Yes, I’m on Twitter- alandove: Should've redacted sequence of ancient girl's DNA. http://t.co/aomVOqla Now terrorists can synthesize cave-girl from scratch.
- alandove: National Academy of Sciences report (http://t.co/No8xHa5C ) - no second gunshot from grassy knoll. Must be part of conspiracy.
- alandove: Whenever I'm feeling negative, I just press ctrl-alt-cmd-8.
- alandove: Turdivirus is to virology as Uranus is to astronomy.
- alandove: RT @profvrr: This Week in Virology (TWiV) episode 169 is up: Epidemiology causes conclusions (p<0.05) http://t.co/2Hk5mwxr
- alandove: I gather there's some sort of sports event today. I mean besides the indoor triathlon I did this morning.
- alandove: Wondering if anyone's compared @Norovirus incidence at land resorts vs. cruise ships.
- alandove: Must remember to relax sphincter. RT @marynmck @lizditz launching bottle rockets from one's anus http://t.co/0j46Rc6n
- alandove: Blog post: A chat with Mike Osterholm (http://t.co/eKFzdFQ4 ) #H5N1 #NSABB
- alandove: @newprof1 Certainly much easier to type.
Tag Archives: evolution
Darwin Day Blast from The Archives
I can’t let Darwin Day pass without a post, but I’m also a) on deadline for some paying work and b) dreadfully lazy by nature, so I’ll take the blogger’s easy way out. Reaching back into the Dovdox archives, I’ll … Continue reading
Ever Since Fish – Traversing the Change-Time Continuum
Recently, I was talking to a researcher about a particular virus, and he mentioned that it has infected us “since fish.” Yes, fish have a time dimension. In two words, he had communicated reams of information: this virus has infected vertebrates ever since the divergence of the common ancestors of fish and mammals – somewhere around 395 million years ago. That implies that all of the species descended from those ancestors should have their own strains of the virus, which will have co-evolved alongside their host species. “Since fish” is a point in time, a testable prediction about present conditions, and a suggestion of how things might change in the future. Continue reading
Deuterostomes Decoded – Stop the Presses!
Discover a new species of mammal, and your work will make front page news. Discover a whole new phylum of life – that’s the second-biggest categorization in biology – and hardly anyone will notice. At least, that seems to be the lesson from this report in last week’s issue of Nature. The researchers even put out a nice press release to put the work in context, but alas, Tom Brokaw doesn’t seem to be taking the bait. Continue reading
The Chicken from the Egg
You may be working for the New York Academy of Sciences if…
1) Your podcast interview with a Nobel laureate is interrupted by a gentleman sticking his head in the door to say "hello."
2) You aren’t bothered by the intrusion, because the gentleman is himself a Nobel laureate.
3) After the interview, you walk down the hall to join a very small but astonishingly high-powered gathering: the two Nobel laureates, the directors of two major scholarly organizations, a book publisher, the German consul, and little ol’ you.
4) It’s the first time in your life the phrase "someone should have thought to invite the Mayor" enters your head without a touch of irony. Continue reading
Speciation is Hard Work
How much energy does it take to produce a new species? The question had never occurred to me – or to most biologists, I suspect – but it’s the topic of a new mathematical modeling paper that just came out in the ”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Normally, mathematical modeling results don’t catch my eye, but this one makes strong, testable predictions and explains some very old observations. Continue reading