My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
At Pizza Lunch talks, we hear a lot about efforts to decipher the physical world. But what about psychological realms? How do you measure them, especially on a large scale among people scarred by trauma? At noon on Thursday, Feb. 18, come hear Dr. Jeffrey Sonis discuss "Cambodian Attitudes and Mental Health on the Eve of the Khmer Rouge Trials." The UNC-Chapel Hill physician and public health researcher is studying how Cambodians are responding to the genocide trials.
American Scientist Pizza Lunch is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes. Feel free to forward this message to anyone who might want to attend. RSVPs are required (for an accurate slice count) to cclabby@amsci.org
Directions to Sigma Xi:
http://www.sigmaxi.org/about/center/directions.shtml
Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Maria Droujkova to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?
At any given time, I typically work on multiple mathematics education projects, as a leader or as a consultant. Geographically, I have connections with North Carolina, where I've been living for a while, and also Dusseldorf, Germany, New Orleans, LA, Moscow, Russia and Crimea, Ukraine - places where I lived and worked before. Philosophically, "progressor" from an old Russian science fiction book series, someone who facilitates progress, is close to my self-image. I visualize social changes around mathematics, and then work on making them happen. The main current directions of changes are helping children make their own mathematics, Math 2.0, and community-centered learning.
Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?
In the early 2000s, I started or led several large and central blog and forum parent and educator communities on early childhood education in runet (Russian internet). My main English site naturalmath.com started in 1996 with a few pages on multiplication, paradoxes and learner rights, and has been growing since then. I have been interested in game development since 2003, had a DoED grant to support some R&D for Natural Math and consulted for others. I am currently building a framework for math game development, including a taxonomy of math game mechanics and a game classification. Since mid-nineties I've been leading family Math Clubs of various types, with thousands of families involved over these years. I am leading six Clubs and unClasses right now, exploring grid and coordinate reasoning with 5-6yo, infinity with 7-9yo, and physics computer modeling, as well as Wonderland art math, with tweens and teens. In 2009, I started Math 2.0 Interest Group, with activities that include software development, conferences, weekly webinars, and asynchronous discussions. I defended a doctoral dissertation about metaphors in math in 2004, and continue to develop a metaphor-based theory of mathematical learning. I also have a MS in Applied Math, and even though I have not worked as a research mathematician since the nineties, having focused on education, I feel my understanding of relatively high-level mathematics is a particular strength.
What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?
There are five parts to my Natural Math Theory of Change: Mathematical Authoring, Psychology of Mathematics Education, Humanistic Mathematics, Executable Mathematics, and Community Mathematics. All of these directions come up in every project I do. Here are some immediate goals:
- Publish "The book of the Club" for every Math Club session we have, inviting all members to actively co-author, of course.
- Start and finish two collaborative Online Family Studies this Spring: Early Algebra and Multiplicative Reasoning, publish these two book drafts once people in the studies react/contribute/develop them
- Organize Math Online 2011, a conference for the Math 2.0 Interest Group
- Restructure naturalmath.com (yet again)
- Present the math game design framework at a conference, and get a couple of articles about it in print
- Start Math Fairs, global, collaborative (non-competitive) series of math events for families and Math Clubs
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
- Citizen science
- Math 2.0
- Apprenticeships for kids, opportunities for participation in real communities of practice
- Community building for social change
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?
- Blogging is something I did a lot in early 2000s, but not as much anymore. I comment on a few blogs and I hosted a Carnival event last year, ironically, on a wiki.
- I mostly use Google Groups and wikis for my projects, because of the number of voices involved, and the network structure (definitely not "one to many").
- I am active in many Nings, wikis, Twitter hashtag networks, Facebook and LinkedIn communities.
To answer the last question, I think of myself as living online. So the "net positive" question is isomorphic to asking if my life has a meaning. I surely hope so!
What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference - a session, something someone said or did or wrote - that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
I liked meeting people - that was the best for me. Also, the inspiration for Math Online 2011 was great. "Citizen science" is a phrase I have not even heard before, but it fits quite a few of my projects and those I find valuable, so I'd like to nominate it as one of the more significant content items.
As for suggestions, I would like to see several mindmaps, created by and for participants, and helping me to visualize the group as a whole. I envision them both as big pieces of paper on the wall (quaint, I know), and online entities we are all invited to edit. Here are some I want:
Interests - areas - fields - names
Online communities - areas - examples we love (and who is active in each)
Projects - area tags - leaders - active people - those who want to participate (this may be a table, rather than a concept map)
So, for example, I'd like to see what projects are active in citizen science, who the leaders are, and who at the conference is involved. Or, more generally, who is interested in a particular science area.
It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview.
Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything
Saturday, January 16 at 10:15 - 11:20am
E.Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything - Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications?
As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
A member of Parliament to Prime Minister Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, Sir", said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."
Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Ken Liu from Scivee.tv to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?
KL: I am a serial entrepreneur who's been doing technology startups for the past 20 years in a variety of technologies, products and business models. My career has spanned the history of software, from shrink wrap software sold in retail stores (Computerland, remember them?) to open-source SaaS today. My business philosophy is akin to Darwinism--Innovate or Die, and quickly. Dreamt about becoming an astronomer or doctor as a teen, but ended up getting degrees in economics and international relations instead, But my love for science has remained to this day.
Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?
KL: I was involved in a company during the dot com era in which the company was acquired in 3 years since it's founding, and practically all the other major players in the market were also acquired by much bigger companies (Cisco, Nortel etc.) within the next year. So an entire industry came and went within 4 years. I am now spearheading business development at Scivee.tv, which aims to become the video platform for publishers, societies, universities and other institutions in the STM market. Every media segment--even newspapers--has adopted video and other rich media aggressively except STM, which by and large is still a text world. I have to conclude that the STM market is the most reactionary in adopting new technology in the age of Web 2.0+. In journals, for example, you can argue that the text format hasn't changed since the days of Issac Newton, who would recognize an article of 2010 vintage published by the Royal Society. I find it baffling that science is all about making new discoveries, pushing ideas forward and expanding knowledge, at a breathtaking pace that occurs daily, yet the primary way to communicate those important findings and what scientists do is stuck in the 17th century. I am obviously exaggerating to make a point, but it's not far from the essential truth.
What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?
