Punctuated Equilibrium Is About Small Subtle Changes

The theory of punctuated equilibrium (PE) put forth by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposes that morphological evolution speeds up during lineage splitting events when new species form. In practice, a paleontologist sampling fossil species in a sedimentary section will find that a species over its lifetime does not show any trend in morphological changes. That species eventually goes extinct at a particular interval. Fossils of the inferred descendant species appear abruptly in the sedimentary bed above. A fossil population showing a mix of traits diagnostic of both species is not generally seen. 

Eldredge and Gould argued that this pattern of change observed in fossil species shows that the history of a species is really characterized by long periods of no change, eventually interrupted by rapid evolution to a new species.

A reassessment of one textbook example in bryozoans suggests no evidence of such a punctuated mode. 

A write up in Phys.org describes the new work. 

Revisiting a Landmark Study System: No Evidence for a Punctuated Mode of Evolution in Metrarabdotos - Kjetil Lysne Voje, Emanuela Di Martino, and Arthur Porto

I am not going into the work itself. There are well documented examples of the punctuated equilibrium mode of evolution while others as in this case may see revision from time to time. 

Instead, I wanted to comment on one of my pet peeves about this topic which is the common use of the phrase "major evolutionary change" to describe the actual evolutionary changes.

This idea which never seems to go way that PE involves big or major changes has caused a lot of misunderstanding about the theory.  As the authors of PE took pains to point out, the amount of morphological difference between ancestor and descendant species is subtle, often taking excruciating examination to recognize. 

Here is Niles Eldredge describing his work on Devonian trilobites.

I measured some 50 different lengths and widths- length of the head, distance between the eyes, height of the eyes, length of the tail and so on -on hundreds of specimens. This was tedious. Each specimen had to be cleaned to at least well enough to make all the anatomical landmarks visible. Each had to be mounted on a block of wood, stuck to a blob of plastilene, with the tops of the eyes (a flat surface) in a horizontal plane, perpendicular to my line of sight down the barrel of the microscope. There was a little scale inside the right eyepiece reticle from which to read off the various measurements. After a day of measuring, and until I got used to the microscope, I would see double from the bus window on my way home. 

 from Time Frames: The Evolution of Punctuated Equilibria.

Trilobites have compound eyes, made up of columns of lenses. All this detailed work led to the recognition that a new species had 17 columns of lenses, instead of 18 in the ancestral species found in slightly older strata!

This point about small changes was missed by many observers. Creationists conflated PE with a theory of macro-mutation or saltation, a sudden origin of big morphological change as for example seen in the transition from reptiles to mammals. They claimed that Darwin with his insistence on gradual accumulation of small changes had been wrong all along! 

Not so. The morphological differences observed involved small changes between the ancestor and descendant species.  It takes an expert to recognize this shift in form. 

The real significance of PE is not about the amount of change, but the pattern. PE proposes that very little morphological divergence takes place during the lifetime of a species. It is only when a sub-population of that species gets isolated that it may experience relatively rapid evolution. This genetic isolation results in the formation of a new species. The ancestral species may persist in the main parts of its range, while one of its peripheral populations has evolved into a new species. Biologists term this process of branching or lineage splitting as cladogenesis. 

PE is about explaining these rhythms in the history of lineages. Long periods of stasis (little or no change in form), punctuated by relatively rapid transition to a new form. This transition, though rapid in geologic time,  may take place over hundred of generations and thousand of years.

Why then isn't this transition to a new form preserved in the rock record as a fossil population with a mix of characters? The answer Eldredge and Gould prefer is that reproductive isolation takes place in outlier regions of a species range. Sediments deposited in these isolated basins will be archiving the incremental evolution of a new form, just as Darwin envisaged,  via a mixed or transitional population. However, these outliers containing transitional populations have less chance of getting preserved in the rock record.  The sedimentary sections that paleontologists examine are generally from the main part of the basin. This is not where the change to a new species has taken place.  The sudden appearance of an inferred descendant species in this strata is really recording the migration of the descendant from an isolated part of the species range where it evolved, into the central range of its extinct ancestor. 

Biologists have named this process of formation of a new species through reproductive isolation in a geographically distant area as allopatric speciation. Eldridge and Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium invokes allopatric speciation and migration to explain the abrupt appearance of new species in the fossil record. In terms of the mechanisms of change, it is not an alternative to Darwinism as is often portrayed. Both the authors accept that even during the period of 'rapid' evolution, changes accumulate through natural selection or genetic drift incrementally across generations. But the vagaries of preservation means that sediments which record this transition are rarely available for study.

New Ancestor Of Man And Other Rants About Media Reports

I am ashamed to admit this, but these days I just shrug away the various instances of poor science reporting I notice in the Indian media. But enough outrage has been building up over a couple of  particularly bad misrepresentations of scientific findings to prompt this rant.

 1) Indian Scientists Find New Ancestor Of Man

One shudders with embarrassment at this jingoistic hyperbole. The study is an international collaboration. Why the chest beating?

The article in Deccan Herald on July 26 by Kalyan Ray completely misrepresents the evolutionary story of Homo sapiens. Here are the sentences which go badly wrong -

"Andaman’s Jarawas and Onges are descendants of a completely new family of early men unknown to science so far"..

"The discovery has the potential to open up a new window in the history of human evolution by suggesting that Homo heidelbergensis—the first group of men who came out of Africa—had given rise to multiple lineages and not just the Neanderthal and the Denisovan—the two known branches from which all modern human beings have evolved".

The writer is suggesting the modern humans evolved entirely from Neanderthals and Denisovans outside Africa and that this new research is showing that the Andamanese are descendants of a yet third branch of humans based outside Africa.

This picture given by Kalyan Ray is false. Take a look at the hominin family tree presented in the research paper.

