T.rex vision

Sight for 'Saur Eyes: T. rex vision was among nature's best: Science News Online, July 1, 2006:

T. rex had a binocular range of 55�, which is wider than that of modern hawks, Stevens reports in the summer Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Moreover, over the millennia, T. rex evolved features that improved its vision: Its snout grew lower and narrower, cheek grooves cleared its sight lines, and its eyeballs enlarged.

These scientists, hey? I remember (vaguely, mind you) thesis titles in the geology department (somewhere at Rhodes University) describing measurements on some obscure fossil jaw bone or some such seemingly esoteric topic. But it is a forensic type study, a Dashiel Hammett/Rebus/Kojak and even Magnum, P.I., effort to uncover (oh dear!) the secrets of all those millenia ago. I'll have another sip of beer on that one...cheers.

He found that T. rex might have had visual acuity as much as 13 times that of people. By comparison, an eagle's acuity is 3.6 times that of a person.

Technorati tags: dinosaurs, palaeontology

The Political Brain

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: The Political Brain -- A recent brain-imaging study shows that our political predilections are a product of unconscious confirmation bias:

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," Westen is quoted as saying in an Emory University press release. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Interestingly, neural circuits engaged in rewarding selective behaviors were activated. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones," Westen said

This certainly confirms my bias...

Michael Shermer, the author of the article, goes further, and discusses what can be done about it in the political system (I would've stopped the article there, since it has confirmed my bias and any further discussion risks confusing the matter and would probably be ignored):

n science we have built-in self-correcting machinery. Strict double-blind controls are required in experiments, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the experimental conditions during the data-collection phase. Results are vetted at professional conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research must be replicated in other laboratories unaffiliated with the original researcher. Disconfirmatory evidence, as well as contradictory interpretations of the data, must be included in the paper. Colleagues are rewarded for being skeptical. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Politicians need a stronger peer-review system that goes beyond the churlish opprobrium of the campaign trail, and I would love to see a political debate in which the candidates were required to make the opposite case.

A bit American-centric, but you get the idea...

Technorati tags: science, neurology, psychology, politics

Quantum Ontology: Minds, Brains & Catalysis

Quantum Ontology: Minds, Brains & Catalysis:

Actually just a link to more info on the muscle contraction and quantum tunneling (also known as Rooney's foot) topic referred to in the previous blog.

An early application of solitons in biology was proposed by Davydov (1982). He suggested that they may play a role in the process of muscle contraction and relaxation (Also Pang, 2001, dealing with the criticism that solitons may not be very robust at body temperature). This model also serves to introduce the concept that in living processes there exists a unique relationship between energy and structure.

Technorati tags: quantum physics, biology

Johnjoe McFadden: The power in Rooney's foot

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Johnjoe McFadden: The power in Rooney's foot:

Enzymes capture light's energy from the sun, power our cells, break down our food and synthesise all the proteins, DNA, fats and other biomolecules of living cells. They do all these jobs by speeding up chemical reactions, so that they occur on biological, rather than geological timescales. But the source of this ability to speed up reactions has eluded modern scientists. Billion-fold rate enhancements are routine: many enzymes can accelerate a chemical reaction a trillion-fold. Some of the tricks enzymes employ are pretty well understood, but not the process as a whole.

Yes, it was the headline that caught me (there aren't enough pre-World Cup games to keep me busy at the moment...). But, read the article, it's fascinating. Okay, very little World Cup info, but it'll keep me going till Friday.

Enzymes live in the strange realm of fundamental particles, where conventional rules break down and quantum mechanics takes over. Remember Schrödinger's cat, that could exist as a weird superposition of a live and dead feline if it lived in the quantum world? Quantum mechanical particles don't have regular positions in space or time, but exist as a kind of fog of all possible positions and states. Sometimes this fog allows particles to go places or do things that would normally be prohibited, in a process called "quantum tunnelling", which is used in modern electronic devices such as tunnel diodes and is likely to be the basis of 21st-century technologies such as quantum computing.

God, I exist in a fog most of the time, and I seldom feel fundamental (and I certainly don't go places). Go figure...

...claims that an enzyme called aromatic amine dehydrogenase (AADH) accelerates its chemical reaction by bringing the substrate particles so close to the enzyme that the fog of particle positions overlaps, allowing a proton to "quantum tunnel" from substrate to enzyme.

So far so good. We're into the biology now...but where's Rooney's foot? And how the hell are they going to get it fixed before England goes out. Manchester United can afford a new quantum computer to fix his foot (in any fog of handwaving and abracadabra). Surely?

