Fun fact: Gender and Sex are both human made constructs designed to describe natural phenomenon but are not actually based in any biological reality. Much like the concept of “species”, it’s a model, and no model is an actuality – then it would not be a model, it would be a fact.
In truth sexual characteristics are diverse and varied and do not always match up with sex chromosomes; also, a sexual “binary” of sorts is not constant amongst all living things, and most organisms have other systems of reproduction.
Furthermore, gender is the suite of societally-defined social roles and behavioral characteristics that is typically assigned based on the externally perceived sex of a child; and does not actually have anything to do with biology – even less so than sex. Even though it is assigned based on this externally perceived sex, a person’s gender does not have to remain with the one assigned; much as we don’t determine people’s careers based on who their parents were anymore, your birth has no limitation on who you are and what gender identity you construct for yourself. Since it is a societally defined construct, people can and do construct more than the two traditional ones, and all are valid.
Just because you cannot handle your societally constructed worldview surrounding sex, gender, and genetics being dismantled by sociology & biology itself doesn’t mean, additionally, that you have the right to make other people feel unsafe and uncomfortable – in short, that you have the right to remove people from moral consideration – simply because you don’t like having your world view being dismantled. Believe it or not, the complexities of human behavior & the diversity of sex and reproduction in life cannot all be covered in a simple high school biology class.
So next time you want to say “didn’t you pass biology” remember: a biology PhD student, who graduated from the University of Notre Dame with an actual degree in Biological Sciences, has reminded you that you’re wrong.
There are more than two genders.
The end.
Sex is biological tough… It’s not a social construct… It’s not time, racism etc. It’s a physics attribute.
Why are you trying to argue with someone who said species is a constructed model and not a fact? You’re not going to change someone’s mind when they’re that far down the rabbit hole
Me: Spends 6 years intensely studying biological science and evolution at two major universities with widespread academic acclaim, earning honors and high GPAs and am currently working on a PhD in the subject of biodiversity and evolution
You: Somehow thinks they know more because you took a couple of classes
Lol
…Buddy. Buddy. Dude. I really don’t think you want to open this can of worms.
I mean, I know that in school they teach you a very clean, concise, definitive way of doing things and you’ve probably learnt something like the definition of a species is a population of organisms that are able to reproduce and produce viable offspring, or something. But I mean literally anyone who has done even undergrad biology can tell you that that statement is incredibly reductive and incredibly controversial in the scientific community [1][2]. In fact, you probably don’t even need a background in biology to spot the obvious flaw in the logic there, which is the fact that organisms classified as different species do reproduce and produce viable offspring. Quite a lot, actually. Lions and tigers (Panthera leo and P. tigris), coyotes and grey wolves (Canis latrans and C. lupus)… In fact, there’s even a word for new species arising through hybridisation between existing species – hybrid speciation [3]. The great skua (Stercorarius skua) is believed to be an example of this in animals [4], and another interesting one that may be pretty much hybrid speciation in action (though not nearly anything that can be called a new distinct species yet) is the so-called “Eastern coyote”, a population of wild coyotes in the eastern US that are mixed with grey wolf and domestic dog, and can contain as much as 40% non-coyote DNA [5].
And, in fact, the ability of two organisms to reproduce and produce viable offspring actually has very little with how we choose to classify them, because evolutionary and genetic relationships are rarely that simple. For example, some species that are the same genus – e.g. horses (Equus ferus) and donkeys (Equus africanus) can interbreed, but their offspring are usually sterile [6], while other species that are different genera to each other can interbreed to produce intergeneric hybrids, some of which are even fertile (for example crosses between false killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens) and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) [7], or between king snakes (genus Lampropeltis) and corn snakes (genus Pantherophis) [8]). Most “exotic” domestic cat breeds (e.g. Bengals and Savannahs) also fall into this category – for some reason felids are genetically Weird in that a wide variety of species in the family Felidae seem able to interbreed with each other, no matter how different or distantly related they are. I mean…
Look at this shit. Now bear in mind that the domestic cat (Felis catus) is known to be able to interbreed with species in the caracal, ocelot, lynx and leopard cat lineages in addition to those in its own lineage, and if that wasn’t bad enough puma/leopard hybrids are a thing that exist. Those species aren’t even in the same subfamily, let alone genus or genetic lineage – the leopard is classed as subfamily Pantherinae, genus Panthera (P. pardus) while the puma is classed as subfamily Felinae, genus Puma (P. concolor).
