Short Takes

Here are a few of my recent favorite things, for your Thanksgiving (U.S.) browsing pleasure:

Bora posts a great article on New and Exciting in PLoS ONE: an article entitled Whole Body Mechanics of Stealthy Walking in Cats and he asks for LOLCat submissions to illustrate the articles. I'd like to see that too!

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I just bought the library a terrific book called Head First Statistics (O'Reilly, 2008), which I like for several reasons:

1. It explains a bunch of statistics in a lot of different ways; and, quoting O'Reilly:  "brings this typically dry subject to life, teaching statistics through engaging, interactive, and thought-provoking material, full of puzzles, stories, quizzes, visual aids, and real-world examples."
2. It's a great example of how books can be designed to effectively -- and professionally -- teach complex concepts.  (O'Reilly says the book "satisfies the requirements for passing the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics Exam" so it's clearly no slouch!). I'd might even call it a 2.0 book?!
3. I got some good ideas of how to present study tips to my LIS students from page xxxiii entitled "Here's what YOU can do to bend your brain into submission," using tips like "Slow down" ... "Talk about it. Out loud" ... "Do the exercises. Write your own notes."  Interactivity improves learning.

Check out the book ... either to learn statistics, or to get ideas on how to make reading tough concepts manageable.

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Heard some interesting (but not uplifting) brain science stories on the News Hour:

• Misdiagnosing Dementia (Nov. 12 2008):  "About 5 million Americans suffer from dementia -- about half of those from suspected Alzheimer's disease -- according to official estimates. Now, researchers are looking for new treatments in a field that hasn't seen a major advance since the 1960s."  
• Military, VA Confront Rising Suicide Rates Among Troops (Nov. 10 2008)  "The Army says that suicides among active duty personnel have doubled in recent years, and multiple deployments might contribute to that increase."
  

Read the transcript, download the audio, or watch the video on the News Hour site.  (Note to the News Hour: nice way to keep your content vibrant in this multimedia age!)

Evolution: the Great Tinkerer

This week's Science Times was devoted to evolution and covered some interesting aspects, including a long article on Evo-devo.

Wikipedia provides the most concise definition of Evolutionary developmental biology:

"Evolutionary developmental biology ... compares the developmental processes of different animals and plants in an attempt to determine the ancestral relationship between organisms and how developmental processes evolved. Evo-devo addresses the origin and evolution of embryonic development; how modifications of development and developmental processes lead to the production of novel features; the role of developmental plasticity in evolution; [and more].[citing Hall, below]"

The Times elaborates on how different features develop on similar species -- using Darwin's finches as an easily-understandable example. Dr. Cliff Tabin, a developmental biologist at Harvard Medical School, found that bird beaks "expressed a gene known as BMP4 early in development." This enables Darwin's finches, living on the Galápagos Islands, look very different from each other and from other finches -- particularly in the beak. Some, in fact, "... have evolved taller, broader, more powerful nut-cracking beaks; the most impressive of the big-beaked finches is Geospiza magnirostris." (see McGill University's Hendry Lab finch comparison photos to see some stunning differences)

The article goes on to provide examples of evo-devo in fish (cichlids), marsupials & placental mammals, butterflies, and even flowers.

For More Information
* David Corcoran, a Science Times editor, interviews people associated with these stories in the June 26 Science Times podcast(mp3).
* Evo-Devo - Evolutionary Science - From a Few Genes, Life’s Myriad Shapes by Carol Kaesuk Yoon, New York Times, June 26, 2007.
* Science of the Soul? 'I Think, Therefore I Am' Is Losing Force by Cornelia Dean, New York Times, June 26, 2007.
* Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift by Douglas Erwin, New York Times, June 26, 2007.
* Guest Editorial: Evo-devo or devo-evo — does it matter? Hall, Brian K. Evolution & Development, Volume 2 Issue 4 Page 177-178, July-August 2000.

Evolution for Everyone!

Have you heard about David Sloan Wilson's new book Evolution for everyone : how Darwin's theory can change the way we think about our lives ?

I saw him speak at Hampshire back in February, and he was great. Natalie Angier reviewed the book in the April 8 issue of the New York Times, and of it, she says:

"Rather than catalog its successes, denounce its detractors or in any way present evolutionary theory as the province of expert tacticians like himself, Wilson invites readers inside and shows them how Darwinism is done, and at lesson’s end urges us to go ahead, feel free to try it at home. The result is a sprightly, absorbing and charmingly earnest book that manages a minor miracle, the near-complete emulsifying of science and the 'real world...' "

Of related interest is his 2005 article Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology (13.5).

