Jack goes up for the spike on Adam as Yasir, Jeffrey, Mahul, LeAnne, Dave, Tom and others standby.
Thanks to all those who participated in this years Biology Department Retreat! It seems like everyone who came had a great time at Beaver Hollow. Be sure to let Brenna and Vera know what you thought of the venue so we’ll know whether to consider returning there next year.
The Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences newest faculty member – Vasilii Petrenko – will be talking on Oct. 13 at 12:30 in the Gowen Room on Wilson Commons on “Using ice cores to understand past climate change.” His talk is part of a series on sustainability being hosted by the University Committee for Interdiciplinary Studies (UCIS) .
Photo by Amro Zayed.
Amro Zayed is in town this Friday from York University for an EEB seminar on “Honey bee genes, behavior and adaptation.”
Andrew Read's group conducting work in Tanzania in 2003 (image from http://www.thereadgroup.net/gallery/)
Andrew Read is here from the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University to talk about “How best to manage the ‘natural’ selection created by medical practice.”
The journal club paper this week will be Kauffman and Levin’s 1987 paper on random walks through rugged adaptive landscapes from the Journal of Theoretical Biology. An OCRed PDF can be downloaded [here]. It is somewhat long, so start early!
This week we will be discussing Maynard Smith’s argument on how adaptive proteins evolve through protein sequence space. The paper is a short one and I think reading Salisbury’s article will help to understand JMS’s argument better.
I think we should hold services at Tap & Mallet again this week. My brother just brewed two new wet-hopped beers at Naked Dove that will be available for the first time tonight at the Tap & Mallet. These beers were brewed with fresh local hops and are only available once a year. They are delicious. More details are available at the Tap & Mallet blog. Try to get there early because the place will probably fill up before too long. Bob and I are going to try to be there by 6:30 or 7.
The next two Donut talks will also be the tenure seminars for two EEB Assistant Professors. Both seminars start at noon in Hutchison 473.
This Monday (19 Sept) Richard Glor will present on “The Evolution of Species Diversity in Anolis Lizards”
The following week (Monday, 26 Sept) Justin Ramsey presents: “An intersection of ecology and genetics: how polyploidy mediates population processes in flowering plants”
David Loehlin successfully defended his PhD thesis earlier today! A reception is set for 4PM in the graduate student lounge followed later this evening by a party at Jack Werren’s house. David will be with us for a few more weeks before he plans on heading to the University of Wisconsin, Madison to do a postdoc with Dr. Sean B. Carroll. During his postdoc, he’s interested in studying the genetic mechanisms behind how new patterns (such as the wing spots in certain Drosophila species) originate.
