I just received promotional information about a new book from Garland Science publishers. “Genome Duplication; concepts, mechanisms, evolution and disease” By Melvin L DePamphilis and Stephen D Bell. Garland Science Oct 2010 ISBN: 978-0-415-44206. It sounds like a great title, especially for someone like me who thinks genome and gene duplication are among the most…
Author: Dave Lunt
Resolutions and Predictions
Last January I made a list of (science) new year resolutions and made some predictions for the coming year. Thought I’d have a look back… 2009 Resolutions * Read more. I used to read at least a paper a day during my PhD. Some PDF counting last year showed me I had averaged 3 per…
From White to Meselson
One of the most talked about ideas in genetic studies of asexual reproduction has been that of extreme Allelic Sequence Divergence (ASD), often called the “Meselson effect” after Matthew Meselson who is usually credited with this idea. In obligatory asexuals (apomicts), which never have the opportunity to recombine during meiosis, the once homologous chromosome pairs…
Why kids don’t understand evolution
In Britain Top Trumps cards have been favourite games of 5 to 11 year olds for at least 30 years (one of my most traumatic childhood memories is dropping my entire collection while crossing a main road and seeing it become Top Trumps roadkill). I recently bought my son the Dinosaurs set as in-flight entertainment…
Wolfram Alpha and Taxonomy
I’ve been exploring Wolfram alpha the new “computational knowledge engine”. If you want to see what it can do have a look at the introductory screencast. It looks really interesting. Taxonomy and information about species is not what it does, its designed I guess to summarize and display primarily numerical data “GDP France / UK”…
Paperless Office
I’ve moved out of my office while falling plaster and cracks in the wall (last years earthquake damage!) are repaired. While packing up I made a decision to see if I could get rid of most of the paper in my office (and not replace it). This is both for environmental reasons and also because…
WordPress ELN and data files
In my previous post I said that I needed to find out about associating data files with electronic lab book entries. I think I’ve got it sorted out now. Imagine you are recording an experiment and want to associate the actual data files with the post of your ELN blog. I don’t mean put the…
WordPress as ELN
In my previous post I said that I had been testing software and decided that the new version of WordPress would be my electronic laboratory notebook (ELN). This post details some of the reasons. WordPress is open software under a GPL license, allowing it to be distributed and modified. I really like this. There is…
Electronic Lab Books 2
Last year I posted about my search for an electronic laboratory notebook (eln). Since then I’ve had experience of several systems, and my ideas have changed quite a bit, so I thought it was time for another post. I listed a number of criteria that I thought were important for my eln. I got it…
The Origins of Phylogeny
I just saw a very interesting piece by Ben Zimmer, whose post details 144 words for which Darwin has the earliest recorded use in English (and he compares to Lincoln, who has one). One of these words is “phylogeny”. I was a little surprised because surely Haeckel invented the term phylogeny. Indeed he did, but…
EvoPhylo 