Abiogenesis

For week one of Bio-CS-20 I decided to research the general topic of Abiogenesis-- the original evolution of life or living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances. In doing so I came across a fun article by Laura Moss titled, "How to Make a Mouse: The Bizarre 'Recipes" Borne of Spontaneous Generation." Here I was able to read a list of the interesting, wacky myths people used to believe regarding the creation of certain organisms, such as frogs or flies. My favorite "recipes" are listed below:

• Bees were once thought to swarm from the corpses of partially buried dead bulls
• Salamanders were born from fire
• Wet soil created the amphibians
• "I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in their shells, and already formed." - Edward Heron-Allen ( Describing the origin of Barnalle Geese) 
• "If a soiled shirt is placed in the opening of a vessel containing grains of wheat, the reaction of the leaven in the shirt with fumes from the wheat mill, after approximately 21 days, transforms the wheat into mice." - Flemish Chemist Jean Baptiste Van Helmont 

I hope you found these "recipes" as ridiculous, interesting, and enjoyable to read about as I did! 

Start the quarter with a Bang

Youtube keep taking this down but it keeps coming back. Also this is an opportunity to remind you that as we go through the course you can click on the labels at the bottom of the posts to review past postings. For example as well as my yearly version of this post the Abiogenesis label has a small, but interesting, collection of posts

For everyone who has ever wondered what it would be like when a 500km diameter asteroid crashes into the earth here's a simulation. Asteroids of this size would have impacted the earth during the late heavy bombardment I mentioned. You might also want to wait until you can crank up the speakers. The perfect soundtrack to the end of the world.

Welcome

Welcome 2019 CS20 students. You will all shortly receive an invitation to join this blog. Please accept this so you can post here.

Here are the links to chosen topic examples I mentioned in class. These were done a few years ago so there will be more up to date papers to find on some of these topics but I'll leave that exercise to you.

Chosen topic example 1
Chosen topic example 2
Chosen topic example 3