KL: My mission and passion is to encourage adoption of video among the STM institutions. Currently, many say "oh, we put our videos on YouTube", and that's that. What SciVee is evangelising is it's got to be more than that. Video and other rich media must be a more integral component to the mission of the institution, and its communications strategy, to serve its various stakeholders--members, authors, funders, government agencies, readers, and ultimately, themselves. Throwing videos to the great YouTube etherworld is an unconnected and unimaginative act. The vision is that within 5 years (should have been by now, as in every other media market), video is an integral component of any journal or scientific institution's communication arsenal. Just look at any good content site, say the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, and that's what I mean. We at Scivee are not reinventing anything new; we are just applying known Internet and video techniques to the text-centric STM world. I have no doubt that our vision will be fulfilled, it's just a matter of time.
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
KL: Obviously it's now video. At SciVee, we have a unique product called SciveeCast. SciveeCast is a synchronized video abstract that enables a viewer to see the presenter discuss highlighted sections of a journal article, poster, coursework, slides in a full multimedia presentation.
PubCasts enliven and enhance science communications and promote discovery. It's also a more efficient way to absorb new research, especially in visual topics. A picture is worth a thousand words; a video is worth a thousand pictures. Finally, a new generation of scientists and readers expect and demand an interactive rich-media experience online. See sample: Bacterial Inclusion Bodies Contain Amyloid-Like Structure.
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?
KL: Both a necessity and net positive, to the point of being overwhelming. There is no way anyone can absorb all of it.
When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?
KL: I have been reading blogs of various major publications such as Nature, Science, NY Times for several years.
What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference - a session, something someone said or did or wrote - that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
KL: From my perspective, I thought it needed focusing and go deeper into certain topics to gain coherence and substance. The audience accordingly is also quite eclectic, from students to scientists to a few vendors like me, although the core seems to be bloggers, free Internet, open access advocates. I also thought the focus on Twitter as the cool thing to do is misplaced; I felt it tried to separate the cool "with-it" guys from the rest. I am a curmudgeon who still clings to the old fashioned idea that usefulness is more important than the fact that something can be done for its sake.
It was so nice to meet you and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.
Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything
Saturday, January 16 at 10:15 - 11:20am
E.Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything - Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications?
There are 16 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.
The complete list of blog/media coverage of ScienceOnline2010 is becoming huge (and also swiftly falling down and off the page), but I wanted to put up on top just a choice of blog posts that completely or partially cover the 'journalism and media track' of session at the meeting, as I found them very insightful. I know, there were many other topics at the meeting, and blog posts covering them, but I feel the discussion of science in the media and journalism was the leitmotif of this year's meeting and it brought about some of the liveliest sessions and most interesting posts (not just for participants, but for a much broader audience interested in science or science journalism or even journalism in general).
Prior to the meeting, I collected a lot of pertinent links in this introductory post, still worth, I think, bookmarking and checking out. A couple of other posts that appeared just before the conference are also included in the linkfest below, for completeness.
The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor:
She said, "If you were my husband, I'd give you poisoned tea."
He answered, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution. ... We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry it to its time.
Description: What role does podcasting play in science? In fact, it plays many. More than just a way to broadcast ideas, podcasting is the beginning of a conversation, it is the archiving of methodologies, it is news, it is marketing, and much more. We will discuss the many ways that podcasting technology and techniques can be used to help you reach your communication goals.
Watch all six video parts of the recording of this session:
There are 26 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Most prior studies on selective attention in the setting of total sleep deprivation (SD) have focused on behavior or activation within fronto-parietal cognitive control areas. Here, we evaluated the effects of SD on the top-down biasing of activation of ventral visual cortex and on functional connectivity between cognitive control and other brain regions. Twenty-three healthy young adult volunteers underwent fMRI after a normal night of sleep (RW) and after sleep deprivation in a counterbalanced manner while performing a selective attention task. During this task, pictures of houses or faces were randomly interleaved among scrambled images. Across different blocks, volunteers responded to house but not face pictures, face but not house pictures, or passively viewed pictures without responding. The appearance of task-relevant pictures was unpredictable in this paradigm. SD resulted in less accurate detection of target pictures without affecting the mean false alarm rate or response time. In addition to a reduction of fronto-parietal activation, attending to houses strongly modulated parahippocampal place area (PPA) activation during RW, but this attention-driven biasing of PPA activation was abolished following SD. Additionally, SD resulted in a significant decrement in functional connectivity between the PPA and two cognitive control areas, the left intraparietal sulcus and the left inferior frontal lobe. SD impairs selective attention as evidenced by reduced selectivity in PPA activation. Further, reduction in fronto-parietal and ventral visual task-related activation suggests that it also affects sustained attention. Reductions in functional connectivity may be an important additional imaging parameter to consider in characterizing the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition.
The declaration of the human influenza A pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (H1N1/09) raised important questions, including origin and host range [1], [2]. Two of the three pandemics in the last century resulted in the spread of virus to pigs (H1N1, 1918; H3N2, 1968) with subsequent independent establishment and evolution within swine worldwide [3]. A key public and veterinary health consideration in the context of the evolving pandemic is whether the H1N1/09 virus could become established in pig populations [4]. We performed an infection and transmission study in pigs with A/California/07/09. In combination, clinical, pathological, modified influenza A matrix gene real time RT-PCR and viral genomic analyses have shown that infection results in the induction of clinical signs, viral pathogenesis restricted to the respiratory tract, infection dynamics consistent with endemic strains of influenza A in pigs, virus transmissibility between pigs and virus-host adaptation events. Our results demonstrate that extant H1N1/09 is fully capable of becoming established in global pig populations. We also show the roles of viral receptor specificity in both transmission and tissue tropism. Remarkably, following direct inoculation of pigs with virus quasispecies differing by amino acid substitutions in the haemagglutinin receptor-binding site, only virus with aspartic acid at position 225 (225D) was detected in nasal secretions of contact infected pigs. In contrast, in lower respiratory tract samples from directly inoculated pigs, with clearly demonstrable pulmonary pathology, there was apparent selection of a virus variant with glycine (225G). These findings provide potential clues to the existence and biological significance of viral receptor-binding variants with 225D and 225G during the 1918 pandemic [5].