Source: Genomic analysis of Andamanese provides insights into ancient human migration into Asia and adaptation

It presents our current understanding of human evolution and migration and admixing events between different branches of hominins. Modern humans migrating out of Africa about 60 thousand years ago met and admixed with the Neanderthals and Denisovans who were branches of an earlier wave of human migration out of Africa. This earlier wave of migration may have taken place about half a million years ago. This admixture between archaic and modern humans resulted in all living non -Africans having  2%-4% Neanderthal ancestry with additional Denisovan ancestry more common in Melanesians.  Now, this study is proposing that another unknown extinct hominid, a possible third diverged population from those earlier migrations, contributed a small amount of ancestry to south Asians. The Andamanese may be taken as an approximate proxy of the original modern humans who entered the Indian subcontinent from Africa since after diverging from a common South Asian population they have admixed less with other modern humans.

Another quibble is the sentence "Hominids are ancestors of the great apes and humans". Well, hominids is a grouping that includes both extinct and living great apes and humans. So yes, some extinct hominid would have been our ancestor, but modern humans are hominids too. As an aside, to confuse matters further, Hominin are the group that includes the extinct and living members of only the human family, excluding the chimpanzee, gorilla and orang-utans.

2) Before The Pharoah: Fresh Evidence Should Make Us Question Earlier Views Of Indus Valley Civilization

This piece which appeared in the Times of India on June 6 is referring to a paper about the link between Holocene monsoon record and the evolution of Harappan civilization. The authors also suggest a revision of the chronology of the various Harappan cultural stages.  Here is their proposed chronology.This is based mainly on the chronology proposed earlier by G.L Possehl. The authors of this study augment  that with new dates from two samples.

"The successive cultural levels at Bhirrana, as deciphered from archeological artefacts along with these 14C ages, are Pre-Harappan Hakra phase (~9.5–8 ka BP), Early Harappan (~8–6.5 ka BP), Early mature Harappan (~6.5–5 ka BP) and mature Harappan (~5–2.8 ka BP)"

And here is the conventional chronology

"Conventionally the Harappan cultural levels have been classified into 1) an Early Ravi Phase (~5.7–4.8 ka BP), 2) Transitional Kot Diji phase (~4.8–4.6 ka BP), 3) Mature phase (~4.6–3.9 ka BP) and 4) Late declining (painted Grey Ware) phase (3.9–3.3 ka BP). This chronology is based on more than 100 14C dates from the site of Harappa and nearby localities".

Here is the chronology Mr. Mehta presents:

The first line in the introduction section of the research paper makes it clear that all dates are presented in BP (Before Present). Yet Nalin Mehta in his article bungles up and without applying the necessary correction presents the chronology as representing dates in BC. The difference is 2000 years! For example, 5000 BP is 3000 BC.

Another big error he makes is lumping all the Harappan cultural stages into one mature phase spanning 8000 -2000 BC ! This gives an erroneous view of the evolution of Harappan society. The mature phase represents urbanization. The earlier cultural stages were rural antecedents represented by farming and pastoral communities and even earlier human settlements in this area. By terming the entire time span of Harappan culture as belonging to the mature phase, Mr Mehta gives an impression that Harappan cities were as old as 8000 BC. This is certainly not the case. This new study revises the mature phase of the Harappan culture from the accepted ~2600 BC-2700 BC (4700 BP) to ~ 3000 BC (5000 BP). This proposed revision at one cultural site should not be taken to mean that dates for cities like Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Dholavira will suddenly be changed to 3000 BC. Their chronology needs to be ascertained independently. As of now, large number of C14 and thermoluminescence dates have secured the age of these cities to be around 2700 BC or so.

One has to be careful with terminology. Mr Mehta uses dates as old as 8000 BP (wrongly presenting them as 8000 BC) to imply that the Harappan civilization is older than the Paraoahs of Egypt. Such a comparison is meaningless. These earlier dates represent a rural society. No doubt there was population and cultural continuity of these earlier people with the later urban phase, but you can say the same thing about pre-urban Egyptian and Sumerian cultures evolving into a full fledged urban civilization. There was a long pre-urban phase from 5-6 millenium BC in Eygpt and Sumer (synchronous to the Indus region) with central political consolidation and urbanism by around 3100 BC in Egypt when the first dynastic kings known as the Pharaohs seized power. In Sumer, the transition from rural to urban took place even earlier with cities like Uruk gaining prominence well before 3500 BC.

The differently named cultural stages of the Indus valley carry a specific meaning  in terms of societal complexity and cultural changes. You can't just call everything mature Harappan and then claim that the finding requires some kind of a fundamental rethink of Harappan society. 

As it happens, the dates presented in the paper that Mehta is ga-ga about are not new. Archaeologists have been aware of the alternate chronology presented by G.L Possehl for about 15 years now! In that sense there is nothing revolutionary about the chronology presented in this paper.

..rant over.

A Small Note On Animal Fossils Before The Cambrian "Explosion"

Every now and then there appears a news story about metazoan fossil findings that expresses great astonishment and surprise that there is NOW... THIS TIME.. new evidence that multicellular animals evolved long before their celebrated preservation in the Chengjiang and Burgess shale Lagerstatte.

But we have known that for a long time.  The Neo-Proterozoic and early Cambrian fossil record is so much better and is improving and paleo-biologists and palaeontologists have recognized in it the gradual increase in complexity of metazoans over a 50-60 million year period before the exceptional preservation windows of Chengjiang and Burgess shale gives us a false impression of a sudden appearance of complex multicellular animals. This artifact has been exploited by creationists who claim that the fossil record actually supports their creation story of a sudden origin, under some intelligent guidance, of complex animals in the Cambrian, summarized in books like Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. The best rebuttal I have come across of the creationists many misunderstandings of early animal evolution is this excellent article by Nick Matzke.

Let me just post this invaluable figure below which summarizes the Neo-Protoerozic - Cambrian metazoan fossil record. This is from James Valentine's book On The Origin Of Phyla.  It shows clearly that metazoan complexity and diversity increased gradually over time. Molecular phylogeny which aims to reconstruct the last common ancestor of animals based on genetic similarities and differences also tells us that the origin of multicellular animals goes back at least 600 million years ago, maybe even more, a good 80-100 million years before the evolution of calcium carbonate skeletonization made their existence obvious in early Cambrian. Next time a news item appears that claims that somehow fossil embryos or fossil burrows from the Neo-Proterozoic times are some shocking new finding that will change our understanding of animal evolution - don't believe it.

