According to this press release:

Scientists have proven that the fungus Geomyces destructans causes white-nose syndrome, a fast-spreading and highly lethal disease of bats.

Research published today (Wednesday, Oct. 26) in the journal Nature provides the first direct evidence that this fungus is responsible for a disease that is decimating bats in North America.

Research at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and other institutions, showed that 100 percent of healthy little brown bats exposed to G. destructans developed white-nose syndrome while hibernating in captivity.

The study fulfilled established criteria for proving that a microbe causes an infectious disease: A pure culture of a suspected pathogen is able to infect a host plant or animal, which then develops the clinical signs of the disease, and then the pathogen is re-isolated from the experimentally infected host species.

White-nose syndrome is a skin infection that often begins around the muzzle, but the exact mechanism of mortality is unknown.

“By identifying the causative agent of white-nose syndrome, this study provides information that is critical for developing management strategies to preserve vulnerable bat populations and the ecosystem services that they provide in the U.S. and Canada,” says study author David Blehert, a microbiologist at the Wildlife Health Center, and a honorary fellow at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UW-Madison.

More…

Wednesday, October 26 · 7:00pm – 8:30pm
The Mann Theatre Maple Grove
13644 80th Circle, Maple Grove, MN
Maple Grove, Minnesota

Come hear an Atheist and a Pastor share their thoughts on the subject of Christs death. You don’t want to miss this special event! Speakers will be August Berkshire and Pastor Martin Bownik. This is event is being sponsored by KKMS radio 980 am and The EDGE Christian Fellowship Church

Are you adopted or from India?

I have a friend who wants to know about her birthmother and family in India, and is seriously considering going to India to check into her own background. I assume she is not the first person who was born in India, adopted by a US family and then got interested in her own past. If you have experience or knowledge in this area, could you help her? I would appreciate that.

You can’t link weather to climate change, right?

Wrong. Of course you can. You can even link specific weather events to climate change if you are willing to adapt the way your brain works to match reality more than most people do. But the specific question of “extreme events” in relation to climate change is not only tricky, but subject to analysis, because it is all really just a matter of how numbers work, statistically. And, a current paper in PNAS manages to do a good job at linking weather and climate. The paper is here and a writeup at RealClimate is here.

Dmanisi … is it a different kind of hominid or what?

Here’s a blog post discussing tooth wear and diet from Dmanisi. I haven’t written much about Dmanisi other than to note that Julia has been hanging out there (did field work this summer). Someday I will. For now, read that blog post by Lawn Chair and then consider the difference between the Australopith diet and the essential Homo erectus diet. (Those last two links go to PDF files)

Other Matters

Mike has some nice pictures of Cheetahs.

This is the funniest comment on the internet ever.

And yes, LeRoy Bell, my nephew, made it through the latest cut on the XFactor!

Please note, the whole “left side right side” brain thing is WRONG and we’ve known it has been WRONG for a very long time. Very. Long. Time. The reality is complex and interesting, but it is probably not what you think.

The following video on this topic is pretty good:
Continue reading Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain →

Update: LeRoy Went Through To The Next Round!!!!!11!!

… assuming there is voting of some kind.

LEROY WENT THROUGH TO THE NEXT LEVEL!!!!!!

More of his music HERE.

I want to point you to a post written by Katie Burgess, a community organizer and artist in South Minneapolis (originally from Maine). As executive Director of the Trans Youth Support Network, Katie was invited to give a presentation at the 18th Annual National Coming Out Day Luncheon. It turns out that a major sponsor of the luncheon at which she was to speak was Cargill. You may or may not have heard of Cargill, but if you live in the Twin Cities you know of them as the corporation that … well, owns all the food and the means of producing food (along with one or two other corporations).

Katie went ahead and spoke truth to power. Read the blog post, and the speech with is reproduced therein.

I have a few items for you from the Evolution Front.

First, you can have a free copy of an excerpt form the book Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig: Click here for the PDF file.

That was complements of the NCSE. Speaking of the NCSE, you can also have the latest copy of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education in its new on-line format:

Continue reading Evolution for you, for everyone, and for the spiders →

A new study confirming the accuracy of existing global temperature records has been ignored by the all the major television news outlets, except for one mention in a CNN news brief. But the omission is most conspicuous at Fox News, which routinely casts doubt on the temperature data, accuses climate scientists of doctoring research to exaggerate global warming, and often just makes up its own temperature facts….

Read more