tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74879152012-01-15T03:59:39.376+13:00A New Zealand student of genetics and biochemistry trying to hone his communication skills. Includes analysis of new science research, explanations of cool things, and the odd purple passageDavid Winternoreply@blogger.comBlogger961100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-68966460986978207652006-10-29T13:07:00.000+13:002006-11-04T16:32:01.342+13:00

Any regular readers of Science and Sensibility will by now have worked out that I have done my usual trick of getting busy with my real life and letting these pages go to seed. One of the things I’ve been doing quite a lot of in my long absence is poking around spider webs with my camera. Our flat has a ‘garden’ which might be better described as a small grassy fallow land. We are hardly going to

David Winternoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1154510283363543822006-08-02T21:05:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.782+13:00

There are two blogging carnivals in full swing at the moment whihc celebrate the natural world - Words and Pictures is playing host to this month's Circus of the Spineless while Charles Daney at Science and Reason has collected a great set of posts for the 59th edition of the Tangled Bank (check out his idea for a physcial science carnival too).

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1154256236180788182006-07-30T22:29:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.707+13:00

Other people mark the first appearance of swallows as the great turning point of the year, me, I like my winged messangers a litte smaller. This afternoon I spied my first bumble bee since winter started. Past experience suggests we're still months away from the emergence of most of this year's queens put it's an exciting event all the same. Sadly when I spotted the early messanger I bereft of

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1154253931498111852006-07-30T22:04:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.630+13:00

Remember last month when all the heavy weights of the science blogging world were talking bout Heliconius heurippa - the Andean butterfly that appears to have arisen by hybridisation between two other Heliconius butterflies? Yeah, if I wanted to be big deal blogger that's probably when I should have put my two cents in. Of course being a big deal is hardly my motivation so I have no shame in

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1152846214897677362006-07-14T15:03:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.557+13:00

Radagast has found an amazing group of photos shortlisted for this year's Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition. There are stunnig photos in all the catergories but have to check out the images of microspopic specimens which include the photo at the top of this post. That photo might look like it's come to you curtousey of Buckminster Fuller (or perhaps an adenovirus) but it's actually

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1152830740634509662006-07-14T10:31:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.465+13:00

Meme Therapy is a cool blog looking at the world from a scifi/futurism point of view. One of their regular features is a 'brain parade' in which they ask various experts in a particular field to answer a question. They usually elicit some interesting conversation - you can check out a couple of them here and here. But now they've really blotted their copy book by including me in one of their

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1151662764820961102006-06-30T22:19:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.378+13:00

Welcome along to the 10th time the Circus of the Spineless has preformed for the blogosphere. I have decided to take hat you might call a systematic approach to presenting the submissions I've received ( and a few posts I hunted down too). The idea behind this presentation is that you will not only get to see pretty pictures of insects (and, oh there are some pretty ones this month) but that

David Winternoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1151638383625246992006-06-30T15:33:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.286+13:00

Aramoana is a tiny settlement (home to 260 people) on the mouth of the Otago Harbour - about 20 minutes drive from my flat in Dunedin. In New Zealand the settlement's name is almost completely synonymous with a tragedy that played out there 16 years ago. On November 13th 1990 David Gray, a reclusive, gun collecting schizophrenic shot and killed 13 people before he was himself killed by armed

David Winternoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1151038174920499662006-06-23T16:49:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.211+13:00

Come the end of this month the Cricus of the Spineless will be undertaking its first performance outside of the USA. I am proud to be able to announce that the first international performance of the renowned circus will be staged right here on Science and Sensibility at the end of this month. So if you've written about or photographed anything that is alive and doesn't have a spine then send me

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1151035506019743522006-06-23T16:05:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.136+13:00

There has been a real glut of great nature writing and photography in blogs over the last couple of weeks. Seeing the great posts that people like Bev and Wayne have put together has made me in equal parts jealous of those enjoying an insectfull spring/summer and motivated to get out and record a little of the natural world around me. Spurred by the great posts I've read I have been able to

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1149154613173415362006-06-01T21:15:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:11.061+13:00

The seasons must be changing in the northern hemisphere - it seems scores of insects have emerged fro their hibernation to completely take over this month's circus of the spineless (I count one non-insect post!) Down here in the deep south it's starting to really turn cold and most of the interesting insects hae hidden over-winter or laid their eggs and got out of here. But here are still

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1148787587339646162006-05-28T15:39:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:10.987+13:00

