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Tangled Bank #24 Welcome to the twenty-fourth edition of Tangled Bank and boy, do we have a live one! There's everything from visual perception to DNA repair and evolution to salamanders. The sheer variety of science articles and links surely live up to this weblog carnival's title. As I was contemplating on how to order the submitted entries, it struck me how boundary-less science really is. Aristotle, the "father of biology," may have been fond of categorizing everything, but disciplines don't exist separately in a vacuum. Things meld and mix to become something that is both like the previous things as well as something completely new. I suppose one could put things up in neat little rows like an unimaginative librarian, but subjects are more like moldable forms than cubbyholes. So I submit the following four forms to help navigate this week's entries: Many of the entries are interdisciplinary in nature and could fit in more than one subject, but I have taken the liberty to group what I saw as similar. I recommend all of these links, but I also realize that it's not so easy to digest everything in one sitting. So feel free to use those four internal links to bookmark your reading. Living Do you remember one book that you loved as a child? Bora at Science and Politics reminisces about an early 1900 children's book called "The Prince and His Ants" and points out The Mighty Ant-Lion which has the curious habit of digging holes during the full moon. At Creek Running North, Chris photographs and muses about a creature that you might run across on a nature walk or in your own living room (!), Aneides lugubris, the lungless salamander. In A Tale of Two Teals, Mike of 10,000 Birds and his Core Team go "twitching" for teals and discuss the two subspecies of duck, the American and Eurasian Green-winged Teals. Lauren at Feministe is fascinated that scientists have found evidence that some herrings communicate via flatulence and On Herrings: An Honest Question muses about the similarities between that and male blogging practices. John Forth submits Fear-No-More Zoo, a place in California that provides "people with the opportunity to appreciate non-humans in their natural state of Contemplation." Jennifer Forman Orth at the Invasive Species Weblog took a picture of Knotweed and Tulips as two cultivated plants with very different temperaments. Geoffrey Palmer, a New Zealand official, announced that the international moratorium on commercial whaling may be dumped spelling Bad News for the ocean's ecosystem. Josh at Thoughts from Kansas explains that whaling will deprive ocean bottom communities, such as the ones at ocean vents, of valuable influxes of organic material. At RoguePundit, some people are playing a strange kind of Exotics Politics by claiming that introduced exotic species in Oregon such as the turkey shouldn't be called exotic because scientists found 7,000 to 13,000 year old turkey fossils in the region. Dharma Bums takes A Walk on the Beach after it's been pounded by winter storms and discovers some wonderful invertebrate fossils along the Californian coast. Following the mini-theme of fossils, Wolverine Tom is doing some cool Trilobite blogging in which he has compiled some vivid images of the extinct marine arthropods. Over at The Frontier Channel, Richard Leis does An Interview with Geologist Jay Quade, a University of Arizona professor who is looking for hominid fossils in Ethiopia. The interview is in four parts: Part I | Part II | Part III: Tools of Time | Part IV: Geology, Famine and War. For the tech-savvy, the entire interview is also on podcast. The Evolution Project points out the discovery of a new predatory shrimp in New Fairy Shrimp Species and remarks on the diversity of species and the need to catalogue new species. Changing Evolgen writes an essay on the origin life. It's one of biology's "great unsolved mysteries" and most of today's research is dedicated toward cracking the origins of RNA and the genetic code. Gird your loins and take a deep breath as we plunge into some math in The Recipe for Complexity: A Pinch of Simplicity. DarkSyd at Unscrewing the Inscrutable illustrates how creationists are wrong to assume that complex systems can't be reduced to a couple of rules by pointing out that simplicity can lead to complexity. In Less than the sum of the parts, the author of Frankenstein Journal takes exception to a New Scientist article in which Paul Davies argues that it is impossible to make a reductionist model of the universe. Pat Hayes posts Darwin and Hitler: An Exchange With Richard Weikart over at Red State Rabble. Are scientists really at the root of evil, as Weikart seems to think, or is he just really mixed up about science and politics? On a lighter note, R.J. Riggins submits Things Creationists Hate which includes (among numerous things), cute little bunny rabbits, male nipples, snowflakes, and pi. Lots of DNA doesn't necessarily mean