Blog

This is our reading menu, take a shot!

In a previous article, we looked at what dinosaurs actually are: a well-defined evolutive group. However, there are a few animal groups (mostly large extinct reptiles) that we associate with dinosaurs, or even think of as dinosaurs, but they are not. So, if not dinosaurs, what were those membrane-winged reptiles and those fully aquatic creatures? Pterosaurs: The winged reptiles, those fuzzy, warm-blooded animals were the closest relatives of dinosaurs without being dinosaurs proper. They evolved from dinosaur-like animals like Lagerpeton and exploded in diversity alongside their dinosaurian cousins (around 200 million years ago), being the first flight-capable vertebrates, and the most efficient ones thus far. The largest ones, like Quetzalcoatlus, reached a 10-meter wingspan, and remained flight-capable despite having a build comparable to a giraffe. They went extinct alongside non-bird dinosaurs 66 million years ago, when a meteor impacted modern Yucatán and wrecked the biosphere. Figure 1. a) Skeletal reconstruction of Lagerpeton, a close relative of the ancestral pterosaur. By Wikimedia Commons user Maurissauro, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. b) Original specimen of Pterodactylus, found in the Bavarian Solnhofen limestone circa 1780. Photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. c) Pteranodon mount in launching posture, with clear view of the unusual proportions of these animals. Photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. d) Artistic depiction of Quetzalcoatlus foraging behaviour, by Mark Witton (2008). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share 3.0 Unported. Marine reptiles: Just like modern marine mammals, they are not a single group, but an assortment of different groups adapted to a marine lifestyle of which only sea turtles survive. Other than sea turtles, those animals tended to evolve warm bloodedness and live bearing. The most notable groups are the following: –Plesiosaurs: Broad-bodied, short-tailed, with four flippers and coming in two main flavours (long necked and small headed fish eaters like Elasmosaurus, and short necked and big-headed meat eaters like Pliosaurus), These reptiles are a bit hard to pin in the family tree: turtles may be their closest living relatives, but that’s not as certain as the nature of dinosaurs or pterosaurs. They became diverse at the same time as dinosaurs and pterosaurs being also meteor victims (however, the big headed pliosaurs went extinct some 20 million years earlier). –Ichthyosaurs: Fish reptiles that were highly adapted to an aquatic life, being very similar in shape to dolphins and sharks, with the larger ones such as Shonisaurus being whale-sized and shaped. Their position in the family tree is even murkier than that of plesiosaurs (maybe their relatives?). They diversified before dinosaurs, pterosaurs and plesiosaurs did; yet shared the oceans with plesiosaurs for most of their history. However, they didn’t make it to the meteor, going extinct at the same time as pliosaurian plesiosaurs. –Mosasaurs: Those shark-like reptiles, whose pop culture presence has surged in the last decade despite being known for two centuries, are a curious case as they are actual lizards, close relatives of monitors, Gilas and slowworms. They rapidly evolved from monitor-like lizards after ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs went extinct, taking over their niches as shark-like predators in the final stretch of the Mesozoic era. But this highly successful evolution experiment was cut short by the meteor impact. Figure 2. a) Museum mount of the long-necked plesiosaur Elasmosaurus. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. b) Reconstruction of the short-necked plesiosaur Pliosaurus. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. c) Pregnant specimen of the ichthyosaur Stenopterygius. Finding show that those animals had a blubber and soft tissue fin. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. d) Museum mount of the giant marine lizard Mosasaurus, one of the largest macropredators of all time. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Dimetrodon and co.: The superficially lizard-like, sail-backed Dimetrodon is not even a reptile, but an early mammal relative (synapsid) which lived 65 million years BEFORE the oldest known dinosaurs. Even if it is the most seen synapsid, there are other mammal relatives that often make it into the dinosaur toy bin: the beaked and tusked dicynodonts (such as Lystrosaurus) and the saber-toothed, somewhat badger-like gorgonopsians (such as Inostrancevia) are both common sights in dinosaur-adjacent media. Figure 3. a) Reconstruction of Dimedon, with skin texture based on relative, by Max Belonio (2019). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. b) Reconstruction of the dicynodont Placerias, by Jeff Martz (2012). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. c) Museum mount of the gorgonopsian Lycaenops. Public domain image. Mammoths and co.: Mammoths, saber-tooth cats, ground sloths and other ice age fauna are often associated with dinosaurs, but those animals are, for all intents and purposes, extinct modern animals. Woolly mammoths, for example, were a species of elephant that evolved alongside reindeer and musk oxen. They went extinct while the pyramids were being built while the rapid spread of early modern humans, placed heavy strain in its habitat. Figure 4. Artistic depiction of northern Spain, 12000 years ago. In a tundra environment, wooly mammoths and wooly rhinos thrive alongside wild horses, reindeer, and lions. Artwork by Mauricio Anton (2008). Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic.   Additional information and references 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
