FieldNotes: one thing leads to another leads to another

The Drug Lord With a Social Mission by Maia Szalavitz at Pacific Standard:

.....Perhaps the most perverse thing about the rise of legal highs is that, in a scenario that is the direct opposite of what Matt Bowden was trying to engineer in New Zealand, these new, easy-to-acquire drugs are often more dangerous than the illegal drugs that they copy.......

The Secret Lives & Ancient Instincts of Sea Turtles by Eleanor Spicer Rice at Our State:

The Gulf Stream, that warm river within the ocean, runs closer to our state’s shoreline than any other ground in the United States. It blankets the continental shelf, where our land’s big, sandy foot drops into the abyss. Dive in: You’ll see squid shoot through the water like rocket ships, schools of yellowfin tuna slice the sea with their razor bodies, and humpback whales capture fish in nets made of bubbles. Look overhead to watch the web-footed paddle of the Arctic tern, which travels 44,000 miles each year to feast on the Gulf Stream’s bounty. Around you, sea turtles soar like birds, dipping and recovering, sinking deep into the black shadows. Here, within the ocean’s teeming waters, sea turtles spend most of their lives, keeping their world a secret from us.....

The Man Who Drank Cholera and Launched the Yogurt Craze by Lina Zeldovich at Nautilus:

What do Jamie Lee Curtis, gut bacteria, and a long forgotten Russian scientist have in common? Why, yogurt, of course. But wait, the answer is not that easy. Behind it stretches a tale that shows you can never predict cultural influence. It wends its way through the Pasteur Institute, the Nobel Prize, one of the hottest fields of scientific research today, the microbiome, and one of the trendiest avenues in nutrition, probiotics. It all began in the 19th century with a hyperactive kid in Russia who had a preternatural ability to connect dots where nobody saw dots at all.....

Classic Story, A City Corpse Meets a Country Corpse by Katy Meyers Emery at Bones Don't Lie:

....I’ve been indulging in a little HGTV this week as a way to recover from post-conference exhaustion. I know that shows like House Hunters aren’t real- they already have bought the house so it’s just a sham discussion of other houses. And yet, I can’t help myself. Sometimes this mundane drama is just what one needs to recover from a long week of conferencing. In the most recent episode, there was a classic division between the couple: a city girl and a country boy. She wanted to be downtown with a big house and lots of neighbors to entertain. He wanted a small farmhouse on a large plot of land without a neighbor in sight. In the end, they got the farmhouse. But it left me thinking about the divisions between them, the difference between city and country living. Is it really that divisive? Well, if I’m going to address that question, I’ll need some dead bodies to do it.......

 

Mixed Signals: Why People Misunderstand Each Other by Emily Esfahani Smith at The Atlantic:

...............This gap arises, as Halvorson explains in her book, from some quirks of human psychology. First, most people suffer from what psychologists call “the transparency illusion”—the belief that what they feel, desire, and intend is crystal clear to others, even though they have done very little to communicate clearly what is going on inside their minds. Because the perceived assume they are transparent, they might not spend the time or effort to be as clear and forthcoming about their intentions or emotional states as they could be, giving the perceiver very little information with which to make an accurate judgment................

Killer whales are stealing our fish to make extra babies by Jason G. Goldman at Conservation:

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) didn’t get their name because they’re gentle herbivores. They are top marine predators, and as a species they feed on a variety of critters from fish to seabirds to marine mammals—including other whales. They are highly intelligent, long-lived animals, with complex social dynamics and traditions that vary from group to group. In other words, they have culture. And each family – orca societies are organized according to maternal relatedness – has its own customs and ways of surviving. Those customs are passed from individual to individual, much like human culture.......

That Brontosaurus Thing by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology:

...........So, these are the well known, much-discussed conclusions of this study. However, there are a few associated issues haven’t been much discussed outside the technical dinosaur community, and I’d like to cover those things here. Some are pretty exciting..................

