to GMOs can be explained in terms of underlying cognitive processes. Anti-GMO messages strongly appeal to particular intuitions and emotions,” says lead author Stefaan Blancke, a philosopher with the Ghent University Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences. “Negative representations of GMOs–for instance, like claims that GMOs cause diseases and contaminate the environment–tap into our feelings of disgust and this sticks to the mind. These emotions are very difficult to counter, in particular because the science of GMOs is complex to communicate.”
Examples of anti-GMO sentiment are present around the world–from the suspension of an approved genetically modified eggplant in India to the strict regulations on GM crops in Europe. Contributing to this public opposition, the researchers suspect, is a lack of scientific understanding of genetics (not even half of the respondents in a US survey rejected the claim that a fish gene introduced into a tomato would give it a fishy taste) as well as moral objections to scientists “playing God.”
“Anti-GMO arguments tap into our intuitions that all organisms have an unobservable immutable core, an essence, and that things in the natural world exist or happen for a purpose,” Blancke explains “This reasoning of course conflicts with evolutionary theory–the idea that in evolution one species can change into another. It also makes us very susceptible to the idea that nature is a force that has a purpose or even intentions that we shouldn’t’ meddle with.”
Read the full article by clicking the name of the source located below.
April 25, 2015
SciShow Talk Show: Mike Potts & Slick the Tiger Salamander
Welcome back to SciShow Talk Show where Hank Green talks with interesting people! In this episode Hank talks with Mike Potts, an environmental engineer at Pioneer Technical Services, Inc. with special guest Jessi Knudsen Castañeda.
Hosted by: Hank Green
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Friday Flicks: Bill Nye’s Big Think
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJ...]
Hey Friday Flicks Fans, I’m letting my good buddy, friend of NCSE, lover of science, and movie blogger, Max Yip, pick this month’s Friday Flick! Max had a million ideas, but I was able to convince him to select just one video (not a conventional ‘flick’, but definitely worth a watch.) Never one to hide from controversy, Max chose the surprisingly controversial Bill Nye Big Think video called “Creationism is Not Appropriate for Children.”
Why this video in particular?
“Bill Nye is one of my childhood science influences. Best known for his show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, he exposed millions of children to a variety of science topics over the span of five seasons during the 1990’s. After the show's run, Bill Nye went under the radar for a while, popping up briefly with another show, The Eyes of Nye, which tackled more mature and controversial scientific topics.”
Max points out that this Big Think video got Bill Nye back on peoples’ radar, and he has been hitting the TV circuit ever since. Featured on CNN, the Colbert Report, and even receiving the honor of being the plenary speaker at this year’s National Science Teacher Award (lucky duck!)
The Big Think video generated a lot of controversy among creationists, garnering responses from the likes of the Creation Museum’s Ken Ham. Some folks in the scientific community were also upset about the video, as they felt it was dismissive of people’s religious beliefs independent of creationism. Watching it again now, I don’t see it as being controversial at all, but maybe I’ve been working at NCSE too long!
What do you think of the video? Do you think it was dismissive or do you think Bill Nye used the right words when trying to talk about creationism and evolution? One criticism: Nye has not studied biology (he actually was a mechanical engineer) should he be taking on a topic that is outside of his field? Are there other scientists that you think would be more reliable? What else could Bill Nye do as an advocate for science?
Take a look at the video and tell us what you think in the comments below!
Ask Me Anything #1
(Photo via TexasEagle)
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/202..."]
In this episode of the Waking Up Podcast, Sam Harris talks about atheism, artificial intelligence, rape, public speaking, meditation, consciousness, free will, intellectual honesty, and other topics.
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