Likewise, the novice may notice that in some animal species males are much larger than females, but the biology student knows that pattern occurs only in species in which males take several mates. Natural selection favors larger males in those species because their greater size helps them prevail in the often bloody contests among males for access to females. By contrast, males tend to be roughly the same size as females in monogamous species, in which there is much less fighting for mates.
In Aperiomics there is also a defensive strategy that can produce larger animals or people. predatory Y males might evolve to be larger or join gangs to use their strength to get mates. Oy makes might evolve to be smaller and faster to get mates without being noticed or to escape. Ro males might defend their neighborhoods like Ro buffaloes from predatory criminals, they do this by also forming gangs or teams and evolving to be larger. R males might survive and find mates by being smaller and faster like Oy males, they with their mates can hide and run when attacked and so live on to have offspring.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Rooted in experience: The sensory world of plants
In Aperiomics the Roy animal kingdom and Biv plant kingdom are two kinds of systems in economics as well. A Biv wealthy economy has abundance and evolves like plants do. This happens through Gb private property, a plant in effect owns the ground it grows on like a farmers owns his field. Both don't move around because they have enough abundant resources where they are, so abundance is a necessary and sufficient condition for private property to work in an economy.
A Roy economy works like the animal kingdom, there is little private property and most is G publicly owned. People then don't own this public property but can use what they can control, for example a Y mafia might control a city without owning the property in it. A Ro neighborhood watch association might control crime in their area without owning it. Animals don't own the ground they live on, they can control a territory though. So scarcity of resources is the basis for public ownership of property, there is little point in owning a small piece of ground if it doesn't have enough resources for someone to stay there.
A Roy economy works like the animal kingdom, there is little private property and most is G publicly owned. People then don't own this public property but can use what they can control, for example a Y mafia might control a city without owning the property in it. A Ro neighborhood watch association might control crime in their area without owning it. Animals don't own the ground they live on, they can control a territory though. So scarcity of resources is the basis for public ownership of property, there is little point in owning a small piece of ground if it doesn't have enough resources for someone to stay there.
Rooted in experience: The sensory world of plants
Thursday, March 7, 2013
"Evolutionary Theory’s Welcome Crisis" by John Dupre | Project Syndicate
"Evolutionary Theory’s Welcome Crisis" by John Dupre | Project Syndicate
For
the last 70 years, the dominant paradigm in evolutionary science has
been the so-called “new synthesis.” Widely publicized in recent years by
Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the new synthesis unites
Darwin’s theory of natural selection with Mendelian genetics, which
explains heredity.
The
current crisis in evolutionary science does not imply complete
rejection of this paradigm. Rather, it entails a major, progressive
reorganization of existing knowledge, without undermining the
fundamental tenets of evolutionary theory: organisms alive today
developed from significantly different organisms in the distant past;
dissimilar organisms may share common ancestors; and natural selection
has played a crucial role in this process.
Other
assumptions, however, are under threat. For example, in the traditional
“tree of life” representation of evolution, the branches always move
apart, never merging, implying that species’ ancestry follows a linear
path, and that all evolutionary changes along this path occur within the
lineage being traced. But examination of genomes – particularly
microbes – has shown that genes moving between distantly related
organisms are an important catalyst of evolutionary change.
Moreover,
the new synthesis assumes that the main drivers of evolution are small
mutations generated by chance within a species. But recent evidence
suggests that large changes, caused by the absorption of a chunk of
alien genetic material, may be just as significant. Indeed, the
absorption of entire organisms – such as the two bacteria that formed
the first eukaryotic cell (the more complex cell type found in
multicellular animals) – can generate large and crucial evolutionary
change.
This can create chaotic effects rather than just randomness being behind mutations. For example one mutation might build on another as dependent variables to amplify the effects. For example a mutation might cause R prey to have larger lung, a later mutation to longer legs might then be amplified because the animal already has an extra ability to supply oxygen in this faster running.
This can create chaotic effects rather than just randomness being behind mutations. For example one mutation might build on another as dependent variables to amplify the effects. For example a mutation might cause R prey to have larger lung, a later mutation to longer legs might then be amplified because the animal already has an extra ability to supply oxygen in this faster running.
