The Evolution of Extraordinary Eyes: The Cases of Flatfishes and Stalk-eyed Flies

Posted on October 16, 2008May 28, 2020 by admin

Evolution: Education and Outreach, October 16, 2008

The history of life is an unbroken stream of evolution stretching over 3.5 billion years. In order to study it—and in order to describe it—it must be carved into episodes. If scientists want to understand the origin, say, of bats, they do not run experiments to test a hypothesis about how DNA first evolved on the early Earth. They do not do research on the transition from single-celled protozoans to the first animals 600 million years ago. Likewise, they do not get bogged down with bat evolution after bats first evolved—how, for example, bats spread around the world and how they coevolved with their prey. There is only so much time in the day.

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Darwin, Botox, and The Brain’s Outer Edge

Posted on October 16, 2008July 24, 2020 by Lori Jia

One of Darwin’s lesser known obsessions was with faces–how we make different faces, and what they say about us. Today, psychologists and neuroscientists are discovering the hidden conversation between brain and face, with a lot of tools Darwin never had–MRI scanners, subcutaneous electrodes, and Botox.

Botox?

Indeed. In fact, some recent studies with Botox raise the weird possibility that our national love affair with that face-freezing drug may be subtly altering the emotions of millions of people.

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Why Darwin Would Have Loved Botox

Posted on October 15, 2008May 28, 2020 by admin

Discover, October 15, 2008

Link

Darwin would have loved Botox.

I don’t mean that he would have been first in line at the doctor’s office to get a needle jabbed into his famously furrowed brow. I mean that Darwin would have loved to use Botox as a scientific tool—to eavesdrop on the intimate conversation between the face and brain.

For much of his life, Darwin was obsessed with faces. On a visit to the London Zoo, he gave mirrors to a pair of orangutans and watched them grimace and pucker their lips as they stared at their reflections. He passed many an afternoon gazing intently at photographs of crying babies and laughing women.

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The Shoulder Bone’s Connected to the Ear Bone…

Posted on October 15, 2008July 24, 2020 by Lori Jia

[10/16/08 Correction appended: see end of post]

When our ancestors moved ashore some 360 million years ago, they underwent a lot of changes as they evolved from ocean-swimming fish to land-walking tetrapods. For one thing, they needed feet instead of fins. Paleontologists have discovered a series of fossils that document the early evolution of limb bones in our aquatic ancestors, showing how long bones first evolved, then parts of the wrist and digit-like bones, and finally full-blown feet.

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Microcosm: The Scientific American Podcast

Posted on October 9, 2008July 24, 2020 by Lori Jia

Steve Mirsky of Scientific American came to my recent lecture at Stevens Institute of Technology about Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. He was equipped with a digital recorder, and now he’s posted a two-part podcast of my talk, introduced by a short chat we had about the book. Here’s part one, and here’s part two. And…here’s the book. You remember books, right? That information technology that came right after papyrus and right before neurodownloads?