Perspective Article

Please see my perspective article on the conservation of endangered species and the ethical and moral implications of animal captivity, published by the following open-access academic journal:

Zootopia- Animal Welfare, Species Preservation and the Ethics of Captivity
Poult Fish Wildl Sci 2014, 2:121. 2:2, (2014)
http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2375-446X.1000121

Shape-Shifting Dinosaurs

Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us

Fascinating article about one my most beloved Dinosaurs as a child - the Triceratops (Ceratopsians). This could change everything we know about a great many horn-billed or frill-fringed Dinosaurs. This also raises a question: has Dinosaur diversity been overestimated, perhaps dramatically, because of paleontologists' failure to take important juveline, sub-adult and adult morphological changes into account? Have we postulated species where none, in fact, may exist?

Arrival in Seattle

Well, I arrived in Seattle Thursday afternoon, a full day and a half before the beginning of the Natural Sciences Seminar. There are about 40 students; ranging in all ages and covering a fairly broad spectrum of academic disciplines. There are a few Ph.D Physics students, and several philosophy students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. There is a biochemistry major, a few in the biological and biomedical sciences (such as myself), and a mathematics major. By and large, physics and philosophy students seem to predominate. It's already been an interesting first day, as we explored the complexities of the DNA molecule.

More to come...this blog is going underground for now

Haiku of Fungi

A crown full of spores

In the firmament belongs
The Kingdom Fungi

Does Biology show evidence of Design?

The question is as old as the perennial search for meaning and purposed in the Universe. Does the study of biology show evidence of design? From July 9-18 2010 I have been truly blessed to be participating in an Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences Seminar in Seattle, WA. Those who are knee-jerk Darwinian Evolutionists, materialists, naturalists, or otherwise fundamentally hostile to the notion of teleology in the natural sciences (and most relevant to me, the biological sciences) will be predictably outraged. I am ecstatic. The reading list, however, is ominous.

I just learned that humans and mice share 99% of our genome. Now, at last genomic sequence count, chimpanzees - our closest evolutionary cousins - shared something like 98.7% of our genome (the exact figures aren't really important). Certain species of marine worms have considerably more genes than humans do. I'm sensing a genomic revolution here.

Stay tuned for updates from my trip, starting July 9th!

Google Chrome: Advantages and Disadvantages

Chrome is an internet browser by Google. It can be downloaded from https://www.google.com/chrome. Advantages and disadvantages of the browser are listed below. Please comment based on your experience with Chrome.

Advantages of Google Chrome:

• Fast web page downloading
• Multithreading approach
• Own task manager - tells how much memory needed and CPU and network usage by a website
• Dynamic tabs
• Safe browsing - warns users when they attempt to visit harmful websites

Disadvantages of Google Chrome:

• No add-ons
• No RSS feeds feature
• Privacy
• No status bar
• No search bar