All the cool kids have been playing with this new toy that takes your website html and makes it into a pretty graph. So here is a graphic description of my web authoring style: The nice looking globe on the right side there will be my link-tastic side bar (blue dots are links and orange ones are the line breaks that go after them). The rest of the graph just goes to show my completely

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1148449759095534112006-05-24T17:00:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:10.897+13:00

I was met the other morning as I sped from my flat by this creature, hanging on to our front door. As you can see I deftly removed it with the aid of an envelope (after a series of less deft manouveurs with my fat fingers threatened to do it a greater injury than had been infliced on it before I came along - check out his lone antenna) but I couldn't resist the urge to take a few pics before

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1144562865655663432006-04-09T17:50:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:10.806+13:00

There has been much made this week of the discovery of the so called ‘fishapod’ Tiktaalik roseae – a fossil with some features intermediate between us land vertebrates and our piscine relatives. And so there should be, Tiktaalik gives us a real clue as to what our ancestors must have looked like 375 million years ago.1 When we talk about the origin of the tetrapod limb we are talking about the

David Winternoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1137301060673197812006-01-15T17:51:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.682+13:00

Wow, you stop posting for a couple of months and the whole blogosphere moves. Pharyngula, the biggest science blog that there is has joined a whole bunch of other science bloggers at… Science blogs. Pharyngula’s new home is here. My Dunedin counterpart Huw has re-launched his blog robotines with the oh so meta idea of blogging about writing blogging software with which to blog about writing

David Winternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1137214774941068712006-01-14T16:47:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.608+13:00

So it appears I was correct when I suggested the posting rate around here might dry up a little while I was working on my summer fellowship. The combination of long working days, warm summer evenings and limited computers in the lab aren’t exactly conducive to blogging. However, today I have some time and a computer so I thought I’d share a few pictures and a few stories from a recent trip aimed

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1131681049723641372005-11-11T16:50:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.540+13:00

While I'm talking about famous New Zealand Scientists I should note one that didn't make it into the top hundred kiwis (though he'd be in mine) - Alan Wilson. Wilson was an Otago trained evolutionary biologist that controversially applied new molecular techniques to studying the evolution of man. He was controversial because before his work most anthropologists had humans pegged as a long

David Winternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1131628833088599382005-11-11T00:04:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.464+13:00

Prime TV has been running a series listing New Zealands's top 100 history makers. Suffering as the series did in' third network conditions' it didn't come across my radar until last week but I found the names and the stories that made up the top 25 pretty interesting - who knew Peter Snell's 800 metres record (run on cinders) would have won silver at last year's olympics? The final was tonight

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1130973676981515012005-11-03T12:21:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.382+13:00

There's a glut of great science posts online at the moment so I thought I'd point them out to you. First off theres the science carnivals; The second performance of the Circus of the Spineless is underway at Snail's Tales (complete with creationist controversy!) and The Tangled Bank is in its 40th iteration at The Examining Room of Dr Charles. The Tangled Bank includes my post about the

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1130390812533003012005-10-27T18:26:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.296+13:00

As you may have seen The Commissar has been constructing a family tree based on who inspired bloggers to get into blogging. A worthy project and one you should contribute to if you can and haven't yet. The Commissar's data combine to make a history of the branching patterns that have given birth to some of the blogs out there today. Scientists visualise these patterns using something called a

David Winternoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1128661928769034892005-10-07T18:12:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:06:10.121+13:00

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA For the first time a New Zealand researcher has been awarded the sought after Ig Nobel prize. James Watson , an historian from Massey University was awarded this year's Ig Nobel for Agricultural Science in recognition of his scholarly work The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers in a ceremony at Harvard University on Thursday. Mr Watson's work

David Winternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1127974919040074182005-09-29T18:21:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:10.039+13:00

Wow but Tony Gallucci is a busy man. No only does he maintain milkriverblog, a collection of posts as eclectic as they are excellent but he has, in recent weeks, hosted (with some flair) the Tangled Bank and I and the Bird. Not content with that he and a few others have gone an made a whole new blog carnival. The Circus of the Spineless will celebrate the most underrated and ubiquitous members

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1127919485804407222005-09-28T22:58:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.965+13:00

Sex is one of the most intriguing puzzles in evolutionary biology. Its very presence seems counterintuitive. If organisms are acting to get as many of their genes into the next generation as they can then why would they go to the extreme lengths that they do to mix their genes with someone else before they make babies? In fact, as John Maynard Smith pointed out, producing males incurs another