Secondary sexual characteristics convey information about reproductive potential. In the same way that facial symmetry and masculinity, and shoulder-to-hip ratio convey information about reproductive/genetic quality in males, waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR) is a phenotypic cue to fertility, fecundity, neurodevelopmental resources in offspring, and overall health, and is indicative of "good genes" in women. Here, using fMRI, we found that males show activation in brain reward centers in response to naked female bodies when surgically altered to express an optimal (~0.7) WHR with redistributed body fat, but relatively unaffected body mass index (BMI). Relative to presurgical bodies, brain activation to postsurgical bodies was observed in bilateral orbital frontal cortex. While changes in BMI only revealed activation in visual brain substrates, changes in WHR revealed activation in the anterior cingulate cortex, an area associated with reward processing and decision-making. When regressing ratings of attractiveness on brain activation, we observed activation in forebrain substrates, notably the nucleus accumbens, a forebrain nucleus highly involved in reward processes. These findings suggest that an hourglass figure (i.e., an optimal WHR) activates brain centers that drive appetitive sociality/attention toward females that represent the highest-quality reproductive partners. This is the first description of a neural correlate implicating WHR as a putative honest biological signal of female reproductive viability and its effects on men's neurological processing.
He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.
Description: What role does podcasting play in science? In fact, it plays many. More than just a way to broadcast ideas, podcasting is the beginning of a conversation, it is the archiving of methodologies, it is news, it is marketing, and much more. We will discuss the many ways that podcasting technology and techniques can be used to help you reach your communication goals.
Watch all six video parts of the recording of this session:
There are 19 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Accurate reconstruction of ancestral character states on a phylogeny is crucial in many genomics studies. We study how to select species to achieve the best reconstruction of ancestral character states on a phylogeny. We first show that the marginal maximum likelihood has the monotonicity property that more taxa give better reconstruction, but the Fitch method does not have it even on an ultrametric phylogeny. We further validate a greedy approach for species selection using simulation. The validation tests indicate that backward greedy selection outperforms forward greedy selection. In addition, by applying our selection strategy, we obtain a set of the ten most informative species for the reconstruction of the genomic sequence of the so-called boreoeutherian ancestor of placental mammals. This study has broad relevance in comparative genomics and paleogenomics since limited research resources do not allow researchers to sequence the large number of descendant species required to reconstruct an ancestral sequence.
Migration of health professionals from low and middle income countries to rich countries is a large scale and long-standing phenomenon, which is detrimental to the health systems in the donor countries. We sought to explore the extent of psychiatric migration. In our study, we use the respective professional databases in each country to establish the numbers of psychiatrists currently registered in the UK, US, New Zealand, and Australia who originate from other countries. We also estimate the impact of this migration on the psychiatrist population ratios in the donor countries. We document large numbers of psychiatrists currently registered in the UK, US, New Zealand and Australia originating from India (4687 psychiatrists), Pakistan (1158), Bangladesh (149) , Nigeria (384) , Egypt (484), Sri Lanka (142), Philippines (1593). For some countries of origin, the numbers of psychiatrists currently registered within high-income countries' professional databases are very small (e.g., 5 psychiatrists of Tanzanian origin registered in the 4 high-income countries we studied), but this number is very significant compared to the 15 psychiatrists currently registered in Tanzania). Without such emigration, many countries would have more than double the number of psychiatrists per 100, 000 population (e.g. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon); and some countries would have had five to eight times more psychiatrists per 100,000 (e.g. Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Nigeria and Zambia). Large numbers of psychiatrists originating from key low and middle income countries are currently registered in the UK, US, New Zealand and Australia, with concomitant impact on the psychiatrist/population ratio n the originating countries. We suggest that creative international policy approaches are needed to ensure the individual migration rights of health professionals do not compromise societal population rights to health, and that there are public and fair agreements between countries within an internationally agreed framework.
Several items showed up recently that may be of interest to science bloggers, their readers, and related science communicators of various stripes....
A) Today, Eureka, the science section of London Times, published a list of Top 30 Science Blogs.
Every list that has me in it is a good list ;-)
They say "Zivkovic, who studies circadian rhythms, is an often-provocative evangelist for new media who has probably done more than anyone else to inspire scientists to blog. He is also a must-follow on Twitter, where he posts as @boraz"
They could have had a more diverse group (in sense of gender, race, ethnicity, age, etc.) and there are some obvious blogs missing from the list (Cosmic Variance, Bad Science, Science-Based Medicine, several SciBlings, a few people from Nature Network, etc.). There is also a curious inclusion of an anti-science, global-warming denialist blog there at the #30 spot. But they are asking for feedback and for suggestions for another 70 blogs so they can make a list of Top 100. So go and leave some ideas in the comments there and help them make a better, more diverse and higher-quality list. Or e-mail them your suggestions to eureka@thetimes.co.uk, with "Best blogs" in the subject line.
B) Research Blogging Awards 2010 are now open for nominations. Which blogs meet the criteria? Those that, at least sometimes, write about peer-reviewed research papers. It is all nicely explained at this page with links to additional information.
You don't need to be registered with ResearchBlogging.org to nominate (or to be nominated, though existing in their system makes both nomination and judging easier), but have to be in order to be one of the judges.
Important to note: nominate yourself! Do not be shy! Everyone is nominating themselves first! Nobody knows your blog, your archives and the links to your four most representative posts as well as you do. So go do it. Then nominate others (Yes, I nominated myself and three other blogs that are not the Usual Suspects, i.e., unlikely to be remembered by many others to nominate).
There is a whole list of categories one can enter to win and each blog is also included for the big prize for the Research Blog of the Year which is $1000 (another $1000 is divided among winners of all the other categories).
C) There was, more than a year ago, a useful blog meme going around the science blogosphere, asking several questions about why science bloggers do what they do: write blogs. Martin Fenner has collected (and even analyzed) all the responses here.
It is time to re-start this meme, with all the new bloggers around. This time, Steffi Suhr came up with the questions and jump-started the meme. Several people did it in the comments on her blog. DrugMonkey did his part on his own blog. Join in either in the comments on Steffi's blog or on your blog (but make sure Steffi gets the link).
D) You have probably heard that Cognitive Daily is closing shop after five years of blogging. This was, how shall I put it, a science blog that early on showed us by example how good science blogging is done. We are all indebted to Greta and Dave for everything we learned from them over the years (and a fascinating blog post every single day!).
