Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In the past few years these contests often lacked winners, so I’m increasing your chances this year by eliminating the sciences and economics from the guesses (two science prizes have already been awarded). The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced Thursday, October 8, and the Peace Prize on the next day. I’m asking you to guess the winners of both, to wit:
Guess the names of the winners of the Nobel Prizes for Literature and for Peace
Here are the Roolz:
a.) One guess per person in each category. If you name more than one person or group for each prize, your vote will be summarily discarded.
b.) Remember that organizations can be awarded the Peace Prize.
c.) To win, you must guess both correctly. But since the Literature Prize is almost never guessed correctly, if nobody gets both I will name as winner the first person to correctly guesses either of the two winners. If there are ties, the first guesser wins.
d.) DEADLINE: Wednesday, October 7 (tomorrow) at 5 p.m. Chicago time.
THE PRIZE: A mint paperback copy of either WEIT or Faith Versus Fact, autographed by the author and with a cat drawn in it to your specifications. (There is some flexibility here if you prefer another animals, but remember that I’m not an artist.) Since I cannot mail books internationally, they will be sent to a U.S. address of your choosing.
Note: if there are fewer than 20 people guessing, the contest is null and void due to lack of interest.
Yes, it’s Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park in Alaska. you can read all about it, see the bears and matchups, and vote for the winner by clicking on the site below:
About the contest, with the links. Note that you can vote TODAY between noon and 9 p.m. Eastern time (11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Chicago time).
Vote for the fattest bear of the year! Some of the largest brown bears on Earth make their home at Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Brown bears get fat to survive. Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament celebrating their success in preparation for winter hibernation. Matchups are open for voting September 22 – 29 between 12 – 9 p.m. Eastern / 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Pacific / 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Alaska.
This is a single elimination tournament. For each match-up, vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears. The bear with the most votes advances to the next round. Only one will be crowned Fat Bear Week champion.
You can vote in four contests today; click HERE to cast your vote. Two of the contests involve bear families, the other two individual bears. Remember, you’re voting for the bear with the most avoirdupois. Today’s pairups:
The details:
How to Participate:
Vote by clicking or tapping on the photos of the bear. The bear you do not vote for will turn gray. Then enter your email where prompted. You have successfully voted when you see the total votes for each bear.
Voting Widget:
The poll registers one vote per email. To view updated results, please refresh the webpage. If the results do not display, then reenter your email and hit submit. The poll will not register it as a second vote. If the polls do not load, please refresh, and check that you do not have any ad-blockers or pop-up blockers enabled.
As you see from the bracket link above, the next vote is tomorrow.
For example, in poll 4 you will be voting for one of these:
You can read about Marshmallow, an 8-year-old female, by clicking on the link below. Look how fat she got from scarfing salmon!
And her competitor, Bear 910, a ten-year-0ld female. Remember, though it’s fun to do this, the bears are in a life-and-death struggle to lay on the pounds before they go into winter hibernation. If they don’t have sufficient resources to make it through hibernation, they may die. The problem is compounded for female bears, who give birth in midwinter and must also suckle their cubs until Spring.
The Champion Bear of 2025 was Chunk, and he won despite overcoming a broken jaw. Tomorrow Chunk will be running against Bucky.
Here’s a short video of the Champ:
Below is the live BearCam at Brooks Falls, the famous small waterfall where bears foregather to catch the salmon migrating upstream. When it’s dark, they show highlights.
No, yesterday wasn’t the “official” Pi Day (March 14), but slap an “e” on the end and you have something better: Hyde Park’s annual “South Side Pie Challenge.” Entrants submit two copies of what they think is their best pie, and judges taste them all in the morning. (I want to know how I get to be a judge!) After the morning’s appraisal and awarding of distinctions to bakers, the pies are put out on a big table, with the public let in to buy slices.
There were well over a hundred pies on tap, with two copies of each. The winners were labeled, so if you wanted you could choose only those (it’s $5 a slice, with the profits going to hunger program charities). But my tastes were also conditioned by the look of the pies, and I anted up $20 for four slices. I brought a container to carry them back to the office, intending to consume one on the spot and then one for breakfast over the next three days. I have always maintained that pie is one of the best breakfast foods available in America.
And here’s what you’re confronted with when you go into the school where the pies were set out:
The tables are divided up by type of pie (“nut pies”, “fruit pies”, “cream pies,” “pumpkin and squash pies”, etc.) What largesse! Below are nut pies (each one said “contains nuts” on the label):
This year meringue pies were not allowed, probably because they contain uncooked egg white. What a pity. . .
The first slice I ate, when I got back to the lab, was this beauty. I thought it was chocolate cream pie, but the thick layer of thick, luscious chocolate on top hid a layer of real pistachio cream below. The crust was fancy and full of butter (as a crust should be), and I have to say that this was among the best pies I’ve ever eaten. You can see the pistachio at about 11 o’clock below. The crust was a dessert in itself.