If Da Vinci were alive today, he'd have tossed away any book selling dubious mysteries - instead, he'd be reading about quantum tunnelling and praying for Rooney's foot.

Yes, but since Da Vinci was Italian (he was, wasn't he?), I wonder what he'd have been praying...

Technorati tags: science, biology, microbiology, quantum tunnelling

Spinosaurus as the biggest carnivorous dinosaur

The Biggest Carnivore: Dinosaur History Rewritten:

Now Cristiano Dal Sasso of the Civil Natural History Museum in Milan says Giganotosaurus has been dethroned based on estimates from a new Spinosaurus skull.

I think Thomas will be upset about this. Tyrannosaurus isn't Rex anymore, it would seem. Still, these measurements were made on fragments of a Spinosaurus skull, so, T, there's hope.

Technorati tags: dinosaurs, paleontology

Email Et(h)iquette

The Secret Cause of Flame Wars:

The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren't that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person's perspective.

Every mailinglist, forum and newsgroup should post a link to the article.

According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

Technorati tags: psychology, sociology

DNA from crushed bones and fossils

Bone Crystal's Treasure:

This method holds much promise for the future analysis of ancient DNA in bones in yielding more reliable and authentic results than has previously been possible, and may help in unearthing the mysteries of our ancestral past.

Not quite Jurassic Park yet, but they're getting there.

Technorati tags: genetics, paleontology

T.rex's Opa

For Thomas - they suspect this find to be an early ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex and other tyrannosaurs.

Scientists find earliest known ancestor of T. rex:

A two-legged meat-eater, the beast was far smaller than T. rex, measuring about 10 feet from its snout to the tip of its tail and standing about 3 feet tall at the hip. It also sported relatively long, three-fingered arms, rather than the two-fingered stubby arms T. rex had. Scientists suspect it had feathers because related dinosaurs did.

From that I can't figure out why they'd think it's a tyrannosaur, but I'll take their word for it. I know Thomas will argue that the tyrannosaurs have two-fingered arms, but there you go. We'll have to head back to the ever increasing pile of dinosaur books, Tom.

Along with some other finds, the creature helps illustrate the sequence of anatomical changes that occurred along the way to the later, more specialized tyrannosaurs, said Philip Currie of the University of Alberta in Canada.

Technorati tags: dinosaurs, paleontology

A scientific leap, but without the faith

I don't want to get into the Intelligent Design vs Science debate on this blog. Really, I don't. But, damn!, this is just such an excellent piece:

Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/05/2006 | A scientific leap, but without the faith:

In the Dover courtroom, proponents of intelligent design could be heard repeating their mantra: "Evolution is just a theory. It's not a fact." Scientists would then point out the categorical error: A theory is a framework to explain the facts. A theory is one level up from fact, so the mantra ought to go, "Evolution is not just a fact. It's a theory."

The theory of intelligent design is not only not falsifiable; there is simply no way to test it. But that is not the main reason it is not science. The main reason is, that ID does not actually explain anything. When we ask, "Why is the world the way it is?" it answers, "Because it was designed that way." The world is the way it is because it is that way. That might be the furthest from a useful, satisfactory explanation you can get.

I almost posted the whole thing, but just head on over to the site and get educated.

[Edited an hour later] Okay, I feel that, since I've actually broached the subject on this blog I'd better, at least, point to something on the other side of the divide and...well, I think I'll just point. As we've seen on a previous entry, there's very little rational thought goes into these discussions, and I certainly am not rational when it comes to this debate. I suggest therefore, if the reader actually requires some background into the debate...google for Intelligent Design (or click on the Technorati link below), and if you find anything intelligent about it...join one of the forums.

Technorati tags: intelligent design, evolution, physics, science, philosophy of science

Discovery could lead...

David Brin said in some interview the URL of which I can't find just now, something to the effect of "Science has become a spectator sport...". He said this in context of the internet and all the science news sites (and blogs, I'm sure). And it certainly seems true. Even Topolog is a commentator on this new "sport".

Now, my idea on this post was not so much to discuss this philosophical concept as the frustration of trying to follow all the stuff that gets continuously thrown up by so many commentators. Kurtzweil's singularity is taking it's time and we seem to be stuck in the event horizon of "...discovery could lead...blahblahblah". Try googling for the title of this post and you'll find

Results 1 - 10 of about 46,300 for "discovery could lead". (0.16 seconds)

entries.

It is a self-appointed task of this author to follow some of these discoveries and find out if any of them do actually lead to...whatever they promised (or carefully didn't promise but definitely hinted towards.) Or at least try to trace a path into the above mentioned singularity...but that may be a bit of a...stretch. Oh dear....

