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Twenty-first-century anatomy lesson

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Nature, January 16, 2008

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Six hundred years ago, anatomists were rock stars. Their lessons filled open-air amphitheatres, where the curious public rubbed shoulders with medical students. While a surgeon sliced open a cadaver, the anatomist, seated above on a lofty chair, deciphered the exposed mysteries of the bones, muscles and organs.

Modern anatomists have retreated from the stage to windowless medical-school labs. They have ceded their public role to geneticists unveiling secrets encrypted in our DNA. Yet anatomists may be poised for a comeback, judging from Your Inner Fish. Neil Shubin, a biologist and palaeontologist at the University of Chicago, Illinois, delves into human gristle, interpreting the scars of billions of years of evolution that we carry inside our bodies.

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Migration, Interrupted: Nature’s Rhythms at Risk

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The New York Times, January 1, 2008

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The world is etched with invisible paths, the routes taken each year by uncountable swarms of geese, elk and salmon, of dragonflies, zebras and leatherback turtles.

Their migrations speak to us in some unfathomably deep way. Birders flock to stopover sites like Cape May, N.J., to watch birds on their journeys to the far north in the spring and back to the tropics in the fall. Eco-tourists head for the Serengeti to train binoculars on herds of wildebeest that stretch to the horizon. American schoolchildren watch monarch butterflies hatch from chrysalises in their classrooms and then see them off on their trip to Mexico.

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Scientist Employs ‘Circuit Theory’ to Protect Endangered Species

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WIRED, December 12, 2007

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When we enter the wilderness, we like to leave the nonstop whir of electronics behind. The worlds of the mountain lion and of the integrated circuit seem to have nothing in common. But in fact, they are similar in some profound ways. Over the years, as mountain lions migrate and mate, their DNA flows across the landscape like electrons flowing around a circuit.

By borrowing some engineers’ insights about how circuits work, ecologists now have a promising new tool for helping conserve mountain lions and other threatened species.

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The 6 Most Important Experiments in the World

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Discover, November 13, 2007

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6. Artificial Life

In the mid-1990s, Craig Venter rose to fame by claiming that he and his colleagues would decipher the human genome long before a huge team of government scientists would. He at least managed a tie: Both groups have provided increasingly accurate versions of the genome since 2000, and Venter has just published the first genome sequence from one person (himself) that includes all the chromosomes inherited from his parents. As important as sequencing the human genome has been, however, Venter is overseeing another experiment that could someday eclipse it.

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From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm

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The New York Times, November 13, 2007

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If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.

Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.

Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.

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