From Science Daily, the view that allopatric speciation is the major force for speciation in the oceans is turned upside down. In an esoteric examination of fossilized foraminifera researchers found that barriers were not a factor in the plankton’s spread and diversification. But rather climate and nutrients were indicators of its colonizing an area.
From the Kalamazoo Gazette opinion page, so the city commission did the right thing and added language for protecting the LBGT community. So the “morally police” decided that they have to “protect” Kalamazoo from from the gays. My understanding is that Kalamazoo has a rather large LBGT population for a city its size out in the hinterlands. What pisses me off is that these fundy fuck, bigoted assholes can go around and try and take away basic human dignity and I’m considered a bigoted asshole because I loathe the fact that they can get away with this bullshit. And why? ‘Cus it’s in the Bible. Well they know where they can stick their Bronze Age Mythology.
Just to Add: Came across this from Science Daily.
From Nat Geo, just in time for Halloween they have found a Siberian moth that drinks blood. It is only the male of the species and they think that it utilizes the salt in blood because they don’t get enough in their diet. Check out the cool video.
From the National Geographic, a study of earthworms living at former mining sites have been shown to create a protein to coat particles of heavy metals (lead, zinc, arsenic, and copper). This discovery could lead to cleaning up contaminated sites where these protein covered heavy metal particles could be utilized by plants and the plants removed for processing. Check out the photo of the worm guts.
From Physorg.com, an experiment done in Israel looked at how bacteria adapted to temperature differences. The bacteria under higher temperature increased the amount of heat-tolerant fatty acids in the cell membrane
On a personal note I was let go from DLD.
From EurekAlerts.com, a study looking at the genetics in plants that have a associated fungi and the plants that produce nodules involved with nitrogen fixation. Seems that the symbiosis receptor-kinase gene is a bit longer in N2-fixing plants than mycorrhiza associated plants.
One of the big questions in the origin of life, is why are some chemicals right handed or left handed. Usually in a reaction, the two enantiomers are formed. And this is dependent on several factors. Looking at meteorites, scientists have found that in space there is a higher proportion of left-handed amino acids than expected.
Edit: After publishing this piece, I received information about a conference on this topic.
From Physorg.com, A apartment complex in NYC is using ladybugs to take care of aphids and mites. the company, Planet Natural, supply the bugs. Collecting and using the ladybugs instead of pesticides is a cool idea. One problem is that there are some people who don’t like insects.
From Physorg.com, A professor has looked at various stories from ancient Rome and Greece and has linked ghost stories with death and its rituals. I like scary stories and movies so knowing that ancient peoples have a liking for the same is not too surprising. And leads me to wonder what stories were told about the Neolithic fire before going to sleep. I can imagine a storyteller setting the scene of a great hunt and during this pursuit, one of the hunters is killed. And his fellows stop immediately to gather up some flowers and get his belongs to place in the burial chamber that they create. And this storyteller reminds the listeners that it is selfish to butcher the meat before the hunter is put to rest so that his spirit will not come to frighten and plea to go onward.
So the First Freedom First is doing a blogswarm against theocracy. And I saw this piece on PhysOrg.com, and I thought to comment on it.
Studying twins, the link between good behavior and religion is examed. There seems to be a strong link that behavior has a genetic component. So there is a balancing between the environment(nurture) and genetics(nature) that determines how “good” a person is. I think how this relates to religion, is that a person is more likely to be of the same religion as his/her parents. And this relates to goodness by the moral teachings of religion. However, those how have left religion or who were raised without religion are just as influenced by the genetic and environmental factors related to goodness. So that certain moral absoluts are connected to being human and not necessarilty related to religion.