Have you ever been sailing at dusk and suddenly saw an old creepy sailboat in the horizon giving you any kind of signals? Probably it would be trying to give you a message from other people who you could never find, cause they would have died three centuries ago. I’m talking about the legendary ghost ship, The Flying Dutchman. Years before Pirates of the Caribbean and One Piece popularized the story of Willem van der Decken’s ship, the sailors were already talking about a flying boat imbued in a spectral light. 🙂  The Flying Dutchman, Pirates of the Caribbean The responsible of this kind of story is the physical phenomenon of the refraction: when a wave that is moving in a medium with some conditions makes it to a different medium, the wave experiences a change of its velocity of propagation. In this case, the medium is the air, and the other medium would be an air with different density. Well, probably not all of us have the experience of seeing a ghost ship but we all have heard about mirages in the desert. In the desert you can remember your name ♫, and moreover it’s very hot. That makes the air located just over the sand get hotter than the rest of the air. This temperature gradient implies a density gradient, so it also implies a gradient of the refraction index. This gradient curves the rays of the light, so we can see in the ground the reflection of objects located far away, despite they seem to be closer. That’s the optical illusion of the oasis, the inferior mirage. A less fancy example would be the false water that we see on a long road on a hot day. In the case of the boat, the air touching the sea is the colder one, so it’s a superior mirage. In this case, if the gradient is strong enough to make the curvature of the light bigger than the curvature of the Earth, we could even see islands floating in the sky. This may sound as a fairytale, in fact, it’s called Fata Morgana in reference to the fairy of the Arthurian Legend. But I want to talk about another optical phenomenon: the green flash. Seconds after dusk, or seconds before the dawn, if the sky is clean enough, you can see a green ray coming from the horizon, just from over the Sun. When the light of the Sun is traveling around the atmosphere, it moves slower on the inferior air, denser than the air of the top layers. Due to this, the light follows a curved path. The light of higher frequencies, as the blue and green colors, are more curved than the rest of the light, so the green remains in the sky while the red is gone. Jules Verne said that in these few seconds you can see “a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope”. Fata Morgana [...] Read more...
There is a river in Costa Rica where God dipped his brush when he was painting the sky. As a consequence of this artist’ routine action, the waters got tainted in an intense turquoise colour giving it the name of the river. And the river became famous and now is overpopulated by tourists that visit Tenorio Volcano National Park (fact-that-i-find-fun: my grandfather is from a tiny, tiny village in Galicia called Tenorio. He will be happy of me talking about ‘his’ Tenorio too on the internet). Once the nonsense introduction is there, I can start talking about colloids. Because yeah, these beautiful celeste waters are just another example of light interaction with colloidal suspensions in this world. And why should I not express my weird love and passion about colloids? Bigger than organic molecules but smaller than a simple cell. To feel in your own skin what we call nanoscale in terms of size: you are the cell and one mole of your skin is one colloid. Moles have a range of sizes too, as nanoparticles do (a mainstream way of calling them). They usually are suspended happily (neither colliding or falling down, aka chilling and enjoying being a colloid) in another medium, like water, air or blood. Having this capability, apart from the size, is what makes something a colloid. Many things can perturb this peace, usually related to changes in the media properties, like concentrations, pH or temperature, which can make the colloid collapse and get you wet with that unexpected rain. Because yes, clouds are water colloids that aggregate in colder temperature and become rain drops. Rain drops that will make plants bloom and release the colloidal pollen particles that will be blown away by the wind. That air where colloidal viral particles are being suspended by the enough amount of time to visit your nose and kill you. The nose that will smell those disgusting parfum particles of your neighbour.  