Source: On The Origin Of Phyla

Geopathic Stresses Behind Indian Expressway Mishaps

Ok..something lighthearted.. but this really was published as a serious article in the newspaper DNA:

Geopathic stress or simply “bad energies” are harmful radiation arising from the depths of our planet. According to geophysicists, there is a natural magnetic field on the earth’s surface to which all beings are acclimatised. Geopathic stress arises when this natural magnetic field of the earth is distorted by weak radiations generated by underground streams of water, sewers, drains, certain mineral concentrations, fault lines and underground cavities. This stress impact on the physiological condition of drivers leading to critical errors while driving. However, awareness about the existence of this factor can help drivers, experts say.

... Tyres bursting at this spot are the cause of a major number of accidents. The stretch has numerous cracks in the road, which are affecting vehicles. These cracks are due to hollow spots, which are generated due to tectonic movements and cannot be repaired by re-tarring, the earth at these high geopathic stress spots shifts periodically in intervals.

An explanation by people who dabble in Vastu.. which studies among other things the "energy" being emitted by the earth. This "energy" is manifest only to a select few.. alas the world's physicists have been unable to measure it and understand its nature.

Geopathic stress levels were determined by a rigorous survey and using sophisticated measurements along all the accident spots on the highway. Apparently the high "geopathic stresses" are indicated by vigorous movement of a dowsing rod like equipment. Geopathic stresses are ranked on a scale known as the Lecher scale from 1 to 15. Spots on this highway go up to 11. 2 on the Lecher.  The greater the movement of the dowsing rod - which a person holds in their hand while surveying- the higher the "geopathic stress". The scale was established after assiduously applying a correction for the "hand tremble syndrome" that seems to afflict practitioners of this art (I made up the last bit).

I am learning a lot!

As a geologist I am not really aware of the earth's magnetic field being distorted by underground sewers and such and that "distortions" will suddenly affect human physiology to the point of being disoriented. Claims that there are cracks in the road due to tectonic movements are also false... "Uhh.. we would have noticed the earthquake?" Movements large enough to generate cracks in the road will have registered on seismometers.. no such largish earthquake damage has been reported by geologists in this part of the country..

After all this hooey.. the Vastuworld team does give admirable advice:

...one major help in reducing the accident rate on the expressway would be that the drivers would still have to drive safely and without breaking the rules.

 Now..the day that happens in India.. the earth will rumble mightily.. right up to 15 on the Lecher scale !

Science Writing In India - 3 Media Coverage Of Climate Change

In the Special Focus section in Current Science, Archita Bhatta gives us a rare glimpse on the evolution of the Indian media coverage on climate change.

There is the predictable push and pull from editors with varying levels of confidence in running stories about global warming. There is the problem of making a case for a phenomenon which is expressed in terms of uncertainties and probabilities. And the Indian media obsession with big occasions like global conferences on climate change with coverage turning a tad jingoistic and self-congratulatory about India's heroic "stand" against the western big emitters.

Nearly missing according to Archita Bhatta is coverage of local stories of changing climate and its consequent impact on ecology and people's livelihoods. This lacunae makes it difficult for the public at large to make the necessary connection between global warming and their own lives.

From the article:

This again takes me back to 2011. Just back from a research on how apple orchards were shifting uphill in Himachal Pradesh because of increase in temperatures, I scanned the papers for the coverage of this in the media. None was found, except for one article in the science and environment magazine called Down to Earth. These local stories of vegetation shifts, reduction in flows in the rivers, loss of crops, drought, etc. might appear as disparate and disconnected, but there lies the failing of the Indian media: it does not grasp the complex connections between these micro-level changes with the larger global changes.

The result is that climate change reportage is viewed by the public as a ‘mere policy issue for 'intellectuals’, remote and unconnected to their lives. 

This has to change

So the situation remains the same as when I travelled across central India to report on how extreme rainfall and drought there had affected people’s lives. Farmers affected by unexpected rainfall in groundnut-growing areas of Andhra Pradesh, did not understand ‘climate change’ as the professor spoke of.

This has to change

The rapidly decreasing rainfall in Chhattisgarh did not make sense to the farmers there; connecting this to the fast burgeoning vehicular population, or the consumptive lifestyle of their middle-class urbane brethren. It is most likely they still do not understand, because we in the media have ourselves not seen the real connection and are comfortable chasing policy diatribes and quoting big politicians.

This is what has to change ..towards building a strong bench of climate change journalists who understand the complex subject and connect it to the lives of the common people, the community that will finally make the difference in climate change scenario happen.

Do read.

Science Writing In India - 2 Writing In Hindi

In the Special Focus section on Science writing in India in Current Science Sopan Joshi writes about the difficulties of writing about science in Hindi:

The world of science has developed a great bias towards English. The research comes from the English-speaking world,so the idiom is culturally English. The Hindi readership is not familiar with this idiom. For example, imagine the words required to explain plate tectonics in Hindi. For most scientific terms, there are translations in Hindi. But those translations mean nothing to the average reader. In fact, they mean very little to even the students of science. Because they are never used outside the classroom.

Each writer has to negotiate this problem on his terms, given his limitations. In my experience, using the metaphor of labour is useful. So, in a Hindi article on the world of computers, I have used the metaphor of carpentry to explain the nuance of a graphical user interface. To talk about the relationship between an operating system and computing software, I have found myself using the image of railway tracks and trains running on them. To talk about climate change and its impact on the monsoon, I have drawn from Hindu customs and mythology.

While this makes the material more accessible to a wider readership, it also dumbs down the narrative. One gets the feeling that there is no room for the beauty of complexity. Since there is very little written on science in the Hindi media, one also regrets the absence of a peer group. When you are  struggling with a choice of words, because you cannot think of words and phrases that can convey the meaning accurately and interestingly, you need peers to bounce off ideas, get feedback.

Since almost all post-high school science education in India is in English these problems do apply to other Indian languages as well.  Sopan Joshi should take heart that the Science Bloggers Association of India has put together a Hindi language science writing ecosystem which could provide him a sounding board for his ideas.

The world of science has recently developed a bias towards English, but don't forget there is a vast research literature in Russian, French, German, Chinese and Japanese, countries that unlike India have been using native languages for post high school science education.

