NATURAL SELECTIONS

MOVING DAY IS NEAR!

2011-10-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

STAY TUNED...I'll let you know my new url at informedbynature.org....

Rainbow Campfire Makes You Think You're Hallucinating

2011-08-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

What's better than a nice, wholesome campfire in summer? Psychedelic flames!

Toss 2 or 3 unopened packets of Mystical Fire into your inferno, and watch the rainbow dance around as if you were on acid. Stairway to Heaven, man, I can see the music.

Outside, it looks like a bunch of little Sweet-tarts packets, but inside is a crushed mix of metal salts like strontium nitrate for red color and copper carbonate for blue color--the metal makes the hue, and the salt changes the flame temperature. But, beware--don't cook over the colored flames...you might ruin your good time by poisoning yourself--even more than you when you were in college. Just because it's a salt doesn't mean it makes your food tasty.

Dangerous. Groovy.

Genetic Study Complicates a Classic Case of Mimicry

2011-07-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that these 3 Heliconius butterflies are completely different species. They have very similar wing shape, color, and patterns, and are all perched on passion flower vines, their food source and a cozy place to lay their eggs. Heliconius have a good reason for resembling each other: predators know that bright butterflies make a really foul-tasting meal (the good-tasting ones just mimic the bad-tasting ones so they won't get eaten.)

Evolutionary biologists have studied Heliconius butterflies for more than a century--the first paper on Heliconius mimicry came out in 1879 and is a classic example of convergent evolution, environmental pressure causing different species to look or behave increasingly alike. Today, genetics inform new studies, but might change the way we think about their evolution.

A recent study reveals an amazing thing about Heliconius wing color: the evolution of only one gene is responsible for Heliconius mimicry across dozens of species. Little tweaks in one gene, over generations, are responsible for making dozens of different species similar. "This is our first peek into how mimicry and convergent evolution happen at a genetic level," researcher Robert Reed said in the press release. "We discovered that the same gene controls the evolution of red color patterns across remotely related butterflies."

Though these species look alike, we have to remember that they are classified as different species, and thus their genes are arranged and/or regulated differently. Which makes it astonishing that the same gene is responsible for changes in each species. "This is in line with emerging evidence from various animal species that evolution generally is governed by a relatively small number of genes," says Dr. Reed. "Out of the tens of thousands in a typical genome, it seems that only a handful tend to drive major evolutionary change over and over again."

But...if only one gene is involved...is this a case of convergent evolution or homology? Reed asks the same question in the abstract of his study's paper, commenting that it"blur[s] the distinction between convergence and homology."

Do these butterfly species come from a different-enough lineage so we can say they evolved to converge on wing color? Years ago, a study showed that non-sterile hybrids of Heliconius species were possible. These hybirds were first noticed in their habitat outside the lab, and so are an example of what scientists once though was mimicry but was really hybridization. The Reed study uses "distantly related species," though, and still finds the same gene involved.

The other possibility is that the wing color gene comes from a common ancestor of all Heliconius butterflies, and since evolution is acting that single gene to change wing color, it's an example of homology. Who knows--maybe Heliconius wing color is like whale flippers and human arms: they all come from the same ancestral part, tweaked, regulated, deregulated, and changed completely since they last had a common ancestor.

Maybe it's homology then convergence...the butterflies first evolved into different species and then converged on wing color. Truth is, I'm not really qualified to speculate. Any takers?

SOURCE -- Heliconius.org, UCI

Reed RD, Papa R, Martin A, Hines HM, Counterman BA, Pardo-Diaz C, Jiggins CD, Chamberlain NL, Kronforst MR, Chen R, Halder G, Nijhout HF, & McMillan WO (2011). Optix Drives the Repeated Convergent Evolution of Butterfly Wing Pattern Mimicry. Science (New York, N.Y.) PMID: 21778360

Treehoppers: the Princess Beatrice of the Insect World

2011-07-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Insects called "treehoppers"sport hats as crazy as Princess Beatrice, except it's possible the insects are more fashion-forward. They're much more beautiful to my taste, anyway. Treehopper hats are actually thorn-like projections of their own body, and are permanently attached between their head and wings (the body is the small yellowish legs and light brown midsection below this Cladonota species' expressionistic "C")

You'd think these oddly large and awkwardly shaped pronouncements would be too cumbersome for scuttling around on tree branches and eating sap; Princess Beatrice is quite happy that she doesn't have to wear that ludicrous nonsense for the rest of her life for fear of hitting her head on every doorframe she walks through. But, the 2-inch-long treehoppers are positively chuffed. They probably use their adornments as camouflage or as intimidation, or at least that's what it looks like to us humans.