And this river is full of aluminosilicate colloids that are happily dispersed in the Buenavista River (check the diagram and the table). We can barely see them (“barely” = we need a microscope), so the water seems transparent. The moment this river gets mixed with the more acidic Sour Creek River, also transparent, these particles stop chilling and the drama starts happening. They lose the charges that keep them away-enough from each other and start colliding, creating random micro-massive aggregates that start dispersing the light in a different way. In this case, it is blurry and bluish, becoming finally the famous Celeste. After 14 km its transparency is recovered. The particles were steep falling during their way, leaving behind a white dust in the riverbed as a final proof of their existence.   These figures are from the paper. The header image is a picture of Rio Celeste that I’ve found in this webpage, where there are many other cool ones. Additional information and reference – Castellón E, Martínez M, Madrigal-Carballo S, Arias ML, Vargas WE, Chavarría M (2013) Scattering of Light by Colloidal Aluminosilicate Particles Produces the Unusual Sky-Blue Color of Río Celeste (Tenorio Volcano Complex, Costa Rica). PLoS ONE 8(9): e75165. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075165 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
What’s the sound? Sound is defined for four different attributes: loudness, duration, pitch and timbre. Of course, when we paint a sound in our mind, we think about a sinusoidal wave. A wave have some properties, like the amplitude and the frequency. When we move to the music world, the amplitude is translated as volume (loudness), and the frequency as the musical note. We know that the spectrum of frequency is kind of infinite, and even the humans can only hear a part of that infinite (20 Hz – 20000 Hz), this part keeps being an infinite continuous. A musician can divide the continuous of frequencies in notes, as C, D♭ or G♯ (pitch). For example, when the particles we were talking about are moving 440 times in a second, we have an A. That’s the definition of note. To simplify the conception of music, we defined 12 different notes, going from the lowest to the highest, and every time we play 12 notes we find the same note again, but higher. We use the same name because the frequency we find after 12 notes is a multiple of the frequency of our first note. If we play a note that vibrates 130 times in a second, we have a C, but we keep having a C if the note vibrates 260 or 520 times every second (these multiples are called harmonics). And yes, we have 11 more notes between the first C and the second, and 11 between the second and the third. If we play the C in a guitar, it will be different than the C we play in the piano, because of the combination of harmonics of C that they emit (timbre, and is also the main reason of why do you recognise people for their voices). When we play different sounds at the same time, we are talking about harmony. And when the sounds evolve through the temporal dimension, that’s the melody. When two different melodies are played independently at the same, like if they were dancing with each other, we are mixing harmony and melody. That’s the counterpoint. With these concepts we can listen what the universe is telling us, and they are also the basics of one of the most amazing things that humans do to decorate time. Cause science, is music after all. 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
Disclaimer: no Geodude was damaged during this study. For those who don’t know, Earth is a magnet. A really big one, so we are surrounded by a massive magnetic field that works as a protector shield against radiation from the Sun and other weird outter space things. As a magnet, it has two poles. But do you know that what we call North Pole is actually the magnetic South Pole and viceversa? If you follow a compass you would think that it is pointing to the North. But compasses are aligned with the field lines (Faraday’s idea, who was a great scientist without scientific formation, which is cool), and the field lines are a map that tell us how to go from the North to the South of a magnetic field, apart of many other things (look at the figure). So poles are reversed. And rocks have been secretly telling us that it has been reversing for so long. In the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, two tectonic plates are slowly separating. As a result, melted rock under the lithosphere, called magma, reaches the surface and solidifies under the ocean, creating new lithosphere (Icelandic vulcanism). Magnetic things are magnetic because the spin of their electrons are coherently aligned, contributing to create this magnetism. But in some rocks, spins are usually randomly oriented, neutralizing between themselves and making the total contribution to create magnetism zero. However, under some temperature conditions, these spins can be forced to align with an external magnetic field (Paramagnetism