- February 9, 2012
- 02:39 PM
- 11 views
Supercontinents: A method to their madness
by Brooke N in Smaller Questions
In 50-200 million years all of Earth’s continents will meet again to form a single massive supercontinent around the North Pole. Move over Pangaea, meet our next supercontinent: Amasia.
There are currently two hypotheses for the organizing pattern of supercontinents...... Read more »
Mitchell, R., Kilian, T., & Evans, D. (2012) Supercontinent cycles and the calculation of absolute palaeolongitude in deep time. Nature, 482(7384), 208-211. DOI: 10.1038/nature10800
- February 9, 2012
- 01:09 PM
- 18 views
Hunter-gatherers are secretly selfish
by sahelanthropus in EvoAnth
Many suggest food sharing is the foundation of society, sowing the seeds of co-operation that eventually gave rise to the complex culture we know and love. Thus explaining why food sharing developed is an area of importance when it comes to understanding Homo sapiens as we see them today. Of course, as with just about [...]... Read more »
Frank Marlowe. (2004) What Explains Hadza Food Sharing?. Research in Economic Anthropology,, 69-88. info:/10.1016/S0190-1281(04)23003-7
- February 9, 2012
- 10:53 AM
- 27 views
When Did Cetaceans Evolve Echolocation?
by Jim Ryan in Wild Mammals
Modern whales include baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti). Baleen whales are large, filter feeding whales that do not echolocate. Odontocete whales tend to be smaller in size, predatory, and are capable of producing high-frequency sounds used in echolocation. In addition, modern odonotcetes have an asymmetrical skull, where the bones of the skull roof extend posteriorly (telescoped) and are shifted to the left side of the skull (asymmetry) (Figure 1). This pronounced asymmetry is linked with the production of high frequency sounds and the reception of the returning echoes.
...Dorsal view of the skull of a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) showing the posterior position of the nasals, frontals, maxilla, and premaxilla bones (telescoping) and the asymmetry of the bones surrounding the blow hole. (copyright Jim Ryan)
Modern mysticete and odontocete whales both arose from Eocene archaeocete whales. The skulls of archaeocete whales were presumed to by symmetrical. ... Julia Fahlke, working with Philip Gingerich, Robert Welsh, and Aaron Wood report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that some archaeocete skulls show distinct asymmetry without telescoping (Figure 2).
...A graph of the mean deviation of the dorsal midline suture for 24 artiodactyl skulls (top row), which show a high degree of symmetry, compared with 6 archaeocete whale skulls (bottom, two protocetids and four basilosaurids). All six archaeocete species show asymmetry to the same side of the skull. (From Fahlke et al., 2012).
The researchers propose that Eocene archaeocetes evolved cranial asymmetry “as part of a complex of traits linked to directional hearing.” Some of the other traits associated with hearing high frequency sounds include the thinning of the pan-bone of the lower jaws (Figure 3), and isolation of the ear region from the rest of the skull.
...Dentary bones of a late Eocene archaeocete whale (Basilosaurus isis) showing the relative bone thickness. The thinnest region represents the location of the pan bone. (From Fahlke et al., 2012)
The authors propose the following sequence of events: 1) Eocene archaeocete whales evolved modest cranial asymmetry along with a change to more directional hearing of high frequency sounds. They also evolved thinner pan bones in the jaw to aid the reception of water borne sounds. 2) Later on, Oligocene odontocete whales evolved more refined high frequency echolocation, which further shifted the cranial roofing bones posteriorly (telescoping) and to the left side of the skull (asymmetry). 3) At the same time, Oligocene mysticete whales lost the skull asymmetry of their archaeocete ancestors as their skulls became modified for a bulk filter-feeding mode with low-frequency hearing. Thus, cranial asymmetry is probably an ancestral condition in whales.