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1127884535553377482005-09-28T17:15:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.878+13:00

As you may have heard from around the traps today marks the first time that images of a live Giant Squid have been presented. These giant cephalopods were previously only known from remains, found in Sperm Whale stomachs and washed up on beaches. As you can see from this image reproduced at the National Geographic website the Giant Squid is an active hunter, following prey and attacking with

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1126858621548459952005-09-16T20:17:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.789+13:00

There's an election tomorrow. I haven't said anything about it here because I really don't have a lot to say - I think the most important role a government can play is to help out those New Zealander's less fortunate than me so my vote will be going leftward and that's about it.f What I've always liked about elections is all the polls, graphs and pretty animations of the house filling up with

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1124689026070853372005-08-22T17:37:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.714+13:00

Coturnix links to a post that links to a cool toy - calculate the amount of various energy drinks you would have to drink to die from caffeine poisoning. The list of drinks doesn't include New Zealand's favourite energy drink 'V' so I did a few calculations myself:The LD-50 (dose of a poison that will kill half the people subjected to it) of caffeine is 150mg for each kilogram you weigh. I weigh

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1124339346173860052005-08-18T16:29:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.639+13:00

One of the really cool things about being at university is the chance it gives you to hear ideas from some immensely bright people. Last month I was fortunate enough to attend a public lecture given by Nobel Laureate Tony Leggett. Professor Leggett's lecture suggested that recent experiments in superconductivity might help to bridge the gap between the phenomenally successful but bizarre theory

David Winternoreply@blogger.com106tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1121050482935665232005-07-11T14:54:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.497+13:00

The Otago student newspaper Critic runs a recurring news column called "Life after lectures" which profiles interesting research coming out of the University. Last week I was lucky enough to talk to Dr Tony Merriman, a geneticist who has recently published a study proving a link between a gene called PTPN22 and rheumatoid arthritis. The story has been published online at Critic's website so you

David Winternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1120653149821813492005-07-07T00:32:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.429+13:00

Radio New Zealand and the Royal Society of New Zealand came together this year to produce a series of lectures celebrating 2005 as the World Year of Physics. The series included lectures on topics from the birth of stars, to the ways ancient peoples kept time and one entitled "The mad, mad world of Schrodinger's Cat:Why no one understands Quantum mechanics". Just now I've found that all the

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1120197668207723202005-07-01T18:01:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.351+13:00

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1120197233528116052005-07-01T17:53:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.281+13:00

Ever wonder what happens when a small time blogger hosts the Tangled Bank? Well, for a start this does: This is the traffic report for Science and Sensibility from sitemeter. The February and March traffic is thanks to my letting the blog go to seed while I was working for HortResearch, the now incremental rise in traffic in April and May looked pretty steep until Thursday's Tangled Bank shifted

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1120049543297791922005-06-30T00:52:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.201+13:00

Welcome to the 31st Tangled Bank. I've opted for a slightly creative way of presenting the excellent links I received - I hope that it is still straight forward enough and that you enjoy your reading. Welcome to day one of the 31st meeting of the Tangled Bank Society. As you know the Tangled Bank meeting offers a chance for scientists and scientific communicators working in disparate fields

David Winternoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1119759662849755262005-06-26T16:21:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.071+13:00

Remember everyone, this week sees me hosting the 31st edition of the Tangled Bank. I've had quite a few excellent submissions already but I'd like to see some more. It would especially cool to see a few science themed posts from kiwi bloggers so if you've been thinking about writing about anything with a look to medicine, science or natural history then get on to it an get it in to david.winter

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1119758601518361502005-06-26T16:03:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:09.001+13:00

That's one image from the 2005 Art of Science Exhibition run at Princeton university. There are another 50 or so pictures just as cool so go check it out The image above , by Anton Darhuber, Benjamin Fischer and Sandra Troian won second prize and is accompanied by the following explanatory text: This image illustrates evolving dynamical patterns formed during the spreading of a surface-active

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1119757559740080252005-06-26T15:45:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:08.804+13:00

I feel that it's important for for those of us lucky enough to live in 'advanced' nations to make an effort to help out people less fortunate. So my ears pricked up when afarensis made this announcement on his blog introducing a new project: The target audience will be junior high (or middle school) and high school students. The purpose is to help counteract the rising tide of creationism/

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1119333977658978412005-06-21T18:06:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:08.739+13:00