Further
destabilizing evolutionary theory is the growing realization that many
factors, not just the genome, determine an individual organism’s
development. Ironically, as the discovery of DNA’s structure – initially
lauded as the final act in the triumph of the new synthesis – led to a
better understanding of genomes’ functioning, it ended up weakening
belief in their unique role in directing biological development. Those
who long deplored the omission of development from evolutionary models –
a decades-old critique made under the scientific banner of evolutionary
developmental biology (“evo-devo”) – together with the insistence that
organisms’ development draws on a wide variety of resources, have been
vindicated.
Recent
developments in molecular biology have put the final nail in the coffin
of traditional genetic determinism. For example, epigenetics – the
study of heritable modifications of the genome that do not involve
alterations to the genetic code – is on the rise. And the many kinds of
small RNA molecules are increasingly recognized as forming a regulatory
layer above the genome.
How bees decide what to be: Reversible 'epigenetic' marks linked to behavior patterns
How bees decide what to be: Reversible 'epigenetic' marks linked to behavior patterns
The scientists say what is most significant about the new study, described online September 16 in Nature Neuroscience,
is that for the first time DNA methylation "tagging" has been linked to
something at the behavioral level of a whole organism. On top of that,
they say, the behavior in question, and its corresponding molecular
changes, are reversible, which has important implications for human
health.
According
to Andy Feinberg, M.D., M.P.H., Gilman scholar, professor of molecular
medicine and director of the Center for Epigenetics at Hopkins'
Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, the addition of DNA methylation
to genes has long been shown to play an important role in regulating
gene activity in changing biological systems, like fate determination in
stem cells or the creation of cancer cells. Curious about how
epigenetics might contribute to behavior, he and his team studied a
tried-and-true model of animal behavior: bees.
Working
with bee expert Gro Amdam, Ph.D., associate professor of life sciences
at Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life
Sciences, Feinberg's epigenetics team found significant differences in
DNA methylation patterns in bees that have identical genetic sequences
but vastly different behavioral patterns.
Employing
a method that allows the researchers to analyze the whole genome at
once, dubbed CHARM (comprehensive high-throughput arrays for relative
methylation), the team analyzed the location of DNA methylations in the
brains of worker bees of two different "professions." All worker bees
are female and, within a given hive, are all genetically identical
sisters. However, they don't all do the same thing; some nurse and some
forage.
This is like horizontal evolution where circumstances around a person can change their genes, this can then change how they succeed in life and who they marry. The evolutionary system can be viewed as a tree with branches of species, this is like two pascal's triangles with their apexes touching as in the diamond graph in Aperiomics. Horizontal influences are like horizontal levels of pascal's triangle which are like normal curves. So these evolutionary influences tend to happen randomly to produce normal offspring. For example methylation of these genes might happen in a team environment where people cooperate to be similar to each other, the same influences lead to similar epigenetic changes. They might all drink green tea to be part of the team, this gives a normalizing change to the methylation of their genes, said to give more weight loss. So this horizontal evolutionary effect is more randomizing while Darwin's evolution is more revolutionary and counter revolutionary in the tree of life.This is because it is more deterministic, a person might get genes from his ancestors and give them to his descendants without any random changes. This can also be affected by mutations in genes which are like innovations in an Iv-b economy. So this epigenetic effect is like changes from team behavior in the V-Bi part of the economy.
This is like horizontal evolution where circumstances around a person can change their genes, this can then change how they succeed in life and who they marry. The evolutionary system can be viewed as a tree with branches of species, this is like two pascal's triangles with their apexes touching as in the diamond graph in Aperiomics. Horizontal influences are like horizontal levels of pascal's triangle which are like normal curves. So these evolutionary influences tend to happen randomly to produce normal offspring. For example methylation of these genes might happen in a team environment where people cooperate to be similar to each other, the same influences lead to similar epigenetic changes. They might all drink green tea to be part of the team, this gives a normalizing change to the methylation of their genes, said to give more weight loss. So this horizontal evolutionary effect is more randomizing while Darwin's evolution is more revolutionary and counter revolutionary in the tree of life.This is because it is more deterministic, a person might get genes from his ancestors and give them to his descendants without any random changes. This can also be affected by mutations in genes which are like innovations in an Iv-b economy. So this epigenetic effect is like changes from team behavior in the V-Bi part of the economy.