and Curie’s Law). Casually, when this rocks are created, they reach that temperature, so their spins aligne with the external magnetic field at that moment (the Earth’s one). When the conditions disappear the magnetization remains in time (Ferromagnetism and Remanent Magnetism). Nowadays, we can take those rocks and determine when they were created and where was pointing the external magnetic field at that moment. (Another figure). By the way, this is the explanation of Geodude evolutive line becoming electric type in the new Pokemon games. Figure: Seafloor spreading and and magnetic reversal. https://divediscover.whoi.edu/mid-ocean-ridges/magnetics-polarity/ This is tectonic plates movement demonstrating itself. And rocks use magnetism to explain us about it, like if they were an open book of Earth’s history. In the future, it may occur again, maybe sooner than later, looking at the periodic behaviour of these reversals. Is our telecommuncation based world prepared for this? Header figure: Paramagnetic and ferromagnetic geodudes 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
I don’t really like the concept of God, or the existence of anything ruling the world over the rest of the people. But there always has been this creature deciding what happens on the Earth, who lives, who dies, the amount of clothes that you are wearing, or even that day that you took a decaf in case you weren’t able to sleep at night. I’m talking about a colorful plasma ball that we all know as Sun, or, in Pumba’s words “a ball of gas burning billions of miles away”. We are in a great debt with the Sun, and to pay for it we should know who was responsible for lighting it up. When the Universe was born, atoms, photons and other kinds of particles started to run away in an homogeneous way. Fortunately, some of those particles found each other on the way, creating anomalies on the density, like clumps on the cocoa. Through gravity interaction, these grumps attract other particles increasing their size and evolving into big, like hundreds of lightyears diameter, and beautiful clouds of gas and cosmic dust, known as nebulae. Nebulae were rotating and getting hotter and hotter, until a gravitational collapse occurred. This led to some conditions of density, temperature and pressure that allowed the appearance of nuclear fusion reactions, making atoms fuse to each other. These reactions emit radiation, which has associated a pressure directed towards the outside of the star; the pressure balances the gravitational force of the star, which is trying to compress the star itself. This is the  so-called  “hydrostatic equilibrium”, the first condition for a star to exist. For a better understanding, a star is trying to explode but its own weight keeps it away from doing it. By this moment, the cosmic night started to be illuminated by the stars, like in Van Gogh’s painting. La noche estrellada, Van Gogh But our Sun is not that old. Eternities after their creation, the stars died in explosions filling the Universe with stardust. As the goldsmith does in Final Fantasy, the ancient stars used nuclear reactions to forge new elements (C, O, Si, Fe…) by fusioning simpler ones (H, He, Li, Be) , so this stardust is the same that is composing our planet and us by this time, but this is another story. Part of the stardust created new nebulae, and someday in this cycle, approximately 4600 millions of years ago, the Sun was born. “Pillars of Creation” taken by Hubble Space Telescope header image: from NASA. 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
If you have gone for a walk through any European pine forest, you probably have spotted some hills between the trees. Have you looked carefully at those hills? If so, you have seen that these constructions are, in fact, ant hills! In the pine forests of Europe the species Formica rufa is responsible for these ant hills. I enjoy sitting in front of the colonies and observing how the ants work. But be careful! If you get too close they will consider you an enemy and will defend the colony! They will respond by spraying formic acid (Fig. 1)…and jays know it. When a member of this bird species, Garrulus glandarius, spots an ant hill, it disturbs the ants on purpose to get a formic acid bath. Why? Because this compound acts as insecticide (you can observe this curious behaviour here). Figure 1. Formica rufa defending the nest by spraying formic acid2 As you have suspected, the name formic acid comes from the scientific name of the ant, Formica. This is because this chemical compound was isolated for the first time from ants. John Wray, an English naturalist in 1671 wrote in a letter “If with a staff or other instrument you stir a heap of Ants, so as to anger them, they will let fall thereon a liquor”3. So, in search of more information about that liquor, he distilled some ants until he got what he called an acid spirit. However, Formica ants are not the only living creatures that produce formic acid. Now maybe you are trying to figure out what other insects do. Here you have another example: Stingless bees (genus Oxytrigona)4. But what do you think if I tell you