If you read Science and Sensibility you probably know what the Tangled Bank is. Just in case you don't it's a fortnightly collection of all the best (self nominated) science writing the web has to offer, you can check out the most recent iteration at Geomblog. I am excited to say the next edition will be hosted right here! The 31st Tangled Bank will be up on the 29th of June (The Tangled Bank

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1119332034113466352005-06-21T17:33:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.858+13:00

In recent years it has become increasingly clear that the regulatory information associated with genes is just as physiologically important an evolutionary malleable as the genes themselves. Well that's all well and good but genomes will still eventually face evolutionary pressures to develop a completely new biochemical trick. But how can an old genome learn new tricks? On the face of it seems a

David Winternoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1118037122334147302005-06-06T17:52:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.778+13:00

Yay! The peerless Carl Zimmer has a post running though some of the findings of a recent paper on the evolution of beetle horns. As I said in the recent trilobite post a lot of beetles sport horns to help them fight off other males in order get access to a mate - a game played throughout the animal kingdom and it seems through out history as well. Zimmer's post explains how evolutionary

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1117632270774309832005-06-02T01:24:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.705+13:00

The Tangled Bank has made it's 29th appearance, this time at the excellent Organic Matter. Chris has had no fewer than 40 posts to summarize for your reading pleasure. He has even categorized that mammoth haul of science writing in sections of 'The Blogosphere Natural History Museum!.' So why not go take a stroll around the displays, there has to be something you like!

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1117516856463692472005-05-31T17:20:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.615+13:00

Excuse me for jumping in on Wolverine Tom's territory here but this week's New Scientist reports an interesting new insight to the ancient lives of trilobites. It turns out the impressive trident sprouting from the head of some trilobites such as the Walliserops trifurcates you see depicted above were probably used, rather like deer antlers, in fighting other males for the right to mate with

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1117064806040667182005-05-26T11:46:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.526+13:00

I usually try and avoid turning Science and Sensibilty into some inane online diary. Not because I particularity prize my privacy, rather I can't imagine there is a single person out there that wants to read what I did today or what I thought of the new Star Wars film. I am going to make a bit of exception today though. Liverpool are the champions of Europe! I managed to find an enclave of people

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1116466841027749622005-05-19T13:40:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.443+13:00

Well, while I've been slack for the last couple of weeks there has been plenty of good stuff written around the web. First of DarkSyd of Unscrewing the Inscrutable has provided a very eloquent 6 part series on human evolution. The story starts here is followed up in parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. The editors of Scientific American maintain an entertaining and interesting blog This week they took

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1116422096369185672005-05-19T01:14:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.365+13:00

Last month media from New Zealand and the world reported the latest results of a study based on people from my home town of Dunedin. The results suggested that some people may carry a genetic predisposition to psychotic illness that is triggered by smoking marijuana as a teenager. The story caused a little bit of a fuss here with cannabis law reform proponents decrying the study as being mere

David Winternoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1115293599610123132005-05-05T23:46:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.289+13:00

My post detailing a few of the web very best botany blogs has thrown up yet more excellence in that field. Since there is actually a little bit of traffic coming to that post from people using google to find botany blogs I've decided to add the new ones to that one . But you really should check them out, they're rather good.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1115266777768808022005-05-05T16:19:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.208+13:00

Another Tangled Bank is online and awaiting your hungry eyes.. Sadly I'm not featured this time around, having let my real life intrude on my blogging this week. I'm afraid you'll have to content yourself with about 30 quality scienitific posts on topics as diverse as tool use in monkeys and Radagast's critique of the biology behind Will Wright's new game.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1114654626164288622005-04-28T14:17:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.134+13:00

So, last week when I railed against the fact that "To my knowledge there is not a single botany blog out there" I was actually railing against my own ignorance. It turns out there are quite a number of really quite good blogs out there dealing with matters phytological so here, in no particular order are a few that I've found thanks the comments for that post Tree Trends (rss) Tom Kimmerer is

David Winternoreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1114650344838198902005-04-28T13:05:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:02.055+13:00

That's not the cover of a pulp science fiction anthology - that's a brand new species of jellyfish. It comes from the camera of a submarine one week into its three week voyage around east of New Zealand. The team of New Zealand and American scientists on board are cruising around undersea volcanoes (seamounts) checking out the unique chemistry, geology and biology they generate, and they are

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1114133128177189802005-04-22T13:15:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.762+13:00