But don't despair yet, because they are not....really done. Not only will Dave continue running ResearchBlogging.org (and its associated news blog), but he will also continue blogging on his personal blog Word Munger. And, just the other day, Dave unveiled his newest project - The Daily Monthly with a unique concept: he will write a post per day, sticking to a single topic for a month, from various angles and perspectives. Topic for February 2010 is AIDS. So, adjust your bookmarks and RSS feeds to include this interesting new project.
The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative - a program of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, with the support of the W.M. Keck Foundation - will award four $20,000 prizes in 2010 to individuals or teams (up to four individuals associated with the creation of the work being nominated) who have developed creative, original works that address issues and advances in science, engineering and/or medicine for the general public. Nominations are accepted in four categories: Book; Magazine/Newspaper; Film/Radio/TV; and Online. The winners will be honored sometime fall 2010 and are expected to attend the awards ceremony in person.
F) Sarah Greene over at The Scientist says that Our conversation is about to get a lot more interesting and I am looking forward to seeing how it works out - The Scientist teaming up with the Faculty of 1000 to, with a help of some nifty geeky t-shirts, get scientists to talk back and give feedback.... we'll keep an eye.
G) It is incredible that almost three weeks later, people are still using the #scio10 hashtag on Twitter and still blogging about ScienceOnline2010!!! I have never seen a conference (except for SciFoo perhaps) remaining 'hot' so long after it ends. Let me know if your blog post is not listed - it's quite possible I missed it.
Yes, years after I left the lab, I published a scientific paper. How did that happen?
Back in 2000, I published a paper on the way circadian clock controls the time of day when the eggs are laid in Japanese quail. Several years later, I wrote a blog post about that paper, trying to explain in lay terms what I did, why I did it, what I found, and how it fits into the broader context of this line of research. The paper was a physiology paper, and my blog post also focused on the physiological aspects of it.
But then, I wrote (back in March 2006 - eons ago in Web-time) an additional blog post on one of my old blogs (reposted on this one here, here and here) in which I followed further, thinking about the data in more ecological and evolutionary terms, and proposing hypotheses following from the data that can only be tested in other species out in the wild. As you can see if you click on the links, this post did not receive much commentary.
Then, about a year ago, I received an e-mail out of the blue, from a researcher at the Cornell Ornithology Lab, essentially offering to test one of the hypotheses I outlined in that post. My first reaction was "sure, go ahead, I am happy someone wants to do this, but please cite the blog post as the origin of the hypothesis"... The response was along the lines of "no, no, no - we are thinking about working WITH you on testing this hypothesis". Wow! Sure, of course, I'm game!
They already had preliminary data which they sent to me to take a look. They are coming from an ecological tradition and are very familiar with the ecological literature, some of which they sent to me to read. On the other hand, I am coming from a physiological tradition and am very familiar with that literature, some of which I sent to them to read.
A month or so later, one of them, Caren Cooper, came down to Chapel Hill. We met and, over coffee, spent a couple of hours staring at the data and discussed what it all means. Then we got started at writing the paper.
In this paper - which is really a preliminary pilot study (who knows, we may yet get a grant to do more) - Caren and Margaret set up video cameras on a bunch of nests of Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis). From the tapes they got times when the eggs were laid. The times were approximate. But the analysis gave us exactly the same result when we used the times when the nest was obviously empty before the bird sat on it to lay the egg, the times when the bird first got up to reveal the egg to the camera, and the mid-point between those two times.
I am not aware of anyone ever looking at timing of egg-laying in wild birds out in the field. There is a huge literature on timing of laying in quail and chicken (and some in turkeys) in the laboratory, but none I am aware of in wild birds. Most researchers, when asked when their species lays eggs are surprised at the question and answer something along the lines of "no idea, but we find the eggs when we come to check the nests in the morning, so perhaps over night, or at dawn?" So, this paper is a first in this domain.
What we have shown is that bluebirds, just like chicken and quail, have an S-shaped pattern of egg-laying patterns (see my older post for theory and graphic visualization).
The question is: how does a bird "know" when to stop laying? When is enough enough? When is the clutch (all of the eggs laid in one breeding attempt) complete? Most of ecological literature is focused on energetics: are birds getting hungry, have they depleted some important source of energy, etc.
But the circadian field looks for internal mechanisms. Running a circadian clock takes very little energy. Even when the animals are extremely hungry, the clock keeps ticking with no changes in frequency (if anything, the amplitude gets bigger, implying even more work!). Even when an animal gets very sick and is dying, at the time when many bodily functions start ceasing, the clock works until the very end. Being produced by a molecular feedback loop in which some reactions use and others release energy, and all of this happening in just a small number of brain cells, the clock is very energy efficient and does not require the organism to be healthy and well fed.
What is important in regard to circadian regulation of egg-laying is to understand that female birds have not one, but two circadian clocks. Let's call one of them A and the other one B. Clock A is located in the brain (or retinae or pineal or some combination, depending on the species) and is sensitive to light: it readily entrains to a light-dark cycle. No matter what the intrinsic frequency of the clock may be (as uncovered in constant darkness conditions), it is forced to a frequency of exactly 24 hours by the entraining power of the day/night cycle.
Clock B, on the other hand, is intimately tied to reproduction. It is a result of an interplay between the clock in the brain and neuro-endocrine signals between the brain and the ovary (which may itself house its own part of the clock). Brain clock sends hormonal signals to the ovary. Those signals entrain the ovarian rhythms AND result in ovulation. Ovulation itself produces hormones that signal to the brain clock and entrain it. This feedback loop is in itself The Clock. This clock is light-blind and its intrinsic frequency is not 24 hours - it is around 26-27 hours in both quail and chicken, and almost two days long in turkeys.
These two clocks, A and B, interact with each other. Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario in which clocks A and B are very tightly coupled. The external light-dark cycles that all the birds in the wild are constantly exposed to entrain the clock A to the exactly 24 hours period. Clock B, being tightly coupled to Clock A is then also forced to oscillate with a period of exactly 24 hours. What would that mean to the bird? She would be laying one egg per day, always at exactly the same time of day, every single day of her life: in spring, summer, fall and winter. She'd spend all her resources on making big yolky eggs every day. She would be sitting on a huge pile of eggs throughout her life. She would not be able even to move short-distance to a better nesting ground, let alone prepare and undergo a long-distance migration. Her eggs would be also hatching at the rate of one per day. Thus, she would have progeny of a variety of ages at all times, each age having different requirements for care or abilities to follow the mother around. Some hatchlings would freeze to death in winter, or starve to death at time when the food is scarce. Others would die from predation at times when they are highly visible (in the snow) or just because there are so many of them they cannot all hide under a bush.
