# s-acad: the nomad razor by Richard

<< Over drinks one evening, a Christian journalist described witnessing an episode of faith healing. Instead of dismissing the story outright, Dawkins pressed for details >>

<< Some people define atheism as a positive conviction that there are no gods and agnosticism as allowing for the possibility, however slight. In this sense I am agnostic, as any scientist would be. But only in the same way I am agnostic about leprechauns and fairies. Other people define agnosticism as the belief that the existence of gods is as probable as their nonexistence.  In this sense I am certainly not agnostic >> Richard Dawkins

John  Horgan.  Richard Dawkins Offers Advice for Donald Trump, and Other Wisdom. Aug 10, 2017.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/richard-dawkins-offers-advice-for-donald-trump-and-other-wisdom/

# s-behav: they behave strangely in the darkness caused by a solar eclipse

<< Many accounts of solar eclipses include tales of animals behaving strangely >>

<< There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence for how animals and even plants respond to totality [of solar eclipses] >>

<< Crickets chirped and frogs croaked [..]  Gnats and mosquitoes swarmed [..] Bees returned to hives and chickens to roost >>

<< small, light-sensitive crustaceans and zooplankton swam upward toward the dark during eclipses, similar to how the tiny animals behave at night >>

<< The sun’s disappearance prompted orb weaver spiders to take down their webs >>

<< captive chimpanzees scaled a climbing structure and faced the blocked sun >>

Lisa Grossman. What do plants and animals do during an eclipse?
A citizen science project aims to gather data to put science behind anecdotal evidence. Aug 12, 2017

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/2017-solar-eclipse-animals

<< The behavior of colonial orb-weaving spiders (Metepeira incrassata) in tropical Veracruz, Mexico was studied during the total solar eclipse on July 11, 1991. Spiders behaved in a manner typical of daily activity until totality, when many began taking down webs. After solar reappearance, most spiders that had begun taking down webs rebuilt them >>

Uetz, G.W., Hieber, C.S., et al.     Behavior of Colonial Orb-weaving Spiders during a Solar Eclipse. Ethology, 96: 24–32. Jan 12, 1994. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.1994.tb00878.x

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1994.tb00878.x/full

<< This year, the California Academy of Sciences is soliciting citizen scientists to record their observations of any animals they see using the academy’s iNaturalist app >>

Solar Eclipse 2017: Life Responds.

http://www.calacademy.org/citizen-science/solar-eclipse-2017

# n-soc: charlottesville, what to do now, by Jeffrey

<< The question is: what to do now? The answer lies in the source of the problem. The huge mess began with bad ideas. The only means available – and it is the most powerful – is to fight bad ideas with good ideas. >>

<< What are those good ideas?  The progress of the last 500 years shows us precisely what the good ideas are: social harmony, human rights, the aspiration of universal dignity, the conviction that we can work together in mutual advantage, the market economy as a means of peace and prosperity, and, above all else, the beauty and magnificence of the idea of liberty itself. >>

Jeffrey A. Tucker. The Violence in Charlottesville. Aug 12, 2017

https://fee.org/articles/the-violence-in-charlottesville/

also

# n-laws: nashville looks back. Apr 8, 2016.

http://flashontrack.blogspot.it/2016/04/n-laws-nashville-looks-back.html

# s-evol: nomadic pulses: when dinosaurs ruled the earth, they took to the skies ...

<< New fossil discoveries show that prehistoric “squirrels” glided through forests at least 160 million years ago, long before scientists had thought >>

<< In a study published on Wednesday, a team of paleontologists added some particularly fascinating new creatures to the Mesozoic Menagerie. These mammals did not lurk in the shadows of dinosaurs >>

Carl Zimmer. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Mammals Took to the Skies. August 9, 2017

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/science/dinosaurs-flying-mammals-squirrels.html

https://twitter.com/NYTScience/status/895359121943351296

<< Two new eleutherodonts from the Late Jurassic period have skin membranes and skeletal features that are adapted for gliding >>

Qing-Jin Meng,David M. Grossnickle, et al. New gliding mammaliaforms from the Jurassic. Nature  (2017) doi:10.1038/nature23476 Publ. Aug 09, 2017
   
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23476.html

# s-gst: they take decisions in a way that is not necessarily uniform (jazzy? funky? fuzzy?)

AA << found that fate decision is not a unique programmed event, but the result of a very dynamic process composed of spontaneous fluctuation and selective stabilisation of alternative cellular states >>

<< The whole process is reminiscent of trial-and-error learning in which each cell explores—at its own rhythm and independently of cell division—different molecular possibilities (i.e. different genes turned on or off) before reaching a stable combination of active genes and the corresponding morphology >>

AA << observed that some cells seem to "hesitate" and change morphology many times before reaching a stable state >>

Which type of cell to become: Decision through indecision.
July 27, 2017

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-07-cell-decision-indecision.html

<< Individual cells take lineage commitment decisions in a way that is not necessarily uniform >>

AA << identifies a new category of cells with fluctuating phenotypic characteristics, demonstrating the complexity of the fate decision process >>

Alice Moussy, Jérémie Cosette, et al. Integrated time-lapse and single-cell transcription studies highlight the variable and dynamic nature of human hematopoietic cell fate commitment. PLoS Biol 15(7): e2001867 doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2001867

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2001867

FonT

in pratica un lancio di dadi, ... quasi.

<< Amico, qualunque  cosa suonerai . . . >>

http://inkpi.blogspot.it/2007/01/2113-soniche-ramulo.html

# s-phyto: mRNA instability may facilitate rapid recovery of plants after stressful events

<< Stress recovery may prove to be a promising approach to increase plant performance, and theoretically, mRNA instability may facilitate faster recovery.   Transcriptome (RNA-seq, qPCR, sRNA-seq, PARE) and methylome profiling during repeated excess-light stress and recovery was performed at intervals as short as three minutes >>

AA << demonstrate that 87% of the stress-upregulated mRNAs analysed exhibit very rapid recovery >>

Peter Alexander Crisp, Diep Ganguly, et al.  Rapid recovery gene downregulation during excess-light stress and recovery in Arabidopsis. The Plant Cell Publ. July 2017 doi: 10.1105/tpc.16.00828

http://www.plantcell.org/content/early/2017/07/13/tpc.16.00828

# s-esobio: self-assembled azotosomes by convective activity, a kind of proto-life on Titan.

<< vinyl cyanide (C2H3CN; also known as acrylonitrile or propenenitrile) would be the best candidate species for the formation of (..) cell-like membranes, known as “azotosomes” >>

AA << report the first spectroscopic detection of vinyl cyanide in Titan’s atmosphere, obtained using archival data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), collected from February to May 2014 >>

AA << detect the three strongest rotational lines of C2H3CN in the frequency range of 230 to 232 GHz, each with >4σ confidence >>

the << production rate of vinyl cyanide and its saturation mole fraction imply the availability of sufficient dissolved material to form ~107 cell membranes/cm3 in Titan’s sea Ligeia Mare (Titan's second largest liquid body) >>

<< Reactions of hydrocarbons with hydrogen, both readily available on Titan, release energy, which could provide support for methanogenic life. The sedimentation time of atmospheric organics depends on the particle size and convective activity in the troposphere. This coupling of Titan’s atmosphere and surface completes the picture regarding the astrobiological importance of (..) detection of vinyl cyanide in Titan’s middle/upper atmosphere >>

Maureen Y. Palmer, Martin A. Cordiner, et al. ALMA detection and astrobiological potential of vinyl cyanide on Titan. Science Advances  28 Jul 2017: Vol. 3, no. 7, e1700022
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1700022

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700022.full