Again! Charles Darwin Was Wrong.. About The Tree Of Life

Well.. I guess the headline "Darwin Was Wrong" always sells!

But The Guardian should have thought a little before publishing this. It is an article which appeared sometime back but is the most viewed in the science section and is about how the recognition of lateral gene transfer i.e. the transfer of genes aross taxonomic groups is proving Darwin's idea of a tree of life wrong.

Read this passage:

Evolutionary biologists say crossbreeding between species is far more common than previously thought, making a nonsense of the idea of discrete evolutionary branches.

I don't think their science correspondence Ian Sample thought enough to see the contradiction in this passage.

Cross breeding between species implies that species exist in the first place which in turn means that there has been in existence discrete evolutionary branches i.e. long periods of independent evolution of different populations so as to have accumulated unique features recognizably different from other populations. Its only when there are discrete unique branches is it possible to recognize lateral gene transfer between the two!

For example, coyotes and wolves are closely related animals that occasionally interbreed in the wild. But the fact that we can recognize coyotes from wolves means that these are two discrete lineages having diverged from a common ancestor at some point in the past and have since followed separate evolutionary trajectories accumulating unique traits along the way. Occasional interbreeding between the two does not wipe away all these differences. They remain two distinct branches on the canid family tree.

Gene trees are not the same as species trees. Gene trees reflect the evolutionary history of a gene which may be transferred across taxonomic groups by a variety of processes. Early in the divergent history of populations genes may be exchanged through interbreeding. Or, for example a not so insignificant portion of the genome of mammals is made up of fragments of genes from other species transferred into us long ago by viral infections. However, that does not change the historical fact that the coyote and the wolf, or for that  matter humans and chimps diverged from a common ancestor. Species trees or the tree of life reflects this history of speciation. So, Darwin's tree of life idea is about diverging populations from a common ancestor. These populations despite occasional transfer of genes maintain reproductive integrity and become different enough over time. Life has become diverse over time by such branching. Darwin was not wrong about that.

And what does one make of this confused para- Last year, scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington found a strange chunk of DNA in the genetic make-up of eight animals, including the mouse, rat and the African clawed frog. The same chunk is missing from chickens, elephants and humans, suggesting it must have become wedged into the genomes of some animals by crossbreeding.

Does that mean there was interbreeding between mouse, rats and the African clawed frog? Ridiculous!

Update May 16 2013: There is another potentially misleading passage in the article:

But modern genetics has revealed that representing evolutionary history as a tree is misleading, with scientists saying a more realistic way to represent the origins and inter-relatedness of species would be an impenetrable thicket. Darwin himself also wrote about evolution and ecosystems as a "tangled bank".

Now, the "tangled bank" has nothing to do with lateral gene transfer and interbreeding at all. It should not be conflated with evolutionary relationships being described as a web or a thicket. Darwin was describing the complex inter-dependencies in an ecosystem as organisms compete and co-operate with each other for resources.

"Submerged Continent" Story Trending For The Wrong Reasons

It does seem so judging by the comment stream of this article by Akshat Rathi which appeared in The Hindu last week. The article is currently in the most popular list of the Sci-Tech section of The Hindu.

"This could be another malefic design to make tamils believe they belong to different continent. As the validity of 75 yrs old dravidian myth is busted by science dna researches and rationale thinking. This could be yet another attempt to confuse south people".

from:  Periyar  

"It is interesting how scientist sometime make outlandish claims with no certainty of counter proofs. In fact it all depends which group you belong to, dominant or struggling, majority view which is stupid or minority non-peer view but sensible. So here we go again. The only certainty is that the world map did not look like today millions of years ago. There are unexplained artifacts many millions of years from different parts of the world which are neither explained or frankly admitted to be un-explainable. The reason being the Scientists calling the shots cannot eat humble pie. There are hundreds if not thousands of such artifacts. Some have conveniently disappeared to stop embarrassment for scientists. And then there are myths and legends, Ramayana and MahaBharat and 'in peoples memories'".

from:  Politenotpc 

"There was an article several days before that Australian aborgines share the same DNA as the rest of South India. So hypothetically speaking their ancestors would have traveled centuries before to Australia by land. impressive findings these.."

from:  Manoj 

"I was fascinated to read about the discovery of this new continent and its location so close to India.I was then wondering whether it could be the JAMBUDWIPA of yore which we repeatedly recite in Vedic chants."

from:  kumar

 

People are relating the submerged continent to events that may have taken place in human history with some nationalist pride and suspicions of scientists thrown in as well :)

The finding off course belongs to deep geological history.

Geophysical data indicated that the lithosphere in this region is thicker than what would be expected in an oceanic basin made up of basaltic crust alone. And zircons collected from xenocrysts (fragment of a foreign crystal) within lavas on the island of Mauritius gave a Proterozoic age. The lavas of Mauritius which contained these zircons were about 9-10 million years old. That suggested that these zircons belonged to very ancient continental fragment beneath Mauritius from which they were broken of and brought to the surface by younger lavas.

The continent is a smaller piece of Gondwanaland that separated from Madagascar about 60-80 million years ago as rifting between larger pieces of Gondwanaland (Madagascar and India) stretched and thinned the crust opening up an oceanic basin.  Prolific basaltic volcanism later covered this continental fragment . So, there never was a land connection across the Indian Ocean between India and other continents in recent geological history. Some of these continental fragments may have submerged below sea level much earlier and some would have appeared as small islands in the area between Mauritius and Seychelles - well to the south of India - before being covered by lava several millions of years before the presence of any humans on the Indian subcontinent.

But the allure of the "lost continent" endures.

Politics And Pettiness In Indian Seismology

American seismologist Roger Bilham who has previously visited India many times to attend workshops and to meet colleagues on a tourist visa is now blacklisted and is being refused entry in to India.

A year ago he and Vinod Gaur of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore wrote a paper in Current Science  (open access) suggesting that there is small probability of a 6-7 mag earthquake near or at the site of a proposed nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in southern Maharashtra and that this should be taken in to account in the design of the plant. The paper was criticized by several Indian seismologists.  The scientific debate has been summarized by K.S Jayaraman.