that plants also synthesise it? There is a common (and extremely hated) plant across Europe that does it: nettle! I have spent most of my life thinking that when someone is stung by a nettle (Urtica dioica) the stinging hairs, called trichomes, were responsible for the pain (I mean, in a physical way). But the fact is that there is a complex chemical response (a wonderful one) behind that unpleasant experience (Fig. 2). When someone brushes against a nettle, the trichomes pierce the skin so the venom is injected. Formic acid is responsible for inducing the pain5. But wait, nettles have a secret strategy: the three neurotransmitters, histamine, acetylcholine and serotonin, cause inflammation and more pain6,7. Finally, to end this wonderful experience, tartaric and oxalic acid are in charge of extending pain duration8. So, next time you brush against a nettle, think about it. It won’t be less painful, but at least you will be distracted by their wonder 😉 Figure 2. The chemistry of stinging nettles5 Additional information and references 1 https://www.britannica.com/video/180428/nest-ants-formic-acid-jay 2 Warren Photographic. Image Library of Animals in Action 3 Wray, J. (1670). “Extract of a Letter, Written by Mr John Wray to the Publisher January 13. 1670. Concerning Some Un-Common Observations and Experiments Made with an Acid Juyce to be Found in Ants”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 5(57–68): 2063-2066. doi:10.1098/rstl.1670.0052 4 Roubik, D.W., Smith, B.H. & Carlson, R.G. (1987). Formic acid in caustic cephalic secretions of stingless bee,Oxytrigona (Hymenoptera: Apidae). J Chem Ecol, 13: 1079–1086. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01020539 5 Dobbin, L. (1920). XI.—On the Presence of Formic Acid in the Stinging Hairs of the Nettle. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 39: 137-142. 6 Emmelin, N. & Feldberg, W. (1947). The mechanism of the sting of the common nettle (Urtica urens). Journal of Physiology, 106: 440–455. 6 Taskila, K., Saarinan, J.V., Harvima, I.T. & Harvima, R.J. (2000). Histamine and LTC4 in stinging nettle-induced urticaria. Allergy, 55: 680–681. 8 Fu, H.Y., Chen, S.J., Chen, R.F., Ding, W.H., Kuo-Huang, L.L. & Huang, R.N. (2006). Identification of Oxalic Acid and Tartaric Acid as Major Persistent Pain-inducing Toxins in the Stinging Hairs of the Nettle, Urtica thunbergiana, Annals of Botany, 98(1): 57–65. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcl089 9 Compound Interest 2015. https://www.compoundchem.com/2015/06/04/nettles/ 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
Is it a rat??? Is it a platypus??? No!!! It’s the Pyrenean desman!Known by the scientific society as Galemys pyrenaicus, this little and ―it has to be said― weird animal, belongs to the Talpidae family (that is, the mole family). Now, prepare yourself because I’m going to introduce you to one of my favourite words: Eulipotyphla. It sounds funny, doesn’t it? The term Eulipotyphla refers to a group of mammals that underwent a rapid diversification just after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary1 and includes members of the Talpidae family along with hedgehogs, shrews and solenodons (Fig.  1). This species can be found in non-polluted mountain rivers in the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Nowadays, this species is endangered because of habitat loss and fragmentation, presence of pollutants and predation by non-native invasive species. Desmans are small semi-aquatic animals with a furry compact body, long tail, and peculiar flat trunk-like nose (Fig. 2). They show nocturnal habits and prey on aquatic invertebrates. Little is known about its ecology and behaviour. Due to the nocturnal habits and its habitat requirements, they are extremely difficult to spot. For this reason, any evidence about them is considered a treasure.  I am going to be clear here, when a researcher finds a desman’s poo, feels like the luckiest human in the entire world. I will tell you why: DNA can be extracted from excrements to obtain very valuable information. Researchers have employed this methodology to reveal the presence of this animal in different areas2, but also to obtain information about its diet3. Figure 1. Diversification of Eulipotyphla1 Figure 2. Artist impression of Galemys pyrenaicus4. Now, I will reveal a little secret, I have experienced that poo-happiness. One of my best friends is a researcher who studies genetic material from insectivorous animals. I had the chance to go with him during one of his field campaigns. On that expedition, we had to walk upstream in the water with lanterns, carefully inspecting each space behind the rocks and waterfalls in search of desmans’ excrements. Our mission was successful, we found excrements of different aquatic animals. He taught me how to differentiate between them based on the consistency, colour and composition (so yummy, I know). One of those little excrements seemed to belong to our peculiar friend, so we put the sample into an Eppendorf tube and added alcohol to preserve it. Could this sample belong to a Pyrenean desman? We didn’t know yet, but, at that moment, I felt extremely (and weirdly) proud of carrying such a valuable sample in one of my pockets. The sample is now in his laboratory, waiting to be examined. After the genetic test, my friend will be able to disclose if we achieved our mission to get close to one of the rarest extant animals in Europe. Additional information and references 1 Jun J. Sato, Tessa M. Bradford, Kyle N. Armstrong, Stephen C. Donnellan, Lazaro M. Echenique-Diaz, Gerardo Begué-Quiala, Jorgelino Gámez-Díez, Nobuyuki Yamaguchig, Son Truong Nguyen, Masaki Kita, Satoshi D. Ohdachi. Post K-Pg diversification of the mammalian order Eulipotyphla as suggested by phylogenomic analyses of ultra-conserved elements. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 2019, 141: 1-14. 2 Pere Aymerich, Francesca Casadesús, Joaquim Gosálbez. Distribució de Galemys pyrenaicus (Insectivora, Talpidae) a Catalunya. Orsis. 2001, 16: 93-110. 3 François Gillet, Marie-Laure Tiouchichine, Maxime Galan, Frédéric Blanc, Mélanie Némoz, Stéphane Aulagnier, Johan R. Michaux. A new method to identify the endangered Pyrenean desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) and to study its diet, using next generation sequencing from faeces. Mammalian Biology. 2015, 50: 205-209. 4 Enciclopedia Virtual de los Vertebrados Españoles. Galemys pyrenaicus.( in Spanish) Museo Nacional de  Ciencias Naturales http://www.vertebradosibericos.org/mamiferos/galpyr.html – Escoda, L, Castresana, J. The genome of the Pyrenean desman and the effects of bottlenecks and inbreeding on the genomic landscape of an endangered species. Evol Appl. 2021; 14: 1898–1913. https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.13249 – Desmán (Galemys pyrenaicus) en la Península Ibérica (in Spanish). Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico. https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/biodiversidad/temas/conservacion-de-especies-amenazadas/vertebrados/desman_peninsula_iberica.html 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
Sensors are the basics of perception. Any type of perception. If you need to know what the temperature of this room is, you could use a mercury thermometer. Previously to that, you need to find a material that is sensitive to temperature changes, like liquid mercury. Then, you need to define a scale just to have a sort of a base line and an idea of what it’s lot and what is tiny. Finally, you will need to use a code, or word, say it, express it, process it, and incorporate into other thoughts and more complex measurements. This is just using technology, that of course, appears to be quite handy. But we, animals, can also perceive temperatures. Sadly, not so accurate than when using mercury, but in a survival way at least. I won’t be able to differentiate that you have a fever, till you are really hot. If I choose to use a thermometer instead, you will be able to explain that weird tiredness you are experiencing and go to bed to rest before you get a crazy high fever. But why? Is it because our sensor is cheap and low quality? Or is it because the differences that we want to differentiate are too tiny for our sensor? Or maybe is that we don’t have installed the proper drivers or trained the algorithm enough to be able to say how much? I wonder if someone can answer conclusively to any of these questions. But of course, the fun here is to think what could be happening. In terms of if our sensor is made with good quality materials… we could go one by one and try to make a comparison with other animals with similar sensors, for example. We could say that our vision is lower quality than a mantis shrimp, but much better than a mole. Or maybe, compare it with technology? Wow, that’s a good stat… our eyes are over the fastest high resolution, at different focus and lights, than any photographic camera. But yeah, perceiving temperatures or quantifying electric currents, any cheap instrument or even a platypus, will do better than you. Let’s think about the fact of receiving enough signal. With temperature, well… it’s true that quantify the temperature of a hot needle is trickier than a hot knife, or the water of a jacuzzi (when being all, of course, at the same temperature), but is also true that the limiting factor here is to not burn the chip. With light is obvious that the amount of it varies a lot inside our range of perception. So if we use these two sensors for concluding, eyes are better sensors measuring light than skin and our nervous system are to measure temperature. But…, what if the temperature is just one of many magnitudes that our skin-sensor can quantify? The comparison now becomes a little bit unfair, since we are talking about one of the best multisensors that I can think about, a multimeter becomes a joke of diversity. Temperature, pressure, wind speed, flavours, light?, a little bit of sound in case you need it, tickles… and not only their magnitude, with many you can even get directionality! It is a vector quantification machine!! But well… who cares about what is a lot or what is tiny, I just wanted you to think about it with me. But I want to finish with the training