increase in complexity. In Fugu!, David of Science and sensibility describes the usefulness of the puffer fish genome which is more than seven times smaller than the human genome yet is able to produce a perfectly functioning (as well as tasty and deadly) fish. All about Steinsky explains how memes are more like genes than you think. Just as bad genes detrimental to the survival of an organism are selected out leaving the good genes, human ideas also go through the process of selection--theoretically leaving the good ideas to be passed down. Chromosomal Evidence for Human Evolution is another rebuttal to creationist claims. Cogito, Ergo Sum...Atheos describes experiments which show one piece of the story in the evolution of the human Y chromosome. On the other side, in the Evolution of the X chromosome, Pharyngula notes a recent Nature article summarizing the X chromosome sequence and comments on the interesting evolutionary history of the X and Y chromosomes which have traveled a decidedly different path than the rest of the autosomes. How did vertebrates get the ability to generate receptors that can recognize any protein or similarly sized molecule? Dr. Andy explains in Evolution of Adaptive Immune Response that the RAG genes, which are critical for recombination to create antibodies and receptors in B and T cells, may have derived from parasitic "jumping DNA" called transposons. At Keats' telescope, Gaw3 is "Alu" about translocations. Recent research show how a type of repetitive DNA called Alu sequences can influence whether DNA is repaired by non-homologous end joining (simply sticking the DNA break points together) or single-strand annealing (using one strand of DNA as a template to fix the new junction). Healing Orac at Respectful Insolence continues his thoughts about wearing two hats. Unlike basic research scientists, the clinician researcher must somehow find a balance between running a laboratory and a medical practice. Who do you trust, a young or an old doctor? Conventional wisdom says that an older doctor would have better skills and more experience, but the Hospice Blog indicates a Medscape article and cites anecdotes that younger doctors may in fact provide higher quality of care because older doctors are more entrenched in the more "traditional" methods. Living the Scientific Life has an excellent three parter on avian flu. First off, Is Avian Influenza THAT deadly? A Nature publication claims that H5N1 is more widespread than previously thought, but that also means that mortality rates would be lower. However, this might only add to the Public Confusion Surrounding Influenza due to widespread misunderstandings of the cause, mechanism, and symptoms of disease. Here's also a primer on influenza and How Its Biology Affects Vaccine Production. Speaking of vaccines, with avian influenza a high priority in public health what sort of antiviral drugs to we have now in our medical arsenal that can help combat the disease? Effect Measure describes a neuraminidase inhibitor and asks how oseltamivir (Tamiflu) works (and does it?) Trish Wilson writes about an ebola-like hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola. Unlike Ebola, this disease is striking a significant number of children. Thinking At the Tales of a MD/PhD student, the author muses about a New York Times article and the possible therapeutic uses of the brain scan in Neuroimaging in Psychiatry. Dr. Charles has a conversation with one of his patients in The Color of One's Life. A color-blind person may not perceive colors the way the rest of us do, but that doesn't mean that they completely lose out in the visual world. Over at Musical Perceptions, Scott Spiegelberg tells how those Catchy Tunes (or more annoyingly, those tunes that get stuck in your head) is evidence of auditory imagery--that we can imagine music without an outside stimulus. Synaesthesia is the nifty ability to associate something with one of the senses such as associating numbers with colors or sounds with taste. Mind Hacks proposes to Test Your Synaesthesia through some easy do-it-yourself tasks. Cognitive Daily explains some experiments appearing in Nature that visual skills can be improved by playing video games. But those same violent video games may be linked to aggression. Finally, (but definitely not the least!), She Flies With Her Own Wings submits a marvelously detailed abstract, The SCN acts as an ensemble of individual oscillators. Neurons in an area called the suprachiasmatic nucleus act as a biological clock in the mammalian system which leads to all sorts of circadian activity. I would like to thank all the contributors--both new and returning--for making this a most fantastic edition. The next Tangled Bank will be held on April 6 over at Respectful Insolence. You can submit your science related posts to Orac, PZ Myers, or host@tangledbank.net. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:00 AM : ] 
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