For those who enjoyed our first set of bacteria art images, you will definitely want to check out Microbial Art.

www.microbialart.com

For those who enjoyed our first set of bacteria art images, you will definitely want to check out Microbial Art.

www.microbialart.com

From Oct. 9-30, the University of Guelph and Ed Video are hosting a special art exhibit entitled "This View of Life: Evolutionary Art for the Year of Darwin". It was organized by professors in four departments: Integrative Biology, Philosophy, History, and English and Theatre Studies, and was curated by Scott McGovern of Ed Video. The exhibit features art by 10 artists, all inspired by the themes of evolution, Darwin, and biodiversity.

The Gregory Lab contributed some installations as well, which are shown in this brief clip from just before the opening reception on Oct. 16 (about 200 people attended the event).

I liked it.

Overall, I think the Discovery Channel did a good job of capturing the painstaking work that goes into scientific research, in this case spanning more than 15 years from discovery to publication. Some other quick thoughts:

• This was not hype. If anything, it was pretty modest, given the amount and significance of the work involved. I didn't see the Darwinius special, but even the previews had me wincing.
  
  

Some instructors have lamented the challenges of teaching students who are constantly logged-on, plugged-in, facebooked, etc.

Guess what? I like teaching the iGeneration*. I enjoy using YouTube clips in my lectures, putting together online discussions, and making use of blogs and online resources. I like the fact that they all have laptops (but not if they're rude enough to play games during class). I appreciate that I can upload my lecture notes as PDF files and they will all be able to bring them to lectures. I have a BlackBerry, an iPod, a netbook, a blog (obviously), a document scanner, and miscellaneous other gadgets. I hate being offline as much as my students do.

The folks over at Science and Religion Today were interested in our study on graduate student conceptions of evolution, and asked me to give some thoughts on the question "How detailed an understanding of evolution do we need?" Here is my answer.

In my recent article on Understanding natural selection in E:EO, I reviewed a large number of studies that examined conceptions of evolution among students from the high school to undergraduate level, as well as among teachers. However, almost nothing seemed to be known about how graduate students in science perceive evolution or how well they understand it. At least, until a student and I did a study at our own university, which is now out in the journal BioScience.

Here's a press release on it:

Tomorrow's Science will be a special issue reporting tons of new information on the fossil hominid Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi"), which is really exciting (though not as much as Darwinius, which was "like a meteor hitting the Earth" or whatever).

Sometimes it is helpful to have a catchy word to describe one's type of research. I think that's why "omics" words are so popular -- they encapsulate a complex combination of approaches (usually something + genomics, or something-more-than-genomics) in a memorable way that immediately conveys the gist of the field.

"Metagenomics" is a good example -- it's the study of a larger assemblage of genomes than just one, usually from an environmental sample of microbes. "Proteiomics" is another, or "transcriptomics". Of course, this can get out of hand (see here).

I have been a CrackBerry user for several years, and am rarely seen without it in my hand or on my belt. Last week I traded my 8700 for the Bold (9000) -- wow, what a good move! The Bold is faster, sleeker, and has 3G capabilities for functions that I would not have tried on the older EDGE network. Anyhow, I have been having fun looking for additional apps for it, and have come up with a good list. Here they are...

Poynt
An absolutely outstanding free app with local searches for people, businesses, restaurants, and movies, including the ability to watch trailers.

LaunchPad