Celebrate one year of science blogging's greatest show, the Tangled Bank, over at Circandia The anniversary editon is as as fascinating as ever and finally this one includes a post about plants.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1113903112951215022005-04-19T21:31:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.688+13:00

I think the science arm of the blogosphere does a pretty good job, it's certainly a group I'm proud to consider myself a very small part of. However there is one area in which this new medium is sadly lacking. To my knowledge there is not a single botany blog out there. While the biological wonders of humans, squids, viruses and even dinosaurs are beamed by RSS to hundreds of newsreaders each

David Winternoreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1113529514019383092005-04-15T13:32:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.613+13:00

Check out the Firefox picture down at the botom of all those little link buttons in the sidebar. I don't make much of a secret that Firefox is my browser of choice and now you, like an epidemiologist set on tracking the spread of a particularly contagious virus, can track the number of times someone has downloaded a copy of that particularly secure, feature laden and pretty browser. The RSS feed

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1112926046911343332005-04-08T14:07:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.540+13:00

New Zealanders that can be dragged from their weekend sleep-ins tomorrow will be greeted by a very different sunrise. At 6:45am the sun will rise in the east as usual but, unusually it will be in the midst of a dire fight with a sky serpent attempting to swallow it and plunge the world into eternal darkness. Or maybe you'll prefer science's explanation? When the sun rises tomorrow around 60% of

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1112787110354798242005-04-06T23:31:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.450+13:00

Really, they have been. Me as a character from South Park: Yes I do have a T-shirt with that text, thought it doesn't look much like that one

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1112786314846798212005-04-06T23:18:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.372+13:00

It's that time again: the Tangled Bank's 25th iteration is up and ready to read over at Respectful Insolence. Orac has, as we have now become accustomed to, taken the opportunity to host a carnival as a personal challenge of creativity. This week's Tangled Bank is presented in form a letter if (re-re-re-re)submitting a paper for publication in a scientific journal. Being very much at the

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1112274873100380802005-04-01T01:14:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.297+13:00

Take a close look at the picture above this text. If you haven't been introduced to a sea squirt before you may be surprised to learn the blue blob depicted above is an animal. If that surprised you then you'll be flabbergasted to learn you are more closely related to that animal than 97% of all the species so far described on earth and very much more than 99% of the individual organisms here.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1112240141654062442005-03-31T15:35:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.216+13:00

Lest anyone think I was a little too serious about this whole blogging thing I present to you "The history of the universe in sixty seconds." A video starting with the big bang and ending with the internet and even finding time to include one of those lovely cambrian reconstructions where every known fossil from a period gets together to have a picnic at the same time in the same spot. Oh, you'll

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1112014357694394192005-03-29T00:52:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.131+13:00

At the risk of seeming a little too post-modern I'm going to open this post with some self-referentiality: "Nevertheless this little self inflating fish, along with a number of its piscine brethren, are teaching us a lot about how we work and how we got here in the first place." That's from the Fugu article I posted last week. You see I left that little teaser about "a number of its piscine

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1111616744611593152005-03-24T10:25:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:06:00.054+13:00

My return to writing something vaguely interesting here ('interesting' in this case is defined as "something I like" readers are free to disagree) managed to just squeeze into the latest edition of that bi-weekly celebration of the natural world - The Tangled Bank. I count 34 great articles about the wonderful universe revealed by science - so set aside some time and get to reading.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1111615895571642902005-03-24T10:11:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:59.932+13:00

I have been most remiss in not linking to my Dunedin cohort Huw's entry to the blogosphere While Science and Sensibility has stagnated over summer Huw has been busy coding some sort of blogging application with python. But, the first few posts of Robotines have been dominated by a story of flatting that would strike fear into the heart of any parent sending their child down to Dunedin to live.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1111550368488055472005-03-23T15:59:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:59.854+13:00

The pufferfish Fugu rubripes has long been infamous as a dangerous way to eat your lunch but it is also garnering increasing fame amongst biologists as a model organism. Fugu may seem an odd creature to study as a model of human biology, being separated from us in evolution by around 400 million years and not as amendable to experimentation as our closer relatives the mouse and rat.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1108613970221699982005-02-17T17:04:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.792+13:00

The Royal Society of New Zealand are doing there bit to celebrate 2005 as the International Year of Physics. They've set up a lovely website complete with a list of the papers Einstein published in 1905, a year in which he described Brownian Motion, the Photo Electric Effect and the small matter of General relativity. There is also a list of some of the events the RSNZ is going to be putting on