This morning I had a slice of blueberry pie, which is perfect for a morning pie as it wasn’t too sweet. It was of course washed down with my customary latte. It too was fantastic:
I have two slices left: a coffee cream pie and a Key lime pie (I hope they used real Key limes). I was one of the first in the door, as I wanted the best selection (pies have only a finite number of slices). After I grabbed my four choices, I scuttled away with my prize, and by that time the line was out the door.
NPR reports on one of my favorite weeks of the year: Fat Bear Week, which extends from September 23-30. (see Wikipedia article here). As you may know, the bears at issue are those in Katmai National Park, and Wikipedia tells us how the ursids qualify:
In order to qualify for Fat Bear Week, brown bears of the Katmai National Park must have been spotted catching sockeye salmon at the Brooks River. A 1.5-mile (2.4 km) section of the river, which has webcams, is used to choose eligible bears. Bears must be seen not just in the fall but also in the summer season as well.[27]
The subjective contest is a single-elimination tournament. Each day, two bears are presented in a match-up, identified by numbers. The bear with the most votes advances to the next round. In order to evaluate which bears have gained the most weight in preparation for hibernation, the public is able to view before and after photos of specific bears, watch them on livestream feeds, and read their biographies. The biographies include information on their feeding habits, personality traits, and physical features. The winner of the final match-up is named the tournament champion.
The contest was started in 2014, and Otis has won three times, while Grazer won twice. (Otis wasn’t there last year and he may have crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
The bears are brown bears (Ursus arctos), sometimes known as grizzly bears or “grizzlies”: a subspecies from further south. The only larger land predator is a close relative, the polar bear, which you saw in the last post.
Click below to read more about the contest:
An excerpt:
Fat Bear Week, when people get to pick their favorite Alaskan brown bear bulking up for hibernation, is coming early this year. The annual online competition that normally starts in early October will instead start on Sept. 23. Katmai National Park and Preserve officials say the bears are magnificently plump ahead of the tournament.
“This year’s salmon run was extraordinary, with salmon numbers surpassing anything seen in recent memory,” Matt Johnson, the park’s interpretation program manager, told NPR via email. “As a result, the brown bears of Katmai are well-nourished and looking for other things to do besides scrap[p]ing with each other for food.”
The bracket for Fat Bear Week 2025 will be revealed on Sept. 22, when fans will see where familiar names of past champions, such as 128 Grazer, 480 Otis and 747— aka Bear Force One, estimated to weigh a whopping 1,400 pounds — stack up against new challengers. The single-elimination tournament starts on Sept. 23 and runs through Sept. 30, when a new champion will emerge. Fat Bear Junior, for bear cubs, started on Thursday.
Organizers expect votes to come from across the planet.
“Over one million votes were cast for the bears in 2024 from one hundred countries,” the park said as it announced this year’s dates.
The brown bears of Katmai occupy the rarest strata of celebrity: captivating and oblivious, thanks to the “bearcams” that beam their activities in the scenic Brooks Falls and other areas to online viewers around the world.
. . .The abundance of salmon in Katmai National Park and Bristol Bay in southern Alaska is contributing to a drop in conflict among the bears this year compared to the 2024 competition, which was delayed when one large bear killed another. Voters then propelled Grazer to a landslide win over the massive 32 Chunk, a bear that, months earlier, had killed one of Grazer’s cubs.
“This year there was less congregating at Brooks Falls, less fighting, and — astonishingly — noticeably more playtime with each other,” Johnson said.
Here’s a photo of Otis, four-time winner for gaining the most weight. Photo from the National Park Service:
And the Explore Live livecam of the bears fishing. Right now they’re showing highlights, which are awesome enough by alone, but wait until it goes live!
I suggest that when September 23 rolls around, you go to the Fat Bear site below (click on icon) to see the contestants and cast your vote. (There’s already been a fat cub contest, in which yearlings compete for weight gain. The winner is unnamed.) Here are Da Roolz for Bearz:
Matchups are open for voting September 23-30 between 12 – 9 p.m. Eastern / 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Pacific.
This is a single elimination tournament. For each match-up, vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears. The bear with the most votes advances to the next round. Only one will be crowned Fat Bear Week champion. Meet the bears, fill out your bracket, predict your fat bear winner, and campaign for your candidate.
The contestants aren’t up yet, so have a look on September 23 between noon and 9 p.m. Eastern U.S. time. It’s enormous fun to vote, and of course the fatter bears have a better chance to make it through the winter.
I hope Otis shows up this year: he was a fatty, but may not have made it through the year.
Two Americans, Gary Ruvkun of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, and Victor Ambrose of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, have split this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs), single-stranded bits of RNA that do not code for proteins but act to regulate other genes. The Nobel organization’s press release explains the significance of the discovery, but you can read the whole thing, which is much longer than this:
This year’s Nobel Prize honors two scientists for their discovery of a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.