You can imagine this intimidating treehopper, whose hat looks like the lethal claws of a European rhinoceros beetle, leaving predators running scared:

....or a group of Costa Rican treehoppers impersonating the local bird of paradise foliage to blend in:

....this treehopper looks just like an ant:

...many different ways to impersonate a stick, a leaf, or another animal:

The creative headgear comes in an astonishing number of variations, and is actually like a third wing, growing alongside the wings as the insects matures. In the treehopper's nymph stag--before their final molt to adulthood--the insects' Hox gene, responsible for making sure their head, segments, and wings end up in the right place, assists making these wild sculptures attached to the first segment of their body, between the head and wings. The Hox protein activates and deactivates genes involved in making wings, and the wild treehopper helmets probably evolved because of a deactivation of a long-time repressed wing-making gene for the first body segment. Here's the developing treehopper nymph, from a recent paper (red is where the helmet is growing, blue is where the wings grow):

In nature, it's rare to find an insect that evolves to add and appendage or enlarge a feature of the body--most often you see wings and body getting smaller as these bugs evolve over thousands of years. The treehopper is truly an eccentric bug.

SOURCE: Nature, Live Science

Doggelganger uses facial recognition software to find your canine look-alike

2011-06-09T07:32:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wondered what kind of dog you'd be, there's a new website for you: Doggelganger uses facial recognition software to match you with your doggy twin.

"Pedigree's New Zealand branch hired design agency Colenso BBDO to come up with a new way to get the word out on pup adoptions. Using the idea that dog owners tend to look like their pets, Colenso teamed up with NEC to develop Doggelgänger, "Human to canine pairing software, designed to connect real homeless dogs to their human doubles.""

Last week in the park, someone told me that our new puppy looks just like me. "She's got hazel eyes, and reddish-brown hair, and she's shy...you got a Casey puppy!" Never mind that she's 12 inches tall, white with brown spots, has fuzzy ears and, well, she's a dog. I'm not amused.

Some random Doggelgander matches:

Moving sculpture of tiny magnets

2011-06-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

moving objects No. 92 - 103 from pe lang on Vimeo.

Writing about physics on the web

2011-06-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

A conundrum posed by SciAm editor George Mussur: why do magazine readers love cosmology/physics stories, while these same topics come in last on the web rankings? My answer--web stories are often shorter and therefore skimp on the the little details that personalize it and help carry the reader through difficult concepts. This is an especially crucial omission for cosmology/physics stories because they can seem so obscure, and the web is such a personal medium.

A former editor once told me, "On the web, people like things personal. They like to think they've learned a little secret that no one else knows." The only thing less personal than cosmology (way way out there) or physics (tiny, almost undetectable things) is math (imaginary things) and math doesn't even get its own subject category on most science news sites. So, as a reader I beg you--give it a little bit of scene-setting, a well-placed metaphor, or a splash of human interest. It goes a long way no matter where you're publishing, and, I would think, especially if your dealing with shorter attention spans. Don't drown us in blase, newsy, jargony press release rewrites. Scan. Yawn. Back arrow.

The reason many editors keep their web stories short and embrace the yawn factor is because they think that the web audience just doesn't read long-form. Bonk. In 2009, New York Times Magazine editor Gerry Marzorati’s said, “contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s our longest pieces that attract the most online traffic." And, also in 2009, Slate's Fresca initiative--their staff took a month off to produce long-form pieces--netted 3-4 million pageviews each. Communities of web readers who seek out long-form now use blogs and services such as Longreads, Longform.org, and Instapaper.