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1106624344691905572005-01-25T16:31:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.730+13:00

I think that in most cases writing replies to creationism just encourages them. You are unlikely to rationalize someone out of such a deeply irrational stance. So, I thought, I should leave those letters that I wrote about yesterday well alone. Then I thought a little more. It seems to me these ideologues shouldn't just get away with trying to rob people of some of the beauty of the natural

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1106484856832048692005-01-24T01:49:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.664+13:00

The reason for Science and Sensibility’s return is an outpouring of that most demeaning ignorance, Creationism in the letters page of a newspaper right her in little old New Zealand. It is easy for someone living here to look on at the struggle between rationalists and Creationists in Dover or even read talk.origins and feel a little smug. The bible belt might have these cretinous ideologues but

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1106484559406986432005-01-24T01:35:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.595+13:00

It may be more than three months since I made a new post here but you can’t yet put Science and Sensibility down as another example of that phenomenon of our time, the Dead Blog. Truth be told I’ve been very busy with my studentship and don’t have regular access to a computer outside of work, and the prospect of staying there an extra hour to write up a post there really doesn’t excite me. The

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1099824960220225712004-11-07T23:54:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.534+13:00

I have lived for so long in Dunedin’s hyperbolically named ‘student ghetto’ I’d almost forgotten what a huge amount of life a suburban garden can play host to. Earlier today I sat in my parents garden an listened to flowers making love. Bees - honey and bumble - sung their ecstasy in disparate buzzes as they flitted from flower to flower. Seduced by sweet rewards and alluring shows of colour

David Winternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1099318222560167852004-11-02T03:10:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.474+13:00

Regular readers of Science and sensibility (both of them) will have noticed something of a falling off in the site's ouput lately. I'm afraid that's going to continue for a little while. This week I have 2 exams, the last one on Thursday followed by two days of frantic packing before I fly to 'home' on Saturday, move into my flat for the summer on Sunday and start work extracting DNA for

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098936321592852352004-10-28T17:05:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.411+13:00

Upon reading my email this morning I was surprise and excited to read about the discovery of a skull representing a previously unknown species of man. The new species lived on an Indonesian island 18 000 years ago as in named Homo floresiensis. Our newly discovered cousin is thought to have have branched from Homo erectus when it took up life on the island; like many island living species they

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098531465495752112004-10-24T01:37:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.349+13:00

i'm making this post as a monument to my geekdom. I've made myself a poster to help me recall a few of key systems from the cell bio course and now I like it so much I'm sure it wll survive this exam, and probably remain on at whichever house I call home for years to come. In fact, gentle reader, I like it so much I'm going to share poorly lit photos of it with you: My big geeky poster

David Winternoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098349415620753902004-10-21T22:03:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.279+13:00

Seems a massive, 3 metre long sunfish has washed up at the top of the South Island. The sunfishes, Mola spp. are related to pufferfishes and the sort of funny looking boxfishes Although the unfortunate one in the news story looks a little incongruous they are quite beautiful in their environment. While I'm linking like crazy check out this sunfish larva: cuter than nemo

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098324494690739842004-10-21T15:08:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.156+13:00

It's here again, another round of the Tangled Bank is waiting for you over at Prashant Mullick's weblog. This edition has a real academic theme with a total of eight submissions containing four from university professors and another three from students of various levels. Anyway, no matter who wrote them they're all a good read so get yourself over there and start clicking the links.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098271868878861762004-10-21T01:05:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.089+13:00

I’ve been trying, between studying cell bio, to write up a post about how eusocial behaviour like that shown in the bumble bee series can evolve. During writing up that post I came across the idea that the bees (family Apidae) may have evolved from wasps that supplemented their diet (which largely consisted of other insects) with nectar or honeydew. In fact there is some evidence for this to

David Winternoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098196567316394222004-10-20T03:24:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:59.023+13:00

Maybe everyone allready knows about this but I've just come across a site with a searchable archive of what must be thousands of those little web buttons that you find linking out of so many blogs. So if you are the sort of person that loves web buttons, and really what other sort is there, then you should check it out.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1098189298835902162004-10-17T01:20:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.933+13:00

At the moment I am about a week and a half away from the start of another round of final exams. Obviously studying takes up most of my time at the moment and as such I don’t have much time to get into interesting sidetracks to blog about and the stuff I’m studying just isn’t all that interesting for the layman audience I try and aim Science and sensibility at. Having said that I thought it might

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1097588765501918942004-10-13T02:02:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.865+13:00