...Fahlke, J., Gingerich, P., Welsh, R., & Wood, A. ... Cranial asymmetry in Eocene archaeocete whales and the evolution of directional hearing in water Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (35), 14545-14548 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1108927108
... Read more »
Fahlke, J., Gingerich, P., Welsh, R., & Wood, A. (2011) Cranial asymmetry in Eocene archaeocete whales and the evolution of directional hearing in water. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(35), 14545-14548. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1108927108
- February 9, 2012
- 10:38 AM
- 19 views
Immunoediting in Cancer by Exome Sequencing
by Daniel Koboldt in Massgenomics
Cancer immunoediting is a process by which the immune system controls the growth of nascent tumors and shapes their antigenic properties. It’s a sort of catch-22 of cancer biology; by protecting the host from development of cancer, the immune system ultimately selects for tumor cells that are resistant to its attack. Central to the concept [...]... Read more »
Matsushita, H., Vesely, M., Koboldt, D., Rickert, C., Uppaluri, R., Magrini, V., Arthur, C., White, J., Chen, Y., Shea, L.... (2012) Cancer exome analysis reveals a T-cell-dependent mechanism of cancer immunoediting. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature10755
DuPage, M., Mazumdar, C., Schmidt, L., Cheung, A., & Jacks, T. (2012) Expression of tumour-specific antigens underlies cancer immunoediting. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature10803
- February 9, 2012
- 09:42 AM
- 18 views
LTP and LTD at the same time? Adventures in Functional Compartmentalization
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
On Monday we talked about LTP and LTD on a basic level, today we are discussing how they interact with each other. In a recent Open Access paper, Pavlowsky and Alarcon ask the question: Can some synapses on a neuron strengthen while at the same time others weaken? And if so, how do the two processes interact with each other? neurons firing (source)First let's get some background. Synapse strengthening (LTP) and synapse weakening (LTD) both require new proteins to be synthesized at the soma* (*in this particular situation, sometimes they don't require it, but those details are too deep to dive into here). So what happens if LTP is induced at some synapses and LTD is induced at others on the same neuron? There are three possibilities:They compete for protein synthesis at the soma, one using up all the precious protein synthesis machinery and impairing the development of the otherThey cooperate, one starting up the protein synthesis engine at the soma so it's ready to go, helping the other. They don't interact and just do their own thing like normal. To determine which of these possibilities actually happen in a neuron, Pavlowsky and Alarcon induce LTP and LTD on the same cells, but in different places. Showing stimulation on the same side of the somaFrom Figure 2 Pavlowsky and Alarcon 2012 They induced LTP in one spot (S2) and then induced LTD in another (S1). And lo and behold! the LTP happening first prevented the LTD (favoring the compete hypothesis above). So this shows that LTP and LTD compete in the neuron. But what are they competing for?There are two steps in protein synthesis where LTP and LTD might compete: translation (getting a protein from an mRNA) and transcription (creating more mRNA from the DNA). To test whether translation or transcription is important for this competition, the researchers induced LTP at S2 in the presence of either a translation blocker (anisomycin) or a transcription blocker (actinomycin-D). Then they washed away the blocker and induced LTD at S2.From Figure 6 Pavlowsky and Alarcon 2012 The translation blocker allowed for subsequent LTD at S1 (top left of figure), while the transcription blocker didn't (top right of figure), even though both prevented the initial LTP at S2 (bottom panels of figure). This is evidence that the translation phase of protein synthesis is important for determining which form of plasticity gets induced (LTP or LTD). So what does all this mean? The results support the compete hypothesis, that the first plasticity induction (LTP or LTD) gets dibs on most of the plasticity-related protein synthesis machinery and prevents the other from happening. However, if the first induction can't access the protein translation machinery (because it is blocked with anisomycin), then the second induction is able to use it just as it normally would. The authors do a thorough job investigating this phenomenon, testing different time intervals between LTP and LTD induction, testing location of the stimuli, and have some interesting discussion about what this might mean for learning and memory. If you are interested in the details, I highly recommend this paper, it's in PLoS One, so it is open access. Pavlowsky A, & Alarcon JM (2012). Interaction between Long-Term Potentiation and Depression in CA1 Synapses: Temporal Constrains, Functional Compartmentalization and Protein Synthesis. PloS one, 7 (1) PMID: 22272255... Read more »
Pavlowsky A, & Alarcon JM. (2012) Interaction between Long-Term Potentiation and Depression in CA1 Synapses: Temporal Constrains, Functional Compartmentalization and Protein Synthesis. PloS one, 7(1). PMID: 22272255
- February 9, 2012
- 07:15 AM
- 23 views
Jurassic Love Song
by Carian Thus in United Academics
For paleontologists it is almost impossible to study sounds of the past. Sounds do not ossify. Yet fossils sometimes offer a solution. An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Jurassic chirping of an extinct insect.... Read more »
Gu, J., Montealegre-Z, F., Robert, D., Engel, M., Qiao, G., & Ren, D. (2012) Wing stridulation in a Jurassic katydid (Insecta, Orthoptera) produced low-pitched musical calls to attract females. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1118372109
- February 9, 2012
- 07:00 AM
- 24 views
February 9, 2012
by Erin Campbell in HighMag Blog
