Concept: Dolphin cognition, communication. And: Fission-fusion society; joint attention, false belief task. A fission-fusion society is one in which the composition of groups changes according to time, environment, and activity, e.g. fusing to sleep, and fission to forage (via Wikipedia). Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It has been argued to be fundamental for...
Concept: Saturn’s magnetic ring rain. Source: Nature News and Views, based on an original research Letter (April 11, 2013). Background: Rings made up of water ice, most of which can be described by Newtonian forces, but those small enough require an explanation of the Lorentz force. If they gain a high enough charge:mass, then they move along the magnetic field. Saturn’s field is...
Concepts: Keystone species, and population cycle dampening. Source: Science original research Report (April 5, 2013). Background: A keystone species is one that disproportionally affects its ecosystem*. Relationships between predator-prey are generally assumed to be cyclic insofar as their amounts reflect each other in a cyclic manner (e.g. many plants feed many herbivores that increase...
Concept: Transposon driven neuronal heterogeneity. Source: An original Report in Science (April 5, 2013). Background: This was already shown in yeast and mammals, now in Drosophila. Transposons account for 45% and 20% of the human and Dros genome. Results: Identified and characterised range of transposon activity in the olfactory memory system of mushroom bodies (MBs), especially in the neuron...
A News Focus covering a trend identified at a conference: opsins (light-responsive GPCRs) are found in myriad tissues, including primitive phylogenies (incl. sea-urchins and jelly-fish). These researches have led to an increased appreciation of the variety of roles opsins may serve: Light-responsive roles (cf. vision) (e.g. modulating likelihood of stinging cells firing in hydra). Part of multi...
Concepts: Psudeoenzymes Source: A News Focus piece in Science (April 5, 2013). History: A 2002 study found that of 518 human protein kinases encoded in the DNA, about 10% lack at least one of three amino acids necessary for phosphate transfer. This was the first time the magnitude of the phenomenon was appreciated. Likely mechanisms for creation: (1) duplication of enzyme’s gene followed by...
Concept: Floral electric fields, bumblebee multimodal cues Source: A (original research) Report in Science (April 5, 2013). Background: Already known that flowers often exhibit negative field potential versus pollinators’ positive field potential. Also, that multimodal floral cues enhance foraging efficiency and pollination. Also that bees transfer information back to the plant for later...
Fact: “When humans cannot tell where the gaze is focused, they assume that people are looking at them.” {Narcissistic gaze prediction}. Source: A Research Highlight in Nature (April 11, 2013) on original research in Current Biology. Fact: Not all neurons follow neurotrophic theory, some die per pre-programming independent of environment. Source: Perspective in Science (April 5, 2013)...
Concepts: Geoneutrinos Source: A News piece in Nature (April 3, 2013). History: The 2011 Fukushima disaster, and the consequent closure of Japanese nuclear reactors, silenced the barrage of particles to which the Japanese underground particle detector KamLAND was normally exposed. Thus KamLAND could clearly read the trickle of neutrinos that originate within Earth, produced by radioactive decay...
Concept: Adaptive diversification. Also: allopatric diversification; sympatric diversification; frequency-dependent selection. Source: An (original research) article published in PLoS Biology (February 19, 2013) Background: A dichotomy of diversification follows depending on whether the ancestral populations were geographically isolated from each other (allopatric diversification) or not...