"This essay reports a success story, showing how both walls of resistance can be surmounted by a single college course, and even more, by a university-wide program. It is based on a campus-wide evolutionary studies program called EvoS, initiated at Binghamton University in 2002, which currently includes over 50 faculty members representing 15 departments. Enthusiasm at all levels, from freshmen students to senior administrators, makes EvoS a potential model for evolution education that can be duplicated; the basic ingredients are present at most other institutions, from small colleges to major universities."

Worthwhile both for ideas about how to start a new program on campus, but also for the science, as Wilson explains a bit about what he teaches in the EvoS program.

British & Irish genes: not that far apart

Last Tuesday's Science Times describes a new view of inhabitants of the United Kingdom as defined by geneticists at Oxford.

"Historians teach that [the Brits & Irish] are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes." Turns out that geneticists are leaning toward a different interpretation; they are ... "struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans."

This chart nicely illustrates Where British & Irish Genes Come From.

Linguistics buffs may wonder how the difference in language arose for the two groups if they are not genetically different. This is alluded to in the article but discussed in more depth in the (excellent) Science Times podcast: language can be transmitted through the use of "technology." There is speculation that the Celts brought agricultural tools to Ireland and their language spread through the use of new farming techniques. Apparently historical linguists don't totally agree, but it seems reasonable to this armchair linguist.

For more, check out Stephen Oppenheimer's The origins of the British : a genetic detective story : the surprising roots of the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh.

A United Kingdom? Maybe by Nicholas Wade. March 6, 2007.

Religion: Spandrel or Adaptation?

Have you been following the debate over religion & science? Whether you have or not, if you're interested, you should definitely check out Darwin's God, an article in Sunday's New York Times magazine. Robin Marantz Henig summarizes the debate on both sides in clear prose that is not (imho) inflammatory.

The main question is: "are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?"

In this corner, we have ... Byproduct Theorists, who argue that religion is a "spandrel", which Henig describes thusly:

"Stephen Jay Gould, the famed evolutionary biologist at Harvard who died in 2002, and his colleague Richard Lewontin proposed 'spandrel' to describe a trait that has no adaptive value of its own. They borrowed the term from architecture, where it originally referred to the V-shaped structure formed between two rounded arches. The structure is not there for any purpose; it is there because that is what happens when arches align." (see the wikipedia definition of spandrel.)

The spandrel could be a result of one or more of these three cognitive tools: agent detection, causal reasoning, and/or theory of mind.

Spandrelists (great name) do not necessarily agree that religion or belief in God "offered an adaptive advantage to our ancestors."

Adaptionists, in the other corner, think that "even if a trait offers no survival advantage today, it might have had one long ago."

David Sloan Wilson, evolutionary biologist at SUNY Binghamton, "staked out the adaptationist view. 'Through countless generations of variation and selection, [organisms] acquire properties that enable them to survive and reproduce in their environments. My purpose is to see if human groups in general, and religious groups in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense' " in his 2002 book Darwin's cathedral : evolution, religion, and the nature of society.

(side note: How does this relate to me? I'm going to see him speak this afternoon at Hampshire College.)

Henig's article is important reading if you are interested in this topic!

Cooperative Eye Hypothesis

Story on the evolution of vision in humans & primates:
Opinion: For Human Eyes Only
MICHAEL TOMASELLO
New York Times, 1/13/07
"Trying to explain why the whites of human eyes are larger than those of other primates leads to one of the deepest and most controversial topics in the modern study of human evolution: the evolution of cooperation."

Tomasello describes some fascinating work in which he & his colleagues study how humans & primates follow their fellow's eye / head movement. Human infants, it seems, follow eye movements and ignore head movements of their mothers, while primates follow head movement and don't pay much attention to eye movement of other primates.

Why?!

Tomasello says "One possible answer, what we have called the cooperative eye hypothesis, is that especially visible eyes made it easier to coordinate close-range collaborative activities in which discerning where the other was looking and perhaps what she was planning, benefited both participants."

Browse some Google results for "Cooperative Eye Hypothesis" for more info, or check out his article in the Journal of Human Evolution; "Reliance on head versus eyes in the gaze following of great apes and human infants: the cooperative eye hypothesis." In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 20 October 2006, by Michael Tomasello, Brian Hare, et al. ($30 for the non-library savvy, or request from Interlibrary Loan).