Summer Assignment 7.27

Early post this week. I am leaving tomorrow morning for a camping weekend, so I probably will not have internet access again until Monday. That means that comments may take a while to show up on the site. If you post a comment over the weekend and don't see it by Tuesday morning, shoot me an email, or just try reposting.

And now, the links:

• Parkour and orangutans. Not orangutans doing parkour, which would be awesome. If you are unfamiliar with parkour, you can watch the short video below.
  
  
  
Researchers were interested in finding out more about the energetics of orangutan movements in the jungle. The use of parkour athletes to simulate the movements allowed direct measurements of oxygen consumption, rather than using mathematical models. You can hear the guys from one of my favorite podcasts, Science...Sort Of, talk about this research at the 47 minute mark of their latest episode.
• When I was in grad school, a fellow student in my lab and I had a few discussions about whether we would ever be able to recreate a living cell via computer simulation. I was on the side of it being impossible, since there was no way to know how all of the proteins interact with each other. The other student felt that it was just a matter of time before computers became powerful enough to process all the data, and since there are a finite number of proteins in a cell, there must be a finite number of interactions. Looks like I was wrong. Though to be fair (to me), this is a very simple cell; one of the simplest known in fact, with only 525 genes (humans have around 30,000 protein-encoding genes).
• So this exists. Biology is weird. Not sometimes.  All. The. Times.

Summer Assignment 7.20

Thanks for all the great comments last week. Remember, if you are going on vacation and don't think you will be able to access the site to comment, please drop me an email with the dates.

• With the Olympics around the corner, this article looks at the bio-mechanics of sprinting, and if the 9-second mark will ever be broken in the 100 m sprint. Interesting that swing time (the time between steps) is equivalent for all runners at top speed. The men's 100m final is August 5th; the women's is the day before.

• What are the most important science questions the presidential should answer? Here is a list of 14 good ones. Four years ago, the McCain and Obama campaigns posted responses to science questions. I wouldn't hold my breath for a science-themed debate, but if you go here you can vote for your choice for moderator. This guy is winning, and would be awesome.

Summer Assignment 7.13

Welcome to the first official post of the 2012 AP Biology Summer Blog. The rules are simple:

1. Check out the links I include in the post.
2. Make an intelligent comment on them.
3. Or respond in an intelligent way to someone else's comment.
4. Earn points!

Just a note, you don't need to read all of the links I post when there are multiple stories linked. You can always pick the ones that seem most interesting to you.

On to the links:

• What do Mothers Against Drunk Driving, America's Most Wanted, and Batman have in common?  Post-traumatic growth of course.
• Newsweek says the web is "driving us mad." This guy (and most of the Twitterverse and Blogosphere) say Newsweek has no idea what science is.
• Someday I hope to make it up to Manhattan for "Manhattanhenge," if only because the odds of bumping into Neil deGrasse Tyson would be pretty good.

Summer Assignment 2012

Welcome to the AP Biology summer blog for 2012. I hope to get the first official post (that you will have to comment on) up sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, some things you can do:

1. Become a follower of the blog. This will allow Blogger to send you notifications of new posts.

2. Follow me on Twitter (@DrHMTHS). There is a button to the right to do this quickly. I will be posting on Twitter as well when new posts are up. If you do not have a Twitter account, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and get one; we may be using it in my class next year.

3. Check out the Podcast list to the right. All of these are excellent, and are a great way to keep up with current science topics, and they are very entertaining as well.

4. If you know of a time frame which you will be unable to comment, please email me and let me know the dates. Some of you have already done this, and I have all the emails. Please try to make an effort to comment while you are traveling, but if you let me know in advance, it will not count against you if you miss a week or comment late.

That is all for now, see you all in the comments tomorrow.