Blogging's been light recently. I spent the last week frantically preparing my talk for the Evolution Meeting. I was analyzing data until late Thursday evening. Then, I still needed to finish putting together my talk. We spent Friday driving to the meeting, and I gave my talk yesterday morning (Saturday). It went well -- I got a packed (albeit, small) room and had enough time for two questions (one coming from a guy whose research I deeply admire).
You probably won't see any new posts until later next week. I'll be spending my time listening to other people talk about their research and catching up with folks I haven't seen since the last time we were at a meeting together. I've been able to chat with a few of those people, but there are still more I need to track down.
Mike's also here, but we didn't get much time to talk. Hopefully I'll run into him again (I'm gonna try to make it to his session). I'm also gonna try to keep my eyes peeled for Carl.
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I highly recommend the following article -
'What Birds See' by TIMOTHY H GOLDSMITH, professor emeritus of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University
Scientific American, Jul 2006 Vol 295 Issue 1 p68, 8p
Goldsmith has performed experiments suggesting that birds and reptiles [tetrachromatic opsins + UV + oils in cones] have vision superior to mammals [dichromatic cones but more rod reliance]. Further, some primates, including humans [trichromatic cones] have regained some loss of this vision.
This appears to suggest that either genes were lost or, probably more likely, two cones were put to other brain uses [neocortex?] during the period of dinosaur domination.