We all know that exercise is good for our bodies, and when we hear people talking about it in the media, the benefits are discussed in big-picture terms. A recent paper describes the effects of exercise at the cellular level, and gives me new motivation to get my ass in gear. Well, after I finish this heart-shaped Dunkin’ Donut (don’t give me that smug look…you know it’s delicious). Autophagy is the process in which a cell metabolizes its own organelles and proteins. Autophagy takes place in the lysosome at a normal rate to rid the cell of old organelles, but is induced at higher rates in response to cellular stress to allow the cell to adjust to changing nutritional needs. A recent study finds that exercise can induce autophagy in muscle cells. In this paper, He and colleagues tracked autophagy in mice after they ran on treadmills. As seen in the images above, the number of autophagosomes (green dots) in the tibialis anterior muscle was higher in mice after 80 minutes of exercise (right), compared to before the exercise (left). Mice with a genetic mutation that prevented exercise-induced autophagy had lower endurance for exercise and had altered glucose metabolism. These fascinating findings provide us with a cellular understanding of how exercise prolongs life and protects our bodies from diseases such as diabetes and cancer. He, C., Bassik, M., Moresi, V., Sun, K., Wei, Y., Zou, Z., An, Z., Loh, J., Fisher, J., Sun, Q., Korsmeyer, S., Packer, M., May, H., Hill, J., Virgin, H., Gilpin, C., Xiao, G., Bassel-Duby, R., Scherer, P., & Levine, B. (2012). Exercise-induced BCL2-regulated autophagy is required for muscle glucose homeostasis Nature, 481 (7382), 511-515 DOI: 10.1038/nature10758Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd, copyright ©2012... Read more »
He, C., Bassik, M., Moresi, V., Sun, K., Wei, Y., Zou, Z., An, Z., Loh, J., Fisher, J., Sun, Q.... (2012) Exercise-induced BCL2-regulated autophagy is required for muscle glucose homeostasis. Nature, 481(7382), 511-515. DOI: 10.1038/nature10758
- February 9, 2012
- 05:36 AM
- 26 views
Why parkin has scientists backing the future of Parkinson's research
by Andrew Watt in A Hippo on Campus
Back in the '80s the name Michael J. Fox was more or less interchangeable with that of Marty McFly, the effortlessly cool protagonist from the Back to the Future trilogy who introduced an entire generation of kids to hoverboards, self-lacing shoes and flux capacitors. Not to mention 'Johnny B Goode'. These days however Fox's name is more likely to have us thinking of his fight with Parkinson's disease, which he was diagnosed with back in 1991, or the advocacy work he does for his aptly named Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Looking at their mission statement you can't help but get the feeling that Fox has brought a little of Marty "nobody calls me chicken" McFly's fighting spirit to the Foundation as it dedicates itself to "finding a cure for Parkinson's disease through an aggressively funded research agenda". Whilst a cure remains allusive, recent research funded by the Foundation has resulted in a giant leap forward in our understanding of Parkinson's disease and suggests that the cure which Fox hopes will one day put him out of business may not be as far off as once thought.It all starts in the basal gangliaClinically, Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by an array of motor symptoms including tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement (or bradykinesia) and gait and walking difficulties. Symptoms which are thought to result from neuronal degeneration within the substantia nigra, a small region of the basal ganglia which acts to produce and release the neurotransmitter dopamine. The basal ganglia is a highly organised group of structures located at the base of the forebrain which exerts a constant inhibitory effect on our various motor systems. An effect which helps to prevent our bodies from becoming inappropriately active. And that's where dopamine comes in. The dopamine, produced by the substantia nigra, acts to facilitate the release of the basal ganglia's inhibitory influence, and thus allows movement to occur. It might be easier to think of the motor system as a somewhat fused set of gears attached to a small motor. Despite the motor (motor system) being active the friction (basal ganglia) is too great to allow the gears to turn. The friction can however be overcome by spraying a small amount of lubricant (our dopamine in this analogy) onto the gears, thus whilst the dopamine doesn't actively turn the gears it acts to reduce the constant friction between the gears thus allowing the motor to initiate movement. Our brains work in much the same way, everything is able to work smoothly in the presence of our personal lubricant, dopamine (sounds wrong I know but stick with me here), however when sufficient levels of dopamine are not available, such as in Parkinson's disease, our ability to initiate and control our movements slowly grinds to a halt.Like most neurodegenerative conditions, the neuronal loss associated with Parkinson's disease occurs due to a variety of factors, some of which are environmental whilst others are genetic. However, as is often the case, it is the rarer genetic forms of the disease which offer the greatest promise for therapeutic advancement in the field. Approximately one in 10 Parkinson's cases result from mutations in the parkin gene, a gene on chromosome six which encodes a component of the E3 ubiquitin ligase complex (for those of you playing at home). Normally this knowledge would result in the use of a mouse model of the disease, however parkin knockout mice show no signs of Parkinson's disease suggesting that parkin mutations act selectively on human nigral dopaminergic neurons. The selective nature of the parkin gene was, until recently, a major hurdle in Parkinson's research as the complexity of neuronal networks in the human brain make it incredibly difficult to study the genetic form of the disease. After all parkin-affected dopaminergic human neurons aren't something you can just grow in a lab. Or at