February 9, 2013
Global warming is threatening marine life
from http://www.socialphy.com/posts/pets-animals/18969/Sea-Butterflies.html
Excerpted from the Athens Banner-Herald, Dec 12, 2012:
“The proverbial “canary in a coal mine” invokes an image of a living early warning system that cannot only detect perilous changes in the environment but has the capability to warn us about the unseen dangers that are often lurking just below the surface of our understanding.
lurking just below the surface of our understanding.
Pteropods are small marine mollusks commonly found in Arctic and Antarctic waters. Unlike most snails and slugs, pteropods do not crawl along the bottom. The name “pteropod” means “flying foot,” and they swim by means of winglike flaps, giving the impression that these delicate creatures are soaring through the water.
Microscopic plankton, abundant in polar seas, is the principal food of pteropods. Many other creatures, including large fish such as salmon, depend on pteropods for a major part of their diet. In turn, killer whales, bears and other top predators feed on the fish. Thus, pteropods play a critical role in the food web that makes polar seas among the most biologically productive places on the planet.
But all that is changing.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising steadily, the result of burning fossil fuels. Since 1850, worldwide carbon dioxide levels have increased nearly 45 percent. Nearly a quarter of this greenhouse gas is absorbed into the world’s oceans, where it reacts with water and produces carbonic acid — the same sort of acid as found in soda.
As carbonic acid has accumulated over time, the chemistry of the oceans has been slowly changing. The seas have become more acidic, presenting a problem for pteropods which, like other snails, have shells.
These shells are composed of a form of calcium carbonate known as aragonite. All pteropods have shells when they are young, but a heavy shell makes swimming difficult, which is why adult animals have either very thin shells — or in some cases, have lost them altogether.
The problem with maintaining a thin shell comes from the fact that aragonite dissolves in acid. A laboratory study in which pteropods were raised under increasing levels of acidity showed that the animals had to spend more and more energy to keep from having their shells disappear altogether. At a certain point, they could not keep up, and they simply died.
Based on these findings, researchers warned that pteropods could become very stressed, and if ocean acidification continues, they could begin to disappear. But it now seems that their dire predictions about this happening in the next few decades were wrong. It’s already under way.
A new study, based on samples collected in 2008, shows that wild populations of pteropods from Antarctic waters are suffering the same sort of damage that was seen in the laboratory. Ocean pH has already decreased to levels which cause shells to begin dissolving, and the animals are in a very poor state of health. Should southern populations of pteropods crumple, entire marine ecosystems will collapse with them.
The only real solution is to slow, and eventually stop, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and to do so as quickly as is humanly possible.”
Complete article at http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2012-12-11/farmer-lets-heed-prophecies-sea-angels
February 5, 2013
This TED-Ed episode has a very simple and accessible way of explaining how evolution works. Share it with a teacher!
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/five-fingers-of-evolution
January 27, 2013
Making their agenda shockingly apparent, the Texas Republican party has stated: “We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
From
January 15, 2013
From NCSE January 14th, 2013
http://ncse.com/news/2013/01/sicb-lifts-boycott-new-orleans-0014676
The executive committee of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is again willing to consider New Orleans to host the society’s annual meetings. Back in 2009, the society decided not to hold any future meetings in New Orleans owing to “the official position of the state in weakening science education and specifically attacking evolution in science curricula,” according to a February 5, 2009, letter (PDF) from SICB’s president, Richard Satterlie, to Louisiana’s governor Bobby Jindal. Particularly of concern to SICB was the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, enacted in 2008, which threatens to open the door for creationism and scientifically unwarranted critiques of evolution to be taught in the state’s public school science classes. The cost to Louisiana’s economy in 2011, when SICB held its meeting in Salt Lake City rather than New Orleans, was estimated at $2.7 million.
Now, however, citing “the May 2011 New Orleans City Council’s unanimous vote rejecting the teaching of creationism as science and the December 2012 Orleans Parish School Board’s decision to prohibit the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in classes designated as science classes,” SICB is lifting its boycott for the city. In a column published by WWLTV (January 14, 2013), activist Zack Kopplin, who helped to organize both of those votes as well as the lifting of the SICB boycott, commented, “In this creationism-riddled state, New Orleans is a bright spot,” praising the city council and the parish school board for “standing up for science.” Kopplin concluded, “Teaching creationism is wrong, and we must keep up fighting it in Louisiana, but thanks to y’all our state’s policy appears to be evolving to a more scientific place.”
January 9, 2013
Georgia is one of the lead states for the development of an improved, standards-based science curriculum for K-12 public schools. The second draft of the NGSS is now available for comment. The NGSS were developed to address the nation’s critical need for a scientifically literate workforce. The U.S. is performing far below the level of our competitor nations in science and mathematics education. Job opportunities in the science and technology sectors are expanding, but America’s young people are ill-prepared to succeed in these areas. Increasingly the nation is losing out in the competition for development of new high-tech products and services. More information on the development of the standards is available at http://www.nextgenscience.org/. The standards themselves can be viewed at http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards . The NGSS development team and the State of Georgia are to be congratulated for their participation in this effort.
December 9, 2012
Is this part of a trend?
Pat Robertson, inventor of the Religious Right said on The 700 Club “Look, I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop Ussher wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said that it all took 6,000 years,” Robertson said. “It just didn’t. You go back in time; you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things, and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas.” Hmm.
Marco Rubio, governor of Florida has changed his apparent beliefs from “Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.” in a GQ interview to “There is no scientific debate on the age of the Earth. I mean, it’s established pretty definitively. It’s at least 4.5 billion years old” in a Politico interview. Why the change of mind?
