Should this student have been suspended?

This is a troubling story if you just read the right-wing perspective: a student at Hamline University (an excellent liberal arts college in the Twin Cities) was suspended for writing a letter to the university administration. That shouldn’t happen, I’d say — we want to encourage free speech. Even if the student seems to be a bit of a far-right nut, and if the letter was supporting that lunatic idea that school massacres wouldn’t happen if everyone were carrying a concealed weapon, people should have the privilege of expressing their opinions.

So I read John Leo’s opinion piece on the issue and was actually agreeing with him, which was a curious sensation in itself. He didn’t actually quote any pieces of the letter in question, though, which was a little odd. So I looked up the letter from Troy Scheffler on the web. Uh-oh.

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One last call for donations

This is the last time I’ll pester you, I promise. The DonorsChoose challenge ends after the end of this month, and we’ve done well. We met my goal of raising $20,000 dollars, 200 freethinkers have stepped up to make donations, and 30 of my 31 chosen projects have been fully funded. That does mean that there is one project that isn’t quite there yet: Embryology in the Classroom is $292 shy of completion. If a few more could chip in a few more dollars, we can achieve perfection.

Good work, everyone!

Student Post: Neurochemicals’ Role in Gender

Hello again, it’s been a while so I thought I’d drop in a comment or two about what I’ve found recently in the news about neurobio. I’ve lately been reading about neurotransmitters and how they bind to sites in specific neurons, instigating depolarization across the membrane of the neuron and allowing for an action potential to communicate to hundreds of thousands of other neurons. This communication between neurons in the central nervous system is relayed into actions in the peripheral nervous system resulting in behavior. But how is this synchronized? What neuron does what? What must be connected to what and why? These are all questions that may take a while to be answered, but we are finding new developments everyday.

In an article from Cornell News, I read about an experiment by James Goodson and Andrew Bass (2000) in which neurotransmitters’ role in the display of sex characteristics in plainfin midshipman fish were examined. In this particular fish, males will make vocal calls through the water that attract females who will come to the site to lay eggs for the vocalizing male to fertilize. However, a second type of male that is unable to make vocal calls waits nearby so that once the eggs are laid, he can get some free-fertilization-action.

Goodson and Bass anesthetized and stimulated the anterior portion of the hypothalamus in each fish to stimulate either a vocal call, or the female’s short grunt (a response to the male’s call). After stimulating normal calls in each fish, the neurotransmitters isotocin and vasotocin (identical to the mammalian oxytocin and vasopressin) were administered to the anterior hypothalamus of each fish. When administered, fish that normally could make calls lost the ability to do so and developed female like grunts, similar to the type II males that could not call but rather grunted like females. This meant that a trait that was typically thought to be controlled by sex (controlled or linked by the gonads) was actually independent, and regulated completely by the brain.

Who knows how many of our traits are linked to gonad development, probably much fewer than we might originally think. If I was given a good dose of estrogen would I not want to play football or wrestle with my best friends?…doubtful (it might just turn into flag football with the Vikes or a pillow fight). At any rate, we shouldn’t be so quick to make judgment calls on biology’s effects in gender behavior.

Kids need to understand developmental biology!

See that little thermometer to the right? It says we’ve met our challenge of raising $20,000 for school kids. However, I actually picked a number of projects that required more money than that, and we still have 3 projects that are not fully funded — and they’re the embryology/developmental biology grants! We’ve got less than a week left, so it would be very nice if people would kick in the last few donations to complete these last few requests.

We’re very, very close and time is running out. Let’s get all of the projects fully funded!

Scholarly integrity

Homer Jacobson wrote a paper 52 years ago in which he speculated about the chemical conditions underlying the origin of life. After discovering that the paper is frequently cited by creationists, and after reviewing the work and finding multiple errors, he has retracted the paper. Good for him. It won’t matter to the creationists, though; this paper will continue to get cited and mangled and misused.

The writeup makes an excellent point.

It is not unusual for scientists to publish papers and, if they discover evidence that challenges them, to announce they were wrong. The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith.

Yes. Science has an integrity and dedication to the honest evaluation of the evidence that religion lacks.

Florida needs your input

Florida Ciizens for Science reports that their brand new state science standards are available for comment. That means you can click over there and make suggestions, even if you aren’t a Florida educator (they do ask for your connection, so don’t worry that the creationist mob can just descend on this poor document and taint it). Make good, productive, constructive suggestions, and help the kids of Florida.

I haven’t gone through it carefully yet, but my general impression is that the evolution standards are broad, but good; on the other hand, the organismal biology standards read like a med school prep course, and don’t say much about the concepts of physiology. So they’re not bad, but they could use some improvement…so help them out!

How do you teach evolution?

I was just turned on to this recent issue of the McGill Journal of Education which has the theme of teaching evolution. It’s a must-read for science educators, with articles by UM’s own Randy Moore, Robert Pennock, Branch of the NCSE, and Eugenie Scott, and it’s all good. I have to call particular attention the article by Massimo Pigliucci, “The evolution-creation wars: why teaching more science just is not enough”, mainly because, as I was reading it, I was finding it a little freaky, like he’s been reading my mind, or maybe I’ve been subconsciously catching Pigliucci’s psychic emanations. I think I just need to tell everyone to do exactly what this guy says.

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Mutations in the CFTR gene cause Cystic Fibrosis

So one of the questions on our Neurobiology test due today was to see if there were any heritable diseases in humans that are caused by defects in ion channel genes. I discovered that mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene have been linked to Cystic Fibrosis (CF).

CF is a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system of its victims. The defective CFTR gene produces a thick, sticky mucus that provides an environment for life-threatening pathogens to establish an infection, and can clog the lungs. This unusually thick mucus also interferes with the pancreas, and impairs the enzymes that help to break down food and allow the body to absorb it. The symptoms of CF include frequent lung infections; persistent coughing, oftentimes accompanied by phlegm; wheezing or shortness of breath; poor growth or weight gain, despite a healthy diet and appetite; salty tasting skin; and difficulty in bowel movements or greasy, bulky stools. The incidence is about one thousand new cases a year.

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The Richard Dawkins Foundation supports DonorsChoose

I am pleased to announce that the Richard Dawkins Foundation has contributed over $2000 to the freethinkers challenge to support science education in American public schools. That brings us close to meeting our goal of $20,000, so we just need a few more of you to sign on.

If you take a look at the leaderboard, you’ll notice that one of the columns lists the dollars donated, but the next column lists the number of donors. We’re again leading the pack, with 152, but I’d really like to be able to say that 200 pharyngula readers were willing to give a few bucks to teachers. 300 would be even better. Donating even a token ten dollars would add up and allow us to say that we godless few could stand up together in our numbers and make a difference.

We’ve had several big donors whose efforts are deeply appreciated. Now lets have everyone else chip in and make those donor numbers spin!

Europeans, Asians, Africans, Canadians, South Americans, Australians, Central Americans, and you scattered few residents of Antarctica: yes, you can donate! We got instructions from a DonorsChoose representative:

non-citizens living abroad can surely donate. When entering their addresses they simply need to enter their city, country, and post code in the “CITY” field, then select “New York” as their “STATE” and enter five zeroes for their “ZIP CODE”.

Note also I mistakenly said you could donate just a dollar; I was wrong, the minimum donation is $10. I know, there go the poor grad students to whom that is a week’s worth of ramen, but the rest of you can cough up a little bit, right? There are still proposals looking for funding!