An opposite scenario: clocks A and B do not interact with each other at all. In this case, A would be entrained to the 24 hour cycle of night and day. Clock B, being light-blind, would freerun with its own endogenous frequency, i.e., with a period of roughly 26-27 hours. Again, the poor bird would be laying one egg per day all of her life. The only difference is that the eggs would not be laid always at the same time of day, but scattered all over the 24-hour cycle. Both scenarios are obviously maladaptive to the bird.
But, oscillator theory provides a third scenario in which clocks A and B are only loosely coupled. There are phase-relationships between the two clocks when they are coupled: A entrains B. There are phase-relationships when the two are at odds: A inhibits B (and thus no ovulation happens). The phase-relationships are dependent on daylength: when the days are short in winter A inhibits B and no eggs are laid. When the days are very long in the middle of the summer (or in constant light) all phases are permissive to ovulation and the clock B can freerun with its own period of 26-27 hours.
But the interesting phenomenon happens in-between, once the length of the day gets just a little bit longer in spring, in normal breeding season. There is only a narrow zone of phase-relationships in which the two clocks are coupled - outside of that zone, ovulation is inhibited. Thus the clock A starts ticking at the beginning of that zone (e.g., at dawn in some species, at around noon in quail) and starts freerunning through it until it "phase-locks" with the clock A and, for a while, appears to be running with the period of 24 hours. But underneath, the pulses of hormones are gradually shifting later and later, just a little bit each day. Finally, these hormonal influences allow the clock B to again break free from the clock A, freerun some more until it gets out of the permissive phase - the feedback loop is broken and the ovulations stops. The clutch is over.
The resulting pattern is S-shaped: early in the clutch eggs are laid a little bit later each day, the middle of the clutch appears entrained to the 24-hour cycle, and the last egg or two again are laid later until the egg-laying stops completely. In quail, which was bred for centuries for egg-production, the selection affected the strength of coupling between the two clocks. Thus, in photoperiods (daylengths) that are just barely longer than the 'critical photoperiod' (the minimal daylength needed to provide any permissive phases at all, thus the first daylength in spring at which the bird can start laying), quail will have S-shaped patterns but the middle portion, the "straight one" that is entrained, is artificially long - I have seen clutches lasting for two months and consisting of 60 eggs!
Birds out in the wild, where natural selection is likely to produce an optimal clutch-size (not a maximal one that humans prefer), may or may not use the same mechanism to determine how and when the clutch starts and ends. So, what we did was see if Bluebirds also show the S-shaped pattern that would suggest they do. And they do:
The first egg in the clutch is laid earlier than the subsequent eggs. All the eggs in the middle (1-6 of them, not 30 - we collapsed them all into one "time-point" in the graph) are laid at about the same time, indicating entrainment of B by A (i.e., to the light-dark cycle). The second-to-last egg may be laid a little later, and the very last egg is laid much later. These results suggest that quail is not a weird unique animal, or that Galliformes (chicken-like birds) are different from other kinds, e.g.., Passeriformes (songbirds). The mechanism is likely the same - not dependent on external factors like food and energy, but a result of a fine-honed system of interactions between two circadian clocks.
Of course, this is just a first observational study, but the results are encouraging. Next steps would be to: a) improve the temporal precision of measurements by, perhaps, installing thermo-couples in the nests (there is a huge but short-lasting body temperature spike exactly at the time of lay), b) increase the sample size, c) compare the bluebirds living in three very different latitudes where both the weather conditions and photoperiodic changes are different to see how the natural selection shaped their responses, and d) do a comparative study of a few more species belonging to other groups. We'll see if we'll try to submit a grant proposal in the future.
Unfortunately, this paper is not Open Access. I wanted to send it to PLoS ONE, which I think is the best journal in the world and IS the future of publishing. But it was important for Caren and Margaret to publish in a journal that their peers consider important, and Condor is a fine little journal for this. So I agreed to go along with it.
Also, the listing of the original blog post in the List Of References, to my dismay, disappeared between the Provisional PDF and Final PDF versions. It is now linked to inline in the text, placing it down to the level of the dreaded "personal communication", once again foiling our attempts to give serious science blogging some respect. Ah well....
Interestingly, I did not know when the paper came out. Apparently, it was published back in November. I learned about it a couple of days ago when I got a first reprint request from a researcher in Russia!
But hey, I am happy. I got a paper published. And now I am using my blog and social networks to promote it... ;-)
Cooper, C., Voss, M., & Zivkovic, B. (2009). Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird The Condor, 111 (4), 752-755 DOI: 10.1525/cond.2009.090061
Description: What role does podcasting play in science? In fact, it plays many. More than just a way to broadcast ideas, podcasting is the beginning of a conversation, it is the archiving of methodologies, it is news, it is marketing, and much more. We will discuss the many ways that podcasting technology and techniques can be used to help you reach your communication goals.
Watch all six video parts of the recording of this session:
There are 24 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Many bat species live in groups, some of them in highly complex social systems, but the reasons for sociality in bats remain largely unresolved. Increased foraging efficiency through passive information transfer in species foraging for ephemeral insects has been postulated as a reason for group formation of male bats in the temperate zones. We hypothesized that benefits from group hunting might also entice tropical bats of both sexes to live in groups. Here we investigate whether Molossus molossus, a small insectivorous bat in Panama, hunts in groups. We use a phased antenna array setup to reduce error in telemetry bearings. Our results confirmed that simultaneously radiotracked individuals from the same colony foraged together significantly more than expected by chance. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that many bats are social because of information transfer between foraging group members. We suggest this reason for sociality to be more widespread than currently assumed. Furthermore, benefits from group hunting may also have contributed to the evolution of group living in other animals specialized on ephemeral food sources.