The Maps Within: Using Viruses in Forensic Biology by Rebecca Kreston at Body Horrors:

Forensic biology has made tremendous strides in the past few decades thanks largely to advances in DNA techniques and analysis. Genomic sequencing has generated new methods of human identification reaching far beyond fingerprints and dental records, providing crucial information in the course of investigations, valuable evidence in historical fieldwork, and personal closure in the wake of tragedy......

The Hummingbird Effect: How Galileo Invented Timekeeping and Forever Changed Modern Life by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings:

.....While we appreciate it in the abstract, few of us pause to grasp the miracles of modern life, from artificial light to air conditioning, as Steven Johnson puts it in the excellent How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (public library), “how amazing it is that we drink water from a tap and never once worry about dying forty-eight hours later from cholera.” Understanding how these everyday marvels first came to be, then came to be taken for granted, not only allows us to see our familiar world with new eyes — something we are wired not to do — but also lets us appreciate the remarkable creative lineage behind even the most mundane of technologies underpinning modern life......

Can wearing orange-tinted glasses before bed help you sleep? Only one way to find out… by Jordan Gaines Lewis at The Conversation:

I recently wrote about the terrible sleep habits of the characters in House of Cards. I disapproved of Frank Underwood’s late-night computer work in the Oval Office, his new midnight iPad gaming habit and Claire taking her laptop to bed with her. But I must confess my hypocrisy. Despite my preaching – and despite being a sleep researcher myself – the last thing I do before I flip off the lights and snuggle into my bedsheets is play games on my iPhone. I know, I’m bad – but I also know I’m not the only guilty person here. Although evidence suggests that the blue light emanating from phones, tablets, laptops, televisions and e-readers can affect the quality of our sleep – in turn affecting our health and well-being – many of us can’t help logging in and tapping away when we should be winding down. A Time/Qualcomm poll of 5,000 people worldwide suggests that nearly a quarter of those between the ages of 18 and 24 generally don’t sleep as well because of technology. Even worse, 40-75% of folks across all age groups report keeping their phones within reach while they sleep at night......

Quagga

Extinct and extant Equus genomes reveal speciation with gene flow despite chromosome number variation by Melissa DeBiasse at The Molecular Ecologist:

In their recent PNAS paper*, Hákon et al. generate full genome sequence data for each living species of asses and zebras, thus completing the set of genomes available for all extant species in the genus Equus (genomes for the donkey and horse have been published previously- see references below). The authors also collected full genome data for the quagga (Equus quagga quagga), a subspecies of the plains zebra that lived in South Africa until being driven to extinction in the 19th century. The last captive individual died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883. In 1984, the quagga was the first extinct species to have its DNA sequenced. Hákon et al. used the Equus genome sequences to search for loci under selection, reconstruct demographic history, and measure gene flow among diverging lineages.....

Human mutation rates - what's the right number? by Larry Moran at Sandwalk:

There's some controversy over the rate of mutations in humans. The latest summary comes from science journalist Ewen Callaway, a Senior Reporter for Nature, writing on March 10, 2015: DNA mutation clock proves tough to set. Let's review what we know. The first thing we have to do is define "mutation" [What Is a Mutation?]. A mutation is any alteration of the nucleotide sequence of a genome. It includes substitutions, insertions, and deletions. The mutation rate can be described and defined in many ways. For most purposes, we can assume that it's equivalent to the error rate of DNA replication since that accounts for the vast majority of substitutions. Substitutions are far more numerous than most insertions and deletions. (But see, Arlin Stoltzfus on The range of rates for different genetic types of mutations). .........

And if that is not enough, more readings for later this weekend:

