Trackback: Calling all skeptics, science bloggers, and med bloggers Tracked on: tangledbank (66.15.48.88) at 2005 07 21 08:18:35
Much to appeal to the scientifically minded is coming up on the weblogs. First, The thirteenth Skeptics' Circle is available for reading right now at Respectful Insolence. This is the weblog carnival for critical thinking. Second, there is another...

#32522: Raven — 07/21  at  08:23 AM

I'll have you know, though, that I am an accomplished neurosurgeon…it's just that all of my patients have been fish and insect embryos, and none of them have ever survived the operation.

Realistic, attainable goals are the secret to success. Besides, taking out that pesky "survivability" requirement takes a lot of stress off of the surgeon.

#32525: — 07/21  at  10:04 AM
LOL!

With beauty operations and all, adaption to invasive procedures may be a new evolutionary pressure in humans that we will eventually benefit from. So I think surgeons should consider it to be a good outcome anyway if by accident some patients survives.

#32528: — 07/21  at  10:44 AM
Totally off topic of course but as people who are obviously all interested in evo-devo I just wanted to point out a paper in this weeks edition of Nature (21 July 2005, subcription required - and recommended!) on "The nerual crest origins of the neck and shoulder" by Masuoka et al.
This is one of the most beautiful papers I've read in a while. In it they use individual cell fate mapping to follow the developmental origins of neck muscles and bones from either the neural crest (basicaly "head-derived" mucles) and somitic mesoderm (trunk muscles). By identifying the source of the muscle scaffolding of the neck and shoulder bones they find that the attachment of the muslces and the bones, rather than the type of bone has been evolutionarily conserved - a major turn-over of "ossification model". Using this they can determine bone homologies in the neck region not just in currently extant species such as mamals, amphibians and sharks, but also in fossil tetrapods and fish.

In addition this gives them an insight into previously baffing features of human diseases by showing how and where the pleitropic effects are derived and directly suggests canditate genes or pathways for several syndromes.

This is a marvelous illustration of how science works - two competing hypotheses are tested empirically with the lastest tools and the one that fits the data the best will eventually come out on top.

Anyone who says that the naturalistic worldview lacks wonder has never read an insightful and well done scientific study. When everything falls into place like that its wonderful!

Cheers,
Yak

#32532: PZ Myers — 07/21  at  10:59 AM
Oh, yeah...I'm working my way through that paper now. Lots and lots of good stuff in there that I'll probably find time to present here in the not-too-distant future.