madame scientist's not-so-mad musings

Evolution of Jealousy Romantic jealousy has inspired poetry, drama and… murder. But what’s the science behind jealousy?

• Two decades ago, jealousy was considered a pathological state, a social consequence of a capitalistic society.

• Evolutionary psychologists now believe that jealousy evolved as an important survival adaptation, going way back to the Pleistocene epoch.

• David Buss argues for an emotional cognitive module with innate gender differences: men are more prone to sexual jealousy while women respond more strongly to emotional jealousy.

• Apparently, early man faced a serious Darwinian threat of cuckoldry..if he wasn’t sure that he was the baby daddy, he ran the risk of expending scarce resources on propagating another man’s genes. Women on the other hand, worried that their mate might philander resources on another woman (and her children)..hence an innate wiring for emotional jealousy.

• Newer explanations suggest that differences are more personal..individuals who prize their autonomy over commitment are likely to feel sexual jealousy, whereas others who are more securely attached in relationships (including men) are susceptible to emotional jealousy.

• All this may be moot, since jealousy arises in babies, long before thoughts of romance! Sibling rivalry, anyone?

• Yeah, this was basically an excuse for me to post Jealous Guy. 🙂 Enjoy!

Scientist or Comedian? Tim Lee has a Ph.D. and “spent years developing simulation and analytical models of population dynamics before he discovered that this bored him to tears. When he tried comedy for the first time the tears stopped.”

Watch him interpret the final state diagram in chaos theory 🙂

Many thanks to Sarkis Dallakian, Ph.D. for pointing me to this site with more funny clips: http://www.youtube.com/user/txlee1#p

How the Genetic Code was cracked. Har Gobind Khorana, 89, MIT biochemist, has died. In 1968, he shared the Nobel prize with Marshall Nurenberg and Robert Holley for working out the “blueprint of life”.

• After the structure of DNA was solved in the 50’s, the challenge was to figure out how it encoded information.

• There are 4 letters in DNA (A, C, T and G) that can be strung together in any combination or length.

• There are 20 amino acids in proteins, that can also be combined in any order.

• The minimal “codon” would need a triplet of 4 letters, giving 64 combinations (4x4x4), sufficient to code all 20 amino acids. Some have multiple codes, and there are stop codons.

• Khorana synthesized strands of precise combination of nucleotides that when translated into protein, revealed the code.

Khorana rose from humble origins from a village in India. In 1970 he painstakingly synthesized the first artificial gene that could work in a cell, a landmark achievement at the time.

An announcement, yesterday, shows the amazing progress in synthetic biology: Johns Hopkins scientists have teamed up with China’s BGI to artificially synthesize a complete eukaryotic genome, paving the way for better bioproduction of chemicals, energy and food.

http://bgiamericas.com/bgi-announces-collaboration-with-johns-hopkins-university-on-synthetic-yeast-project-to-accelerate-the-development-of-synthetic-biology/

The Theramin, an electronic instrument, is played without any physical contact! Invented in 1920 by Russian physicist Leon Theramin, it uses two metal antennas to sense the movement of the player’s hands in the air and control oscillators for pitch and volume. It evolved from Russian government sponsored research into motion detectors and was said to have greatly impressed Lenin. Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesizer, credits his years studying the theramin as his inspiration.

The theramin produces an eerie sound used to effect in movie tracks and by psychedelic rock bands. Watch this strange, hands-off performance by Celia Sheen…she really is playing an instrument!

Sadly, Celia Sheen, an accomplished professional violinist, passed away last month.

50 ways to leave your lover …wearing 25 chic scarf styles! Move over, Beau Brummell, it’s the ladies turn now. This winter, my scarf is not going to be trailing in the snow or getting caught in my car door 😉

If you men are feeling left out, check out the art of tying a cravat: http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/the-art-of-tying-the-cravat/

Originally shared by Kavi Harshawat

I had no idea there were so many ways to wear a scarf! Just in time for cold weather too!

/via Mike Kim

/cc Tina Chen dave carlsson Kimberly Johnson Jay Runquist

Thank you, Konstantin Makov , for finding the perfect song for Veterans Day. The armistice that stopped hostilities of World War I went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.

Dire Straits & Eric Clapton – Brothers in Arms; Mandela Live 1988

—————————

Konstantin Makov – 4:25 PM (edited) –

Public#CIRCLES | HUMAN | WORLD | GOOD MUSIC |

Some day you’ll return to

Your valleys and your farms

And you’ll no longer burn

To be brothers in arms

| Dire Straits & Eric Clapton – Brothers in Arms; Mandela Live 1988

On YouTube there many versions of song , may be with better quality,

but I choose this version because it seems to me the most sincere

and true-hearted.

Originally shared by Alex Michaels

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” -Mahatma Gandhi

A demonstrator embraces a riot police officer during a student protest against government plans to reform higher education in Bogota, Colombia.

(Photo: William Fernando Martinez)

Happy Binary Day! Enjoy 11-11-11 while it lasts since the next binary day won’t be until the next century (January 1, 2100).

Want to send a coded message in binary? Use the link to convert either text or binary.

Here’s a nostalgic musical message for you: 01101000 01110100 01110100 01110000 00111010 00101111 00101111 01100010 01101001 01110100 00101110 01101100 01111001 00101111 01110011 01101100 01100011 01110000 00110101 01001110

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan!

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Autism Spectrum Disorders: From Mechanism to Therapy Day 1 of the Cell/Society for Neuroscience conference that I am attending. Some highlights:

• In 1943, Johns Hopkins physician Leo Kanner first described autism as the “innate inability to form usual biologically affective contact with other people”. The next year, Dr. Asperger described some Austrian children he was treating, with similar traits.

• autism has tremendous heterogeneity and it is said that “if you have seen 1 child with autism, you have seen 1 child..”

• autism is associated with many other problems (comorbidity)..1/3 have seizures, also common are attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disability, gastrointestinal and immune disorders

• autism is highly inheritable (50-88% concordance in identical twins), but inheritance is complex rather than simple Mendelian. There are many genes (>105) that cause or increase risk, possibly with common pathways.

• environmental factors are involved but unclear. As proof of concept, mothers who have taken valproic acid (for depression) or thalidomide, or have Rubella (German Measles) when pregnant have higher risks of having autistic children

• Mouse models of autism mimic the social impairment, repetitive behavior and language problems. Wait..mice talk? Yes! I heard ultrasonic recordings of pups calling to their mothers, males confronting one another, and romantic love songs between mates! Very cute mouse chat!

Collective Behavior For those of you who enjoyed the Murmuration of Starlings video that went viral on G+ last week, here is another lovely treat, taken at the refuge at Otmoor, Oxfordshire. Watch the graceful swoops and soars set to the music of Pachelbel’s Canon, thought to have been written for Bach’s wedding and lost until rediscovered in the 20th century.

If you’ve wondered about schooling fish, swarming insects and flocking birds, watch this superb RadioLab interview given by Iain Couzins, Princeton researcher and boss of fellow G+ser Simon Garnier . Mathy geeks will be gratified to learn that astonishingly simple algorithms can recapitulate seemingly complex collective behavior. The video is 24 minutes long, but worth every second! It is interactive, funny, wholly charming, and I promise you, the next time you find yourself in a crowd, you will thank your stars that you are not a locust.

http://icouzin.princeton.edu/iain-couzin-on-wnyc-radiolab/

Short video of swarming fish that behave like Dr. Couzin’s software models: Clip from Swarm (Natures invasions)