Tree of Life Runners Web Notes 6-20-2008

Just some little notes here in lieu of more detailed posts.

• Interesting Open Access papers to look at:
• PLoS Pathogens: Ameobal Pathogen Mimivirus Infects Macrophages through Phagocytosis
• PLoS Genetics: Trends in Selenium Utilization in Marine Microbial World Revealed through the Analysis of the Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) Project
• PLoS Computational Biology: A Probabilistic Model of Local Sequence Alignment That Simplifies Statistical Significance Estimation
• PLoS Biology: Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait
• Evolution in the news:
• A counterattack for evolution -- Baltimore Sun
• The Cons of Creationism, Editorial - NYTimes
  
• Other science news:
• Survey suggests scientific sins are common
• Open Access blogging:
• Historical OA
• Microbes
• What Happens If This Government-Sponsored Research Finds Raw Milk Really Is Good for Us? (a bit of a conspiracy theory but also entertaining
  

Tree of Life Runners

More little ditties here

• Harold Varmus was on Science Friday 1.5 weeks ago talking about Open Access. I think he did a fine job, no matter what Evolgen might imply. You can listen to the interview here. Glad Science Friday covered this.
• Just found the blog Evolution Minute. They seem to be trying to represent both sides of the ID vs. evolution debate. Not sure what to make of it yet, but it seems worth checking out.
• New publication available from the American Society of Microbiology. "Uncharted Microbial World: Microbes and Their Activities in the Environment". Thanks to Dan Drell at DOE for pointing this out.
• Obama shares beliefs about Islam and evolution. Note - in case you missed it. Darwin endorsed him here on my blog.
• Charles Darwin's theory of evolution drafts go online. Look behind the scenes at Darwin writing his big book.
• Scathing review of 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed' (Ben Stein monkeys with evolution) by Roger Moore.
  

Tree of Life Runners Web Notes

Well, I needed a name for little mini tidbits to post on and "Runners" has won the competition. So here is my first "Runners" entry of things from the web that caught my eye this week

• Govt. acknowledges accidents at virus lab. Yes, shocking as it may be to some who believe the government does everything perfectly, they are finally acknowledging some mistakes at the Plum Island Bioweopons/Biodefense research facility.  I note, I think that, while a Bioterror attack is terrifying, I am possibly more worried about things leaking out of research labs than being introduced on purpose.
• Merging bacteria species reverse evolution - evolution. 
• I am not sure I buy this story completely.  It basically is about how two microbe populations that seemed like they were separating are now merging back together.  But some of the researchers involved are very very good so I think it is worth looking at. 
• The World's Smallest Whistle-Blowers, Microbes Warn of Ecological Damage. Forrest Rohwer in the news, again. See Rohwer Lab
• UC Davis News & Information :: Scholars: Open up publishing. Story about Open Access publishing issues associated with UC. Davis.  Oh and I am in it. Oh, and, thanks to Karen Higgins the photographer for making me look much better than reality.
• Bill would safeguard evolution doubters. Florida, being silly. 
• Begley: Blame the Bugs | Newsweek Voices - Sharon Begley.Microbes and xenophobia.
• Genomics and biology come together to fight HIV. Essay by David Goldstein on a new article in PLoS Biology on HIV.  Oh, and David is a co-author of my new Evolution textbook.
• Academy of Sciences names leader, sets fees. Appointment of David Mindell as head of the California Academy of Sciences. 
• Good bacteria and Eli Stone. The Eli Stone episode called "Heartbeat" that showed last week discussed the theory that the appendix is used to repopulate the gut with good bacteria.  This was discussed as an example of how we learn new things in medicine all the time.  Bizarre that this showed up on Eli Stone.  Especially as there seemed to be no evidence for the theory.