For more than four decades the cause of most type A influenza virus infections of humans has been attributed to only two viral subtypes, A/H1N1 or A/H3N2. In contrast, avian and other vertebrate species are a reservoir of type A influenza virus genome diversity, hosting strains representing at least 120 of 144 combinations of 16 viral hemagglutinin and 9 viral neuraminidase subtypes. Viral genome segment reassortments and mutations emerging within this reservoir may spawn new influenza virus strains as imminent epidemic or pandemic threats to human health and poultry production. Traditional methods to detect and differentiate influenza virus subtypes are either time-consuming and labor-intensive (culture-based) or remarkably insensitive (antibody-based). Molecular diagnostic assays based upon reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) have short assay cycle time, and high analytical sensitivity and specificity. However, none of these diagnostic tests determine viral gene nucleotide sequences to distinguish strains and variants of a detected pathogen from one specimen to the next. Decision-quality, strain- and variant-specific pathogen gene sequence information may be critical for public health, infection control, surveillance, epidemiology, or medical/veterinary treatment planning. The Resequencing Pathogen Microarray (RPM-Flu) is a robust, highly multiplexed and target gene sequencing-based alternative to both traditional culture- or biomarker-based diagnostic tests. RPM-Flu is a single, simultaneous differential diagnostic assay for all subtype combinations of type A influenza viruses and for 30 other viral and bacterial pathogens that may cause influenza-like illness. These other pathogen targets of RPM-Flu may co-infect and compound the morbidity and/or mortality of patients with influenza. The informative specificity of a single RPM-Flu test represents specimen-specific viral gene sequences as determinants of virus type, A/HN subtype, virulence, host-range, and resistance to antiviral agents.
Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite). In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.
Auditory laterality is suggested to be characterized by a left hemisphere dominance for the processing of conspecific communication. Nevertheless, there are indications that auditory laterality can also be affected by communicative significance, emotional valence and social recognition. In order to gain insight into the effects of caller characteristics on auditory laterality in the early primate brain, 17 gray mouse lemurs were tested in a head turn paradigm. The head turn paradigm was established to examine potential functional hemispheric asymmetries on the behavioral level. Subjects were presented with playbacks of two conspecific call types (tsak calls and trill calls) from senders differing in familiarity (unfamiliar vs. familiar) and sex (same sex vs. other sex). Based on the head turn direction towards these calls, evidence was found for a right ear/left hemisphere dominance for the processing of calls of the other sex (Binomial test: p = 0.021, N = 10). Familiarity had no effect on the orientation biases. The findings in this study support the growing consensus that auditory laterality is not only determined by the acoustic processing of conspecific communication, but also by other factors like the sex of the sender.
The Agabus bipustulatus complex includes one of Europe's most widely distributed and common diving beetles. This complex, which is known for its large morphological variation, has a complex demographic and altitudinal variation in elytral reticulation. The various depth of the reticulation imprint, both in smaller and larger meshes, results in both mat and shiny individuals, as well as intermediate forms. The West Palearctic lowland is inhabited by a sexually dimorphic form, with shiny males and mat females. In mountain regions, shiny individuals of both sexes are found intermixed with mat individuals or in pure populations in central and southern areas, whereas pure populations of mat individuals are exclusively found in the northern region at high altitude. Sexual selection is proposed as a driving force in shaping this variation. However, the occurrence of different types of reticulation in both sexes and disjunct geographical distribution patterns suggest an additional function of the reticulation. Here we investigate the phylogeographical history, genetic structure and reticulation variation of several named forms within the Agabus bipustulatus complex including A. nevadensis. The molecular analyses recognised several well-supported clades within the complex. Several of the named forms had two or more independent origins. Few south European populations were uniform in reticulation patterns, and the males were found to display large variation. Reticulation diversity and population genetic variability were clearly correlated to altitude, but no genetic differences were detected among populations with mixed or homogenous forms. Observed reduction in secondary reticulation in female and increased variance in male at high altitude in South Europe may be explained by the occurrence of an additional selective force, beside sexual selection. The combined effect of these selective processes is here demonstrated in an extreme case to generate isolation barriers between populations at high altitudes. Here we discuss this selective force in relation to thermal selection.
With Bex Walton moving on to another job, it is now my duty to take over posting about media coverage over on everyONE blog, as well as to pick a cool image of the week. So I started this week with Weekly PLoS ONE News and Blog Round-Up and Worth a Thousand Words. Take a look. Am I doing it right?
I wrote 134 posts in January. Unsurprisingly, a lot of that had to do with ScienceOnline (but there was other fun stuff as well, including some cool videos, images, etc.).
Description: What role does podcasting play in science? In fact, it plays many. More than just a way to broadcast ideas, podcasting is the beginning of a conversation, it is the archiving of methodologies, it is news, it is marketing, and much more. We will discuss the many ways that podcasting technology and techniques can be used to help you reach your communication goals.
Watch all six video parts of the recording of this session:
Just checking in on a few of the new PLoS titles.... As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
What makes us human, what sets us apart from other animal species, and which traits do we share with our closest living relatives? Ever since Darwin introduced the notion of continuity in his theory of evolution, humans have been obsessed with the question of how to distinguish themselves from all other species. In the postwar period, our species became known as "Man the Toolmaker," until in the 1960s Jane Goodall watched chimpanzees using sticks to fish for termites, and that was that. We then distinguished ourselves using the term "Man the Hunter," but the discovery that chimpanzees and other social carnivores engage in coordinated hunts refuted this type of collective action as the one decisive feature. More recently, the issue of culture has entered center stage. Trying to distinguish the cultural "haves" from the "have-nots" tends to generate more heat than light, and it seems much more productive to think about the cognitive prerequisites for social learning, attribution of mental states, and symbolic communication.
Medical ghostwriting, the practice of pharmaceutical companies secretly authoring journal articles published under the byline of academic researchers, is a troubling phenomenon because it is dangerous to public health [1]. For example, ghostwritten articles on rofecoxib [2] probably contributed to "...lasting injury and even deaths as a result of prescribers and patients being misinformed about risks" [3]. Study 329, a randomized controlled trial of paroxetine in adolescents, was ghostwritten [4]-[7] to claim that paroxetine is "generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents" [8], although data made available through legal proceedings show that "Study 329 was negative for efficacy on all 8 protocol specified outcomes and positive for harm" [9]. Even beyond frank misrepresentation of data, commercially driven ghostwritten articles shape the medical literature in subtler but important ways, affecting how health conditions and treatments are perceived by clinicians. The ability of industry to exercise clandestine influence over the peer-reviewed medical literature is thus a serious threat to public health [1],[10].
