Supernovae, Comets and Holey Mammoth Tusks
Jan 5 at 11:11pm by Aileen
…a tale of mass extinction and woe
Blue Sky Studios
Not so very long ago the wizened gatekeepers of scientific orthodoxy staged a vigorous and extremely nasty campaign designed to prevent any possibility that impressionable science students or the great unwashed masses might come to suspect that things in our cosmic neighborhood were ever anything but perfectly peaceful, perfectly ordered, and perfectly safe. It was the middle of the 20th century, a bit over 150 years since the staid scientists at the Royal Society in London had discovered the hard way that stones really can fall from the sky despite their pronouncements to the contrary.
Yet the publication of Worlds in Collision in 1950 – and Ages in Chaos in 1952 – purported to demonstrate that the Earth had suffered some serious cosmic upheavals within the memory of human civilizations. These ideas drove such astronomical lions as Harlow Shapley to use every underhanded method and scheme available to destroy the author and reassure the public once again that, despite all evidence and witness through the ages, stones do NOT fall from the sky, comets do NOT wreak havoc on the Earth, and the perfect clockwork of cosmic orderliness is NOT violated by disorderly events. Thus did the notorious Velikovsky Affair take its place in the annals of science’s ample history of internal turf wars.
Many young people today are quite used to the idea that our planet has been bombarded by cosmic billiard balls of one sort or another, learning about the epochal events that marked transitions from one age to another, usually by causing mass extinctions of life forms and altering the course of evolution. Even children’s books and movies portray the catastrophic events of 65 million years ago when a large asteroid ended the age of the dinosaurs. Yet apart from those now-recognized disasters in the distant past of our planet, scientists have tended to remain skeptical of the notion that such world-shattering events have ever occurred – or been recorded – in the short (~100,000 year) history of human beings on this planet.
Popularity: 25% [?]
The Non-Evolution of Ethnic Cuisine
Jul 14 at 9:09pm by Aileen
It was bound to happen. Science Daily reports that research from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil entitled The non-equilibrium nature of culinary evolution has established that regional cuisines don’t evolve much. Even in a small world.
The researchers examined historical food preferences for ‘national’ diets in Britain, France and Brazil, and found that certain staples as well as unique ingredients remain in the cuisines despite modern access to restaurants specializing in regional or ‘national’ foods. And despite the modern availability of regional foods in grocery stores.
In other words, the Irish still love potatoes, the French still eat snails and frogs’ legs, the Germans still love sausages and sauerkraut, the Japanese still rely on fish stock and Central and South Americans still choose tortillas over Wonder Bread. Mediterranean peoples still consume lots of olive oil, and still have longer lives, less heart disease and lower cholesterol than the average American.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Rewriting the Bird Family Geneology
Jun 30 at 8:08pm by Aileen
Bird-watching is one of the most popular pastimes in the world, for people from all walks of life. Our fascination with birds in all their sizes, colors and habitats thus makes for a ready field of study in biology, where bird evolution used to maintain a fairly rigorous tree-of-life.
Not so much any longer, since researchers with the Early Bird Assembling the Tree-of-Life Project centered on the Field Museum examined DNA from all major living groups of birds and discovered that phylogenics had it all wrong!
Huge Genome Phylogenic Study of Birds Re-Writes Bird Evolution
As an indicator of just how wrong it was, DNA analysis has determined that falcons – those swift and trainable birds of prey – are NOT closely related to hawks and eagles. Whoa. Spokespersons for the project say the entire understanding of bird evolution will need to be re-written with this new information, and that information itself raises some further questions about concurrent and repeated evolution of certain traits at different times in different families.
“We now have a robust evolutionary tree from which to study the evolution of birds and all their interesting features that have fascinated so many scientists and amateurs for centuries,” Reddy said. “Birds exhibit substantial diversity (largest of the tetrapod groups), and using this ‘family tree’ wwe can begin to understand how this diversity originated as well as how different bird groups are interrelated.”
Popularity: 10% [?]
The Surprising Technology of the Bacterial Flagellum
Jun 24 at 2:02pm by Aileen
[Photo Credit: Zina Deretsky, NSF]
Scientists at Indiana University Bloomington and Harvard published a report in Science June 20 describing a protein “clutch” that disengages the bacterial tail from the “tiny but powerful engine” that powers its rotation. The flagellum is the means that many bacterial cells – including Bacillus subtilis used in this research – use to ‘swim’ in liquid environments where they live.
Microscopic ‘Clutch’ Puts Flagellum in Neutral
The clutch mechanism was discovered by accident when the researchers were studying the formation of bacterial “biofilm,” where the cells accumulate and become stationary, biofilms are involved in bacterial infections. It is hoped that the discovery will give nanotechnologists some ideas about how to regulate tiny engines they create in the lab.
“We think it’s pretty cool that evolving bacteria and human engineers arrived at a similar solution to the same problem,” says IU biologist Daniel Kearns, leader of the project.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Send In The Clowns! …Humor as Coping Mechanism
Jun 19 at 4:04pm by Aileen
Way back in 2005 researchers at Texas A&M determined that humor – an appreciation of the absurd hilarity of life – can significantly increase Hope, and that hopefulness helps people cope with stresses in daily life and during illnesses as well.
In January of this year a communications professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, demonstrated that in a medical setting, laughter is the best medicine. Humor helps both the doctors and the patients cope. The finding was extended to the workplace and to educational situations as well, eventually reaching the conclusion that regardless of the content, humor seems to be beneficial and productive. It helps to get the point across in almost any situation.
