A Scattered World

I have no overarching theme today. A bunch of interesting things came across my desk that are incoherent and chaotic. Not that my mind doesn't try. (Links are all below.)

Given its an election year, let's lead off with a lovely article on tactile illusions. Vincent Hayward has written an interesting article showing different sorts of these phenomena. What else are you going to do in a hardware store?

Some new bat fossils have been discovered that shed a bit of light on their evolution. Bats make up a fifth of all mammalian species. They are characterized by two fundamental features: All bats echolocate and all bats fly. Which came first? The evidence suggests flight came first. This seems likely to me if we also look at birds. Archeopteryx has teeth and fingers, neither feature being shared by modern birds. It makes sense that one single salient feature (flight) might have knock on repercussions.

There's a new carnivorous dino on the the block, a Carcharodontosaurids which is a group contemporary with they Tyrannosaurids that I find unpronounceable. My son, Ben, has a tooth.

Continuing on the theme of evolution, some genetic and fossil studies have shed light on the evolution of metazoans, organisms that are more than one cell. Sponges, kelp and human beings are all metazoans. The organism being sequenced is a choanoflagellate , a creature that shares characteristics with several different groups. The results are mixed.

Several articles on chimp thought and chimp behavior have surfaced. One study suggests that diet is a key difference between chimps and humans. Another pair of studies show that chimps use stone tools and have used stone tools for thousands of years. They don't do flint knapping but I wonder if they could be taught.

Climate change means more drought in the Western United States. There's a significant chance that Lake Mead will dry up in the near future (a decade or so) and a much greater chance it will dry up within fifty years as the Colorado reduces flow. Though we promised Mexico would get some of the Colorado water, it doesn't and likely won't in the future.

Orgasms are coming under scientific scrutiny as scientists try to titillate the brain. One doctor discovered an implanted electrical treatment can induce sexual pleasure. The discovery was an accident when, following administering the voltage, the female patient declared she wanted her husband to learn how to do that. The device has been patented and is now being marketed as the "Orgasmatron".

One study has declared that one million Iraqis have died under occupation. Iraq has a population of 27-- eh, 26 million.


-----------------------------
Links of Interest
Things to do in a Hardware Store
Bat Evolution. And here.
New dino in Africa
Metazoan Origins
Diet Differences between Chimps and Humans
Chimp Stone Age Tools. And Here.
No more Lake Mead
The Science of Orgasm
The Orgasmatron
1,000,000 Iraqi dead. And here.