The August 2008 issue of Integrative and Comparative Biology has the following papers in a special section entitled Evolution vs. creationism in the classroom: evolving student attitudes.

Trichoplax adhaerens is a bizarre little animal with a decidedly simple morphology. (You can see some here). There has been some question as to the relationship between this critter and other animal groups, but mitochondrial sequences (Dellaporta et al.

This appeared in my weekly automated journal search. I have ordered the paper as I can't find an online copy, but the abstract pretty much covers what the argument will be. Same old pre-1980s adaptationist idea presented as radically novel.

The Panda's Thumb (PT) has a short post giving a quote from Michael Medved, a new fellow at the Discovery Institute (DI) (which promotes intelligent design, or ID).

The first post at Genomicron was called "My grad student made me do it", and explained that a then-newly-arrived PhD student in my lab was a blogger and got me interested in blogging.

In case you aren't reading them yet, take a minute to check out these relatively new blogs by scientists:

BdellaNea
A blog about leeches -- Mark Siddall (American Museum of Natural History)

Larry Moran directs us to have a look at Species-Scape at the Cornell website. It's great.

But...

I already posted one of these figures in an earlier version of What's wrong with these figures?, but the other one of them I hadn't noticed. For the answers, please see the post on Evolgen.

The move from Blogger to Scientific Blogging has been good overall, and I am certainly enjoying more hits and a broader readership from outside the normal blogosphere. However, I have also noticed that bloggers and blog readers have more or less dropped off. I think it would be useful for Genomicron to reach both audiences, but it seems that one Genomicron can't serve that function yet.

Scientific Blogging is a work in progress and lots of neat features (some of which are visible, some are not) are being incorporated continually.  As things move forward, it is helpful to bug the powers that be to fix things that we don't like and to include things that we do.  So, in this comment thread, please NICELY point out things that you would like to see updated or changed. 

As many of you are aware, a new journal entitled Evolution: Education and Outreach was launched in late 2007, with three issues now available.  What you may not know is that the journal also has a

Or something.  See the paper

Carl Zimmer has posted a spiffy summary of the word usage in his book Microcosm using the super cool Wordle site.

A very brief comment on a complicated topic...

New Scientist has a story in the current issue about epigenetics -- differences in gene expression that are not due to changes in the gene sequences themselves -- and how non-genetic variation can be both influenced environmentally and, in some cases, inherited.

In today's issue of Science there is a piece by Elizabeth Pennisi on the "Altenberg 16" who will be attending what overhyping journalist Suzan Mazur calls the "Woodstock of Evolutionary Biology", only it "promises to be far more transforming for the world".

In case anyone is new to the blog, here are some ways that you can explore content.

Browse the content on the new blog

The best of Genomicron (links to posts on the old page)

Search Genomicron (new and old sites):

I have previously been pleased to announce on Genomicron the release of the first two issues of Volume 1 of Evolution: Education and Outreach.

Some time ago, I lamented a precipitous drop in subscriptions to the Genomicron RSS feed from a high of more than 500 (RSS woes).

In reading an interesting article in the New York Times (in part because it quotes my colleague Andrew MacDougall), I came upon this statement that caused a bit of a cough.