So, it is possible to hook a web reader and keep them (without lying or sensationalizing.) The best web writing is like a little gem that you discover in your own home.

So, I say--enrich those web stories. Don't be scared to write long-form (or at least long-er-form.) If you really don't have time to write long-er form, do something crazy. Get creative and add a little personal touch so those articles don't all sound the same. "Astronomers have sighted a new thing in space." "Physicists have detected a subatomic particle doing cartwheels." Ok, now let's bring it down to earth and chat about it.

BTW--hats off to those who are publishing long-form science articles and all the science blogs who dedicate themselves to disregard length for the sake of creativity.

Lioness steals camera, makes a film

2011-05-31T15:47:00.000-07:00

Shot at Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve by this team of artists, the camera was left on the ground to record lion movements close to the fence. A curious lioness picked up the camera and made the video hers.

Sea Creature Kites

2011-05-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

Stingray Kite, world's largest kite, France

Some Unknown Kite Festival somewhere

Driffield Kite festival

Berkeley Kite Festival, CA

Semaphore Kite Festival, Australia

What happens if your hooker kite gets bitten by my shark kite.

LeafSnap: An Electronic Field Guide

2011-05-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the woods, surrounded by deciduous trees. As years went on, the Dogwoods, Oaks, and Magnolias became as familiar as good friends, but now that I live in Southern California, I'm totally naive again.

Enter--LeafSnap app: an iPhone app that identifies trees based on pictures of their leafs. I may be older, but I'm no less in love with technology. Just snap a pic of that three-leafed suspect or beautiful bouquet on your hiking trail, upload it to LeafSnap, and the app will compare it to thousands of high res pics of leafs in its database. Then, you have an opportunity to put a name with your mysterious member of Plantae.

Smithsonian Institute did the identification, collection, and photography of all the plant species in the database, and let me tell you--the pictures are beautiful. Behind the electronic field guide is a sophisticated visual recognition algorithms built by researchers at Columbia University and University of Maryland. In a nut shell, it works by finding the outline of the leaf in your picture, measuring its shape at various points along its edge, and returning the best matches in it's database. You get to make the final call as to which species matches best.

So, next time you hit the trails, get in touch with your inner techno-horticulturist:

Illusion Comes to Life: the Science of 3D

2011-05-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

How does our brain make us see a rose pop out of this flat splotch of red paint?

It starts out as an oblong red blob. The outer lines of the blog converge in the distance, so my eyes tell my brain that it's about 25 feet back-to-front.

As the artists adds black shading to the red splotch and petals start to pop out, suddenly it's a round red rose. The shadows tricks my brain into thinking I'm seeing a different object all together. Suddenly, what was the back of our blob, is the top of the rose, and my brain uses the sides of the rose instead of the back of the blob to determine how far back the object goes into space.

The human eye calculates distance by by how much each eye tilts to see something. Since the eyes are set apart, looking at a farther object means less inward eye tilt, closer means more inward eye tilt. Look at your nose, and the acuteness of you inward eye tilt makes you look cross-eyed.

In the final concrete painting, we register the sides of the rose with our eyes and our brain tells us it's close, not far. The effect of the shadow on our brain's perception of 3D is tremendous, as Rembrandt or Cezanne knew well. The artist here take full advantage of it.

So, that's how the rose seems so close. But, how do I see 3D in the first place? Simple. Camera 1, camera 2. My eyes see in stereo which means they spot slightly different images at the same time from their slightly different vantage points. The slightly different images combine into one image in the brain, an image which basically presents almost two sides of a thing and registers it as 3D:

Again, the shadows on the flat painting do the work of telling our brain that our eyes are viewing a 3D object from different angles. Cool trick. But not new...

Rembrandt self portrait, round face accomplished through shading.

Jello Science—aka Freaky Collagen

2011-05-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

Jello uses gelatin, of course, for its bouncy texture, which you might not guess is made of animal bone and skin (specifically, a protein called collagen which also makes up a third of the human body.) When you make Jello, you have to boil it to break apart the collagen particles and cool it quickly to make it form a loose network of tangled proteins with water inside called a gel. The only difference between a pure liquid and a gel is that a gel has a few crosslinks between molecules here and there. But, it's not exactly a solid either because it's molecules are vibrating like a liquid.

