Recently in Announcements Category

The 45^th Carnival of Evolution is up at Adrian Thysse’s Splendour Awaits in a new and interesting format, with (at least) one bug per page guaranteed.

Charles Darwin in 1816. Detail of a painting by Ellen Sharples. Public domain.

And the Center for Inquiry provides a short list of resources for campus organizations or anyone else who wants to sponsor an event. In particular, you may contact their speakers bureau to find speakers on evolution, creationism, and intelligent-design creationism (it is a complete mystery why hardly anyone from Panda’s Thumb is on that list, but we will not go into that now). Additionally, Center for Inquiry directs you to the International Darwin Day Foundation, where you may find a list of activities near you, and, of course, the National Center for Science Education.

CFI recommends that you try to teach someone about evolution or other scientific principles and notes that the Public Broadcasting System has a wealth of material on evolution, science, and Darwin. The Understanding Evolution Web page is likewise an excellent resource.

Finally, not mentioned by CFI, the Clergy Letter Project lists 400-odd religious congregations that plan Evolution Weekend activities, February 10-12. Indeed, it may be of interest to some that Science can help church keep its young folk.

Upcoming television series on PBS: Inside Nature’s Giants, begins January 18^th at 10 PM.

Professor Joy Reidenberg is an unlikely TV star. She’s a comparative anatomist with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Physically, she is diminutive, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and not the sort of slender sylph in morphotype that TV producers seem to favor. But Joy has deep anatomical knowledge and a gift for communicating what she knows, and that led the producers of the documentary series, “Inside Nature’s Giants”, to feature Joy in their program.

(Originally posted at Austringer)

Jonathan Smith, VP of Florida Citizens for Science, will be interviewed by RadioExiles about teaching good science in schools, what is bad science, and the knowledge (or lack thereof) of the presidential candidates. The program “The seven day challenge” will be here at 11:30 am Eastern on Friday, December 2. It looks like the podcast will be available a bit later.

I just found out that Gobind Khorana died November 9 at his home in Concord MA. Khorana won the Nobel in 1968 (along with Nirenberg and Holley) for deciphering the genetic code. Before his work, nobody knew how a DNA sequence could “encode” the information necessary to make a protein macromolecule. His experiments were carried out in the classic bacterial system Escherichia coli. The realization that the genetic code in a single-celled bacterium is the exact same code used in humans is what finally convinced the biological community that all life, from trees to bacteria to elephants, shares common ancestry.

Khorana was also the first person to artificially synthesize a synthetic gene and use it to make a protein. It is not an exaggeration to say that these twin feats form the basis of all modern work on proteins.

Later, Khorana went on to use these techniques to investigate in detail the structure and mechanism of bacteriorhodopsin, which has to be one of the darn coolest proteins in the biosphere (full disclosure — I’m biased, since my lab now studies the evolution of bacteriorhodopsin). Photosynthesis evolved twice, with two very different mechanisms: plants use chlorophyll, and many bacteria use bacteriorhodopsin. While chlorophyll wins in terms of efficiency, bacteriorhodopsin is much simpler and more elegant.

Well, it had to happen sometime. Yet another one of our own, veteran TO-poster, long-time PT contributor, hacker, and guru Reed Cartwright, has taken the academic plunge and accepted a tenure-track appointment. (As if it wasn’t enough being the current Huxley Faculty Fellow at Rice University!) Reed starts this coming January 2012 as an Assistant Professor with the Biodesign Institute (does that have the D-word in it?) at Arizona State University. He will be sharing his lab space with Prof. Steve Steve, of course.

Word also has it that, as all good geneticists should, Reed has successfully replicated himself (albeit quite imperfectly, only 50% genetic identity by descent). As you can plainly see above, these life-changing events have had quite an effect on the poor Reed.

Congratulations Prof Cartwright!

According to an advance review of a program tonight on the Discovery Channel, Stephen Hawking (unsurprisingly) says no. In the U. S., the program is on the tube at 8:00 Eastern time.

PZ Myers, Ed Brayton, The Digital Cuttlefish, Chris Rodda, and DarkSyde are starting a blog network called FreethoughtBlogs.com. It’ll open August 1, tomorrow. From the comments on the Facebook announcement of the opening it looks like Ophelia Benson will be joining it soon, too.

They have TED. We have BILL.

We here at Panda’s Thumb are pleased to announce the establishment of a new video lecture series: Brilliantly Illuminating and Lively Lectures, or BILLs.

Once every two weeks, a new BILL will be posted along with commentary by a PT crew member. Topics can vary widely, with the only criteria being brilliance, illumination, liveliness, and/or financial contributions from members like you. Feel free to nominate lectures for inclusion in this prestigious series by leaving a comment here or by emailing the director of the BILL series at BILL at pandasthumb dot org.

Our first two BILLs are already selected, and the inaugural BILL will be posted on Wednesday 27 July.

TED is cool. But BILL is more excellent. Party on, dudes!

I’ve been organizing Science Pub in Madison, Wisconsin since July of 2009. Each month we invite a different UW Madison science professor to Brocach Irish Pub in downtown Madison. At Science Pub there’s no PowerPoint, no podium or microphone. We just sit our speakers down in a big comfy chair with the beverage of their choice from the bar.

