Welcome Back to School!

Welcome new and returning students to Block II! Hope you all had a good Fall Break, and are ready for your Biology, Biology Honors , and Forensic Science classes. Stop by my Blog here once a week or so to find science articles, images, and videos that I find interesting (and hopefully you will, too). 

If you leave a comment on the post, you get some extra credit. Either use your Google or Open ID account, or leave your name in the post so I know who to give the extra credit to.

For the first one, it's easy as pie. Just click on the comment link below this post, and leave your name, so I know you found the site. Get stoked for science, dudes!

Maggot DNA Identifies Corpse

Corpse identification is as much art as science. Sometimes no ID is possible and at other times creativity is required. 

In a recent case, where a badly charred body could not be identified due to the damage, DNA was extracted from the GI tracks of the fly maggots that had populated the corpse. U

sing the STR technique, DNA from the maggots was compared with DNA from the suspected victim’s father and a paternity-type match was made, proving the ID of the corpse to an accuracy of 99.685% according to the authors of the study.

This is the first time this technique has been used in this manner.

Happy Birthday, Neil deGrasse Tyson: Intelligent Design and the Philosophy of Ignorance

By: Maria Popova
 

Why even Newton was susceptible to cognitive cop-outs.

Today marks the 54th birthday of the inimitable Neil deGrass Tyson, who blends the “Great Explainer” quality of Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan’s penchant of the poetry of the cosmos with a brand of eloquence all his own. He’s previously made a political case for space exploration, showed us why we’re wired for science, and bantered with Colbert about scientific literacy, education, and the universe. In this short excerpt from a longer lecture, Tyson exposes intelligent design as a kind of dead-end cop-out that even some of history’s greatest intellectuals resorted to when stumped — including Sir Isaac Newton, who invented calculus at the tender age of 25.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQucyuKsrOE&feature=colike