HIV and the T Cell Life Cycle

In an excellent review of a paper in the Journal of Biology (“Generalized immune activation as a direct result of activated CD4+ T cell killing“), Nienke Vrisekoop , Judith N Mandl, and Ronald N Germain discuss the life and death of the T lymphocyte.
T lymphocytes have a difficult existence. As mature cells, they are essential [...]

Astrobiology: Part of RNA Built in the Lab

Astrobiologists have built Uracil, a component in RNA, in space-like conditions in the lab.
“We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, a component of RNA, non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space,” said Michel Nuevo, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We are showing that these laboratory processes, [...]

Change Geeks Can Believe In: White House Goes Drupal

President Obama promised us change, and change we get.  The White House official website, whitehouse.gov, has changed its CMS (Content Management System) to the open source platform Drupal.
Drupal is, quite frankly, a pain in the butt if you don’t know any php, and aren’t comfortable learning the architecture of a site.  For most individuals who [...]

House Passes Health Care Bill with Public Option

It looked dicey, but last night it happened.  The House passed the health care bill with a public option.  I’m not sure the Senate will keep the public option–regarless of 60% approval ratings for it in the public.  But, we’ll see.
According to the Huffington Post:
The Congressional Progressive Caucus had pushed hard for a “robust” public [...]

Happy 40th Sesame Street: Let’s Count to 12!

This is how I learned how to count to 12.  Arguably the coolest counting song of all time (sung by the Pointer Sisters).  Thanks Sesame Street.

Ardipithecus, Poster Child for an Evolutionary Adaptive Plateau

“Ardi”, or Ardipithecus ramidus, has been much in the news lately.  Most of the reporting has been decent, but there are some clearly over hyped ones.  Thankfully, Paleoanthropologist John Hawks wrote an article for Seed magazine about Ardipithicus and its significance to the ongoing science of human origins.  He also wrote up a great FAQ [...]

New Paint Job

As you can see (unless you’re reading this via RSS or email), I’ve changed the look slightly of the blog.  It’s not a major shift, but I dropped one of the sidebars, and changed the decorations and fonts.  I’m still using Sandbox 0.6.1, but while the old theme was based on Biology by Ntuat, this [...]

Parochial Altruism and War: A Game Theoretic Analysis

War, what is it good for?  Apparently, altruism.  In a paper published in Science, Samuel Bowels and Jung-Kyoo Choi took a game-theoretic approach to studying the evolutionary roots of both altruism and parochialism.  They concluded that neither would have likely evolved alone, but instead co-evolved, together being a powerful combination in the survival kit  of [...]

Be a Heathen, Save a Pet

If you are a devout Christian who is afraid what will become of your pet when the rapture comes and you are whisked off to heaven, then have I found the organization for you.
Eternal Earth Bound Pets is a charitable organization designed with your needs in mind.  Here’s the basics:
You’ve committed your life to Jesus. [...]

Gettin’ Boney With It: 78th Four Stone Hearth at Paddy K

Paddy K is hosting the 78th Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival, and the theme is Bones.
I was particularly interested by Adhominin’s look at mid Pleistocene Heidelbergensis.
At the conference, much attention was focused on the Middle Pleistocene “muddle in the middle” [3], particularly the role of Homo heidelbergensis in hominin evolution. While H. heidelbergensis possesses [...]