least they weren't, until now.Test tube neuronsThat's right for the first time ever scientists have managed to generate human dopaminergic neurons from Parkinson's disease patients with parkin mutations. And what's more they made them from skin. Ok so to be more specific the researchers generated human induced pluripotent stem cells from dermal fibroblasts (skin cells), collected from two Parkinson's patients (both with parkin mutations) and two controls. The stem cells were subsequently used to generate the dopaminergic neurons some of which contained the parkin mutations and some of which did not. The generation of these mutant neurons allowed the researchers to finally observe parkin in action in its native habitat, and enabled them to see just how mutations in the gene were leading to neuronal damage. As it would turn out normal parkin acts to control the production of monoamine oxidase, or MAO for short, an enzyme which acts to catalyse dopamine oxidation. The production of MAO is normally tightly controlled to ensure that adequate levels of dopamine are being oxidised and our movements are able to all run smoothly. However when parkin mutations occur, the tight control of MAO production is lost and MAO is expressed at much higher levels. But what's the big deal? Surely there's nothing wrong with a bit of extra MAO floating around the place. After all it just means we'll have some MAO for a rainy day, right? Wrong. As it would happen MAO production is generally tightly controlled for a very good reason. It's toxic! Yep, at high levels MAO leads to the degeneration of our dopaminergic neurons as a result of oxidative stress. And no amount of shiraz-based anti-oxidants can do anything about it. But whilst shiraz may not work, it turns out that restoring control over MAO production does, as lead author Houbo Jiang and his team found that the early-stage damage could be reversed by delivering normal parkin back into the cells. As well as providing insight into the role parkin plays in genetic forms of the disease, these findings also provide a novel target for future Parkinson's treatments. MAO production. Whilst one of the drugs currently on the market acts to inhibit MAO activity, there are no therapies which attempt to restore control over MAO production. At least not for the time being. So with the hope these findings seem to be injecting into the field of Parkinson's research, you can't help but get the feeling that if Marty McFly were reading this now he'd smile and say 'if only they knew, there's just a few short years to go'. And I for one am hoping he's right. SourcesJiang, H., Ren, Y., Yuen, E., Zhong, P., Ghaedi, M., Hu, Z., Azabdaftari, G., Nakaso, K., Yan, Z., & Feng, J. (2012). Parkin controls dopamine utilization in human midbrain dopaminergic neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells Nature Communications, 3 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1669... Read more »
Obeso JA, Rodríguez-Oroz MC, Benitez-Temino B, Blesa FJ, Guridi J, Marin C, & Rodriguez M. (2008) Functional organization of the basal ganglia: therapeutic implications for Parkinson's disease. Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society. PMID: 18781672
- February 9, 2012
- 04:00 AM
- 16 views
DNA barcoding pest crop bugs: from old to new species
by Mauro Mandrioli in The aphid room
Aphids are generally identified using morphological characters. However, their small size, the presence of intra-specific polymorphism, the occurrence of environmentally induced variations and the reduction in morphological characters make their identification difficult. Yet accurate identifications are needed because many species of aphids are pests in agriculture, forestry and horticulture and they cause damages not only [...]... Read more »
Pérez-Hidalgo N, Martínez-Torres D, Collantes-Alegre JM, Muller WV, Nieto Nafría JM. (2012) A new species of Rhopalosiphum (Hemiptera, Aphididae) on Chusquea tomentosa (Poaceae, Bambusoideae) from Costa Rica. Zookeys. info:/
- February 9, 2012
- 03:22 AM
- 30 views
How the zebra got his stripes?
by Colin Beale in Safari Ecology
Most animals in the savanna come in one shade of brown or another, except for zebra. Zebra, as everyone knows, are stripey. Black with white stripes, at that; or are they white with black stripes? Anyway, why they're stripey has puzzled many people for a very long time: even Wallace and Darwin debated whether zebra stripes make them conspicuous or not! For stripes to have evolved there must be some evolutionary advantage, but what, exactly is it? There are a huge number of theories out there (many reviewed here), from the rather obvious to the some more ingenious ideas too:For many (and despite Darwin), it's obviously camouflage - just as the stripes on a tiger disguise the outline of this animal and patches on army vehicles hide them, so too, do zebra stripes hide them from lion, at least at a distance. It's a temperature regulation thing - black areas warm up fast and create tiny areas of hot rising air that move cool air over the white bits, to create a series of tiny eddies to cool the animal.It's simply so zebra can see their conspecifics easily in the distance, an advantage as if attached they'll be able to get back into a herd quickly.Whilst they might be conspicuous by day, in low light, and importantly, through a lion's eyes (don't forget they have different visual systems to us) zebras are rendered invisible at night.It makes then invisible to tsetse fliesMoving stripes dazzle and confuse predatorsEtc., Etc.Lion's vision of zebra?In fact I've been told by Tim Caro, who's thought a lot about this problem (here and here for good examples), that there are at least 17 different hypotheses going around, but none of them really have good experimental evidence. The one in the news today is the fly story, thanks to a new paper that describes experiments involving different coloured model animals. In the paper (available here, but probably not free I'm afraid) Ádám Egri and colleagues set up a series of experiments in Hungary (not the first place you might think of studying zebra colours, but why not!). They started with sticky trays with different degrees of a cross pattern and set them out to see how many tabanid flies (commonly known as horseflies) were attracted (and stuck) to each tray (click here for photos). Not immediately related to zebra stripes, I know, but they gradually increased the complexity of the experiment, making stripes and comparing black to white alone, etc., until they ended up with sticky model 'horses' of white, black, brown and zebra stripes (there's a nice picture on the BBC site!). And they counted the horseflies that got stuck to each one.Results, well, black 'horses' attracted 562 horseflies, the brown one 334 the white model 22 and the zebra striped one only 8. So stripes certainly do protect these animals against horseflies. Why this is was the subject of many of the other experiments in the paper, and the authors suggest it comes down to the way light is reflected or not off the animals, resulting in polarisation (i.e. all the waves of light are parallel) which the flies are rather good at detecting (horsefly larvae are dependant on water, which is a good source of polarised light: if you want to find water, looking for polarised light is a good technique). Now white animals do not polarise any light, but striped animals do (from the black bits), so why the striped animals should still be less preferred than white ones isn't clear. The authors suggest it might be something to do with the resolution of the compound eye in the flies. Essentially, they argue that thanks to the width of zebra stripes combined with the resolution of the compound eyes in the horseflies, zebra are invisible to the flies until they're almost on the animal anyway.Zebras are harder to see than wildebeest? Seronera, Nov 2010Now, is this the answer to why zebras are stripey? Well, obviously the authors haven't tested any of the other theories, so can't rule those out. What's more, I need convincing that horseflies are equivalent to tsetse. Horseflies are dependent on water to complete their life cycle, and are consequently rather scarce in many savannahs. Does such a rare species really have a large enough influence to overcome the risks associated with stripes, if stripes make them conspicuous to predators? Tsetse, on the other hand, might be a serious selective force - they can certainly appear in such numbers that they kill animals, and are vectors for Trypanosoma (the animal causing sleeping sickness) that can be fatal to horses. So are the results for Hungarian horseflies going to be the same here with tsetse flies? If you've been in the bush here you'll certainly know that wearing dark colour clothes will give you lots more tsetse bites than wearing light ones (and you'll probably have seen the black and blue tsetse traps in many places - coloured for maximum attraction to the flies). But I still think the work needs to be done - movement alone seems very important for attracting tsetse, and stripes don't seem to hide movement. Similarly, if the resolution of tsetse compound eyes is different to that of horseflies, the hiding won't work. And, of course, tsetse have a very unusual breeding strategy, which, thanks to internal development of single young at a time in the female, means they're not reliant on water - so do they really have the same attraction to polarised light? I think we need a few more answers before I'm quite convinced yet.And in fact, I spoke to Tim Caro back in December at the TAWIRI conference about his research in this area, as he's been busy doing experiments down in Katavi to test all the hypotheses he could find (involving such crazy things as dressing up in zebra skins and walking about in the savanna! That is seriously brave science - it's just asking for trouble!), including the biting flies option, and his answer so far is that he still doesn't know. Nothing conclusive. So until he's finished and written up all these experiments I'm not going to be convinced by a single study that only tested one hypothesis. I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of the story though - nor would I be surprised if there are multiple processes at work here, but I'm not going to just jump on one theory just yet.... Read more »
Egri, A., Blaho, M., Kriska, G., Farkas, R., Gyurkovszky, M., Akesson, S., & Horvath, G. (2012) Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least attractive: an advantage of zebra stripes. Journal of Experimental Biology, 215(5), 736-745. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.065540
- February 9, 2012
- 12:02 AM
- 25 views
Baseline Neurocognitive Test Performance and Symptoms may be Influenced by Depression
by Jane McDevitt in Sports Medicine Research (SMR): In the Lab & In the Field
The objective of this study was to examine depression and baseline neurocognitive function and concussion symptoms in male and female high school and college athletes.... Read more »
Covassin T, Elbin RJ 3rd, Larson E, & Kontos AP. (2012) Sex and Age Differences in Depression and Baseline Sport-Related Concussion Neurocognitive Performance and Symptoms. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. PMID: 22246342
- February 8, 2012
- 10:00 PM
- 30 views
How did some early black holes get so big so fast?
by Charles Daney in Today's Science
The supermassive black holes (SMBHs) found in the centers of large galaxies can be astonishingly large. The closest example to us is in the giant elliptical galaxy M87, and it’s estimated to be 6.6 billion solar masses (M⊙). More distant examples can be even larger, more than 10 billion M⊙ (at distances ~300 million light-years). [...]... Read more »
Di Matteo, T., Khandai, N., DeGraf, C., Feng, Y., Croft, R., Lopez, J., & Springel, V. (2012) COLD FLOWS AND THE FIRST QUASARS. The Astrophysical Journal, 745(2). DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/745/2/L29
- February 8, 2012
- 07:40 PM
- 47 views
You're being watched. That's okay, though, we do it for your own benefit. Or so we'd like you to think...