Duckbill dinosaur mystery finally solved

One for Thomas the tyrannosaur...

Duckbill dinosaur mystery finally solved:

"From the brain case, there's no indication that the nerves curled upward into the crest, as we would expect if the crest was used for the sense of smell," Evans says. "It appears the brain changed very little from their non-crested dinosaur ancestors, and the primary region of the sense of smell was located right in front of the eyes -- and, coincidentally, that's where it is in birds, crocodiles, mammals and basically all four-legged animals."

The title is a bit misleading. They only rule out one of several theories. Still, they do it quite thoroughly

Technorati tags: paleontology, dinosaurs, hadrosaurs

Politics and reasoning

Emory study reveals the political brain:

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up.

Nothing new, really, but nice to have a scientific basis for my understanding of politics, to have my suspicions confirmed.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," he said.

Technorati tags: neurology

Title 1 of 3

I have no idea why, all of a sudden (geologically speaking), I get three titles to each entry. All in different styles and colours. I only type the title in once...really...

First Impressions Of Beauty May Demonstrate Why The Pretty Prosper

First Impressions Of Beauty May Demonstrate Why The Pretty Prosper:

"Research has demonstrated time and again that there are tremendous social and economic benefits to being attractive," Olson said. "Attractive people are paid more, are judged more intelligent and will receive more attention in most facets of life.

"This favoritism, while poorly understood, seems to be innate and cross-cultural. Studies suggest that even infants prefer pretty faces," Olson said.

Go figure...

Technorati tags: neurology

Social and cultural evolution

Just a thought on cultural evolution (completely unrehearsed and with no quotable or linkable evidence):

Evolutionary list one of two:

• Approximately 300+ million years ago (please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these details, but it's not overly important just yet) amphibians were the dominant organisms on earth.
• Somewhere in the late Triassic dinosaurs came to prominence and "ruled" for, say 150 million years
• Then came mammals and they were the dominant organisms, since 65 million years ago (roughly; and I know insects have been around for most of this time, but somehow they don't get recognised as dominant organisms at any particular stage, go figure).
• Then, roughly (and I'm making a very wild stab in the dark here) 10000 years ago human culture came to dominate. Doesn't really matter when exactly, but human culture, as an organism, have certainly been the dominant and most influencial organism for the last 100 years. Surely?

Evolutionary list two of two:

• Humans are pretty unique in the evolutionary scheme of things for their adaptability (which is an attribute intricately and self-referentially linked to various other attributes, such as language, use-of-tools and culture).
• Western culture, as an organism, is very similar to humans in its evolutionary adaptability

I'm not making value judgements here, okay, so any comments on morals or ethics will probably be ignored. This is just a pattern I've noticed and anyone with some insight is welcome to comment. I'll do some more research and will have more to say about the matter in time.

Some links so long, garnered by a simple google search for "Cultural Evolution". Haven't done any reading of it yet...

• Social and cultural evolution
• Daniel Dennet:

  Cultures evolve. In one sense, this is a truism; in other senses, it asserts one or another controversial, speculative, unconfirmed theory of culture. Consider a cultural inventory of some culture at some time--say 1900AD. It should include all the languages, practices, ceremonies, edifices, methods, tools, myths, music, art, and so forth, that compose that culture. Over time, that inventory changes. Today, a hundred years later, some items will have disappeared, some multiplied, some merged, some changed, and many new elements will appear for the first time. A verbatim record of this changing inventory through history would not be science; it would be a data base. That is the truism: cultures evolve over time. Everybody agrees about that. Now let's turn to the controversial question: how are we to explain the patterns to be found in that data base? Are there any good theories or models of cultural evolution?

Technorati tags: evolution, cultural evolution, philosophy

Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet: ITU

BREITBART.COM - Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet: ITU

In a report entitled "Internet of Things", the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) outlined the expected next stage in the technological revolution where humans, electronic devices, inanimate objects and databases are linked by a radically transformed Internet.

Technorati tags: science, science fiction, artificial intelligence

Light is slowing down. E doesn't equal MC square

Treading the light fantastic: Einstein challenged - Science - Specials

Thought I'd start the year with something fundamental:

He believes that not long after the Big Bang light hit a "speed bump" and is, in fact, slowing down.

And I'll tell you what, if it had hit any of the speed bumps here in Grahamstown you can bet it'd be standing still. Which, come to think of it, time is certainly doing around here...

Technorati tags: physics, cosmology