This is just unbelievably cool. New Zealand scientist Steve O'Shea, well known for his attempts to study giant squid, has set up a live webcam that will follow the development of broad squid larvae in an attempt to beat his own world record for keeping squid in captivity and as a a warm up to his goal of one day raising a giant squid in a tank. You can watch the squid grow up live

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1097585151196985192004-10-13T01:22:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.801+13:00

You may remember that the last post in this series lamented the death of a queen bumble bee and promised to show what may have been. So we’ll pick up the story by explaining what will be happening around me as emergent queens get fed and establish a new nest. Following their first shaky flights new queens will spend somewhere near to a week searching for a warm and dry place to set up their

David Winternoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1097238541785151992004-10-09T01:02:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.744+13:00

The property of mass is clearly an important part of physics. But even as physicists have delved further and further into the fabric of our reality they haven’t yet been able to show how the various particles they have discovered acquire mass. In order for the acquisition of mass to square with their most accurate models for the rest of reality there needs to exist a thus far undiscovered

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1097143516239194672004-10-07T22:55:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.668+13:00

Another edition of everyone’s favourite bi-weekly celebration of science blogging is up and ready for your perusal. This week there 19 interesting articles just one click away, so what are doing here, go read them

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1097142926138611362004-10-07T22:34:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.597+13:00

New Zealand’s second Nobel laureate has died. Maurice Wilkins has been called the ‘third man of DNA’ and it has been suggested had Rosalyn Franklin survived he wouldn’t have been awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1962. All that aside it is inarguable that Wilkins was responsible for the improvements made to X-ray crystallography that lead to Watson and Cricks renowned

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096876996205222012004-10-04T20:45:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.462+13:00

This post is part of a story that grew beyond control and so was serialised, if you haven't read the first part then you should do that before embarking on this post When we left her our queen she was lying asleep under the ground waiting for the spring, as you can imagine at this stage her story gets a little monotonous so spare a thought now for the workers of the nest. With their honey

David Winternoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096945592031867312004-10-03T15:55:00.000+13:002006-10-29T13:05:58.532+13:00

Am currently trying to find a few photos to illustrate the remaining posts in the bumble bee series. In the process I stumbled across this fantastic series of photos from Jim Irvin: The green fellow is a dragonfly and the other picture is of paper wasps tending to their brood. The album these came from have bunch more at least as weird and wonderful as the ones above

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096875633947034672004-10-02T19:57:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:58.398+13:00

Over the last few weeks my flat has been beset by slow, confused looking bumble bees. Most days at least one gets itself stuck in the house, usually trying valiantly but ultimately futilely to fly through one of our closed windows. Of course I usually try and help these wayfarers out but I was too late for one, which I found dead in our living room. I have tried to get a photo of the

David Winternoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096631028187366582004-10-01T23:21:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:58.338+13:00

I got a phone call this afternoon from someone at the HR department of HortResearch – it seems they are sending me a contract to sign! This summer I’m going to be working (largely doing monkey work the “real” scientists wouldn’t want to do) at the Palmerston North campus of HortResearch helping to develop a simple DNA based test to determine the presence of pest resistant genes in seedling

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096503305132557412004-09-30T13:08:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:58.273+13:00

An article I wrote for Critic about the formation of the NZ bioethics council right back at the start of the year is now part of the website's archive. For whatever reason they seem to have cut off the lead-in paragraph so I'll include that here: Today the ethical questions surrounding scientific research are more open to public scrutiny than they have ever been. Watchers of the evening

David Winternoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096289666424187902004-09-28T01:50:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:58.126+13:00

With my job interview done with and my last ever lab report safely stowed within the hand-in box I have time again write posts for this blog and do a few of the other things I do when not completely snowed under by work. One of those things I'm really keen about is the sport of cycling, so I marked the controversy surrounding Tyler Hamilton’s positive test for blood doping with interest.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1096291381595333082004-09-28T01:22:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:58.202+13:00

With all that talk of cheating I thought I might mention a perfectly legal way of increasing your endurance uncovered by a recent BMC Physiology paper: breathing. I won’t go into too much detail because the paper is accompanied by an excellent press release. In short the study that showed ten sessions of rapid, deep breathing lasting thirty minutes decreased cyclist’s average time for a

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1095919275607509882004-09-23T17:56:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:58.059+13:00