Starting March 1st Google's much anticipated new privacy policy will take place. Of course, how much it will or will not affect your life depends upon your own personal choices. It strikes me, though, how much the Internet has become a place like those Italian marketplaces I used to love growing up: lots to see, stands full of goodies, lots of people, lots of entertaining distractions, yet if you don't keep a constant eye on your wallet next thing you know it'll be gone.What can you lose on the Internet?Well, privacy, of course. It's a subtle question. Google offers me a service, and in a way, they have a right to access certain information that, by accepting their services, I am voluntarily giving up. Where's the boundary, though? For one thing, I'm bugged by the fact that they present it as yet another service they are offering me: they gather information so they can make my searches easier and provide me with a better service, tailored to my needs.Please. It's called marketing, and we all know it. Check-out what Leonhardt and Magee had to say back in 1998 (Remember 1998? Gmail didn't even exist back then!):"[...] location services will often become repositories of potentially sensitive personal and corporate information. Where you are and who you are with are closely correlated with what you are doing. To leave this information unprotected for everybody to see is clearly undesirable. People would feel uncomfortable if their every move could be watched anonymously [1]."Do you like to be watched anonymously? From Google's new privacy policy:"Location data: Google offers location-enabled services, such as Google Maps and Latitude. If you use those services, Google may receive information about your actual location (such as GPS signals sent by a mobile device) or information that can be used to approximate a location (such as a cell ID)."You may argue it's a machine, not a person watching you. You're still being watched, though, and the way it's done -- as I understand it -- is not that you choose what to make public and what not to. Email or GPS signals are not something people typically post publicly, yet those pieces of info are apparently up for grabs as well. And that, to me, doesn't sound right. Leonhardt and Magee predicted the future when they wrote:"We are especially concerned with the balance between security imposed by the system (mandatory security), and security specified by individuals (discretionary security). [...] We expect that [a global location] service would be provided by a network of loosely cooperating providers, very similar to today's mobile telephone system. Customers would subscribe to one or more service providers. The providers would have roaming agreements with each other. [...] Further, there is scope for third-party location-aware services. For example, such a service might be responsible to automatically inform emergency services when a distress signal from a subscriber is received. On the other hand, users will often have to trust the service providers to obey the security policy laid down in the service contract."Another quote, from a 2006 paper this time (yes, I did a lot of research on this!):"These technologies can be applied for private and public goals, and can be used in private and public situations. Although it is possible to make a distinction between private and public on an analytical level, in reality, it is difficult to draw a clear line between private and public situations, and between private and public goals [2]."That's exactly the issue here. Where do we draw the line between public service, hence available, and private data, hence "hands-off"? What are the dangers of not being able to draw such line? In the above paper, titled "Privacy invasions," philosophy professor Karsten Weber explains:"In principle, leaving a physical place means leaving it forever; by contrast, being in cyberspace means being there forever, because all of an individual‚Äôs actions are stored immediately, and can be tracked and analyzed. [...] The technology could be used to track individuals and monitor related characteristics, such as whether the person gathers in groups or prefers solitude. Even if the reader cannot imagine a use for such information, rest assured that marketing experts would find it highly valuable."Some people seem not to be bothered by any of this. Still. I live in a country where parents can't get their kids' grades and you can't obtain relevant health information of an elderly parent because it's considered private data. How can the same country allow Google to tap into our lives so easily? [1] Leonhardt, U., & Magee, J. (1998). Security Considerations for a Distributed Location Service Journal of Network and Systems Management, 6 (1), 51-70 DOI: 10.1023/A:1018777802208[2] Weber, K. (2006). Privacy invasions: New technology that can identify anyone anywhere challenges how we balance individuals' privacy against public goals EMBO reports, 7 DOI: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400684... Read more »
Leonhardt, U., & Magee, J. (1998) Security Considerations for a Distributed Location Service. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 6(1), 51-70. DOI: 10.1023/A:1018777802208
- February 8, 2012
- 06:34 PM
- 48 views
All Mixed Up: Julian Jaynes
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In 1976, the polymathic Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes published The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It is one of those rare books which is mostly wrong but is filled with so many penetrating and provocative insights that it still deserves to be read. It’s a fun and big idea book [...]... Read more »
Jaynes, Julian. (1986) Consciousness and The Voices of the Mind. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 27(2), 128-148. DOI: 10.1037/h0080053
- February 8, 2012
- 04:40 PM
- 44 views
Melting Ice and Sea Level Rise
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
If all the water currently trapped in all the glaciers across the entire world, the sea level would rise far more than most people imagine. Almost everyone living anywhere in the world at an elevation of below about 500 feet with a direct drainage to the sea would be directly affected; The sea level rise itself might be a bit over 300 feet, but oceans tend to migrate horizontally when they rise onto previously uninnundated land surfaces. So if you lived at 500 feet above sea level in most of Maine, you'd have a much shorter walk to the rocky shoreline, but if you lived at 500 feet across much of the Gulf Coast it would only be a matter of time until the eroding sea cliff reached you incorporated you into the offshore sediments.
Having said that, Anthropogenic Global Warming has resulted in only modest sea level rise to date, and it is at this point probably true that warming of the ocean causing thermal expansion has been at the same level of magnitude (or greater) than seas rising because of the influx of melted glacial water.
The problem is, it is very difficult to measure either sea level rise or ice loss very accurately, for a number of reasons. But there is a saving grace. Or should I say, GRACE. GRACE is a NASA project; Twin satellites measure changes in the Earth's gravity field in such a way that it is possible to identify changes in the distribution of water. From the GRACE overview statement:
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Jacob, T., Wahr, J., Pfeffer, W., & Swenson, S. (2012) Recent contributions of glaciers and ice caps to sea level rise. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature10847
- February 8, 2012
- 04:35 PM
- 35 views
A Brief History of Bioarchaeology: Part II - Italy
by Kristina Killgrove in Powered By Osteons
Author's Note: This is the second post in what I envision as a series addressing the history and practice of bioarchaeology around the world. The first post was Part I - America.
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.
[It was such a massive task to establish the Roman race.]