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, chair of the Republican Governors Association, said on CNN in relation to some of the gaffes made by conservative candidates during the election: “We need to stop being the dumb party. We need to offer smart, conservative, intelligent ideas and policies.”
Would that include the Louisiana legislature’s idea to support teaching public school kids that the Loch Ness monster is a real living dinosaur and that the earth is 6,000 years old, Governor Jindal?
The US is being vastly outperformed in the global science education arena. It is critical for the economic success of the United States to teach our children cutting edge- not cutting floor- information about science.
November 8, 2012
via the Athens Banner-Herald, 8 November 2012:
In apparent response to State Rep. Paul Broun’s comment that evolution and other areas of science are “lies straight from the pit of hell”, Charles Darwin received almost 4000 votes as a write-in candidate against Broun in his re-election bid.
full story at http://onlineathens.com/election/2012-11-08/charles-darwin-gets-nearly-4000-write-votes-athens-against-rep-broun
May 16, 2012
Good news from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, in print on May 11 2012
Georgia science scores on national exam show improvement
By D. Aileen Dodd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:02 p.m. Thursday, May 10, 2012
Science scores for Georgia’s eighth-graders are on the rise, matching their peers across the country on a national test released Thursday.
Standardized science test scores for eighth-graders taking the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed a 4-point increase, bringing the state’s score 151 — the same as the national average. The overall growth rate for the nation was 2 points.
State officials attribute the gains to increased rigor in the science curriculum and an effort to make the subject an important part of evaluating a school’s performance.
“Georgia’s students and teachers have much to be proud of with these results,” state Superintendent John Barge said. “The national average, however, is not where we want to stay. As we implement the new accountability measures that place equal emphasis on achievement in science as we do in math, English/language arts and reading, we will continue to see those scores increase in science.”
The NAEP is given to a representative sampling of students from each state across the nation. The test is scored on a scale from 0 to 300 and is also broken down into four scoring categories: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient and Advanced.
In Georgia, a random and diverse pool of 2,367 eighth-graders took the test.
Among the test highlights:
• The average science score for white students in Georgia increased from 161 in 2009 to 166 in 2011.
• Black students’ average score increased from 129 in 2009 to 133 in 2011.
• Scores for Hispanic students increased from 137 in 2009 to 143 in 2011.
• In 2011, the gap between the average score for black students and white students was 33 points for Georgia, which was smaller than the nation (35 points).
• The gap between the average score for Hispanic students and white students was 23 points for Georgia, which was also smaller than the nation (27 points).
Fulton County Schools Superintendent Robert Avossa applauded the increase.
“It’s a strong sign that by focusing on and pushing high standards and high expectations our students and teachers will rise to the occasion,” he said. But he said the state must push even more.
In Gwinnett County, Calvin Watts, associate superintendent for teaching and learning support, said the district’s focus on science, technology and engineering in math is helping to improve science test scores.
The district has a charter school focused on the areas and integrates the subjects into the k-12 curriculum. Elementary school students participate in hands-on experiments in science and engineering labs, and middle school students are using interactive technology and online text books to experience science-related careers and case studies up close.
Watts said the effort has strengthened the academics, knowledge and skills of students in science. “We realize that our workforce does need to include problem solvers, innovators and inventors. They need to think critically, and as educators we need to think critically about developing those skills in our students.”
Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-science-scores-on-1435044.html
May 3, 2012
Evidence of non-random mutation rates suggests an evolutionary risk
management strategy
Inigo Martincorena, Aswin S. N. Seshasayee and Nicholas M. Luscombe
The local mutation rate in Escherichia coli has evolved to reduce the
risk of deleterious mutations, leading to a non-random occurrence of
mutations and suggesting that DNA protection and repair mechanisms
preferentially target more important genes.
http://links.ealert.nature.com/ctt?kn=41&ms=MzkxNTAxNDAS1&r=NzAwNTg1MDQ2MAS2&b=2&j=MTQxNDI1NDMzS0&mt=1&rt=0
March 16, 2012
A study on ‘brainless’ worms has shattered the theory that complex brains evolved entirely in vertebrates, long after they branched off from spineless species in the tree of life. Nature, 3/14/2012. Original at http://www.nature.com/news/marine-worm-rewrites-theory-of-brain-evolution-1.10226
To learn about the origin of the vertebrate brain, researchers tend to look to the group’s relatives. Studies of vertebrates’ closest living invertebrate kin — such as the fish-like lancelets, which like embryonic vertebrates have a notochord supporting the body — have previously confirmed the uniqueness of the vertebrate brain’s three-part brain structure and system of proteins directing brain formation.
However, Chris Lowe and his colleagues at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California reopened the case to study the development of an invertebrate on the next branch of the evolutionary tree. These animals, acorn worms, bear ‘gill slits’ like sharks and lancelets — the key characteristic uniting them with both vertebrates and notochord-bearing invertebrates.
Lowe’s team demonstrated that proteins in the acorn worms interact with one another in much same way that they do in vertebrates. The main difference is that the worm never forms a distinct brain. Instead, nerve cells speckle the proboscis and collar, forming what Lowe calls a “skin brain”.
Cliff Tabin, a developmental and evolutionary biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, says that the similarities cannot be a coincidence, and that the signalling centres must have evolved long ago in a common ancestor of acorn worms, vertebrates and the notochord-bearing invertebrates in between. The centres’ nearly complete absence from sea squirts and lancelets suggests that, in these creatures, they were lost over evolutionary time.
The report leaves open the question of what brain signalling centres do in an essentially brainless worm. Lowe suggests that the centres help to design the network of nerves and the tissue that surrounds them.
