Via Pharyngula:
15 Evolutionary Gems: A body of evidence published in the last decade that flexes the considerable intellectual muscle of Evolutionary Theory.
1. The discovery of Indohyus, an ancestor to whales.
2. The discovery of Tiktaalik, an ancestor to tetrapods.
3. The origin of feathers revealed in creatures like Epidexipteryx.
4. The evolution of patterning mechanisms in teeth.
5. The developmental and evolutionary origin of the vertebrate skeleton.
6. Speciation driven indirectly by selection in sticklebacks.
7. Selection for longer-legged lizards in Caribbean island populations.
8. A co-evolutionary arms race between Daphnia and its parasites.
9. Non-random dispersal and gene flow in populations of great tits.
10. Maintenance of polymorphisms in populations of guppies.
11. Contingency in the evolution of pharyngeal jaws in the moray.
12. Developmental genes that regulate the shape of beaks in Darwin's finches.
13. Evolution of regulatory genes that specify wing spots in Drosophila.
14. Evolution of toxin resistance.
15. The concept of evolutionary capacitance: the idea that environmental stress can expose hidden variations that are then subject to selection.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Stimulant Surprise
Sometimes you just need that extra oomph to get through the day.
Today's NY Times had an interesting article about the smell of coffee and how that scent alone can have a gene-activating effect on the brain. The reality is the vast majority of our genes are almost always mothballed away, tightly bound to inhibit and regulate their expression by methyl groups and G-C rich zippers. However, get the right stimulant and the cell will release that tight grip and allow amazingly fast transcription of genes to build proteins that in this case, get the brain moving off of sleepy maintenance mode and on to the business of minding...uh, one's business.
Still, one cannot live on stimulants alone, and another research group has shown some compelling evidence for that thing we all likely got in preschool and kindergarten: The afternoon nap. The one real perk I miss from one of my former labs is that the New Age building had nap rooms, and boy did I ever take advantage. A snappy 20 minute snooze around 2pm made not only the rest of the work day but the night as well a time of full production and activity.
Really, those lab sombreros I invented back in grad school make great sense.
Today's NY Times had an interesting article about the smell of coffee and how that scent alone can have a gene-activating effect on the brain. The reality is the vast majority of our genes are almost always mothballed away, tightly bound to inhibit and regulate their expression by methyl groups and G-C rich zippers. However, get the right stimulant and the cell will release that tight grip and allow amazingly fast transcription of genes to build proteins that in this case, get the brain moving off of sleepy maintenance mode and on to the business of minding...uh, one's business.
Still, one cannot live on stimulants alone, and another research group has shown some compelling evidence for that thing we all likely got in preschool and kindergarten: The afternoon nap. The one real perk I miss from one of my former labs is that the New Age building had nap rooms, and boy did I ever take advantage. A snappy 20 minute snooze around 2pm made not only the rest of the work day but the night as well a time of full production and activity.
Really, those lab sombreros I invented back in grad school make great sense.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Playing with food never felt so artistic.
Enjoy here the bizarre and outright wild stylings of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, a group that generates its music exclusively from specialized produce they pick up from the grocer the day of the show.
The instruments require occasional lubrication during the performances, as the hot lights of a stage performance will begin to dry the raw plants, and that can apparently change the sound various carrot recorders and cucumberophones make, so they much dip them in water between pieces and sets.
The best part? They make a soup out of the instruments after the show and share with the audience.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Fabulous Games and Prizes - in the lab.
I'm sure many readers are aware of the X Prize for various goals reached in commercializing the space race, as illustrated by the landmark (spacemark?) achievement by SpaceShipOne in 2004. But did you know there are X Prizes for cell crushers too?
There's another cool 10 million bucks out there for the ability to cut the cost of genomic sequencing into the affordable range, that is, to sequence one person's entire genome for less than a thousand dollars.
There appears to be several groups that are going to make this a photo finish.
The possibilities of such a cheap and afforable technology are staggering, as one's genome would become core information in medical files, allowing treatments and therapies to be targeted with greater precision.
I recall in 1994 as a college freshman I went to a seminar with a representative of the Human Genome Project, then working on merely sequencing a composite of the complete genome. I was told of the industrious effort being put into this project, a thousand computers crunching millions of numbers non-stop with a target of around 2006. Not only did the HGP beat that goal by a long shot, they were almost usurped by a private company! The merger into the HGP is its own sordid story, alas. Never the less, the acceleration curve of our technology is staggering sometimes.
There's another cool 10 million bucks out there for the ability to cut the cost of genomic sequencing into the affordable range, that is, to sequence one person's entire genome for less than a thousand dollars.
There appears to be several groups that are going to make this a photo finish.
The possibilities of such a cheap and afforable technology are staggering, as one's genome would become core information in medical files, allowing treatments and therapies to be targeted with greater precision.
I recall in 1994 as a college freshman I went to a seminar with a representative of the Human Genome Project, then working on merely sequencing a composite of the complete genome. I was told of the industrious effort being put into this project, a thousand computers crunching millions of numbers non-stop with a target of around 2006. Not only did the HGP beat that goal by a long shot, they were almost usurped by a private company! The merger into the HGP is its own sordid story, alas. Never the less, the acceleration curve of our technology is staggering sometimes.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Like a big 'You Are Here' sign
I'm sure you've heard of the news last month of UFO sightings in Stephenville, Texas. One of my colleagues queried me if I felt there was any legitimacy to the story - could the UFO actually be some intelligent and advanced alien life?
Unfortunately, my answer is a dull almost certainly no. I feel there is plenty of good evidence to suggest life as we know it could arise independently across the universe. Given we have at least a grasp that how things are put together here (like stars and matter) this is probably how they are put together elsewhere. Also, given the vastness of space and the cosmically short time it has taken us to go from polymer goo to intelligent life, it seems ignorant to assume we are in some special and unique nook of the Big Everything, and everywhere else is just void storage.