We currently understand the mental effects of psychedelics to be caused by agonism or partial agonism of 5-HT2A (and possibly 5-HT2C) receptors, and we understand that psychedelic drugs, especially phenylalkylamines, are fairly selective for these two receptors. This manuscript is a reference work on the receptor affinity pharmacology of psychedelic drugs. New data is presented on the affinity of twenty-five psychedelic drugs at fifty-one receptors, transporters, and ion channels, assayed by the National Institute of Mental Health - Psychoactive Drug Screening Program (NIMH-PDSP). In addition, comparable data gathered from the literature on ten additional drugs is also presented (mostly assayed by the NIMH-PDSP). A new method is introduced for normalizing affinity (Ki) data that factors out potency so that the multi-receptor affinity profiles of different drugs can be directly compared and contrasted. The method is then used to compare the thirty-five drugs in graphical and tabular form. It is shown that psychedelic drugs, especially phenylalkylamines, are not as selective as generally believed, interacting with forty-two of forty-nine broadly assayed sites. The thirty-five drugs of the study have very diverse patterns of interaction with different classes of receptors, emphasizing eighteen different receptors. This diversity of receptor interaction may underlie the qualitative diversity of these drugs. It should be possible to use this diverse set of drugs as probes into the roles played by the various receptor systems in the human mind.
One of the most famous illustrations in all of biology is that of the somatosensory homunculus--a little man stretched along the brain's surface, each body part swollen or shrunken to match the size of the underlying neural real estate that receives its sensations from touch receptors in the skin. But while the illustration indicates where tactile sensation is recorded in the brain, it tells nothing about how. In a new study in this issue of PLoS Biology, Yu-Cheng Pei, Sliman Bensmaia, and colleagues address part of that deficiency and show that in at least one respect, the somatosensory system is like the visual system--it contains a class of direction-sensitive neurons that care not about what is moving along the skin, but only where it is going.
"Big, Fast and Bulletproof: What One Biologist Has Learned From 300 Million Years Of Shark Evolution"**
Free lecture by shark expert and "Finding Nemo" technical advisor Dr. Adam Summers,
Assoc. Director of Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington
Friday, February 12^th
6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences
11 W. Jones Street, Downtown Raleigh
While you're there, get a sneak preview of the exhibit /Megalodon: Largest Shark That Ever Lived from 5-8 PM (opening to the general public the next day, Saturday, Feb. 13^th ).
/Megalodon/ preview discount pricing: $5 (adults), $3 (children, ages 5-11), Free for museum members.
Please reserve separate tickets for the talk and the exhibit sneak preview if you plan to attend both.
Lecture is recommended for guests 12 years and older.
Exhibit is recommended for everyone.
Description: What role does podcasting play in science? In fact, it plays many. More than just a way to broadcast ideas, podcasting is the beginning of a conversation, it is the archiving of methodologies, it is news, it is marketing, and much more. We will discuss the many ways that podcasting technology and techniques can be used to help you reach your communication goals.
Watch all six video parts of the recording of this session:
There are 21 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
In the wild, frugivorous and nectarivorous bats often eat fermenting fruits and nectar, and thus may consume levels of ethanol that could induce inebriation. To understand if consumption of ethanol by bats alters their access to food and general survival requires examination of behavioural responses to its ingestion, as well as assessment of interspecific variation in those responses. We predicted that bats fed ethanol would show impaired flight and echolocation behaviour compared to bats fed control sugar water, and that there would be behavioural differences among species. We fed wild caught Artibeus jamaicensis, A. lituratus, A. phaeotis, Carollia sowelli, Glossophaga soricina, and Sturnira lilium (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) sugar water (44 g of table sugar in 500 ml of water) or sugar water with ethanol before challenging them to fly through an obstacle course while we simultaneously recorded their echolocation calls. We used bat saliva, a non-invasive proxy, to measure blood ethanol concentrations ranging from 0 to >0.3% immediately before flight trials. Flight performance and echolocation behaviour were not significantly affected by consumption of ethanol, but species differed in their blood alcohol concentrations after consuming it. The bats we studied display a tolerance for ethanol that could have ramifications for the adaptive radiation of frugivorous and nectarivorous bats by allowing them to use ephemeral food resources over a wide span of time. By sampling across phyllostomid genera, we show that patterns of apparent ethanol tolerance in New World bats are broad, and thus may have been an important early step in the evolution of frugivory and nectarivory in these animals.
The avian retina possesses one of the most sophisticated cone photoreceptor systems among vertebrates. Birds have five types of cones including four single cones, which support tetrachromatic color vision and a double cone, which is thought to mediate achromatic motion perception. Despite this richness, very little is known about the spatial organization of avian cones and its adaptive significance. Here we show that the five cone types of the chicken independently tile the retina as highly ordered mosaics with a characteristic spacing between cones of the same type. Measures of topological order indicate that double cones are more highly ordered than single cones, possibly reflecting their posited role in motion detection. Although cones show spacing interactions that are cell type-specific, all cone types use the same density-dependent yardstick to measure intercone distance. We propose a simple developmental model that can account for these observations. We also show that a single parameter, the global regularity index, defines the regularity of all five cone mosaics. Lastly, we demonstrate similar cone distributions in three additional avian species, suggesting that these patterning principles are universal among birds. Since regular photoreceptor spacing is critical for uniform sampling of visual space, the cone mosaics of the avian retina represent an elegant example of the emergence of adaptive global patterning secondary to simple local interactions between individual photoreceptors. Our results indicate that the evolutionary pressures that gave rise to the avian retina's various adaptations for enhanced color discrimination also acted to fine-tune its spatial sampling of color and luminance.