The information stored within our chromosomes can be likened to an instruction manual for all cells in our body. Every cell contains the same chromosomes, so every cell contains exactly the same set of genes and exactly the same set of instructions. Yet, different cell types, such as muscle and nerve cells, have very distinct characteristics. How do these differences arise? The answer lies in gene regulation, which allows each cell to select only the relevant instructions. This ensures that only the correct set of genes is active in each cell type.
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were interested in how different cell types develop. They discovered microRNA, a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation. Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.
And here’s how it started: as so often, with a seemingly minor observation that blew up big time, leading to generalizations about control of gene expression in all organisms—even viruses (but not bacteria).
In the late 1980s, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were postdoctoral fellows in the laboratory of Robert Horvitz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002, alongside Sydney Brenner and John Sulston. In Horvitz’s laboratory, they studied a relatively unassuming 1 mm long roundworm, C. elegans. Despite its small size, C. elegans possesses many specialized cell types such as nerve and muscle cells also found in larger, more complex animals, making it a useful model for investigating how tissues develop and mature in multicellular organisms. Ambros and Ruvkun were interested in genes that control the timing of activation of different genetic programs, ensuring that various cell types develop at the right time. They studied two mutant strains of worms, lin-4 and lin-14, that displayed defects in the timing of activation of genetic programs during development. The laureates wanted to identify the mutated genes and understand their function. Ambros had previously shown that the lin-4 gene appeared to be a negative regulator of the lin-14 gene. However, how the lin-14 activity was blocked was unknown. Ambros and Ruvkun were intrigued by these mutants and their potential relationship and set out to resolve these mysteries.
After his postdoctoral research, Victor Ambros analyzed the lin-4 mutant in his newly established laboratory at Harvard University. Methodical mapping allowed the cloning of the gene and led to an unexpected finding. The lin-4 gene produced an unusually short RNA molecule that lacked a code for protein production. These surprising results suggested that this small RNA from lin-4 was responsible for inhibiting lin-14. How might this work?
Here’s the announcement, which I always find exciting:
AND THE TWO CONTESTS:
1.) Guess who will win the other two Nobel Prizes in science: Physics and Chemistry. One guess per discipline, and the first person who guesses both winners gets one of my trade books, autographed per their choice (including cat drawings).
2.) Alternatively you can choose the other contest: Guess who will win these two prizes: Literature and Peace. Same rules as above, and same prize.
You can guess in only one of these two competitions.
In previous years, people have failed miserably in these contests, but someday someone will win. . . .
The Washington Post has published some winners of the 2023 Nikon Photomicrography Contest (you can see a lot more entries here), and I present a selection of the pictures in lieu of readers’ wildlife, which will resume tomorrow. (Send in your photos!) Photo captions come from the Post site.
Fourth place, venomous fangs of a small tarantula. (John-Oliver Dum/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
Image of distinction, cabbage butterfly eggs. (John-Oliver Dum/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
Sixth place, Comatricha nigra, extreme close-up of two developing fruiting bodies cultivated in a moist chamber. (Timothy Boomer/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
Honorable mention, carpenter bee (Xylocopa violacea) head and antenna. (Ángel Navarro Gómez/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
Image of distinction, cleared mouse embryo. (Arthur Chien/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
11th Place, crystallized sugar syrup. (Diego García/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
12th Place, “Cuckoo wasp” standing on a flower. (Sherif Abdallah Ahmed/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
Image of distinction, feeding bryozoan colony zooids. Bryozoans are microscopic aquatic invertebrates that live in colonies. (Charles Krebs/Courtesy of Nikon Small World)
Two more from Nikon’s contest site:
Image of Distinction: Maturing Mouse cortical neuron in culture; Nadia Efimova:
Images of Distinction: Marine organism (Pyrocystis lunula, Dinophyceae); Frank Fox:
If you didn’t vote yet in Fat Bear week, you’ve missed two rounds of voting, both involving choosing the fattest bear in each of two pairs. Here are the results so far, with Bears 806 Spring Cub., 901, 128, and 164 winning their rounds (you can read about each of the bears here).
Today, starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time (noon Eastern time and 11 a.m. Chicago time), you can vote for two more matches on the Fat Bear Contest site linked above. All you have to do is tap on your favorite bear of each of the two pairs, enter your email address, and press “enter”. Remember, though, that it’s 1½ hours until the games begin!
Here are the matchups. Both of the bears I voted for made it through!
CONTEST #1
CONTEST #2
You can read about all the bears here. I won’t tell you how to vote, of course, but would like to point out that 806 Spring Cub, a first year, has had a tough life so far. Further, 480 Otis has already won more Fat Bear Titles than any other ursid, while 901, a mom, had a tough go last year, having reared THREE cubs, lost a lot of weight, and then lost one of the three cubs. How sad!
There will be another chance to vote on Monday, and then on Tuesday there’s the final matchup, with the winner again determined by popular vote.
