Links: Earthquake Detectives, Origin Of Life, India Water Act

Reading from the past few weeks- 

1) How earthquake scientists solved the mystery of the last “Big One” in the Pacific Northwest. The American northwest is a tectonically active region. About 150 km west of the Pacific coast is the Cascadia subduction zone. Here, the Juan de Fuca, Explorer, and Gorda tectonic plates slide underneath the continental plate of North America. Large earthquakes have occurred in the past and will occur in the future. 

Reporter Gregor Craige has written a book, On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake, in which he explores the region's earthquake potential and the cross disciplinary studies that enable scientists to understand past earthquake history as well as the impact a big future earthquake will have. Canadian Geographic has shared an abstract from his book. The earthquake puzzle was solved by combining information from tree rings, Native American peoples memories of past events, and Japanese record of tsunamis. It is fascinating reading. 

2) To unravel the origin of life, treat findings as pieces of a bigger puzzle. Was life's beginnings in a warm little pond or in a deep sea hydrothermal vent? Did lightning provide the energy, did asteroids provide the organic matter? There are many many scenarios that try to provide an explanation to this vexing question. 

One of the leading researchers of this field, Nick Lane, and his colleague Joana Xavier, have summarized some of the key arguments and problems of the field in this tour de force of science writing. Highly recommended! 

3) Analysis: The Great Indian Water Act Of 2024. In more good news for industries, factories and foreign investors, yet another Indian environmental law has been diluted to facilitate “ease of business”. Shailendra Yashwant begins his analysis of The Water Amendment (Pollution and Prevention) Act, 2024 Bill on this depressing note. Amendments seek to "rationalize criminal provisions". Polluters can now escape jail time and get away by just paying a fine. All this when climate change and water security is one of the big challenges facing India. 

Summer In My Neighborhood

Its been a blazing week with temperatures over 100 deg F. Pune this past few days has been as hot as I can ever recall. Time for ice tea and cool stewed mango drinks. Evenings are very warm too. We are giving our rugby kids water breaks every 10 minutes.

But walking through the small lanes near my house are sights like this one:

Summer can be glorious too. And the alphonso mangoes and cold beer is helping!

Crazy About Rugby

I've been taking some time off and helping spread sports and particularly rugby in the rural areas around Pune. This is a project started by two of the rugby organizations in Pune - RFS Pune and KFANDRA .

Here are some pictures from Nanegaon which is about 40 km westwards of Pune. A friend farms here and its through him that we have started this initiative:

That's me looking very fit, surrounded by rugby crazy kids.

All Hands in groups of three:

The Pop-Up pass routine:

 

 Keen eyes and hands- what a picturesque setting to a sports scene not very common in rural India:

 All this action takes place against the backdrop of the vast layered Deccan Basalts. The village is quite attractive and has some of the classic elements and atmosphere of rural India like this temple square:

The countryside around is lush and there are some pretty picnic spots for the tired and weary - a basalt stream bed:

The idea is to encourage children to learn discipline, team work and good work ethics through sports. So far the children love taking part in this activity and we plan to keep this program running for the foreseeable future.

Multicellularity, Evolution, Life

On NPR's Cosmos and Culture blog biologist Ursula Goodenough has been writing some terrific posts on evolution. Two that recently caught my eye:

Unicellularity Vs. Multicellularity: Why We Bother With More Than One Cell

Time and Life

Both are worth spending some time on.

Coming back to the topic of the evolution of multicellularity the latest issue of Geology has a paper that does some analysis on continental reconfiguration during the early Cambrian and proposes that there was a major movement and rotation of Gondwana resulting in establishment of a new ecological landscape, new conditions that may have provided the impetus for the rapid radiation of metazoans otherwise known as the Cambrian "explosion".

Explanations for the Cambrian explosion have occupied two extremes. One view proposes that the fuse was a biological one. Some crucial biological innovation in terms of gene regulation and molecular cascades remained to be discovered until complex metazoans could evolve. According to this view these changes likely occurred beginning around 600 mya. The other view proposes that practically all the complex genetic machinery necessary for metazoans to function already existed in unicellular eukaryotes. The reason for the delay in the advent of metazoans (complex unicellular eukaryotes date back to more than a billion years) were ecological constraints such as a lack of enough oxygen in the atmosphere.

Lately I sense that the ecological argument is winning out not least because earlier experiments in multicellularity are coming to light. Life getting organized into agglomerates of cells is a  theme that has been independently invented several times and as far back as a couple of billion years ago if recent findings in Gabon and in India's Vindhyan basin hold true.

The thought of genetic potential waiting to be unshackled into new and varied forms is fascinating and one doesn't have to venture into the unfamiliar Cambrian terrain for an example. The transformation of the wolf into the myriad morphs of dogs is a strong example. A recent study (via Panda's Thumb) showed that the morphological variation in skull shape across the entire order of Carnivora is less that the variation seen within dogs. The ecological landscape experienced by ancestral wolves did shift dramatically in recent times not by continental movements as proposed for the Cambrian radiation but by the imposition of new selection pressures by humans. Wolves apparently always had the genetic potential to diversify into what could be described as downright weird forms. The changing human ecology provided the trigger and helped maintain these forms, many who may not have survived in the wild.

The evolution of complexity seems to be open ended. There must have been occasions when there was a significant change in genetic architecture. John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary document these steps in their book The Major Transitions in Evolution. Other times it was an exogenous influence that triggered a change, a  matter of filling a new ecological niche.

We All Need A Little Luck In Life

From Discovery News:

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of World War II, has died at age 93....

 

Getty Images/WireImage

I am predicting that The Economist will carry an obituary.

Mumbai 26th 27th 28th.... and On and On

I am just unable to get my mind of the disaster in Mumbai. Unable to write science.

One of my rugby friends who is a professional chef lost 5 friends when terrorists stormed into the Taj hotel kitchen and started shooting. I didn't have the words to console him. I cannot imagine what he and others are going through.

I have to help out in a rugby clinic for schoolchildren tomorrow. Not sure what I and the other coaches should tell them. Should we just go about our business and pretend life has returned to normalcy? Does sports really unify? Does it help heal? Will it help us and my rugby chef friend take our minds off what happened?

For a sample of reactions from the Indian Blogosphere visit Desipundit.

Science blogging will resume soon.