Antibiotic resistance, evolving and spreading among bacterial pathogens, poses a serious threat to human health. Antibiotic use for clinical, veterinary and agricultural practices provides the major selective pressure for emergence and persistence of acquired resistance determinants. However, resistance has also been found in the absence of antibiotic exposure, such as in bacteria from wildlife, raising a question about the mechanisms of emergence and persistence of resistant strains under similar conditions, and the implications for resistance control strategies. Since previous studies yielded some contrasting results, possibly due to differences in the ecological landscapes of the studied wildlife, we further investigated this issue in wildlife from a remote setting of the Galapagos archipelago. Screening for acquired antibiotic resistance was carried out in commensal enterobacteria from Conolophus pallidus, the terrestrial iguana of Isla Santa Fe, where: i) the abiotic conditions ensure to microbes good survival possibilities in the environment; ii) the animal density and their habits favour microbial circulation between individuals; and iii) there is no history of antibiotic exposure and the impact of humans and introduced animal species is minimal except for restricted areas. Results revealed that acquired antibiotic resistance traits were exceedingly rare among bacteria, occurring only as non-dominant strains from an area of minor human impact. Where both the exposure to antibiotics and the anthropic pressure are minimal, acquired antibiotic resistance traits are not normally found in bacteria from wildlife, even if the ecological landscape is highly favourable to bacterial circulation among animals. Monitoring antibiotic resistance in wildlife from remote areas could also be a useful tool to evaluate the impact of anthropic pressure.
In Oecophylla, an ant genus comprising two territorially dominant arboreal species, workers are known to (1) use anal spots to mark their territories, (2) drag their gaster along the substrate to deposit short-range recruitment trails, and (3) drag the extruded rectal gland along the substrate to deposit the trails used in long-range recruitment. Here we study an overlooked but important marking behavior in which O. longinoda workers first rub the underside of their mandibles onto the substrate, and then--in a surprising posture--tilt their head and also rub the upper side of their mandibles. We demonstrate that this behavior is used to recruit nestmates. Its frequency varies with the rate at which a new territory, a sugary food source, a prey item, or an alien ant are discovered. Microscopy analyses showed that both the upper side and the underside of the mandibles possess pores linked to secretory glands. So, by rubbing their mandibles onto the substrate, the workers probably spread a secretion from these glands that is involved in nestmate recruitment.
In the event of an influenza pandemic, the majority of people infected will be nursed at home. It is therefore important to determine simple methods for limiting the spread of the virus within the home. The purpose of this work was to test a representative range of common household cleaning agents for their effectiveness at killing or reducing the viability of influenza A virus. Plaque assays provided a robust and reproducible method for determining virus viability after disinfection, while a National Standard influenza virus RT-PCR assay (VSOP 25, www.hpa-standardmethods.org.uk) was adapted to detect viral genome, and a British Standard (BS:EN 14476:2005) was modified to determine virus killing. Active ingredients in a number of the cleaning agents, wipes, and tissues tested were able to rapidly render influenza virus nonviable, as determined by plaque assay. Commercially available wipes with a claimed antiviral or antibacterial effect killed or reduced virus infectivity, while nonmicrobiocidal wipes and those containing only low concentrations (<5%) of surfactants showed lower anti-influenza activity. Importantly, however, our findings indicate that it is possible to use common, low-technology agents such as 1% bleach, 10% malt vinegar, or 0.01% washing-up liquid to rapidly and completely inactivate influenza virus. Thus, in the context of the ongoing pandemic, and especially in low-resource settings, the public does not need to source specialized cleaning products, but can rapidly disinfect potentially contaminated surfaces with agents readily available in most homes.
Description: What role does podcasting play in science? In fact, it plays many. More than just a way to broadcast ideas, podcasting is the beginning of a conversation, it is the archiving of methodologies, it is news, it is marketing, and much more. We will discuss the many ways that podcasting technology and techniques can be used to help you reach your communication goals.
Watch all six video parts of the recording of this session:
I am collecting all the blog and media coverage on this wiki page, but redundancy is always a good idea in the digital realm, so the links are also now posted here, under the fold:
Update: the wiki page has reached its limit of number of links per page, so I am only updating this post from now on, adding freshest posts I can find on top. Please let me know if I missed yours.
If there were ever a place that came close to the magical world of Pandora in James Cameron's new film Avatar, it would probably be the Amazon. There may not be butterflies that look like flying squid, but in the Amazon can you eat giant worms and lemon flavored ants for dinner in a forest that is home to both the jaguar and the pink dolphin. Reporter Melaina Spitzer joined a group of indigenous leaders from the Amazon in Ecuador's capital Quito, to see Avatar on the big screen in 3D.
I heard the story on PRI's The World this afternoon. Glad to see there is also a video. Interesting....
The wisest line? At 0:56: "we want to hear what is actually happening, not what people are saying about it". That is the problem with journalism (all media, not just TV) in a nutshell: the #1 reason journalists are very low in the polls of trustworthiness in comparison with many other professions. Safety in quoting, instead of telling it as it is and assigning Truth-values to statements. That is post-modernism: to hell with the facts, what is important is what random people feel about the facts and say about them. The video is funny because it is so true.
This month, the movie Creation opened in theaters across the United States.
The film chronicles the life and work of Charles Darwin.
The movie is directed by Jon Amiel. Paul Bettany stars as Darwin. Jennfer Connelly plays Darwin's wife, Emma.
Creation is based on a biography written by Charles Darwin's great great grandson, Randal Keynes.
Keynes is a conservation biologist who lives in London.
The World's science correspondent, Rhitu Chatterjee, spoke with Keynes about his famous ancestor and the experience of seeing his book turned into a movie.
Now it's your turn to chat with Randal Keynes. Join the conversation -- it's just to the right.
* Did Keynes's famous pedigree prompt his decision to become a conservation biologist?
* What is it like for Keynes to see the species Darwin studied -- in the Galapagos, for instance -- threatened with extinction?
* Have you seen the movie Creation? Did it change your view of Darwin as a man?
At any given time, I typically work on multiple mathematics education projects, as a leader or as a consultant. Geographically, I have connections with North Carolina, where I've been living for a while, and also Dusseldorf, Germany, New Orleans, LA, Moscow, Russia and Crimea, Ukraine - places where I lived and worked before. Philosophically, "progressor" from an old Russian science fiction book series, someone who facilitates progress, is close to my self-image. I visualize social changes around mathematics, and then work on making them happen. The main current directions of changes are helping children make their own mathematics, Math 2.0, and community-centered learning.
PLoS shirts are always hot items in labs and at conferences. People just love them. They 
Hmmmm, I want some of these things myself!!!!