(Vergil, Aeneid 1.33)
One of the major themes of the Aeneid is the struggle of the protagonist to reach Rome. The burden of founding the population of Rome rests entirely on heroic Aeneas, and the quotation above illustrates the immense effort required to create what was, at the time, the largest city in the known world.
Aeneas Fleeing Troy, by F. Barocci, 1598 (credit)
With history and myth stretching back over two millennia, the biological and cultural origins of the Italian people are quite different than the story of the colonists in America. Modern anthropology in the American (Boasian) tradition has been characterized as “a bond between subject matters... part history, part literature, part natural science, part social science” (Wolf 1964). Most American anthropologists practice their research in a four-field manner that promotes an holistic approach to academic inquiry through incorporation of linguistics, culture, archaeology, and biology. Italian anthropology, on the other hand, is not as coherent a discipline as American anthropology -- archaeology can be found in either history or classics departments, physical anthropology is often found in biology departments, and cultural anthropology is split among four different subfields comprising cultural anthropology, (British-inspired) social anthropology, ethnology, and folklore.
The Italian and American anthropological traditions reflect a disparate response to differing subjects of inquiry and the contingencies of political history, and it's interesting to see where the two traditions paralleled one another and diverged, with the result that, today, bioarchaeology is a more mature discipline in contemporary American archaeology compared to Roman archaeology.
Classical Origins of Anthropology
Some would argue that the roots of Mediterranean anthropology can be found in ancient literature. Homer knew about the Scythians in the north and the Ethiopians in the south, and by the 8th century BC, Greek colonizing efforts expanded the oikoumene in all directions (Kluckhohn 1961). In the mid 5th century BC, Herodotus, reporting on the aftermath of a battle in the Persian Wars, wrote that (Histories 3.12.2-3):
The skulls of the Persians are so brittle that if you throw no more than a pebble it will pierce them, but the Egyptian skulls are so strong that a blow of a stone will hardly break them. And this, the people said (which for my own part I readily believed), is the reason of it: the Egyptians shave their heads from childhood, and the bone thickens by exposure to the sun (Godley 1982).
Geography of the Oikoumene (credit)
Herodotus noticed a difference in the thickness of the skulls of two populations of warriors lying dead after a skirmish, which he attributed to the sun. This explanation isn't correct, but he did foreshadow discussions in physical anthropology of the effects of the environment on the human skeleton.
For examples of early ethnographies, we can look to Roman authors from the first century BC. Julius Caesar was both a consummate military general and a thorough recorder of the peoples with whom he came into contact in his conquering expeditions. His observations about the ancient Gauls in the first lines of Commentarii de Bello Gallico include geographic dispersal and linguistic differences:
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae nostra Galli appelantur.
[All Gaul is divided into three parts: in one of these live the Belgae, in another the Aquitani, and in the third, the Galli, who call themselves the Celtae].
Lucretius, who wrote De Rerum Natura in the first century BC as well, included a more sophisticated idea of biological evolution than would be seen for thousands of years, and in the first century AD, Tacitus wrote an early tribal ethnography of the Germani, touted by some as “the finest tribal monograph prior to the 19th century” (Grottanelli 1977:593).
Although this written tradition of investigating the cultural Other was largely continuous for two thousand years, the academic tradition of anthropology in Italy was surprisingly slow to develop. Pre-anthropological literature was largely comparative in nature, intent on describing variations and similarities among cultures. Philosophically minded Italians such as Giambattista Vico and F.A. Grimaldi denied in the mid-to-late 18th century that there was a linear progression to culture and that there was such a concept as Rousseau’s l’homme naturel or noble savage.
In spite of the legacy of the Renaissance to questions about natural history, art, and literature in Italy between the 16th and 18th centuries, Italian anthropology did not exist until the middle of the 19th century. Even in this century, however, Italy’s fight for political independence and unity between 1860 and 1870 absorbed much of the energy of the country (Grottanelli 1977:594).