GMO labeling bill stalls amid interagency, committee tussle by Tiffany Stecker at E&E Daily
How I Got Converted to G.M.O. Food by MARK LYNAS at NYTimes
Ancient Viruses, Once Foes, May Now Serve as Friends by Carl Zimmer at NYTimes
All the science that is fit to blog – an analysis of science blogging practice by Grant Jacobs at Code for Life
What should a modern scientific infrastructure look like? by Bjoern Brembs at bjoern.brembs.blog
World Tapir Day, 2015 by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology
Fatal attraction: the intuitive appeal of GMO opposition by Dr. Jekyll at Lunatic Laboratories
The Twitch (or, “You’re Going to Do What to My Horse?”) by David Ramey at Horse Collaborative
How not to start your next ecology or evolution talk by Jeremy Fox at Dynamic Ecology
Cooperation Is What Makes Us Human by Kat McGowan at Nautilus
The Many Resurrections of the Hubble Space Telescope by Corey S. Powell at Out There
DNA testing offers a far better way to detect Down syndrome by Steven Salzberg at Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
Talk About “Manipulation” by Lucy Hornstein at Musings of a Dinosaur
Hubble's Other Telescope And The Day It Rocked Our World by Joe Palca at Joe's Big Idea, NPR
Beatboxing birdsongs of New York by GrrlScientist at Maniraptora
Why the Food Babe Takedowns Are What Our Society Needs by Rebecca Strong at BostInno
Evidence-Based Farriery: The Proof is in the Hoof by Erica Larson at The Horse
Methane: The Embarrassing Molecule by Valerie Brown at Beacon
Want to save the planet? Say bye-bye to nature by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus at USA Today
Societies With Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness by Bruce Levine, Ph.D. at Mad In America
The Cosmopolitan Ape by Steve Paulson at Nautilus
With This Ring by Jessa Gamble at The Last Word On Nothing
New Fossil Providing Insight into History of Flight by Cameron Halladay at This View of Life
How March of the Penguins ruined the nature documentary by Todd VanDerWerff at Vox
Scientists Can Trick You Into Thinking You’re Invisible by Rachel Fobar at Popular Science
The Deep History of the Sea’s Bone-Eating Worms by Brian Switek at Laelaps
What Drove the Great Dying? by Sedeer el-Showk at Accumulating Glitches
The real side effect of a gluten-free diet: scientific illiteracy by Julia Belluz at Vox
Pseudoscience and strawberries: ‘wellness’ gurus should carry a health warning by Hadley Freeman at Comment is free
Is Synesthesia A Brain Disorder? by Neuroskeptic at Neuroskeptic
Marmoset Parents Teach Their Kids Not to Interrupt by Elizabeth Preston at Inkfish
How to Combat Distrust of Science by Sander van der Linden and Stephan Lewandowsky at Mind Matters
The Next Generation of Medical Tools May Be Home-Brewed by Alex Howard at Backchannel
Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, T-rex’s Vegetarian Cousin at Strange Animals
When society isn’t judging, women’s sex drive rivals men’s by Tom Stafford at The Conversation
Not all GMO plants are created equally: it's the trait, not the method, that's important by Elizabeth Bent at The Conversation
We're Paranoid About GMO Foods Because of Pseudo-Science by Lizzie Crocker at The Daily Beast
Has agroecology been hijacked by activists more concerned about anti-GMO purity than sustainability? by Rebecca Randall at Genetic Literacy Project
Cool homes, hot planet: How air conditioning explains the world by Chris Mooney at The Washington Post
The Role Of Writing And Recordkeeping In The Cultural Evolution Of Human Cooperation by Daniel Mullins at The Evolution Institute
Melatonin and leaky gut continued by Paul Whiteley at Questioning Answers
The Rat Paths of New York by RYAN BRADLEY at NYTimes Magazine
We are not edging up to a mass extinction by Stewart Brand at Aeon
 
 

Image: Quagga, an extinct equid. Water colour on vellum parchment by Nicolas Marechal (1753 -1802), painted at Paris in 1793 and illustrates the Quagga stallion of Louis XVI menagerie at Versailles. 

Previously in this series:
FieldNotes: Let the sleeping apes lie
FieldNotes: Rogue Microwave Ovens Call Home
FieldNotes: Brontosaurus in, Food Babe out.
FieldNotes: this is not your grandparents' neuroscience!
FieldNotes: from Captain Ahab to Jeff Goldblum, chasing the giants
FieldNotes: speeding up and slowing down time
FieldNotes: Golden Mean, polite middle-ground, and optimal numbers of legs.
FieldNotes: The Word For World is Blue (or is it Gold?)
FieldNotes: a view to spotted horses in the morning