Here are the possibilities:

Jello white house

Jello brain

Jello baseball

Jello neighborhood

Sleep Consolidates Your Memories

2011-05-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and moderator Alan Alda

Face Transplants: How The Hell...

2011-05-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

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Dallas Wiens, the first person in the US to get a full face transplant—yes, that means he now wears someone else's face—appeared in public for the first time today. Wiens face was obliterated in 2010 in a construction accident: he was using a cherry picker to paint the top of a church and accidentally ran into a high voltage electrical wire. After 15-hours of surgery, doctors gave him a whole new look plus the added bonus of restoring his sense of smell.

It sound pretty sci-fi—you just cut off someone's face and flop it down onto someone else's?

It's not so easy. A full face transplant is not like a liver, kidney, or even a heart transplant where you can just cut it out and reattach somewhere else; the face contains muscle and nerve that must be re-attached as well, to render a face in working order.

Doctors have to make something like a topological map of the transplant recipient's face and where he or she need extra muscle and skin. Then, the donor's epithelial tissue, muscle, and nerve are cut to compensate for missing areas of the recipient's face. The recipient's skin would need to be prepped before the new face was laid on top, the outside skin and some of the underlying fat and muscle removed. Wiens' whole face would have had to been prepped this way. Recently-deceased cadavers serve as face donors.

Evidently, even though you're wearing someone else's face, you don't necessarily look like them. A varying degree of underlying muscle and bone are still distinctly yours, and your expressions can remain similar.

Face transplants can restore function and a sense of normalcy to the lives of those involved in serious accidents. Dallas Wiens can smile now. He says it feels really great to breathe out of a nose after years of breathing through a stoma and even better to regain his sense of smell—the flowers smell so sweet now, he says.

Other face transplant recipients:

Sandeep Kaur, a 9-year-old girl who caught her face and scalp in a thresher, was technically the first person to get a full face 'transplant.' They attached her original face back on.

Oscar, a Spanish farmer who lost his face to a accidental shotgun blast, was the first full facial transplant in the world. March 2010 in Barcelona.

Isabelle Dinoire, maimed from a dog attack, received the world's first partial facial transplant. November 2005.

Connie Culp, disfigured from an accidental gunshot, was the first to undergo a partial facial transplant in the US. 2009.

Images by AP

FULL OR EMPTY BEER: WHICH IS THE BEST WEAPON?

2011-04-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's likely that if I ever witness a barroom brawl that culminates in someone's head getting smashed with a beer bottle, I'm drunk too, and the gravity of the situation is lost to the spectacle of it all. But, if i was a sober witness to the climactic crack, after everyone was deemed safe I might wonder, "Was the beer full or empty? Would it matter?" I'm just a curious person, you know.

Actually, I got the idea from researchers in Bern, Switzerland who decided to test it, applying a scientists' touch to the seemingly frivolous question. For the experiment, no hand-to-head smashing took place, probably for safety reasons. Instead, researchers constructed a 13-foot-tall drop tower and bought a few six packs of the Swiss beer Feldschösschen in half litre bottles. They placed full and empty bottles in a tub at the bottom of the drop-tower and wrapped them in clay to mimic human brain tissue. Then, they dropped a 2lb ball, analog of a human skull, from different heights.

It turns out, it takes 30 Joules of impact energy to break a full beer bottle and 40 Joules of impact energy to break and empty beer bottle. The empty bottle is more sturdy--the opposite of what I would have guessed. The unopened beer, which you might think would act like a blunt object, is actually more fragile because it's pressurized. Any slight deformation makes it explode. Shaken-up beer creates even more CO2 bubbles that might help explode the beer, too.

So, for maximum impact, go with an open beer bottle. For minimum injury, go with an un-cracked brew. Now, the chances that you get so mad as to act on your homicidal urges before you've opened your next beer are probably slim. You need that extra alcohol to fuel your rage. Plus, the bartender probably opened it for you anyway.

In daylight?