The Evolutionary Advantage of Depression - Brian Gabriel - The Atlantic
The Evolutionary Advantage of Depression - Brian Gabriel - The Atlantic
Interestingly,
researchers at the University of Michigan's Molecular and Behavioral
Neuroscience Institute discovered that individuals with major depressive
disorder were more likely to have the mutated NPY gene. The
normal NPY gene codes for higher levels of a neurotransmitter known as
Neuropeptide Y, which appears to help ward off depression by increasing
one's tolerance of stress. So the same mutated NPY gene that likely
protected our ancestors against pathogens also increases our chance of
developing depression.
Drs.
Miller and Raison believe that acute (or severe but short-term) stress
can not only lead to depression, but also jump-start the immune system.
The physicians note that in the environments in which our ancestors
lived, acute stress was often associated with the threat of physical
harm or physical wounds. And unlike today, wounds readily led to
infection and death. Therefore, Drs. Miller and Raison believe that
evolution favored individuals whose immune systems operated under a
"smoke-detector principle."
Although
smoke detectors often react to false alarms (for me, burnt toast), if
you removed the detector's battery and a real fire occurred, the
consequences could be severe. Similarly, immune responses to acute
stress are typically not necessary -- not every stressful situation
results in a wound and infection. However, if our ancestors became
wounded even a single time and didn't experience a piqued immune
response, they might die from an infection.
The immune system acts like the I-O police in the body to find usually R germs that are hiding and camouflage themselves. They act like the middle of the food chain in the Roy animal kingdom and like the trunk of a tree in the Biv plant kingdom. A high stress environment can occur in an Iv-B economy because safety nets and insurance are much lower, people feel stress like a piece of flexing metal might experience stress until it cracks and shatter from chaos.
Depression from stress can then be related to this this IV-B economy which also affects the immune system, it can also relate to a depressed economy where the weakened immune system has wasted so many resources from being overworked and false alarms. For example a person might become depressed because of chronic inflammation and being sick, auto immune problems, germs that the body can't get rid of because of this stress, etc. in the same way an economy can become depressed from this weakened and overworked I-O policing system, Iv-B and Oy-R interactions are secretive and deceptive giving continual levels of fraud such as in the financial system. The economy experiences this as chronic inflammation as a response to this fraud, it can be from mistakes with this I-O policing causing outrage in the V-Bi community like police shooting innocent people.
The economy becomes like a zombie, it has this low grade infection of Iv-B secretive frauds and the government tries to compensate by putting it on life support with regular economic stimulus like a comatose patient kept alive with transfusions.
An I-O police can also have problems by not having this piqued or hyperactive immune response, this is like a neighborhood where the police are slow to respond to crime. it is also like how I-O regulators ignored many of the warning signs prior to the GFC. Such an immune system can also allow infections just as an overactive one can become exhausted then allow similar infections. In an economy the I-O police then need to be strengthened but also to become more selective and accurate at finding these deceptive criminal infections , this avoids auto immune responses of attacking innocent people which can exhaust it.
The immune system acts like the I-O police in the body to find usually R germs that are hiding and camouflage themselves. They act like the middle of the food chain in the Roy animal kingdom and like the trunk of a tree in the Biv plant kingdom. A high stress environment can occur in an Iv-B economy because safety nets and insurance are much lower, people feel stress like a piece of flexing metal might experience stress until it cracks and shatter from chaos.
Depression from stress can then be related to this this IV-B economy which also affects the immune system, it can also relate to a depressed economy where the weakened immune system has wasted so many resources from being overworked and false alarms. For example a person might become depressed because of chronic inflammation and being sick, auto immune problems, germs that the body can't get rid of because of this stress, etc. in the same way an economy can become depressed from this weakened and overworked I-O policing system, Iv-B and Oy-R interactions are secretive and deceptive giving continual levels of fraud such as in the financial system. The economy experiences this as chronic inflammation as a response to this fraud, it can be from mistakes with this I-O policing causing outrage in the V-Bi community like police shooting innocent people.