This May, Bilham was denied entry into New Delhi and deported.  The reason given was that he was coming for activities not consistent with his tourist visa status. Bilham suspects that this decision by the Indian government is due to pressure from a senior Indian seismologist.

From G.S Mudur's article in The Telegraph:

The government decision was presumably based on recommendations made by one or more influential seismologists in India,” Bilham wrote to the IISc on October 17 this year, in a letter where he has declined to evaluate the PhD thesis of a young scholar. 

The IISc had requested Bilham to assist in the evaluation of the thesis. 

“It has been brought to my attention that some younger colleagues have been intimidated by a retired (Indian) seismologist who once held a position in Hyderabad, from working with me, or being associated with scientific studies, or discussions,” Bilham told the IISc. 

“The intimidation takes the form of suggestions that future funding, or chances of promotion, or job security, may be placed in jeopardy if these young scientists are in any way associated with my name,” he wrote, adding that his presence on the panel of thesis examiners might turn detrimental to the future of the young scholar. 

If true, this is a sorry sorry situation. What was it that Prof Krishna Kumar wrote about Indian academia and research institutions recently?... 

Inadequacy of funds is, of course, worrisome, but it cannot explain the extent to which malice, jealousy and cussedness define the fabric of academic life in our country.

All that seems to be on full display here. Several Indian seismologists have spoken out against Bilham's entry ban. More scientists must speak out. Scientific differences and even personality clashes should not translate into bans for scientists. If the tourist visa is indeed a problem then Dr. Bilham should be asked to apply for the correct visa category. But just keeping silent shows our government as a whimsical petty system which takes offense at any dissent, in this case, someone pointing out that it may have been wrong in its assessment of seismic risk. So far there has been no detailed explanation from the government for Bilham's ban.

HT: Nanopolitan

Richard Muller On Reconfirmation Of Temperature Data

NPR Science Friday hosts Berkeley professor Richard Muller whose Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project investigated whether measured temperature data collected and reported by climate scientists was flawed. His conclusion is that the previously measured data faithfully records that the earth has been warming and that humans are primarily responsible for the temperature increase:

FLATOW: So tell us about your change of mind and heart about this issue.

MULLER: Well, if you had asked me a year ago, I might have said I didn't know whether there was global warming at all. But we had begun a major study, scientific reinvestigation. We were addressing what I consider to be legitimate criticisms of many of the skeptics.

But about nine months ago, we reached a conclusion that global warming was indeed taking place, that all of the effects that the skeptics raised could be addressed, and to my surprise, actually, the global warming was approximately what people had previously said.

It came as a bigger surprise over the last three to six months when our young scientist, Robert Rhode, was able to adopt really excellent statistical methods and push the record back to 1753. With such a long record, we could then separate out the signatures of solar variability, of volcanic eruptions, of El Nino and so on. And actually, to my surprise, the clear signature that really matched the rise in the data was human carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It just matched so much better than anything else. I was just stunned.

Prof. Muller also talks about the urgent need for a policy that provides incentives and financial assistance to switch to natural gas thus cutting down on the need to burn coal. Clean fracking is his rallying point!

Also the Guardian has a long article on Richard Muller and his work.

ExxonMobil Were Playing Both Ways On Global Warming All Along

Fresh Air has an absolutely fascinating interview with journalist Steve Coll who has written a new book on ExxonMobil.

For many years ExxonMobil engaged in a campaign to downplay the human role in global warming and tried to discredit the science of recent climate change.

And yet:

GROSS: Just one more thing about climate change. During the period when ExxonMobil was trying to defeat global warming science, at the same time scientists within Exxon were trying to figure out, well, if the planet is warming, how can we profit from that? So they work in both fronts at the same time.

COLL: Well, that's right. They're a science-based organization. They employ a lot of geologists, and the mission of those geologists is to understand the Earth's structure and how changes in temperatures, geology, technology, could intersect to create opportunities to find oil. And as the book reports, geologists in some of their most important kind of discovery departments were looking at how warming might unlock oil reserves and positioning ExxonMobil with advice about how to think about that.

GROSS: So in other words, Exxon wanted to defeat global science because that says that fossil fuels, burning fossil fuels is warming the climate and creating weather changes and climate change, and that would mean problems for Exxon because it's the fossil fuel industry.

But at the same time, its own scientists were saying, well, it looks like the Earth is warming, so let's see what new oil reserves that might open up to us.

Those new reserves that might open up were under the Arctic sea bed, made more accessible as increased summer melting of the Arctic sea ice makes it easier to explore and eventually exploit those resources.

There are a lot more interesting tidbits in this long interview including ExxonMobil's tussle with the U.S. government over human rights issues in oil rich countries like Chad and the company's increasing interest in unconventional oil and gas resources.

Science On Indian Radio

A friend recently got hooked on to Science Friday and other radio programs on NPR. We were talking about the lack of science programming on Indian radio and whether something on the lines of Science Friday will find an audience in India.

Both of us remembered that All India Radio and Gyan Vani do have educational segments that discuss primarily health issues. A guest, usually a medical practitioner, talks about one health topic.. diabetes, stress, AIDS, eye disorders and so on. On All Indian Radio, the program is uniquely geared towards keeping Indian audiences tuned in. It intersperses the discussion with the guests favorite movie songs. Listening to Bollywood music and songs is something of a craze in India and the educational segments try to use it to keep listeners attentive. Someone used to Science Friday and other science programs on western radio stations will find these programs quirky with their song and musical interludes! Gyan Vani is by comparison quite sedate with long stretches of conversation without interruption.

But why not add to the repertoire of subjects discussed? No doubt, healthy citizens make a healthy nation and the current programming is seen to be pragmatic and providing an immediate social benefit. On the other hand,  I have never heard "pure" sciences been discussed in these programs. No geology, no evolution, no chemistry, no genetics or cosmology. I hope the perception is not there that only advice about health which audiences find useful in their daily lives should be covered. Or that, there is no interest in India in listening to someone ramble about the earth's tectonic plates or whether humans interbred with the Neanderthals or some arcane topic about the cosmos.

The trick to hook audiences may be to begin with events of national interest wherein knowledge of certain scientific super-specialization has been called upon to weigh in favor of or against the implementation of big projects and policy decisions. The programs could be in English or Hindi or a regional language. Here is my list:

1) Biotechnology and Indian agriculture
2) Nuclear, Solar and Wind Power
3) Groundwater and Indian agriculture
4) Designing New Remote Sensing Senors For Ecological and Mineral Mapping
5) Interlinking of Himalayan and Peninsular Rivers

Make no mistake. Fundamental principles of biology, geology, physics and chemistry will be put to use to tackle the above listed problems. These already have been given considerable attention in the mainstream media and are in the public eye. Often though, the science involved is not written about in articles or discussed on television. A more leisurely radio program might just be the most convenient medium for explaining the basic science and weaving a story about discoveries with the practical applications of these fields. And scientists coming out and speaking frankly about their work in these fields will get citizens interested and involved in a more open and informed debate about controversial projects.

..one final request. These radio stations must have a website and a downloadable podcast of every program. I have a feeling that many people in India too will find listening on a mobile device the best way to catch up with science stories.

what will life be without little dreams.. :)

Science And Nature Programming On Indian Television

Yesterday afternoon I watched a good documentary on the wild game trade and its social and ecological context on National Geographic. The setting was the Central African Republic and the hour long episode followed a researcher studying the hunters, traders and customers involved in Africa's bush meat trade. It was a sobering look at the decimation of wildlife that is occurring in these regions. Logging roads are reaching ever more in the interior and bush meat is highly prized,  due to old social preferences and a lack of alternative sources of protein.

The documentary brought back memories of some fine programming that used to be common on National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet. I say this because I continue to be deeply disappointed with the recent programming on these channels. I looked through the guide and here is a sample of the programs which form the bulk of the repertoire these days. I have divided them up into themes - Science Fiction - Alien Invasion, Crop Circles.. Adventure/Reality - Banged up Abroad, Survivor, Gold Rush Alaska.... Wildlife / Nature - Man vs Wild, Monster Fish, River Monsters, Worlds Deadliest Animals, Duel in the Swamp...

All are fast paced action packed dramas, full of adventurers getting into trouble abroad, or trying to "survive" in a mountain range somewhere or diving into swamps and running through forests grabbing at otters, fish or whatever small animals that come their way. ..The wildlife shows focus on life's brutal side, with plenty of sequences of lions hunting and crocodiles dismembering prey, all with a hushed but triumphant voice telling us that might is right in the jungle.

The kind of unhurried slow paced shows that exposed - through conversations and fine camerawork - the intricacies of a particular topic are being overwhelmed by a gonzo reporting style. Maybe it's the Steve Irwin effect that many nature reporters now feel compelled to run and grab at wild animals. The science depicted on these shows is minimal at best. And what example for conservation and respect for wildlife does it set with such an aggressive and intrusive film-making?

I miss those old shows on so many varied topics - Vets of Rural England, A Social History of Tofu, The Ecology of Tasmanian Tigers, Indonesian Mining Industry, The Chinese Homo erectus, to name just a few.  These shows were excellent examples of carefully thought out ideas and topics and were filled with richly detailed and nuanced contents on the cultural histories of people and communities and their interface with medicine, ecology, geology, evolution and genetics. Lots of relevant science was packed in an episode.

There are still a few shows in this vein being made even now.. Expedition To Borneo.. being a recent example. But mostly,  inane "survival" and extreme adventure episodes, duels between humans and animals and sensational violent hunting sequences with blood and gore are dominating the television screens.The assumption seems to be that people these days have very little attention spans and the best educative value would be provided by rapid visual stimulation and bombarding viewers with an array of facts and conclusions.

That leaves little space for depicting science as it really is - a process of knowing, wherein constructing a hypothesis, gathering data and analyzing it and finding out that that has opened up more questions than answered your initial one is really how we gain new knowledge and clear a path for the discoveries of tomorrow.

Conversations About Seismic Risk Of The Proposed Jaitapur Nuclear Plant

I get mails from reporters asking me geology questions. I got one today morning from a reporter of a big newspaper about the controversy regarding the siting of a proposed nuclear power plant near the village of Jaitapur in southern Maharashtra.

With his permission I have pasted his question and my reply below-

Dear Suvrat,

After the press conference by Dr Bilham regarding the earthquake hazard  to Jaitapur. NPCIL has issued a press release, which mentions about the various studies carried out on behalf of NPCIL. They are mentioned in the file attached with this mail. I was wondering whether they have taken adequate test for the Jaitapur site.

I would be obliged if you could see the mail and give your feedback.

Warm Regards

XX

Dr. Bilham is Dr. Roger Bilham who along with Dr. Vinod Gaur recently published a paper (open access) on the tectonic situation and seismic risk along the southern Maharashtra region. My post summarizing the paper is here.  NPCIL is the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited and their press release can be found here.

Here is my reply. I've added a couple of words (in black for clarity) -

Hi XX-

The list itself covers all the geological studies that can be done. I cannot off course speak to whether individual studies were comprehensive or not. I am curious whether the NPCIL already has or is planning on making all these studies available to the public so that independent experts may evaluate the findings of the government scientists.

Geologically there are two limitations here. One is that, there is no reliable historical documentation of large seismic events from this area (Jaitapur). Second, there is no surface expression of faults and displacements along these faults that may give us some idea whether and with what frequency was this area affected by large earthquakes in pre-historic times. Therefore it is difficult to develop a robust statistical extrapolation of the risk of large earthquakes.

This uncertainty means that people can read what they want to into all the tests and theories about this area. People who don't want a nuclear plant can say.. look, an earthquake can hit any time.. just like Latur. No scientist can disagree with that.

On the other hand the nuclear establishment can say with some justification that over the life cycle of a nuclear plant (next 100 or so years) there is a small probability of a moderate size earthquake (6 -7 Richter) and an even minuter chance of a tsunami and we can deal with the engineering requirements.

I don't see any side giving way because the opposition to nuclear energy goes deeper than just geological considerations and its hard to change the government's mind on anything.   From what I have read about the general geology of the area I suspect that everyone can beat the geological risk angle to death and get nothing new out of it.

One impression I did make when I followed some of the panel discussions on the Tamil Nadu nuclear plant on TV shows is that some of the nuclear scientists were dismissive and even contemptuous of civic society concerns. Maybe a similar attitude has aggravated the situation at Jaitapur.

Cheers

Suvrat

Latur is the area in southern Maharashtra which suffered a 6.4 mag earthquake in 1993. It was long thought to be at low seismic risk. The Indian government is promising to engage with civic society on all aspects of the construction of the many planned nuclear power plants and in that spirit of openness I hope they make the relevant geological studies available for anyone to critique.

I will post more on this topic as the story develops.

Scarcity Of Earth Science Specialists Hurting India

Shobhan Saxena's article in the Times of India on the scarcity of earth science specialists throws Indian geologists in poor light. She quotes a geologist:

"From the data available and signs in recent years, it's clear that a big earthquake of magnitude 7/8 is long overdue in north India, but we are not prepared. The government geologists are happy monitoring the Richter scale and announcing the intensity of the quake when it happens. That's it," says the expert who doesn't want to be named.

Ouch... that is harsh. But there is some truth in it. A case in point is the website of the Geological Survey of India. Apart from a four line statement, there has been no effort to explain the Sikkim /Nepal earthquake. And no easily accessible details that I could find of what the Geological Survey scientists are doing or attempting to do in terms of a sustained program to educate the citizenry about earthquakes and other geo-hazards.  The media coverage didn't help either. There were no lead articles by geologists in major newspapers and no geologists appeared on major news channels to talk about the earthquake and earthquake preparedness.

You can't pin the blame entirely on the scientists. The article points out that we have few scholars pursuing advanced degrees in geology and earthquake studies. That may be right. But the problem is not just the small number of geologists but that their recommendations regarding building standards and construction practices are flouted with impunity. If its accountability you are looking for then you need to cast the net wider to encompass the polity and civil governance. Politicians, civic officials of municipalities and builders must share the blame for allowing the growth of the unplanned chaotic tottering towns of the Himalayas.

Couple Of Articles On Earthquakes

Not all writing by journalists on earthquakes and earthquake prediction border on sensationalism and unsupported speculation. Here is a sensible one by Christina Reed in Discover Magazine...

Also over at Ars Technica John Timmer summarizes the finding of three studies aimed at understanding the mechanics of the recent Japan earthquake, now officially known as the Tohoku-Oki quake.

Crustal Quartz And Continental Deformation

Fresh from the press a revelation:

Quartz deposits hold key to predicting earthquakes:

..The scientists discovered that quartz crystal deposits are found wherever mountains or fault lines occur in states like California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah.

The Utah State geoscientist said the breakthrough came after repeated testing revealed a correlation between quartz deposits and geologic events that was "completely eye-popping."

Using newly developed remote sensing technology known as Earthscope, Lowry and Perez-Gussinye found that quartz indicates a weakness in the earth's crust likely to spawn a geologic event such as an earthquake or a volcano.

A friend pointed out to me the above news which came in a particularly mangled press version of a study published in Nature by  Anthony R. Lowry and Marta Pérez-Gussinyé - The role of crustal quartz in controlling Cordilleran deformation.

In this post-Japan atmosphere of heightened awareness, hype, hyperbole and sensational claims about earthquakes and volcanoes it is important to set the geology straight.

The paper is behind a paywall and I have not read it, but from the abstract I could gather -

The study addresses variations in the presence of crustal quartz and whether it may influence localization of continental scale deformation due to quartz being weaker than other minerals. The study is on the continental scale and when geologists speak of crustal quartz they mean the mineral that makes up part of the bulk of the rock. Crust with high amounts of quartz would mean crust made up of rocks like granites, granite gneisses and quartz rich schists and quartzites. So variations in the bulk composition of the crust over hundreds of kilometers may influence where deformation occurs and persists over geological time.

Tuzo Wilson imagined the crust being recycled by the repeated opening (rifting) and closing (collisions) of continents, the famous Wilson cycle. This study suggests that such opening of continents may be initiated in quartz rich zones of the crust and these previously rifted and weakened zones are then more likely to break into rifts or deform into mountain belts during subsequent tectonic events thus localizing deformation over many cycles.

The press release though mutates crustal quartz into crystal quartz deposits accompanied by a picture of an amethyst crystal cluster and announces that such crystal quartz deposits may help us predict earthquakes. Crystal quartz deposits and crustal quartz mean different things to geologists. Crustal quartz as I explained above refers to the mineral quartz that is pervasive throughout the crust making up a proportion of the rock mass along with other minerals.

On the other hand the term crystal quartz deposits usually is taken to mean veins cutting across the rock mass or cavities in the rock which are filled with quartz crystals often as pretty faceted forms. These may occur over very small regions of a few hundred meters to a few kilometers or so and sometimes quartz may occur in concentrations that can be mined.

These types of small segregated deposits of quartz do not automatically indicate an increased likelihood of earthquakes in that particular area. At the most they may point to the presence of a fault.  For example fault zones contain fractured rock. Mineralizing fluids containing silica may precipitate quartz concentrations along these fractures. However geologists don't make a leap and announce that an earthquake is likely along that fault anytime in the future based on the presence of these crystal quartz deposits.

Quartz deposits by themselves don't tell us anything about the stress levels the crust is under and whether the fault may slip anytime soon. Independent monitoring of stress levels along faults using sensitive instruments is just beginning to be used in some areas but we are a long way away from using that information to make predictions about an earthquake.

Coming back to the paper...Large continental zones over which the crust has been deformed such as rifts, collision zones or subduction zones are also regions where earthquakes are more likely to occur. We already know that. But while there may be a correlation between crustal quartz amount and such large zones of deformation, that does not translate into specific predictions about where and when earthquakes may occur in these zones. The study certainly does not claim any such advance in our understanding of earthquakes.

I had a thought though about the correlation between quartz rich crustal zones and repeated deformation. Think about the early Archean when continents were forming. What would be the future Indian continent is a collage of several such continental nuclei which welded to each other over the Archean and early Proterozoic. An example is the zone of continental deformation along the Narmada rift in central India which has seen suturing and rifting of continental blocks repeatedly in the Archean and early-mid Proterozoic.

The first location of collision between continental nuclei was not controlled by the presence of quartz but was just happenstance. That initial collision, the zone of suture along which the two continents stuck to each other became the prime zone of weakness in the larger continental block. And during collision that zone likely became richer in quartz as partial melting of the old crust formed differentiated quartz-rich new crust.

This crust because it was weak from a previous collision/deformation event was reactivated during subsequent tectonic events and became even richer in quartz following repeated magmatic and sedimentary differentiation of the crust during each such event.

Is there really a quartz enrichment trend in the Precambrian crust of the Narmada rift? Is quartz rich crust the cause or the consequence of localized crustal deformation? Maybe the relation is different in different settings..maybe there are feedbacks...

Some Good Science Talks On Radio

A few terrific science talks I've heard recently:

1) A Biography of Cancer- Terry Gross of Fresh Air interviews oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee.

2) The Man Who Killed Pluto - OnPointRadio's Tom Ashbrook talks to astronomer Mike Brown and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about why Pluto has been relegated from the league of planets and some other frontiers of astrophysics.

3) Science Sees Further - Ira Flatow of Science Friday talks with Richard Holmes and Sir Martin Rees about the contribution of the Royal Society to science and its history and future.

Dissemination of scientific knowledge for improving public understanding of science with scientists playing the role of advocates and popularizers was a theme that Sir Martin Rees emphasized quite strongly in the talk.

Not long ago scientific societies did not always approve of scientists turned popularizers. Carl Sagan was infamously refused membership of the National Academy of Sciences, some say because of his public profile as a popular science writer and TV personality despite his excellent credentials as a research scientist.

The tide seems to be turning with scientific societies now actively engaging in science outreach in the number of ways.. take for example the recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union where a science blogging workshop and social media meetings are being held for exploring ways to strengthen the scientists connection to the public at large.

That is a good sign. Scientists should be talking more to the public about their work and its significance to society.

Rocky Plateaus Of Western Ghats Need Protection

The Times of India Sunday Pune Edition (Nov 21) carried a good article (the print edition has a more detailed write up) by Dipannita Das on the ecological importance of the rocky plateau landforms of the Western Ghats. These outcrops are often termed "wastelands", a terminology that reflects classification of landscapes by their economic potential, a classification tradition that goes back to the days of the British Raj. Rocky plateaus were thought to be unproductive and were termed wastelands.

Here is a classic example of one of these rocky plateaus from Panchgani, a hill station south of Mumbai. The cap is made up of an early Cenozoic laterite. At other locations the plateaus are hard basalt flows.

And here is a view of the surface of such plateaus.

It may seem mostly barren, but as the article details, such plateau environs are teeming with plant and animal life, specialized to live in crevices and along the slopes and depressions and hollows and water seeps that have formed by the action of physical and chemical weathering.

There is a national level effort going on to map the biodiversity of the Western Ghats (see site WesternGhatsIndia.. not working at the time of writing ) and one hopes that many of these ecologically rich and interesting rocky plateaus will be afforded protection from various anthropogenic activities. These plateaus are of geological importance too. As I wrote in an earlier post, many of these "rocky" surfaces tell a story of the erosional, uplift and weathering history of the Western Ghats.

Over the last couple of years I have come across increasing number of reports in newspapers on various environmental issues. Reporters are talking not just to a few well known and politically connected scientists, but also to faculty and researchers from local colleges and institutes that are on the front line ... doing field work, collecting data and conducting research on various biological and geological aspects of the surrounding landscapes.

That marks a positive change in terms of increased science outreach by the media and raising awareness of these issues in the communities that are going to be directly affected by the unplanned development of the nearby environment.

Planting Trees Will Provide Clean Air To Pune?

Pune has several hills scattered throughout its extents. About 1600 odd hectares of them going by the various sources. Some of the hill land is owned by government and is managed by the forest department, some is government owned and is covered by slums and some is under private ownership.

There is a grand plan to convert all or most of this 1600 odd hectares into bio-diversity parks. While the idea of setting aside large swaths of hills as open spaces is creditable, reporting by the media on the supposed benefits of these parks verges on the side of being silly.

Here are a couple of examples I see again and again in media reports on this issue, most recently in yesterday's Times of India (Nov 12 2010, Pune edition):

Air pollution in Pune is a threat to health and well being. The United Nations recommends at least 12 sq m of green area per person for adequate environment for physical and mental health.

An average family of five will require 60 sq m of green area to survive and breathe. Once it comes up, the BDP's will provide clean air for approximately 35 lakh people.

BDP's are the bio-diversity parks and 35 lakhs equals 3.5 million.

Reading this strange environmental calculus makes me wonder how people in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Dubai and Las Vegas, cities with either hyper dense populations or ones bereft of any greenery manage to live healthy lives.

Going by the U.N criteria as presented in the Times of India (TOI) all the people in these cities should be diseased wrecks by now.

The fact is that the greening of the hills will not make a dent in either offsetting carbon dioxide emissions or preventing other types of air pollutants. Pune by a rough estimation of the number of vehicles (approaching 2 million) likely emits more than a million tons of carbon dioxide a year from vehicles alone (here is another estimate). There are other sources that add to this.

1600 hectares of the Utopian forest that may or may not come up on these hills will sequester at most a few thousand tons of carbon dioxide per year. That is the best case scenario. Most likely the number will be disappointingly smaller. Currently the forest on these hills sequester a few tens of tons per year according to this study on carbon sequestration in Pune.

Besides trees don't suck in particulate matter and sulfur and nitrous compounds which have ill effects on health. More than CO2, these pollutants pose an immediate threat to our health. These continue to be emitted in large quantities mostly as vehicular emissions and tree plantations won't reduce their presence in the air above Pune.

I would like to see at least parts of these hills being left as open spaces..there are clear benefits in terms of providing cool recreational spaces for citizens and as a refuge for the urban bird and animal populations. But whether those hills are left barren or are built upon or are completely covered by trees won't make a difference in terms of providing clean air to the city.

That will happen only through cleaner and more efficient use of energy sources particularly a move towards cleaner vehicular fuels.