of our algorithm and installing drivers, the last part. And in case you were wondering, this is where art, food and science enter in the equation. The world of flavours is one I didn’t know it existed till some years ago. We don’t use many spices in Galicia.. so even we use really delicious and intense flavours, combinations are usually kept quite simple. I’m starting to understand that my sensitivity and flavour detection capabilities are not limited by my sensor, either by the signal, the training of my neural network is what is missing here. I am starting to learn how to identify them, one by one, collecting many data points, trying to focus in limiting and locating them inside some sort of a scale, to then detect and enjoy multiple and weird combinations. Apparently, colours are like this. Colours are complex, but how we visualise them in our brain is an idea, is part of a calibration scale we made. Maybe in a less conscious way than flavours, maybe we come with some preinstalled drivers, but that’s just because colours help us more with natural selection than flavours, but we can learn them too. These are just two interesting examples, but think about what are the limits of this. We can train our algorithm and learn with practice and experiencing becoming a more accurate, optimised, and expert machine. And the science… I will let it to you to figure it out where it fits. Header image: Josef Albers, Portfolio ‘Homage to the Square’. From here. 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
I got enough about people telling me what I can do, what I am supposed to do and how I suppose to think; and yes, today I’m annoyed about this because their voices have broken my self-confidence. I was waiting to start this “little universe” until one of those days when other people’s assumptions make me weaker, less valuable, less confident and less everything. I wanted to be emotionally weak to start this because I wanted to create a place for people who secretly carry these feelings too. Curious minds who don’t fit in the middle of the others, genuine humans whose ideas are rejected, the ones who need a place to share their precious thoughts without having to compromise their values. Also those who need to activate their brains with a little bit of raw and beautiful knowledge. I would be a fool if I started this project alone. Combining the perspectives of these curious minds orbiting around society, makes our approach stronger and easier to avoid getting stuck into just one perspective, topic or whichever ‘scientific-label’ is on trend. I want to create this universe for that almost extinct bunch of humans. I have met gorgeous people in my life that taught me incredible things, not only about science and reality, but also about how they understand knowledge and learning. A common trend is founding them alone, keeping all their magic secretly inside, quitting from Science forever, used to stay hidden, burnt out after fighting society in order to make a better change for society. Here, all these incredible humans can encourage and motivate each other, not only sharing ideas, but also sharing feelings, thoughts and their life vision and values. This is a place where knowledge is understood from ignorance. So, if you are one of those and If you want to collaborate or just read something that makes your brain work, you are very very welcome. If there is one thing I’ve learnt pretty well about science is that making too many assumptions is going to give you an inaccurate solution. It could be close to reality, maybe, but never fully true. Assumptions are based in human ego and ignorance, as religion does. If the explanation is ‘there is God who does miracles’, it is easy to not call ourselves stupid or just a ‘bunch of dumb humans in an insignificant piece of rock in the middle of an infinite universe full of wonders that we cannot even imagine’. Quite disappointing. So, what it’s intelligence? Is it the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills? This is quite an egocentric human definition. Are plants intelligent? Are viruses intelligent? Is a rock intelligent? Is humanity as a group acquiring useful and proper knowledge and skills? What is the difference between a plague and a conqueror? In the moment that someone, or humanity, starts thinking ‘yes, I totally got this, everything is controlled and I can do what I want without consequences’, is doomed. Oh… yes… wait… I forgot for a second that we are already. Finally, I want to write my feelings and my thoughts because I’m pretty sure they are not so silly. My life, and for sure yours too, is full of people telling you what you are doing ok and what you are not, but this is like reality: no one knows nothing about your infinite universe inside you. So, in my personal experience, everyone of us is going to be defined by others and society and yes, the problem starts when you believe what they say. Remember that the Earth was once the centre of the Universe and I’m going to add something that any scientist would hate: science is never even close to the reality. But…. that’s the fun, isn’t it? And please, don’t get me