Over at Blog around the Clock, Bora has the details on the new science blog anthology book he has put together and which is now for sale. (My posts on eye evolution (1, 2) are included.)
Bora apparently got the idea for his book three weeks ago, and now he's got an honest-to-goodness tome between covers. I got the idea for my own book in 2005, and if I'm lucky, it'll be out in a year. Strange business.
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At A Blog Around the Clock, Bora has announced the posts that will be published in Open Lab 2007, the forthcoming second annual anthology of the best science blogging of last year.
Of the 486 submitted entries, just 50 have made it into the book, and I'm pleased to say that one of them is written…
Open Lab 2008 is a printed anthology of the best science blogging of the year. We're now only two weeks from the deadline (December 1) for nominating posts for inclusion in this year's anthology. The fifty best posts, plus one poem and one cartoon, will be chosen by a panel of judges, and the…
Our own Bora Zivkovic, proprietor of A Blog Around the Clock, has been editting an anthology of the best science blog posts of 2006. Yours truly was lucky enough to be included for this post on Floyd Landis several months ago. Here is the editor's announcement.
The book -- entitled The Open…
I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll…
Carl, if you are interested in the human eye, please considering looking at the (huge) online book written by James T. Fulton. He mentions human ability to see UV light has been functionally retained in the retina but is non-functional due to the lens. I would also suggest viewing my website about a vestigial reflex in some humans which may be interpreted as an indication of a former Aqua-photic Respiratory Cycle (ARC) in ancestral Homo species.
http://the-arc.wikispaces.com/Aqua-photic
Regarding the cave fish and cave salamander, and the evolution of extant species eyes, please consider that during the last 500 million years, many global and innumerable regional catastrophies have occurred which decimated the flora and fauna living on the Earth's surface which were highly dependent upon water and sunlight in cyclical patterns, but animals/fungi/bacteria which had adapted to reduced O2/CO2/sunlight (after having evolved in deep caverns and geothermal vents deep in the sea) would have a much higher likelihood of surviving such catastrophies, so therefore would play a part in the recolonialization of the Earth's surface. The safest place on Earth in case of a nuclear attack is deep in the Earth, same goes for a comet/meteor/Super-Ice_age/Super-Global-Warming event. Those that survive at depth have the DNA for eyeballs/Whiskers/etc. written in the junk DNA (storage) code, ready for re-use via "throw-back mutations".
BTW, the "Lamarkian" explanation is accidentally true, not that Lamark was correctly explaining it, but rather that due to gestational cost of embryological tissues (eyes, dog-tails) in a severe environment, in long term, functionless eyes (in deep caves) are more costly to the mother, so a genetically blind embryo will be cheaper to produce. Eyes are extremely oxygen hungry, so in a cave habitat with low oxygen, eyes are best deselected. I hope I've got it right.
Peace Bless You.