The newest edition of the tangled bank is up. I really like this thing; a collection of good science related stories from the blogosphere from the last two weeks. I don't have anything in it this time round, by virtue of me not having written anything that people outside of New Zealand are likely to care about, but really, you should check it out

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1095918908111024272004-09-23T17:54:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.985+13:00

There seemed to be something resembling interest from the readership about the job interview I mentioned in an earlier post would go, so here goes: Good, I think. It was on the telephone since the studentship is in Palmerston North and I am not, and the lead scientist on the project I’m applying for had a thick French accent which made me ask him to repeat things more than once. I

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1095735115938255612004-09-21T14:20:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.904+13:00

Traits or phenotypes that are under some level of genetic control can be usefully divided into “quantitative” or “continuous” traits and “discontinuous” traits. Discontinuous traits are the ones in which there are only a few possible classes for an individual to have - ‘blue eyes’ or the ability to roll their tongue. If we want to predict which class an individual will fall in we can look at

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1095731181018866982004-09-21T13:43:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.817+13:00

Hi all, sorry about the lack of blogging lately, you can blame it on mitochondria. My own mitochondria are doing alright as far as I can tell (and most mitochondrial diseases are the sort of thing you’d know about) but I am trying to write up the mitochondrial lab block from my cell bio course and it’s sucking up all my spare time. I have about twelve pages of results in my lab record book that

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1095212490383442712004-09-15T13:20:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.743+13:00

Wow, I've just stumbled across the exellent Genome News Network which if full of intersting news and information. The thing that really struck me though was the art gallery: A spider extrudes proteins from its silk glands. It has been estimated that if the silk created by combining the fibres those proteins make (shown in green) was enlarged to the thickness of a pencil it would be capable

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1095036979831125452004-09-13T13:50:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.636+13:00

Just a quick update on the unfolding Taranaki dioxin story: A frame of reference: The Ministry of Health has produced a document that outlines the where the levels of dioxin found in the Taranaki residents fit in the scheme of other studies. The average level in the report was 11pg/g lipid (11 picograms per gram of lipid -a picogram is one trillionth of a gram.) The average in New Zealand

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1094802644965046652004-09-10T17:51:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.496+13:00

A report(PDF) released yesterday shows that people who lived close to Ivan Watkins-Dow's chemical plant in Taranaki between 1962 and 1987 have elevated levels of the dioxin 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (mercifully shortened to TCDD for the rest of this post) in their blood. TCDD is a known carcinogen that was produced as a by product of the plant’s manufacturing of the herbicide 2,4,5-T.

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1094793621304607502004-09-10T16:59:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.424+13:00

I imagine a lot of you reading Science and Sensibility at the moment have come via the latest installment of the Tangled Bank. Thanks for for coming, and I hope you enjoy your stay - as you may have noticed this site is still very much in it's infancy so I'd thank anyone that notices a horribe glitch, an ugly looking page or misdirected link to send me an email so I can sort it out. For those

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1094531097709305692004-09-07T16:13:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.359+13:00

One of the scariest things about the rise of the Intelligent Design movement is the way religious fundamentalists can point to it to ostensibly lend credence to their wacky claims. Brian Tamaki and his Destiny Church should be proof enough for any New Zealander that we possess our own fundamentalists. One such home grown intransigent is one time talkback host and now editor of Investigate

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1093929478746820902004-08-31T17:04:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.298+13:00

The moa were a class of massive ratite birds that lived in New Zealand for thousands of years. With no indigenous terrestrial mammals outside of our short and long tailed bats our native birds fill the niches that are occupied by mammals in other ecosystems. In this scheme moa represented something akin to deer, grazing the forests and tussock land. The terrifyingly huge Haast’s Eagle served

David Winternoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1093861400498549322004-08-30T22:20:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.235+13:00

As I said in my opening post I am going to use a few post a few of my older articles since Critic has taken down any online archive of them. So in that vein here's an article I wrote in about March of last year regarding the plight of the bannana palm: It was reported last month the banana as we know it may be on the verge of extinction. A new parasite has emerged that the banana can’t

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487915.post-1093860914969401712004-08-30T22:03:00.000+12:002006-10-29T13:05:57.159+13:00

Welcome to Science and Sensibility. My Name is David Winter and I'm currently a student of biochemistry at the University of Otago in New Zealand. I'm absolutely mad about science and think that everyone alive should be able to understand some of the beauty and wonder that makes scientists do what they do. This blog is my own small contribution to that goal. I wrote a science coloumn in hte

David Winternoreply@blogger.com0