Although these aren’t even the most distantly related species that are able to interbreed – domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) are known to hybridise with guineafowl [10], and the offspring of these crosses are interfamilial hybrids since chickens and guineafowl are classified in different families (chickens belong to family Phasianidae, guineafowl to family Numididae).
And of course another place where the “able to interbreed and produce viable offspring” definition falls apart is with organisms that reproduce asexually or without the need for a sexual partner, which is even more complicated when you consider that some species (for example, some species in the paraphyletic whiptail lizard genus Cnemidophorus) aredioecious, meaning they have separate sexes, and reproduce by producing gametes via meiosis, but have actually lost the ability to reproduce sexually somewhere along the evolutionary line – these species reproduce predominantly or entirely by parthenogenesis (essentially a form of self-cloning) and the Y chromosome has been entirely lost in the population. This also ties into hybrid speciation because it is believed that these parthenogenic species arose from hybridisation between two or three sexual species [11][12], leading to polyploid individuals (i.e. those with ‘extra’ sets of chromosomes) – for example, the all-female parthenogenic species Cnemidophorus neomexicanus is actually a hybrid of two sexual species, Cnemidophorus inornatus and C. marmoratus (or C. tigris, according to Wikipedia), and thus new individuals of this species can be formed either by parthenogenesis in a single C. neomexicanus parent, or sexual reproduction between a male and female C. inornatus and C. marmoratus/C. tigris [13]. Some female parthenogenic species are also able to interbreed sexually with males from sexual species, resulting in hybrids which may or may not also be parthenogenic [14].
So you can ask, well what the fuck is a genus, or a species for that matter, if it doesn’t necessarily indicate whether two animals are genetically similar enough to interbreed or not? And, more to the point, is there a strict set of quantitative criteria that defines whether two populations of organisms are classified as the same or different species? And I mentioned speciation, which brings up the question, when exactly in the process of evolution does one species actually become another?
The thing is, there aren’t actually definitive answers to these questions – if you ask a bunch of biologists what a species is, it’s likely you’ll get different answers. “Species” also has a number of definitions [15][16], mainly depending on the type of organism being studied and the angle it is being studied from. For bacteria, for instance – where “similar enough to reproduce” really isn’t applicable – I think the general consensus is that individuals are grouped together if their genetic similarity to one another is 97-98% or higher, while a similar definition of “organisms that are highly genetically similar to one another” tends to be used for asexually reproducing organisms such as some plants, and parthenogenic animals like whiptail lizards or Bdelloid rotifers (which does of course raise the question of what exactly “highly similar” means – any decided-upon cutoff point will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary). Such groupings of organisms may be referred to as phylotypes to distinguish them from the reproductive definition of a “species” [17]. Likewise, a lot of ecological writing will define species and speciation according to reproductive isolation, which isn’t necessarily synonymous with reproductive compatibility – reproductively isolated populations may be genetically able to reproduce, but be prevented from doing so or unlikely to do naturally so due to differences in geographical location, habitat or behaviour (think lions and tigers). These are some of the many different “types” of species, with either competing or overlapping definitions of what exactly constitutes a species in each case:
Morphological or typological species (morphospecies)
Phylogenetic species
Evolutionary species
Genetic species
Genalogical concordance species
Reproductive species
Autapomorphic species
Ecological species
Recognition species
Phenetic species
Isolation species
Cohesion species
…You get the idea.
For vertebrates, I think generally the two most used definitions are the biological species concept (BSC) and phylogenetic or cladistic species concept (PSC), which differ in their criteria for what they consider a species [18][19]. PSC, for example, doesn’t include a subspecies category while BSC does – and thus, some organisms that are classified as subspecies of the same species under BSC are either classified as different species or are lumped together as the same species under PSC. For example, grey wolves and domestic dogs. The domestic dog is/was often considered a separate species to the grey wolf, for obvious (morphological/behavioural) reasons – the wolf was Canis lupus, the dog C. familiaris – but since dogs are descended from wolves (a now-extinct lineage of wolves, not modern grey wolves [20], but Canis lupus nonetheless) they are more properly classified as a subspecies, C. l. familiaris. Likewise, having also ultimately descended from wolves, the dingo is officially classified as C. l. dingo, although there is some debate about that – at one stage I remember it being classified as a “subspecies” of domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris dingo (and it’s still, to my knowledge, widely considered to be descended from domestic dogs [21][22], in which case the second name would be more correct), while still other people classify it as a completely separate species, Canis dingo [23]. You can see why species boundaries and definitions can get murky, especially when the exact evolutionary origins of a particular animal are unknown or hotly contested.
