Bjornostman

LATEST ARTICLES ( 111 )

• My Pet Theory About the Human Nose: Breastfeeding

  

  Why is the outer nose shaped as it is? Why don't humans just have two holes in the face, rather than this protuberance that we care so much to have the right... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Carnival of Evolution #59 is up

  

  The 59th edition of Carnival of Evolution is now up at DNA Barcoding. Letter from the Doctor. CoE needs hosts for the next editions, and you could host the... Read more

  Posted on 02 May 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can We Predict Evolution?

  

  Evolution is not predictable, right? It has famously been said that if we were to rerun the tape of life, it would be very unlikely that something like humans... Read more

  Posted on 13 April 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The War on Science™

  

  According to Science Left Behind (book review), there's a war on science, and it isn't raged by conservatives alone. Progressives are also ideologues who... Read more

  Posted on 13 March 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• My Guide to Better Talks

  I like public speaking, and would like to be better at it. Two rules I have been living by are: Love the words that you speak Always have something to say Numbe... Read more

  Posted on 03 March 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Professorship in France

  

  On EvolDir there is this job-posting: *The lab of "Biometry and Evolutionary Biology" UMR CNRS 5558, (***University of ******Lyon**, France)* offers a... Read more

  Posted on 24 February 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Titles in Evolution

  

  Can you spot the odd one out in today's list of titles in evolutionary biology? The category is open, though. For example, the journal Evolution insists on its... Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2013 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Weird Comments

  I get quite a few anonymous comments to random posts. They are random in that there is no apparent correlation between the content of my posts and their... Read more

  Posted on 19 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Empty Talk About the Evolution of Complexity

  

  PZ Myers has a post on the evolutionary origins of complexity: αEP: Complexity is not usually the product of selection I find it frustrating that people... Read more

  Posted on 15 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Title in Evolution Quiz

  

  For those unawares (prolly all), I post these titles in evolution i) as a reminder to myself when I skim the numerous eTOCs that I get in my inbox every week,... Read more

  Posted on 09 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 54th Carnival of Evolution is up

  

  54th edition is up at ideonexus.com: Carnival of Evolution #54: A Walkabout Mount Improbable. And it's a super-fancy one, so don't miss it, and let everyone els... Read more

  Posted on 01 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Titles in Evolution Overload

  

  There are simply too many interesting papers published in evolutionary biology to keep up with. Not even just reading the abstracts is feasible. Read more

  Posted on 17 November 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Knowing What I Know Now...

  

  I'm an evolutionary and computational biologist doing my second postdoc at Michigan State University. I have learned all sorts of thing in this short career, an... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Pleiotropy Saves the Day for Evolving New Genes

  

  What is the origin of new genes? In order to do new stuff, new genes are needed. Where do they come from, then? Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) - direct... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Carnival of Evolution Statistics

  

  David Morrison just hosted Carnival f Evolution #52, and now he has written a post with lots of statistics of CoE: The network history of the Carnival of... Read more

  Posted on 22 October 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Titles in Evolution - and in Creation?

  

  Here w go again with the new articles on evolution. This is just a very small sample that I chose out of interest from the last couple of weeks - and just from ... Read more

  Posted on 17 October 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Ochman on Bacterial Evolution

  

  Yesterday I went to the annual Thomas S Whittam Memorial Lecture here at MSU. Howard Ochman talked about "Evolutionary Forces Affecting Bacterial Genomes",... Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Genotype-phenotype Maps and Mathy Biology

  

  I'm reading a book chapter by Peter Stadler from 2002 called Landscapes and Effective Fitness [1]. It has this absolutely gorgeous figure: I love it. But just... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How to Be a Good Speaker

  

  Bjørn's two rules of being a good speaker: Love the words that you speak Always have something to say An engaged speaker is more enjoyable to listen to than... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Epistasis in Evolution

  

  [The following is a post written for BEACON.] What is epistasis? Epistasis is a measure of the strength of epistatic interactions. Epistatic interactions are... Read more

  Posted on 17 September 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE