Google Reader Is Shutting Down on July 1 2013

Just a reminder that Google Reader will be shutting down come July 1 2013. If you have been reading this blog via my RSS Feed in Google Reader do change over to an alternative. Feedly seems to be a popular choice, with a feature to import your aggregated Google Reader feed at a click. although there are many others too. Here are two articles that explore replacements for Google Reader.

Moving On From Google Reader

There Is No Google Reader Replacement, Only Alternatives

Again, here is my RSS Feed and as always, thanks for your support.

Dog Domestication Controversy: When, Where And How Many Times?

Interesting article in Nature on advances in our understanding about dog domestication. Apparently it is a "sexy field" of study:

"In recent months, three international teams have published papers comparing the genomes of dogs and wolves. On some matters — such as the types of genetic changes that make the two differ — the researchers are more or less in agreement. Yet the teams have all arrived at wildly different conclusions about the timing, location and basis for the reinvention of ferocious wolves as placid pooches. “It’s a sexy field,” says Greger Larson, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Durham, UK. He has won a £950,000 (US$1.5-million) grant to study dog domestication starting in October. “You’ve got a lot of big personalities, a lot of money, and people who want to get their Nature paper first.”

Fossils and genetic data are in conflict too. Fossil skulls with dog like features dating back to around 33,000 years have been reported from Siberia and Belgium. There is genetic work that suggests that China was where the first dogs were domesticated at a similar early date of around 32,000 years ago. Other scientists feel that these early lineages went extinct without contributing to extant dogs which according to them evolved post ice age maxima beginning around 15,000 years ago or so. Yet others think that dog domestication coincided with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

I think multiple episodes of domestication at various times is an entirely reasonable possibility given that both wolves and humans are hyper social and the opportunities to clash, cooperate and be fascinated with each other would have arisen again and again.

Expect more trading of intellectual blows as genomics will bring a tighter focus on the timing and geography of dog origins.

"The move to look at ancient DNA could make the small field of dog genetics even pricklier, because archaeological bone samples are so precious. Novembre says that he finds the field more fractious than human genetics, and says that his experience has given him pause about future canine work. “It’s really intense in the dog world,” he says. But Boyko, who also collaborates with the Chinese group, says that although the field is competitive, it remains collegial. “At the end of the day, we sit back and enjoy a beer together when we see each other.”

Creationists Don't Get The Cambrian Explosion

There is an excellent post by Nick Matzke on the Panda's Thumb on the Cambrian Explosion, which was the evolutionary radiation and diversification of animal life over a 30 million year period from about 540 mya to 510 mya. To clarify, the lower boundary set at around 540 mya does not mean there is no evidence of animal life before that and "poof" animals originated instantaneously at 540 mya. On the contrary, there is long earlier history of multicellular animal life preserved in various forms including the famous Ediacaran biota going back another 10's of million years or so,  but the fossil record does become more prolific beginning about 540 mya. The important point is that complex forms evolved and diversification occurred in recognizable stages, not all at once. So yes, there are "transitional fossils" preserved from this time period!  There are geological and ecological reasons for why animal life diversified and was preserved better by 540 mya, but that is another story.

Nick Matzke has written this post as a rebuttal to a book by Stephen Meyer titled Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design.

It is a long post but well worth reading. You will learn:

1) What is the nature of the fossil record beginning late Proterozoic and the Cambrian.

2) What methods of analysis are being used by paleontologists to make sense of this fossil record and what is the current thinking on how these ancient animal groups of the Cambrian were related to each other and to extant animal groups, with implications for how and when diversification from simpler forms took place.

3) How Creationists obfuscate, ignore and are ignorant of both, the nature of the fossil record and analytical methods, resulting in them misdirecting readers about the actual state of our knowledge.

Do read it.

Benjamin Franklin And Erasmus Darwin: Musings About Geology and Evolution

I am reading When You Were A Tadpole and I Was A Fish  by Martin Gardner. It is a collection of essays on science and culture. There is a really good one on the complex personality of Isaac Newton, another one on Ann Coulter's rants against evolution and quite a bit of writing on debunking paranormal claims. I haven't yet finished the entire book with some chapters on literature and religion still unread. I am not sure they will hold my interest as there is more critical dissection of literary figures like Chesterton and a long explanation on why he (Mr. Gardner) is not an atheist than I care to read about.

In one of the chapters Mr. Gardner gives a list of anticipations made by famous figures about how the world works which have turned out to be right, although not in all details. The larger point he is making throughout the book is the lack of evidence for clairvoyance. People are making predictions all the time. Most of them turn out to be wrong. We however tend to remember and wonder only at the tiny fraction that turn out to be correct.

He off course does not categorize Benjamin Franklin and Erasmus Darwin as people making loose predictions. They were both far better thinkers than your run of the mill soothsayers and fortune tellers. Their musings were serious attempts to understand natural processes and were not just opportunistic attention grabbing stunts.

This is Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Abbe Soulaive, September 22, 1782:

"Such changes in the superficial parts of the globe seemed to be unlikely to happen if the Earth was solid to the centre. I therefore imagined that the internal parts might be a fluid more dense, and of greater specific gravity than any of the solids we are acquainted with; which therefore swim in or upon that fluid. Thus the surface of the globe would be a shell, capable of being broken and disordered by the violent movements of the fluid on which it rested."

Exhumation Patterns Of Dhauladhar Range Himalayas: Interplay Of Tectonics And Climate

Open access in Current Science:

 New apatite and zircon fission-track ages from the Dalhousie Granite exposed along Dhauladhar Range, Northwest Himalaya extend from 2.9 ±  0.2 to 4.4± 1.0 Ma and 10.4 ±  1.4 to 21.1 ±  2.2 Ma respectively. One-dimensional thermal modelling of the data suggests slow exhumation during Middle to Late Miocene, followed by acceleration during Plio-Pleistocene. The activity along the Panjal Thrust (PT)/Main Central Thrust (MCT) in this region ceased at ~ 15 Ma, while tectonic activity along the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) started prior to ~ 10 Ma. Tilting of topography due to activation of MBT controls the exhumation pattern of Dalhousie Granite during Middle to Late Miocene. Correlation among structure, topographic pattern and thermochronometric ages indicates interplay between tectonics and erosion controlled  exhumation along the mountain front. The fast exhumation rates since Pliocene are synchronous with intensification of the Asian monsoon and suggest a causal link between erosion and climate variation for evolution of the landscape.

What is heartening to see is that research like this requiring sophisticated geochemical analysis is coming out of regional Universities like Kurukshetra and Ambala.  Ten to fifteen years ago, a paper like this would be most likely published from labs of just a few elite institutions in India, with the analysis being done by a Western collaborator in a U.S. or European University. That is still the case with many research programs, where Indian geologists seek collaboration to access instrumentation not easily available in India, but with more money being available through Science and Technology Ministry grants, the research environment may be slowly changing.

A while ago I had an email exchange with a senior geology faculty where I ventured to ask him if my perception was correct that many really large research projects on Himalayan tectonics involve primarily Western researchers with a solitary India based colleague. He agreed somewhat, but opined that this was not because there is a lack of research funding potentially available to address Himalayan geology, but rather funding towards subjects like climate change, groundwater, Quaternary processes and environmental geology has increased and many researchers today prefer more theoretical and lab based work than difficult high altitude Himalayan fieldwork!

A bit unkind I thought :).. but this paper is a departure from such slack attitudes if they really do exist!