In fact, canids as a whole are kind of a mess when it comes to phylogeny. How many species of wolf there are really depends on who you ask – some populations traditionally classified as subspecies of the grey wolf, for example the Indian wolf (traditionally C. l. pallipes), the Himalayan or Tibetan wolf (traditionally C. l. chanco) and the Eastern wolf (traditionally C. l. lycaon) have been suggested instead to be classified as separate species – Canis indica, Canis himalayensis and Canis lycaon, respectively [24][25]. Likewise, just last year it was discovered that what was thought to be an African subspecies of the golden jackal (Canis aureus) had in fact been misidentified and was instead an undiscovered species of wolf, now the African golden wolf (Canis anthus) [26]. And then there’s also the fact that, despite being called “jackals”, the black-backed and side-striped jackals actually aren’t very closely related to the golden jackal, or indeed to any of the rest of the genus Canis [27]. In fact, going by the cladogram below, you can see that the African wild dog and dhole – both of which are classed in their own, unique genera (Lycaon and Cuon, respectively) – are actually placed closer to wolves, golden jackals and coyotes than black-backed and side-striped jackals are, even though both of the latter species are considered part of genus Canis (the black-backed jackal is C. mesomelas and the side-striped is C. adustus). Many sources also say that these two species differ from the rest of the group in that they have only 74 chromosomes, while wolves, coyotes, golden jackals, African wild dogs and dholes all have 78. This makes the moniker of genus Canis somewhat useless when trying to determine exactly how genetically similar these animals actually are to one another.
And this isn’t even touching the issue of the “red wolf” (Canis rufus), a critically endangered so-called “species” of wolf closely related to the grey wolf, eastern wolf and coyote, which more recent molecular and genetic analysis has revealed may simply be a wolf/coyote hybrid [29]. Of course these classifications aren’t set in stone, either – new studies and discoveries are constantly uprooting and rewriting our knowledge of phylogenetic and evolutionary relationships among species. Sometimes it’s also pretty much impossible to accurately represent the relationships between similar-but-distinct populations using only the terms “genus” and “species”, which is where alternate concepts like species complex, subgenus and superspecies come in.
Another feature of evolution and speciation that makes classification difficult is what are known as ring species, in which a series of neighbouring populations of organisms may evolve divergently (i.e. undergo allopatric speciation) in such a way that each geographically adjacent or overlapping population can interbreed with the next, but the last population in the “ring” has diverged to the point that it can no longer interbreed with the first (basically, population A can interbreed with population B, B with C and C with D, but D can no longer interbreed with A).
When does the actual split occur, and at what point in the ring can we consider the populations to be different species? We just don’t know. (And in some cases this is considerably more messy and complicated than even the ring species model makes it seem [32]). The point is, though, that there is no definitive, universally agreed-upon cutoff point at which we can say with certainty that two organisms have evolved sufficiently as to become different species, any more than you can definitively say where along a rainbow spectrum of colours red becomes orange or orange becomes yellow. The decision whether to lump or split taxa becomes even more arbitrary in paleontology than it is with extant species [33][34] – when you’re working with an incomplete fossil record and pretty much going entirely on morphological similarities since genetic or molecular analysis often isn’t possible, there isn’t really a way to conclusively determine whether that specimen you found represents a new species, a new genus, or is simply a larger/smaller/juvenile/unfortunate-looking version of an already-described animal. Many specimens now believed to be juveniles of previously-described species were originally believed to be completely new ones – for example, Nanotyrannus is now often (but not universally) agreed to be a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex [35], and Dracorex and Stygimoloch are considered immature specimens of Pachycephalosaurus [36]. And then there was the whole deal where Brontosaurus didn’t exist for a while and then it did again and it was all very confusing [37].
Obviously, at the end of the day, a zebra is materially different from a dog in the same way that, to get back to the original topic, a penis is materially different from a vagina (actually a bad analogy since homologous reproductive organs are much more similar to each other than taxa that have been separated for millions of years, but anyway). The biological differences and similarities themselves exist, but any attempt to categorise and quantify them will necessarily rely on socially constructed and frequently arbitrary models, definitions and assumptions. That’s basically what science is – a continuous (and frequently wildly inaccurate) attempt to try to make sense of reality. We often attempt to understand or make predictions about reality using mathematical or quantitative models of the situation or by sorting things into sets and categories, which is useful and necessary in many cases but is also often far too simplistic to be taken as any kind of gospel truth regarding the actual nature of reality, because simply put reality doesn’t care for or abide by human-made rules and categories. Essentially, we’re trying to find quantitative ways to represent things that are by nature qualitative, and that’s always going to be arbitrary to some extent. Obviously biological characteristics (whether genetic, sexual/reproductive, etc.) objectively exist and would continue to exist if humans and human culture were to suddenly disappear, and in that sense, things like sex, gender and taxonomic classification can be said to be basedin biological reality. But human attempts to define or categorise these characteristics – for example species concepts, the binary model of sex, etc. – are not in themselves biological realities, and are subject to change based on new information. For example, evolutionarily speaking, “reptiles” (as we traditionally understand them) don’t exist [38]. Obviously this doesn’t mean that lizards, tortoises, snakes, crocodiles, non-avian dinosaurs etc. don’t exist or never existed. It simply means that the socially constructed classification of animals into two distinct, mutually exclusive groups called “reptiles” and “birds” is completely arbitrary and not actually the result of any inherent biological reality (in fact the opposite).
