If you stroke a snake, its skin feels slick and slippery (ed: or smooth, at any rate). Yet according to a new study by scientists at New York University and Georgia Tech, snakes actually depend on friction to move.
Author: Matt Kristoffersen
Jacylnn, a medical student, writes: “If you assign a certain color to each base, this double helix tattoo represents the first 45 nucleic acids from the first exon of p53. p53 is a transcription factor known as the “guardian of the genome.” It sends damaged cells into apoptosis and thus helps prevent cancer. I studied p53 and other targets of the SV40 tumor virus while working on a molecular biology degree at The University of Pittsburgh. I’m now a medical student at Nova Southeastern University. My husband, who is much more right-brained than I am, designed the tattoo for me.”
[Update: Thanks to eagle-eyed readers who realized that the original photo was backwards. Fortunately, the error was photographic and not a matter for laser tattoo removal.]
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published June 7, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
“We do not even in the least know the final cause of sexuality; why new beings should be produced by the union of the two sexual elements…The whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness.”
So wrote Charles Darwin in 1862. In this week’s issue of Science, I write an essay on what we know now about this mystery. The essay is
here (subscription required), and you can listen to me talking about why sex is weirder than you know on this week’s Science Podcast.
To continue this celebration of sex in all its evolutionary glory, I’ll be guest-blogging a few times this month over at Science‘s Origins blog. I’ll let you know here when each post goes up.
Image: From Robert F. on Flickr/Creative Commons License
Originally published June 4, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
It’s now been a bit over a week since Darwinius Day, and the sky, for the moment at least, still remains blue. It’s a good moment to look back and take stock of that hallucinatory ride through the media-science funhouse, and Brian Switek–a remarkable undergraduate who took to the Times of London to help people think straight about this fossil–has assembled a blog carnival just on this topic. In particular, check out the post that looks at a brief but questionable statement in the Darwinius paper: “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.” I asked PLOS One about whether that was true, and they said they’re getting in touch with the authors. Stay tuned.
I also want to add a couple extra posts to the carnival. Henry Gee, editor at Nature, was inspired by all the claims of Darwinius being a missing link to blog about the history of the phrase “the missing link.” In response to Henry’s twitter for help, I put my lexicographer brother Ben on the case. He did some research of his own, which you can find in his latest “Word Routes” column.
Originally published June 2, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
3 Quarks Daily has finished gathering nominations for its science blog prize, and you can now vote for your favorite. From the top 20 vote-getters, the editors of 3QD will then select six finalists, from which the winners will be chosen by Steven Pinker. The public voting closes at midnight, June 8 EST.
Originally published June 1, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.