Redux: Doom and the Dogmometer

By: | May 21, 2018

This post originally appeared June 21, 2017

One way to understand a really big problem is to break it down into more manageable parts. That’s why scientists use specific, smaller systems to help them grasp the overall health of the planet. The Arctic, for example, is regarded as a bellwether for the catastrophes of climate change that will soon afflict us all, thanks to its temperatures that are rising faster than those in any other region on Earth. There’s also the escalating loss of glacier ice around the world. Or this week’s “heat attack,” which will basically force residents of the American Southwest to go hide deep underground in caves or risk perishing in temperatures predicted to climb past 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

But since long before the famous hockey stick graph, scientists have also secretly relied on another, much more ancient analog to skry the hot ’n’ doomy future: The dogmometer.

The dogmometer is an accurate indicator of ambient air temperature, gradating from “so cold I have reduced my body to the size of a fist and buried my face in my own butt” to “all the other dog owners buy kiddie pools when it’s this hot, you asshat” and “OK I’m basically dead of hotness I will never move again not even for treats.” But its readings are more precise than a regular thermometer’s, because they also incorporate a dog’s uncanny ability to pick up on ambient vibes to put those temperatures in local, regional, and even global ecological and geopolitical context.

Even better, you don’t need some fancy degree to read a dogmometer. And you’d better learn, because with Trump in the Whitehouse, U.S. government funding for climate change research is bound to plunge. Here, let’s go through some examples. More…

 

The Last Word

By: | May 19, 2018

May 14-18, 2018

To start the week, Emma has some good news: butterflies are adapting more nimbly to the Anthropocene that some might have thought. This happy ending surprised the researchers. “Our mindset in 2014 was simply to reconfirm the extinction, and we were very surprised to find larvae,” they write. To be fair, ecologists are often unprepared for good news.

Michelle reduxes a post about the taxonomically-frustrating caribou—and a collaborative study about these animals. When he explained to them that Polfus was asking whether residents would be willing to collect caribou scat in exchange for gasoline gift cards, they thought at first they had misunderstood; then, they burst out laughing.

Abstruse Goose is back! Hooray!!

Cassie has a pain in the ankle, and ends up accidentally getting a reflexology treatment that sets off her skeptic alarms . . . and a surprising sense of hope. I lay quietly and tried not to grimace or yelp or giggle as J– pressed her fingers deep into my feet while saying things like “your breast area feels great,” “your kidney is tense,” and “you have so many ribs out,” a phrase I find totally baffling.

At the end of the week, Rebecca takes us to the moon, where a Lunar Library may be installed in 2020—a moon landing that is a different kind of giant leap. It is a reflection of our most fundamental desire, the deepest ache in all our hearts that ties us to everyone who has ever lived. It is a way for us to send versions of ourselves into the future.

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Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Desolation, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

 

To The Moon, For the Last Refuge of Human Knowledge

By: | May 18, 2018

After several thousand years spent looking up and contemplating the nature of the cosmos, as well as what’s for dinner, we humans have amassed a lot of knowledge. We know the precise age of the Earth and the universe. We know how life sends copies of itself into the future. We know, with amazing accuracy, how strange mistakes in those copies lead to endless forms of life. We know who won the 1998 World Series and how to calculate area and the best way to make a beef bourginon. This is a lot of information to have in one brain, so humans also invented a way to offload some of that information and store it someplace else, through writing.

The loss of collective knowledge, either through deliberate acts of destruction or via accidents, remains one of the most potent sources of psychic pain — at least on a humanistic level. So there was something so touching about the press release I got from Astrobotic Technologies this week. Continue reading →

A Skeptic Limps Into a Reflexology Session

By: | May 17, 2018

Six months ago, I did something foolish. I ran a five-mile race with little training. I figured five miles wasn’t going to kill me, and it didn’t. But after the race, I had a nagging ache in my ankle. So I took a break from running, and the ankle pain went away. I thought I was cured.

But each time I tried to be more active, the pain would return. I’d run, the ankle would hurt. I’d rest, the ankle would get better. I’d power through a tough workout at the gym, the ankle would hurt. I’d rest and it would get better. No matter how long I rested, however, the pain would always return.