I mean I know how crappy the highschool biology syllabus can be @valarie-lynn so I’ll also link you to the Wikipedia page on species and the species problem, and also to somemoreonsex and how it’s just as complicated and arbitrary as the concept of species (from Actual Biologists™) if you’re interested. I’ll also leave you with a quote from Charles Darwin:
“From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake
A team of scientists, including UC Riverside assistant professor Juan Pablo Giraldo, have transformed plants into sensors that detect explosives.
The spinach plants were designed to sense chemical compounds known as
nitroaromatics, which are often used in landmines and other explosives. A paper about the research was published in the journal Nature Materials.
This research has a lot of potential uses. Plants embedded with the sensors could detect explosives, harmful airborne pollutants and plant health for farming.
“In a way, we are showing that we can turn plants into solar powered
technology that report to humans what they are experiencing in the
environment,” said Giraldo.
The future has never been closer.
How can you not be excited about the possibility of getting rid of the worst scourges of humanity? I mean, is there anything more exciting than the idea of getting rid of malaria? Do you know how many billions of people have suffered horrible lives as a result of things like that, or cancer? I mean, these things are real possibilities. And if you’re not excited about that, I really don’t know what you’re going to be excited about.
A friend of mine is working on a show to encourage and cultivate young girls’ curiosity and sense of adventure and get them interested in STEM fields, and to give young boys strong female role models to look up to as well. I don’t normally do promotional posts, but this is a project I think is great and might be up your alley, too. Check out her video, donate to her indiegogo if you have the ability, or just spread the word! Let’s get more ladies in science.
Thousands of scientists in Germany, Peru and Taiwan are preparing for a new year without online access to journals from the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier. Contract negotiations in both Germany and Taiwan broke down in December, while Peru’s government has cut off funding for a licence.
“It’s very unpleasant,” says Horst Hippler, spokesperson for the DEAL consortium of state-funded universities and research organizations, which is overseeing negotiations in Germany. “But we just cannot accept what Elsevier has proposed so far.”
1. You as a taxpayer pay for the salaries of academics, and among those who are scientists, their labs. This is as it should be.
2. But then scientific research and academic papers are enclosed by private corporations like Elsevier behind pay walls and sold back to the public (public and university libraries, individuals, etc.) that paid for the labor behind these papers in the first place.
As a result…
3. The transmission of knowledge is slowed down. One way this happens is common practice of imposing 6 month to 12 month ‘embargoes’ that limit access to journals. If your library or institution can’t afford the high rates that these companies charge, you may have to wait a full year to access any number of journals.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
5. Students and even academics everywhere are unable to access information they need.
6. This might very well slow the pace of research in various areas, including urgent medical research.
7. The exorbitant fees charged by these academic publishing companies drain scarce university and public resources.
And for what purpose?
Basically none. Everything a company like Elsevier does could be done by the public sector at lower cost and done in such a way as to eliminate the castle walls that limit access to knowledge.
The for-profit academic publishers really exist for no other reason than to parasitize public wealth for private gain.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
1. Gravitational waves are real.
More than 100 years after Einstein first predicted them, researchers
finally detected the elusive ripples in space time this year. We’ve now
seen three gravitational wave events in total.
2. Sloths almost die every time they poop, and it looks agonising.
3. It’s possible to live for more than a year without a heart in your body.
8. Earth has a second mini-moon orbiting it, known as a ‘quasi-satellite’. It’s called 2016 HO3.
9.There might be a ninth planet in our Solar System (no, Pluto doesn’t count).
10. The first written record demonstrating the laws of friction has been hiding inside Leonardo da Vinci’s “irrelevant scribbles” for the past 500 years.
12. Crows have big ears, and they’re kinda terrifying.
13. The largest known prime number is 274,207,281– 1, which is a ridiculous 22 million digits in length. It’s 5 million digits longer than the second largest prime.