Self inflicted? Ouch.


Not so bad.

Bad.

VIA B Good Science Blog

Bolliger, S., Ross, S., Oesterhelweg, L., Thali, M., & Kneubuehl, B. (2009). Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull? Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 16 (3), 138-142 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013

PIC: MEGA SPIDER FOSSIL—THE LARGEST EVER FOUND

2011-04-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

The largest spider fossil ever found: an ancient relative of the golden orb spider. The white bar is 5mm. More...

PHASE CHANGES IN ART: ICE MELTING AS A METAPHOR

2011-04-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

This week, MIT graduate students have created a temporary sculpture if there ever was one. IceWall is a wall made entirely of ice bricks which continue to melt and evaporate as it sits on campus, signifying traditions of ideas fading away and new generation of ideas blossoming (in conjunction with the MIT150 Festival of Science, Art, and Technology.) Frozen in the bricks are flower seeds and as the ice blocks melt, the seeds will drop to the ground and hopefully grow a flowering garden in a few months time. The sculpture reminds me of Francis Alys and Allan Kaprow's performance pieces that use the simple process of H20 phase changes to say something about life.

Here's IceWall:

In 1997, world famous performance artist Francis Alys labored to drag an ice block through the streets of Mexico until the ice got smaller and then disappeared, signifying a reinvention of the way you interact with your city. By the end, he was just kicking the ice down the sidewalk like a kid. The piece was called Something Making Something Leads to Nothing:

In 2008, Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo made dozens of ice-men and let them melt on the steps of a public street. What a sad affair.

The piece that started this all was made by artist Allan Kaprow in 1967, famous for basically birthing the genre of performance art, who built an ice wall and let it melt, signifying art as a part of life in all it's transformations and fluidity rather than art as the making of a specific form in a specific circumstance. The exhibition was titled Fluids: A happening by Allan Kaprow and was recreated in 2007 in New York and in 2008 in Los Angeles.

Of course, ice sculptures have existed for decades as a decoration for weddings and sweet 16 parties. If only we knew that the melting signified the temporary-ness of our existence: parties come and go so enjoy it while you can, says the sad, melting swan:

MY BLOG WILL BE MOVING SOON

2011-04-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

Soon, Natural Selections will be moving to informedbynature.org....the website's not up yet, but will be in a few months.

2,000 PING PONG BALLS IN ZERO GRAVITY

2011-04-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

NASA and Etsy Space Crafts Contest Winners

2011-04-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

NASA and Etsy joined up to run the 2010 Space Crafts Contest, a showcase for dozens of amazing space-themed crafts. From Etsy:

The judges included NASA astronaut Steve Robinson, Susannah Locke of Popular Science magazine, Shaifali Puri of the NY Academy of Sciences, John Matson of Scientific American, Peter Giles of the NYC Center for Space Science Education, freelance scientific journalist Lee Billings (formerly of SEED), Rob Giampietro of Project Projects Design Studio, and Maria Popova of Brain Pickings. Alison Feldmann, Matt Stinchcomb and Randy Hunt were also on the panel, representing Etsy. All winners' work (or photographs of their work) will have the opportunity to be flown into space aboard a shuttle!

The grand prize went to Colleen and Eric Whiteley (a.k.a. ColleenWhiteley) for their Northstar Table. Beautiful table with a secret mechanism: press the North Star and a drawer pops out:

The 2D Original prize went to Rachel Barry Hobson for High Texture Hand Embroidery of the Moon:

Other finalists:

The eagle nebula, painting by by Eleanor Gilpatrick

Space Shuttle Fleece Hat by Ohmybrian

Galaxies Converge, quilt by Kim's Crafty apple

Pick up a hard copy of the OPEN LABORATORY: the best science writing on the web 2010

2011-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Yep, nothing's more fun than seeing how web writing stands up on the printed page. Buy a copy of OPEN LAB 2010 today and read what's been on other web-nut's minds for the past year and what kind of writing we value. This year's editor, Jason Goldman, is a neuroscience grad student at USC writes The Thoughtful Animal at Scienceblogs. The series editor, Bora Zivokovic, is affectionately known in science blogging circles as "the blogfather."