Anthropology in the Italian Academy
It is important to note that the nomenclature for subfields and areas of anthropological concentration is not the same in Italy as in the U.S. The term antropologia was originally used to mean the English equivalent of physical anthropology, “the natural history of the human family” (Grottanelli 1977:597). What we call cultural anthropology is known in Italian as etnologia, which is distinct from folklore studies (demologia or storia delle tradizioni popolari in Italian) and, to a lesser extent today, distinct from a theoretical, sociocultural anthropology sometimes called antropologia... Read more »
B. Bernardini. (1976) Italian anthropology. Man, 11(2), 283-283. info:/
Dyson, S. (1993) From New to New Age Archaeology: Archaeological Theory and Classical Archaeology-A 1990s Perspective. American Journal of Archaeology, 97(2), 195. DOI: 10.2307/505656
Grottanelli, V. (1977) Ethnology and/or Cultural Anthropology in Italy: Traditions and Developments. Current Anthropology, 18(4), 593. DOI: 10.1086/201970
Renfrew, C. (1980) The Great Tradition versus the Great Divide: Archaeology as Anthropology?. American Journal of Archaeology, 84(3), 287. DOI: 10.2307/504703
Saunders, G. (1984) Contemporary Italian Cultural Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13(1), 447-466. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.an.13.100184.002311
Wiseman, J. (1983) Conflicts in Archaeology: Education and Practice. Journal of Field Archaeology, 10(1), 1-9. DOI: 10.1179/009346983791504426
Woolf, G. (2004) The Present State and Future Scope of Roman Archaeology: A Comment. American Journal of Archaeology, 108(3), 417-428. DOI: 10.3764/aja.108.3.417
- February 8, 2012
- 02:48 PM
- 37 views
Cyberchondria: Online health information and health anxiety
by Ben in Critical Science
Wondering what that rash on your arm is? If the cough you’ve had for a few days warrants making an appointment to see your doctor/physician? If you’ve ever used the internet to answer these sort of questions then you’re in the 60-80% of internet users who regularly do so. In theory this is a great idea – you get access to the collective knowledge of medicine, and you don’t get kicked out of the appointment room after 15 minutes. However, there are a few problems – research tell us that:... Read more »
Muse, K., McManus, F., Leung, C., Meghreblian, B., & Williams, J. (2012) Cyberchondriasis: Fact or fiction? A preliminary examination of the relationship between health anxiety and searching for health information on the Internet. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 26(1), 189-196. DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.11.005
- February 8, 2012
- 02:36 PM
- 49 views
Dating in the Digital Age
by APS Daily Observations in Daily Observations
The report card is in, and the online dating industry won’t be putting this one on the fridge. A new scientific report concludes that although online dating offers users some ... Read more »
Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P.W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H.T., & Sprecher, S. (2012) Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1). info:/
- February 8, 2012
- 02:17 PM
- 57 views
Having superior working memory capacity can make time go faster
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Working memory is like a neural memo-pad. People with higher working memory capacity can hold more items in mind whilst solving a concurrent problem or performing a distracting task. There's been some excitement lately about the possibility that working memory can be improved through training, with knock-on benefits for IQ and academic attainment. A new study suggests such training should come with a footnote: "Improving your working memory could affect your perception of time".
James Woehrle and Joseph Magliano divided 99 students into two groups according to whether they had high or low working memory capacity. Next, the students solved subtraction problems in their heads. They were told the maths was their primary task but an extra challenge was to solve the problems for a certain duration, as judged by their own internal sense of time: either two minutes or four minutes.
The intriguing finding is that time went faster for the students with higher working memory capacity. When tasked with doing the maths for four minutes, they tended to work for longer, estimating that the time was up later than the low working memory participants.
What was going on? Why should having more working memory speed up the passage of time? Woehrle and Magliano said the finding was consistent with a popular account of time estimation, which posits that pulses are released by an internal pacemaker and accumulate in a counter. More pulses in the counter suggests more time has passed. Crucially, this process is gated by attention. When we pay attention to time, each pulse makes it into the counter and the passage of time feels slower. By contrast, if our attention is focused elsewhere, fewer pulses make it into the counter, as if less time has passed than really has (i.e. giving the subjective feeling of time having flown).
According to Woehrle and Magliano's Working Memory Capacity Hypothesis - the students in the current study with more working memory were able to allocate their attention almost entirely on the primary maths task. This benefited their maths performance but meant they were less vigilant of pulses accumulating in their internal clock. By contrast, the low working memory students couldn't help but allocate some attention to the secondary time-keeping task, making them more aware of the passage of time. As a consequence the low working memory students' time perception was actually more accurate but their maths performance suffered. The researchers said this evidence could have "profound implications in academic situations ... low working memory students may 'think' too much about how much time they put into their school work."
The new findings complement previous research showing that greater working memory capacity is associated with more accurate time perception, when time perception is the primary task. In this case, having more working memory allows for greater vigilance of the internal pacemaker and counter. Indeed, in the current study, the time perception of the higher working memory group was superior in a control condition in which they only had to estimate the passage of time.
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Woehrle, J., and Magliano, J. (2012). Time flies faster if a person has a high working-memory capacity. Acta Psychologica, 139 (2), 314-319 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.12.006
Previously on the Digest: Doubt cast on the maxim that time goes faster as you get older.
The surprising links between anger and time perception
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
... Read more »
Woehrle, J., & Magliano, J. (2012) Time flies faster if a person has a high working-memory capacity. Acta Psychologica, 139(2), 314-319. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.12.006
- February 8, 2012
- 01:01 PM
- 35 views
Coaxial ‘cables’ make great lasers, too
by Joerg Heber in All that matters
When Oliver Heaviside invented the coaxial cable in 1880 he could not have foreseen the implications of his idea on modern nanotechnology. His coaxial cables consist of three layers: an inner metallic core, surrounded by an insulator, surrounded by a metallic layer on the outside. The benefit of this design is that the outer metallic [...]... Read more »
Khajavikhan, M., Simic, A., Katz, M., Lee, J., Slutsky, B., Mizrahi, A., Lomakin, V., & Fainman, Y. (2012) Thresholdless nanoscale coaxial lasers. Nature, 482(7384), 204-207. DOI: 10.1038/nature10840
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