Then on June 12, 2008 Alastaire Clarke published his Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor, which purportedly explains the reason that humor is common to all human societies. In Humor Shown to be Fundamental to Our Success as a Species, Clarke claims that humor is fundamantal to the evolution of human beings, and continues to be important in the cognitive development of infants and children.
Alas, Clarke’s Pattern Recognition Theory can’t tell us what’s funny or why, so it probably won’t be used by comedy writers or clowns to formulate their skits any time soon. And while humor can progress from basic slapstick to childish jokes to ridicule to satire, he does not attempt to explain why slapstick still makes us laugh even if we’ve progressed all the way to dry British satire. A clown would have a handy explanation for that, but I don’t think Clarke asked one. Oh, well.
The articles do make a strong case for the survival value of humor to human beings, and that may be all we really need to know about it.
Links:
Humor Can Increase Hope, Research Shows
Laughter is the Best Medicine
Popularity: 23% [?]
Nature’s Oldest Profession
Apr 16 at 4:04pm by Aileen
Just Like Penguins and Other Primates, People Trade Sex for Resources
A research scientist at UMich School of Public Health has established through interviews with 475 undergraduates that humans exchange resources (or merely clout) for sex, just like penguins, hummingbirds and other species of beings on this planet. His paper, “Young Adults Attempt Exchanges in Reproductively Relevant Currencies,” is published in this month’s Journal of Evolutionary Psychology.
Not that the idea of trading sex for resources is something unheard of in human society. Or even that in cultures where marriages are arranged among parents and grandparents before the young are old enough to walk, the arrangements are all about relative wealth and social standing – things considered valuable in the societies.
It is interesting that biologists (yes, the evo-psych folks too) have just recently figured out that their traditional reliance on exclusivity in sexual selection as a primary mechanism of directional evolution is not nearly as cut and dried as they long assumed it was. Given that cheating on spouses and general promiscuity have turned out to be fairly rampant in birds and beasts – the beauty of that peacock’s tail or the size of that ape’s manly parts doesn’t prevent lesser males from getting their genes into the pool after all…
There’s a reason we call it “The Oldest Profession.” Turns out, it’s even older than humans!
Popularity: 13% [?]
Expelled!!!
Mar 29 at 2:02am by Aileen
The Nonprophets radio show comment on what happened.
The science blogosphere erupted this week after biology professor Paul Myers [a.k.a. PZ Myers] was summarily expelled from a pre-release screening of the Ben Stein movie Expelled, even while his wife, daughter and guest Richard Dawkins were allowed in to see the film.
Myers blogged about the incident in several posts to his #1 rated science blog for Seed Media Group, Pharyngula. Other science bloggers for the same outlet also blogged about it – Greg Laden bestowed sainthood on PZ and compiles the buzz from Dawkins, other bloggers, national and international media… it’s an exhaustive (but dated) list.
Popularity: 13% [?]
First ‘Rule’ of Evolution…
Mar 18 at 7:07pm by Aileen
Researchers at the University of Bath in England, Imperial College London, and the University of Waterloo in Canada have analyzed the last 550 million years of evolution in the fossil record, and determined that the First ‘Rule’ of Evolution Suggests that Life is Destined to Become More Complex.
This may be news to evolutionary biologists and interested laity who were taught that evolution is solely a matter of random mutation and natural selection with no direction toward greater complexity. Dr. Matthew Wills from the University of Bath explained it thus…
“If you start with the simplest possible animal body, then there’s only one direction to evolve in – you have to become more complex. Sooner or later, however, you reach a level of complexity where it’s possible to go backwards and become simple again.”
But does this happen? Wills explains…
“What’s astonishing is that hardly any crustaceans have taken this backwards route. Instead, almost all branches have evolved in the same direction, becoming more complex in parallel. This is the nearest thing to a pervasive evolutionary rule that’s been found.”
Popularity: 7% [?]
10 Earth Science Questions for the 21st Century
Mar 15 at 5:05pm by Aileen
The National Research Council has identified and reported on Ten Questions that will shape 21st century earth science. Some may be a little surprised that these questions are still unanswered, having been told in no uncertain terms in science classes in the last century that science already had definitive answers to questions like how the earth and other planets in our solar system formed. Live and learn. Here’s a bare list of the identified questions…
1. How did earth and other planets form?
Scientists still do not know enough about how our planet got its elements to understand its evolution, or why other planets in our system are very different.
2. What happened during the first 500 million years?
Current scientific belief is that another planet collided with ours during the late formation stage, creating the moon and melting this planet all the way to its core. Yet unknown is how (and when) the Earth developed its atmosphere and oceans.
3. How did life begin?
Scientists hope to obtain evidence from rocks and minerals, as well as investigations of Mars and other members of our system.
Popularity: 23% [?]
50 Weird Science Tidbits – 5
Feb 15 at 6:06pm by Aileen
Part 5: Items 41-50
This is the final installment of our 50 Weird Science tidbits, odd factoids and strange-but-true trivia. There are of course more weird things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But these 50 should get you through at least one championship round down at the pub. By the way, the word “dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt.” That’s a freebie!
41. Plants Have Family Values Too
Researchers from Canada found that plants can have complex social interactions despite being… um, vegetative. Plants will grow more aggressively near unrelated plants than when they grow near relatives from the same maternal family.
42. The World’s Most Dangerous Animal
The not-so humble mosquito wins this award hands down. Mosquitoes transmitting countless diseases kill more animals – including humans – than any other animal (or plant) on Earth.
Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 58% [?]
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