A few months ago, I finally went to see a doctor. She diagnosed me with posterior tibial tendonitis — inflammation of the tendon that runs along the inside of the leg from the big toe into the calf. She prescribed physical therapy. Weeks later, I was still in pain. But because of a glitch with my insurance, I couldn’t see that doctor again. So I saw another doctor. Same diagnosis. He gave me wool pads to put in my shoes. They didn’t help either. I asked my physical therapist if I should undertake an intensive rehabilitation protocol I found by scouring PubMed. He shrugged.  Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: The Naked Intellect

By: | May 16, 2018

Our boy is back!  Abstruse Goose was our go-to back-up for 100 years, then he unaccountably disappeared for another hundred.  And now, with no explanation (and we don’t need one), he’s back amongst us and our hearts rejoice.

This one you can figure out without knowing what Bayesian priors are. I know a little because I like saying “Bayesian priors.”  The Reverend Thomas Bayes, 1700’s, wrote “An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” (source: Wikipedia, without shame but with admiration for Rev. Bayes’ excellent title), in which he tries (“essays”) to figure out (not that I’ve read the essay) how to make predictions most accurately.  Turns out you’ll be a better predictor if you take into account — before (prior to) making the prediction, mind you — how likely any given scenario is.  Example here: will Han Solo make it through the asteroid field? 100%, period. I’d argue the real Bayesian prior is that Harrison Ford was signed up for the sequel.

Anyway, it’s logic done with math.  And since I don’t do math, you shouldn’t take my word for any of this.  Besides, what Abstruse Goose did with his Bayesian priors here just made my neurons go on the fritz.

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http://abstrusegoose.com/584

Redux: How to Name a Caribou

By: | May 15, 2018

Few species are more frustrating to taxonomists than the North American caribou. Ranging from the Canadian Arctic to the Great Lakes, caribou vary enormously in size, color, antler shape, habitat, and behavior. Some aren’t much bigger than domestic dogs; others are almost big enough to rub shoulders with a moose. For more than two centuries, scientists have argued over the identities and distributions of caribou subspecies and populations, and while they now generally agree on the existence of four North American subspecies, naming criteria remains controversial and, in some places, wildly inconsistent. The confusion has consequences not only for science but also for the caribou themselves: Because some subspecies are protected by Canadian and U.S. endangered-species laws and others are not, names can determine destiny.

Continue reading →

Butterflies can adapt to a humanized world–and that’s worth celebrating

By: | May 14, 2018

The inhabitants of little world evolve very quickly, making them nimble in the Anthropocene. That’s good, because most things on Earth are little.

It is because I have some faith in the richness of the little world’s genetic raw material and the blind, brute power of evolution that I am less worried about “invasive” plants than I used to be. Case in point: the American Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) has been invading Western Europe since the early 20th century. It only took 100 years for the insects to adapt to it and begin eating it. Ecologist Menno Schilthuizen found over 64 species—including some finicky “specialist species” predicted to shun the novel—gnawing on it in a 2016 study in PeerJ. (Cool short video about the experiment here.)

This week, in Nature, we are treated to another tale of insect adaptability in a humanized world. This is a really fantastic longterm experiment with a long and painstakingly collected data set—and here is the story the data tell…

In one meadow in Nevada, the Edith’s checkerspot Butterfly (Euphydryas editha) began to eat and lay its eggs on the introduced narrow-leaved plantain (Plantago lanceolata). Indeed, those that chose the new plant instead of their old standby—maiden blue eyed Mary (Collinsia parviflora)—had higher numbers of surviving offspring because the plantain lives longer and is reliably there to nourish emerging larvae. Starting in the 1980s, butterflies in this meadow began to prefer to lay their eggs on Plantago, a preference that was genome-deep. By 2005, every single female the scientists caught was a convert. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 12, 2018

May 7 – May 11, 2018

Ann starts off the week by tapping into her inner Aldo Leopold and remembering the forests of her youth in Northern Illinois. The trees and critters and flowers might be the same but you can’t ever really go home again.

Jessa discusses the Green Party and the party over green as Canada legalizes marijuana across the country. It will surely be a boon for researchers as well as weed-happy Canadian youth.

All things have to end but not all things end when they should. Rose reviews the her favorite shows that have recently passed into the mists and thinks about the end of her own podcast.

Sally imagines the end of the world as really only Sally can. It’s dark and funny and just plain weird. It’s kinda hard to explain, actually. The easiest thing would just be to read it for yourself.

Christie knows astrology is bullshit. She knows it, she really does. But she just can’t help checking her horoscope anyway – especially when she has writer’s block.

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