Link Digest (8/14 – 8/18)

There’s quite a bit to this week’s “Link Digest”…

First, a video-link from a friendly lurker (thanks Mark):
Richard Dawkins and the Teapot Atheists.

Then, perhaps the biggest science news of the week was on the identification of a gene that appears to have been evolving at an accelerated pace from Chimps to Humans, and is involved in brain development (specifically the neocortex and other areas involved in higher brain function). More can be read about this on EurekAlert, Evolgen, The Loom, and the Neurophilosopher. The actual article is in this week’s issue of Nature: An RNA gene expressed during cortical development evolved rapidly in humans.

The site of the week is the reDiscovery Institute, a parody of the Discovery Institute (as if they need to be satirized, with their normal buffoonery and all). Their mission is to “promote better education of children, and re-education of certain adults; those on our current Enemies List. The reDiscovery Institute supports Fellows, who write letters to editors, testify at trials, post ‘articles’ on the web, but never publish peer-reviewed papers.” (HT: RSR)

And finally there’s the miscellaneous recommended reading from around the blogosphere:

• 8/14 – Kirtland’s Warbler and Cowbirds, revisited returns to the ecological pro’s and con’s of controlling Cowbird nest parasitism following a report in Conservationism in Practice on Bootstrap Analysis.
• 8/15 – Something in the Tubes takes a look at axonemal microtubule structure on the ScienceSampler.
• 8/15 – Retinal Neurons Derived from Human Embryonic Stem Cells looks at some recent progress reported in PNAS on regenerative therapy at The Neurophilosopher’s blog.
• 8/17 – Fixing the Drug Approval Process: a sea change or tilting at windmills? takes a look at, well, opposing proposals for how to fix the drug-approval process, at Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge.
• 8/18 – When Hawks Dream reveals a very pretty scene of a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk as a metaphor for war and peace at Dharma Bums.
• 8/18 – A Bridge Over Severed Axons looks at a combination of nerve grafting and treatment with an enzyme was to regenerate severed the severed spinal cord of rats, leading to a partial restoration of mobility on The Neurophilosopher’s blog.

…Did I mention lately how kickass a science blog The Neurophilosopher’s Blog is?

(if you haven’t noticed, I have these links and more on My Del.icio.us – subscribe to that feed as well, if you like my selection in reading material!)