That said, I also think us meeting up with another indendently arising alien race is also unlikely, for the very same enormity of the universe.
Our little probes, our pollution of the planet, our TV, radio and light waves, even our active search for aliens are riding on a lot of luck to suddenly be noticed by anyone, even if they are taking a hard look at our solar system.
The real trick would be to construct something BIG, and I think Jaron Lanier has the right idea: start moving stars around. Lanier proposes building up a fleet of gravitational tugs or tractors to move objects around, eventually one could get enough of them to start influencing a star's movement. From there, the idea is simply one of scale:
Why move stars around? Because then they could be guided into orbital formations that almost certainly would not have occurred naturally. An imaginable set-up period of tens of thousands of years could therefore be leveraged into a much longer period—billions of years, perhaps—during which aliens could observe the fruits of our efforts. A group of stars organized to present a sign in this way might be called a “graphstellation” (like a constellation, but also a form of writing).
Yeah, the bumps in the roads are almost as big as the objects that are being suggested to be moved into some sort of kitschy Vegas eyesore. Still, I think this is the first proposal I've heard of that even gets close to achieving what so many people feel they've done in Stephenville, Texas - get noticed by little green men.
Unfortunately, my answer is a dull almost certainly no. I feel there is plenty of good evidence to suggest life as we know it could arise independently across the universe. Given we have at least a grasp that how things are put together here (like stars and matter) this is probably how they are put together elsewhere. Also, given the vastness of space and the cosmically short time it has taken us to go from polymer goo to intelligent life, it seems ignorant to assume we are in some special and unique nook of the Big Everything, and everywhere else is just void storage.
That said, I also think us meeting up with another indendently arising alien race is also unlikely, for the very same enormity of the universe.
Our little probes, our pollution of the planet, our TV, radio and light waves, even our active search for aliens are riding on a lot of luck to suddenly be noticed by anyone, even if they are taking a hard look at our solar system.
The real trick would be to construct something BIG, and I think Jaron Lanier has the right idea: start moving stars around. Lanier proposes building up a fleet of gravitational tugs or tractors to move objects around, eventually one could get enough of them to start influencing a star's movement. From there, the idea is simply one of scale:
Why move stars around? Because then they could be guided into orbital formations that almost certainly would not have occurred naturally. An imaginable set-up period of tens of thousands of years could therefore be leveraged into a much longer period—billions of years, perhaps—during which aliens could observe the fruits of our efforts. A group of stars organized to present a sign in this way might be called a “graphstellation” (like a constellation, but also a form of writing).
Yeah, the bumps in the roads are almost as big as the objects that are being suggested to be moved into some sort of kitschy Vegas eyesore. Still, I think this is the first proposal I've heard of that even gets close to achieving what so many people feel they've done in Stephenville, Texas - get noticed by little green men.
Friday, February 08, 2008
The Six Million Watt Man (1.2 million miles of travel not included)
A research team unveils a device that convert leg energy into electrical energy. In principle its exactly how hybrid cars can use the deceleration of a car by braking as a harvest point for gathering up some extra electrical juice.
As the team reports tomorrow in Science, the braces produced 5 watts of power--enough to run 10 cell phones.
Now we're talking. I'd love to have a little bioelectric zappage on hand for my cell phone and even an LED flashlight. I suppose if I ever had a laptop it would be good motivation to get enough power to turn it on.
The prototype appears lightweight (1.6kgs). I wonder if a more industrious individual could strap on a battery and bank some of those watts, eh? It'd be pretty neat to be able to not have to plug my cell phone in every night and just have it charge as I tool about the lab. Of course, the more noble applications such as insulin pumps and prosthetic limbs, but man, I'd love to drop another chore off my daily decompression routine when I get home from work.
I guess they're still working on getting that USB port for the brain.
As the team reports tomorrow in Science, the braces produced 5 watts of power--enough to run 10 cell phones.
Now we're talking. I'd love to have a little bioelectric zappage on hand for my cell phone and even an LED flashlight. I suppose if I ever had a laptop it would be good motivation to get enough power to turn it on.
The prototype appears lightweight (1.6kgs). I wonder if a more industrious individual could strap on a battery and bank some of those watts, eh? It'd be pretty neat to be able to not have to plug my cell phone in every night and just have it charge as I tool about the lab. Of course, the more noble applications such as insulin pumps and prosthetic limbs, but man, I'd love to drop another chore off my daily decompression routine when I get home from work.
I guess they're still working on getting that USB port for the brain.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Weather didn't do this Atlantis in
Atlantis lifted off this afternoon despite threats both from gloomy weather and a faulty fuel sensor.
This is a huge mission as the Atlantis shuttle is taking up the Columbus science lab, a five billion (with a BUH) dollar module built by ten European nations. The lab is going to more than double the amount of science that can be done on the international space station once the Atlantis crew gets it attached and running.
I still recall in grade school getting to put down the composition and times tables once every few times a year to watch the shuttle lift off on a TV strapped down to a cart in the glorious theatre that was my classrooms. I may not always agree with the government's expense of funds, but the exploration of space never ceases to feel like a most righteous investment and spectacle.
This is a huge mission as the Atlantis shuttle is taking up the Columbus science lab, a five billion (with a BUH) dollar module built by ten European nations. The lab is going to more than double the amount of science that can be done on the international space station once the Atlantis crew gets it attached and running.
I still recall in grade school getting to put down the composition and times tables once every few times a year to watch the shuttle lift off on a TV strapped down to a cart in the glorious theatre that was my classrooms. I may not always agree with the government's expense of funds, but the exploration of space never ceases to feel like a most righteous investment and spectacle.
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