wrong, this is not a place for “Flat-Earthers”, it’s a place based on logic, reason, curiosity and observations through the scientific method, where all opinions are valid since you respect others and you use your brain. Even though we are going to focus on science topics (yes, of course, we are passionate about it) but we also want to touch on crazy topics that make us think in different ways with uncommon points of view. Remember that the world is beautiful and exciting, but not the humanity we are creating. Do not be a simple human, use your brain, think more, decide what you want to decide, find the centre of your universe. And do it, just keeping always in mind that everything is science after all. Header image: Copernican heliocentrism illustration, from the Harmonia Macrocosmica of Andreas Cellarius (1660). 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
If you happen to know a dinosaur-loving kid aged from 3 to 93, you may have been told that the pigeons and ducks in the park are dinosaurs, or an innocent “my favourite dinosaur is the Pterodactyl” may have been replied with “Pteranodon is not a dinosaur”. As the implication is that not all long-gone reptiles qualify for the label, AND that they may still be around, you may be wondering “what is actually a dinosaur?” “Dinosaur” (roughly meaning “terrific reptile”) was coined as a word in the 1840s, to refer to a trio of rhino-sized animals discovered in the previous decades: the carnivore Megalosaurus, the herbivore Iguanodon, and the armoured Hylaeosaurus. The remains were scarce, and thus the restorations imprecise, yet they were found to share anatomical details that pointed to them being active land animals with an upright stance, more like mammals than to large lizards, despite clearly being reptilian. In the following years, discoveries on Europe and North America increased exponentially the number of species deemed dinosaurs, and the world got a clearer idea of how those animals looked like. Dinosaurs were found to fall into 2 major groups told apart by hip structure: Saurischians (made up in turn by the carnivorous Theropods such as Megalosaurus or Tyrannosaurus, and the gigantic, long necked Sauropods such as Diplodocus or Brontosaurus) and Ornithischians (herbivores with beak-tipped mouths such as Iguanodon, Stegosaurus or Triceratops). Animals such as the flying Pterodactylus, the highly diverse marine reptiles, or the sail backed Dimetrodon were never pondered as belonging to the group. Around those years, the “first bird” Archaeopteryx was discovered, and its reptilian characters were so like the small theropod Compsognathus, discovered in the same area, that an evolutionary connection was pondered by early Darwinists. However, ideological shifts in the early 20th century disregarded most of those assumptions: dinosaurs were deemed evolutive failures unrelated to any living animal, perhaps not even to each other. The word itself got tainted into pretty much “big dead lizard”. However, in the 1970s, the situation started to change: The discovery of Deinonychus (forever known in pop culture by the name of its relative Velociraptor), a nimble and birdlike predator built for agility, lead a new generation of palaeontologists to challenge then-conventional knowledge. Dinosaurs steadily became understood as birdlike, warm-blooded active animals, a view that made it into pop culture with a highly popular 1993 film. Subsequent discoveries have only reinforced those notions. So then, what is a dinosaur? The advent of classification based on most recent common ancestry (cladistics) in the 1980s gave us a definition: a dinosaur is a descendant of the most recent common ancestor shared by Iguanodon and Megalosaurus (and Diplodocus, just to avoid potential issues). And well, this is an evolutive definition, which tells us what belongs and doesn’t belong in the group (birds do, as they are descendants of that common ancestor, while stuff like pterosaurs doesn’t, as they aren’t). But what physical characters do we have to look for in a dinosaur? Large size? It appears to have evolved independently many times within dinosaurs. Fuzziness and a birdlike physiology? Those appear to be older; ancestral to dinosaurs but also present in close non-dinosaurian relatives. The key, among tiny yet highly informative details of skeletal anatomy, appears to be related to the old character of “upright posture”: the shape of the hip and ankle joints is unique to dinosaurs. It tells them apart from their closest non-dinosaurian relatives and gives them the upright posture that caught the eyes of scientists 2 centuries ago. So, the common children’s book definition of “land-based reptile which lived in the Mesozoic era” falls flat: there are plenty of non-dinosaurs which fit that definition, while a humble duck, which lives in the present and is a semiaquatic flying animal, is a proper dinosaur. Additional information and references Header figure: From One Piece, by Eiichiro Oda 🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　 🪐.　　　•　° ★　• ☄▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁▂. [...] Read more...
Full menu