ORVs - WTF?

In today's NY Times: A surge of off-road vehicles is roaring across the West's public lands. Since coming west for graduate school, I've seen a lot of this firsthand. There's not much of the Mojave Desert (outside of national parks) that isn't crosshatched with ORV tracks, and it's shockingly hard to get away from the roar of gasoline engines in the mountains of Idaho. It's nice to know, as the Times article points out, that there are a few off-roaders trying to reshape the pastime into something more responsible - but they've got a lot of work to do.

Open-source journal on evolution education

Via Wired Science: the new journal Evolution: Education and Outreach aims to connect working biologists with elementary and secondary science teachers to provide a resource for teaching about evolution. And all its articles will be freely available online.

The inaugural issue includes an essay by John N. Thompson, one of the leading names in my own sub-field of coevolutionary ecology, which points out that the popular press frequently fails to use the word "evolution" when it covers such concrete examples as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and host shifts by disease organisms. I've noticed this myself, and I think it's a very relevant issue: without calling evolution by its name, idiotic disconnects like the one between President Bush's "teach the controversy" position and his spending for bird-flu preparedness aren't as obvious.

Not-so-silent nights in Bethlehem

Manger Square
Photo by Dave Landis.

For Christmas Day, here's an excellent article about life in present-day Bethlehem from National Geographic. If you aren't well versed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's a good introduction. For me, it's a sad reminder of how much worse things have gotten since I spent three weeks in Bethlehem as part of an undergrad cross-cultural semester. Dave Landis, who was on that trip with me, is now back in-country, helping to run a sort of interfaith hostel in Nazareth. He has lots of pictures.

Merry Christmas!

'Nuff said.

Here we go again

Leave it to Congress to reduce Christmas to an insult to religious liberty.

Huckabee's looney fringe

I've been kind of conflicted about Mike Huckabee. Sure, he's anti-science and has wacky ideas about taxation, but he first really came to my attention when he said, in defense of offering state tuition assistance to the children of undocumented immigrants, “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.” That's the sanest thing I've heard from any Republican candidate on the subject of immigration.

But now it looks like Huckabee's conservative Christian affiliations have wiped out that little glimmer of goodwill. Turns out he's willing to take money from Christian Reconstructionists, a right-fringe strain of the faith I've bumped into in Moscow, which holds that the U.S. should be ruled by "biblical" laws like these. Including that physicians should not treat patients on Sunday. Wow. I'm actually pretty sure Jesus specifically contradicts the one.

And if Huckabee wants to hang out with that kind of "Christian," well, he gets about as much respect from me as they do.

Foster care raises I.Q.

NY Times: A newly-released study compares cognitive development of children raised in orphanages with those raised entirely by foster families, and those moved from institutional to foster care. Key findings: foster care is associated with better cognitive development (measured for the study in terms of I.Q.), and the negative effect of institutional care is offset by the transition to foster care, with more benefit at younger ages. For the full details, see the original paper on Science's website [subscription required]. Yes, this is one of those studies that seems intuitively obvious, but it's always useful to test intuition, especially in matters of government policy. As a bonus, this is also strong evidence in support of a large effect of early environment on I.Q. scores.

If only I could ...

Red means stop?

Autumn leaves
Photo by nico.cavallotto.

New in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology: An article asks whether autumnal leaf colors could act as a deterrent to insect herbivores [abstract free; subscription needed for more].

It may seem odd to think that trees could be interested in defending leaves that are about to drop off anyway; but the authors' idea is that trees with brighter red leaves are signaling a "commitment" to producing more defensive chemicals in next year's leaf crop. To test this hypothesis, the authors measured aphids' preference for leaf color in the fall, and whether fall leaf color predicted aphids' performance on the same trees in the spring.

The aphids showed a significant preference for green autumn leaves over red, but there was no correlation between fall color and aphid performance on the next spring's leaves. So, interesting idea, but no dice. The authors say, reasonably, that their results suggest aphids' color preferences have more to do with finding the most nutritious leaves in the fall than avoiding defensive chemicals in the spring.

It's important to note that this result is not necessarily coevolution, in the strict sense of reciprocal natural selection between the aphids and the trees. The aphids seem to have adapted to their host plant, but it's not clear (base on this study, anyway) that the aphids exert significant selection on the plant in return.

Reference:
Ramirez, C. C., B. Lavandero, and M. Archetti. 2008. Coevolution and the adaptive value of autumn tree colours: colour preference and growth rates of a southern beech aphid. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 21:49-56.

Corn's not just for eating anymore

NY Times: Increasing ethanol production, spurred by government incentives, concern about global warming, and the desire for energy independence, could be starting to impact the food supply. Cross-reference to the Economist (whence the graph): the upturn in prices is the biggest since the 1970s.



I can't say it's surprising, given that most estimates I've seen conclude that ethanol couldn't supply the world's energy even if all the farmland on the planet were converted to biomass production. But it is surprising that it's happened so early in the movement to drop fossil fuels. If this is the wave of the future, Americans could someday find themselves literally taking food out of the mouths of the Third World to fuel their cars. That's a terrible thought.

Thank God for Dodd

Just up on Wired: A Bush Administration bill that would have given retroactive immunity to big telecoms that helped the administration conduct warrantless surveillance on domestic communications is now dead in the Senate till next year. It looked likely to pass until Senator Christopher Dodd threatened to filibuster if the immunity provision wasn't removed; Senate leadership pulled the bill so they could get other work done before the Christmas recess.

Immunity for the telecoms would cut off the only available avenue to legally challenge warrantless wiretapping. It's based on a ridiculous premise: that the telecoms should be excused for doing something illegal and unconstitutional because the government told them to do it! The essence of democracy is that citizens are responsible to know and obey the law on their own accord - not just do whatever government orders them to. What are we coming to?

Video of Dodd's closing remarks (via O'Reilly Radar):



More thorough (but not so up-to-date) coverage by the NY Times.

"Hacking" Campaign Finance Law

On Wired.com: Ron Paul Supporters Hack Campaign Finance Law to Send Blimp Aloft

Would this "end run" around campaign finance law be "hacking" (which implies good-hearted mischief) if the Swift Boaters did it? I don't think so. Regardless of what I think of Ron Paul (and he does seem like the sanest man in the Republican primary), this is kinda dodgy.

See also coverage from this week's On the Media.

Googlepedia will have experts!

Google recently announced its response to Wikipedia, a collection of webpages called "knols," so called because they'll be discrete chunks of knowledge. The announcement on the official Google blog puts a lot of emphasis on the way in which knols are not Wikipedia with a link to Gmail in the top corner: expert authors. Knols will be written by people who already have a reputation connected to the relevant subject, with prominent attribution for contributors.

It's an interesting idea. First, it should prevent people and organizations from tweaking entries to suit their PR preferences (unless, of course, the Pentagon gets to write its own knol). Second, it could be a great opportunity for academics to make their work accessible to the lay audience that doesn't have university-provided access to the journal sites. Disseminating your work to the unwashed masses looks good on grant applications (filed under "broader impacts"), and lord knows we can all use the practice at explaining our work in common sensical terms.

At this early stage, knols contributions are invitation-only. Hey Google! Want a knol about Joshua trees?

The rising tide of I.Q.

The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell has a short but worthwhile column about James Flynn's observation that worldwide I.Q. test scores are rising, and its implications for the interpretation of I.Q. in general. Gladwell takes the opportunity to snipe at William Saletan's recent defacement of Slate.com with a series of columns on race and I.Q., which (after stirring up a hurricane of scorn on Slate's reader forum) culminated in a sad non-apology when Saletan's main source turned out to be a known white supremacist.