PIC: Plasma plumes leaping up from the sun

2011-03-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

Crazy resolution on this pic of the sun taken by Alan Friedman, astrophotographer. More...

SCI CAL, LOS ANGELES (March)

2011-03-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

MARCH
4TH    NHM: First Fridays event (5PM) Call ahead for tix, res req.
9TH    Caltech: Revealing the Cold Universe, lecture (8PM) Free
11TH    USC: The future of climate change policy, symposium (9-3:30PM) Free
11TH    UCLA: ES Cells, iPS Cells and the Promise for Personalized Medicine, lecture (12-1PM) Free
12TH    Griffith Park Obs: Public Star Party (5-10PM) Free
17TH    JPL: WISE: Infrared sky survey, lecture (7PM) Free
18TH     Pasadena City College: WISE: Infrared sky survey, lecture (7PM) Free
20TH    Griffith Park Obs: Spring Equinox Events (noon--sunset) Free
21ST    Griffith Park Obs: Cosmic Musings: How it all ends, lecture (7:30PM) Res. Req.
21ST    Huntington Library: Mysteries of the Dark Universe, lecture with Rocky Kolb (7:30PM)Free
23RD    UCLA: Radiolab live recording (8PM)Res. Req.
23RD    Caltech: Discovery and surprises with small molecules, lecture (4-5PM) Free
26TH    Caltech: Science Saturdays film: Roachmobile (2-3PM) Free
26TH    Caltech: The Physics of the Future, lecture (2-5PM) Free
27TH    Machine Project: Moonwalking with Einstein, book release (8PM)Free

Keep up with fun science events in one of three ways:
1. RSS: subscribe to my blog and every month, like clockwork, I will publish a list of the months events in the feed.
To subscribe, click the orange icon on the right.
2. Add events to your own Google calendar by visiting the calender main page and clicking the date.
2. Bookmark and revisit the calender main page!

PIC: ME AT 7AM THIS MORNING

2011-03-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

That's me at 7AM this morning--I mean--that's an Australian frilled lizard.

Informed by Nature: support for science outreach, education

2011-02-17T16:06:00.000-08:00

I've been dying to mention Informed by Nature on my blog, but couldn't really. Until now. For the last couple years, I've assisted in the development of their website dedicated to helping science outreach projects around the world GET FUNDED. It's set to launch in about 6 months.

Basically, public science literacy is not where it should be. You know it. I know it. Science outreach helps, as NSF knows: they give millions each year to ensure outreach is included in every science research project they fund (among other things.) But alas, more could be done.

So, the founders of Informed by Nature reasoned--instead of building their own infrastructure to carry out additional science outreach programs, why not take a more cooperative approach and lift up the projects that are already going. Why reinvent the wheel? Some of you are doing a great job already.

But, you could probably use some more money, right? For your ongoing science conference, web project, public events series, educational group outing...On the Informed by Nature site, you'll be able to submit your project: we'll help promote it online and in pop media, help you get funding from your friend circle, AND we'll often match that money with our own. If we like your project well enough from the start, we'll just fund it outright. We give based on whether the project is well-run, professional, sustainable, and fits with the goals of make citizens aware of science as: a tool to sharpen decision-making, a vehicle to drive human progress, and generally a pleasant subject that should be a big part of culture just like art and music.We love to hear about proposed new project, too, as long as your team has a good plan and great track record!

Why are we doing this? Because we have money. And we wanna give it to science. And this seems like the best way to do it. How? Because one of the founders is a former money manager in the finance world who feels extremely indebted to scientific discovery and knowledge for what he's been able to accomplish in his life. "If I have seen further, it's by standing on the shoulders of giants," he'd say (quoting Newton.) This guy is motivated, and has the skills (almost overly so) to keep this thing funded and running.

I'm getting excited about the website launch. Oh yeah, and by the way--we've just secured a partnership with NSF. So, visit and bookmark the temporary website, put yourself on the mailing list to get monthly updates about our progress, and, get excited to see this thing launch.

Also, we have new Facebook and Twitter pages, so follow/like us and spread the word!