It’s with great sadness and not a few tears that I say goodbye to Steve Gey, someone I never met in person but who nonetheless had a huge influence on my life. Steve was a professor at the Florida State University law school and one of the preeminent First Amendment scholars in the country. He was one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in Edwards v Aguillard, the case that ruled creation science out of public school science classrooms.

A little over 4 years ago, Steve was diagnosed with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease, and he had to give up teaching about a year later. He was, according to everyone I’ve ever talked to who took his course, one of the most inspiring teachers in the country. He was revered and adored by colleagues and students alike for his brilliance and his humanity.

Shortly after he was diagnosed with ALS I was able to arrange for him to receive the Friend of Darwin award from the National Center for Science Education. I called Glenn Branch to ask about it and he said that the board had, in fact, just voted unanimously to give him that award but they hadn’t yet found a venue in which to give it to him (they typically like to ambush people who win the award and give it to them when they don’t expect it).

I told Glenn I knew of the perfect time to do it. A group of his students were running a triathlon a few days later to raise money for ALS research in his name and they were going to be having a banquet afterwards. The NCSE rushed the award down to a friend of mine, who was one of Steve’s students and dearest friends. She was so happy to be able to present that award to him.

The country has lost one of its finest teachers and one of its most powerful advocates for civil liberties. And a great many people have lost a man who inspired them.

If there’s anyone living in the Columbus, OH, area who’s interested in getting involved (or more involved) in science outreach and the Science Cafe movement, now’s your chance. The Columbus Science Pub, which I started off back in September 2010 and which now boasts over 450 fans on Facebook, is looking for new leadership to take over when Dan (the current organizer) leaves Cowtown at the end of the summer.

Anyone interested should send a note to [Enable javascript to see this email address.].

For more information on the Columbus Science Pub, go to Columbus Science Pub’s Facebook site or for information on the Science Cafe movement, check out http://www.sciencecafes.org/.

If any of our readers or contributors are taking part in Darwin Week activities, I’d like to invite them to announce those activities here. The International Darwin Day Foundation lists the better part of 100 activities here, most but not all between February 9 and 12. But if anyone has any pet activities to publicize, please go at it in the comments.

I will start: One of my colleagues tells me that the Iowa City event on February 11 and 12 will feature two talks by Frans de Waal, one technical, and one general. The general talk is entitled “Morality before Religion: Empathy, Reciprocity and Fairness in our Fellow Primates.” You may find the entire schedule and location at the link directly above.

The Secular Students and Skeptics Society at the University of Colorado is sponsoring a weeklong event, February 7-11. On Wednesday, February 9, I will discuss my contention that our sense of morality is an evolved trait; by a not entirely surprising coincidence, de Waal’s work figures into my talk. The no doubt sassy students will also show the movie “Creation” on Monday, February 7, followed by a discussion led by philosophy professor Carol Cleland. Again, you may find the entire schedule and locations at the link.

All I have so far. I invite anyone else who wants to publicize a specific event to do so in the comments.

Update, January 26: Please see below the fold for an update by Michael Zimmerman of the Huffington Post.

Adrian Thysse flags the December issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach and provides links to individual articles that are easier (for me, at least) to navigate than those on the journal site. Some good stuff there.

Correction: Turns out that Adrian’s post came up in my reader this morning and I blasted right ahead not noticing that for some reason the reader had displayed Adrian’s 2009 post on that issue. Sorry, folks. (There’s still some good stuff there, though.)

What we got in the mail:

I would like to alert you and invite you (and hopefully your readers) to attend a NASA-sponsored workshop on the origin of life - but you don’t have to leave home.

In addition to the Columbus Science Pub (link is to its Facebook page) previously pimped here, there’s the Columbus Science Cafe. This week–in fact tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov 3, at 6:30 pm–Jeff McKee will speak on “The Far Side of Evolution” using (among other things) Gary Larson’s cartoons as illustrations.

Jeff is a physical anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology & Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University, a former excavator (IIRC) at Sterkfontein, a stalwart of Ohio Citizens for Science, and general all-around good guy. The Cafe is at Gateway Film Center at 1550 North High Street.

Columbus Science Pub

Central Ohioans, remember the Science Pub in Columbus on Tuesday September 7 at 7:00 pm in the basement of Hampton’s on King right by the OSU campus in Columbus.

The speaker will be Tara C. Smith, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa, Deputy Director of the University of Iowa Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, founder of Iowa Citizens for Science, author of the Scienceblog Aetiology, and a participant in the Panda’s Thumb field trip to the Creomuseum. Tara will be talking on “Science Denial and the Internet.” More info on the Science Pub’s Facebook page.

Marion Science Cafe

Also, a foreshadowing: the Marion Science Cafe, now in its fourth year under the leadership of Brian McEnnis of OSU Marion, will have its first meeting on Tuesday, October 5, with guest speaker Mike Elzinga, a regular PT commenter. Mike will be talking about “Order, Disorder, and Entropy: Misconceptions and Misuses of Thermodynamics.” I’ll post a reminder a few days before it. Unfortunately that conflicts with the second Science Pub meeting. I know the principals have been in contact in an attempt to work that out, but have no news yet.

And there are adult beverages available there, too.