16. Artificial intelligence can beat humans at Go.
17. Tardigrades are so indestructible because they have an in-built toolkit
to protect their DNA from damage. These tiny creatures can survive
being frozen for decades, can bounce back from total desiccation, and
can even handle the harsh radiation of space.
22. There’s a giant, 1.5-billion-cubic-metre (54-billion-cubic-foot) field of precious helium gas in Tanzania.
23. The ‘impossible’ EM Drive is the propulsion system that just won’t quit. NASA says it really does seem to produce thrust – but they still have no idea how. We’ll save that mystery for 2017.
The World’s Smallest Snowman stands less than 3 microns tall. The snowman was fabricated from three 0.9 micron silica spheres stacked with the use of electron beam lithography. The eyes and mouth were cut with a focused ion beam while the arms and nose were sculpted with platinum.
A cat can jump up to five times its own height in a single bound.
The little tufts of hair in a cat’s ear that help keep out dirt direct sounds into the ear, and insulate the ears are called “ear furnishings.”
The ability of a cat to find its way home is called “psi-traveling.” Experts think cats either use the angle of the sunlight to find their way or that cats have magnetized cells in their brains that act as compasses.
One reason that kittens sleep so much is because a growth hormone is released only during sleep.
A cat has 230 bones in its body. A human has 206. A cat has no collarbone, so it can fit through any opening the size of its head.
A cat’s nose pad is ridged with a unique pattern, just like the fingerprint of a human.
If they have ample water, cats can tolerate temperatures up to 133 °F.
A cat’s heart beats nearly twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats a minute.
Cats don’t have sweat glands over their bodies like humans do. Instead, they sweat only through their paws.
The claws on the cat’s back paws aren’t as sharp as the claws on the front paws because the claws in the back don’t retract and, consequently, become worn.
Cats make about 100 different sounds. Dogs make only about 10.
Researchers are unsure exactly how a cat purrs. Most veterinarians believe that a cat purrs by vibrating vocal folds deep in the throat. To do this, a muscle in the larynx opens and closes the air passage about 25 times per second.
A cat almost never meows at another cat, mostly just humans. Cats typically will spit, purr, and hiss at other cats.
A cat’s back is extremely flexible because it has up to 53 loosely fitting vertebrae. Humans only have 34.
Some cats have survived falls of over 65 feet (20 meters), due largely to their “righting reflex.” The eyes and balance organs in the inner ear tell it where it is in space so the cat can land on its feet. Even cats without a tail have this ability.
A cat can travel at a top speed of approximately 31 mph (49 km) over a short distance.
A cat’s hearing is better than a dog’s. And a cat can hear high-frequency sounds up to two octaves higher than a human.
A cat’s brain is biologically more similar to a human brain than it is to a dog’s. Both humans and cats have identical regions in their brains that are responsible for emotions.
And that’s how cats work.
I learned more about cats in this post than I did in my freshamn biology class in college
So scientists have found gravitational waves, and I’d like to take the opportunity to talk to you guys about how I feel this impacts magic.
Magic is real. It is the manipulation of energies in the world. It is us these tiny, cosmic blips reaching out in the fabric of existence and imposing our will. It is atoms restructuring atoms, energy changing the flow and movement of energy. We are told so often that magic isn’t real, that these forces can’t exist, and yet we are just now finding solid proof of things that were as yet unproven.
We knew gravity was real. Obviously we haven’t flown off the planet and into the far reaches of space. SOMETHING was doing it. It was known. We weren’t solid on the actual workings though. Now we know. Now we can see it. Now its tangible to people.
In “olden times” healers used herbs and it was magic. And then we learned about chemical compounds and somehow decided that made it less magical. We discovered the placebo effect and decided that was less magical too, despite proving how much control we have over our own bodies. Most horrifyingly of all, we discovered celestial songs and decided it was a neat factoid and not a stunning truth of reality that stars and plants sing in the first place! Its not magic its science. Because now we have an explanation.
Bullshit.
These things are magic. Today we have learned that there are waves we have never seen, that the effect of celestial bodies spiraling through the void is tangible. Stars and planets sing and give off waves that touch and effect other things. And that is magical. We tiny creatures with blood made of star dust, we are a part of this! And science has no measure yet, but perhaps one day it will. For now though, we deal with what we know, what we experience, but which cannot yet be quantified: We are magical.
Science and magic do not have to be in opposition. Just like science and religion. Science is just another way of observing and measuring the world around us. Often the science of magic is dismissed because a few people with shoddy scientific methods have tainted it.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 