The economy becomes like a zombie, it has this low grade infection of Iv-B secretive frauds and the government tries to compensate by putting it on life support with regular economic stimulus like a comatose patient kept alive with transfusions.
An I-O police can also have problems by not having this piqued or hyperactive immune response, this is like a neighborhood where the police are slow to respond to crime. it is also like how I-O regulators ignored many of the warning signs prior to the GFC. Such an immune system can also allow infections just as an overactive one can become exhausted then allow similar infections. In an economy the I-O police then need to be strengthened but also to become more selective and accurate at finding these deceptive criminal infections , this avoids auto immune responses of attacking innocent people which can exhaust it.
It
turns out that depression may not be a mere trade-off for a vigorous
immune response. Dr. Miller suggests that depressive symptoms like
social withdrawal, lack of energy, and a loss of interest in once
enjoyable activities were actually advantageous to our ancestors. For
example, a loss of energy might ensure that the body can leverage all of
its energy to fight an infection. Also, social withdrawal minimizes the
likelihood of being exposed to additional infectious agents. In this
way, Drs. Miller and Raison note that "depressive symptoms are
inextricably intertwined with -- and generated by -- physiological
responses to infection that, on average, have been selected as a result
of reducing infectious mortality across mammalian evolution."
Recently Dr. Miller and Dr. Raison completed a separate study in which they attempted to treat patients with "difficult to treat" depression with a novel drug infliximab. Infliximab works by disrupting communication between immune cells and consequently reduce inflammation.
While
infliximab did not significantly improve depression symptoms in the
group being studied as a whole, it did reduce depression symptoms among a
subset of study participants who showed elevated levels of
inflammation. Inflammation was measured using blood tests for
"C-reactive protein" (CRP). The higher the
Who’s in Charge Inside Your Head? - NYTimes.com
Who’s in Charge Inside Your Head? - NYTimes.com
That’s
right: zombie bees. First reported in California in 2008, these
stranger-than-fiction creatures have spread to North Dakota and, just
recently, to my home in Washington State.
Of
course, they’re not really zombies, although they act disquietingly
like them, showing abnormal behavior like flying at night (almost
unheard-of in healthy bees), moving erratically and then dying. These
“zombees” are victims of a parasitic fly, Apocephalus borealis. The fly
lays eggs within honeybees, inducing their hosts to make a nocturnal
“flight of the living dead,” after which the larval flies emerge, having
consumed the bee from the inside out.
These are R pests that can grow like a contagion, without Oy predators they can grow exponentially in number. In some ways the US economy was infected with zombie like home loans prior to the GFC, R people who were usually poor and even nomadic fruit pickers were able to buy million dollar homes on little or no deposit. Their aim was to resell these in the boom to make a profit to provide for their families like the parasitic fly did. The result of so many liar loans was a bizarre market that seemed to be growing because R and B people had a lot of secret income, however it was often parasitic where the usual predators looking out for this fraud where abetting it as Iv subprime agents. The center of the food chain or I-O police were weakened and deregulated allowing this self interested parasitism to grow so large as to be systemically dangerous.
These are R pests that can grow like a contagion, without Oy predators they can grow exponentially in number. In some ways the US economy was infected with zombie like home loans prior to the GFC, R people who were usually poor and even nomadic fruit pickers were able to buy million dollar homes on little or no deposit. Their aim was to resell these in the boom to make a profit to provide for their families like the parasitic fly did. The result of so many liar loans was a bizarre market that seemed to be growing because R and B people had a lot of secret income, however it was often parasitic where the usual predators looking out for this fraud where abetting it as Iv subprime agents. The center of the food chain or I-O police were weakened and deregulated allowing this self interested parasitism to grow so large as to be systemically dangerous.
These
events, although bizarre, aren’t all that unusual in the animal world.
Many fly and wasp species lay their eggs inside hosts. What is
especially interesting, and a bit more unusual, is the way an internal
parasite not only feeds on its host, but also frequently alters its
behavior, in a way that favors the continued survival and reproduction
of the parasite.
Not
all internal parasites kill their hosts, of course: pretty much every
multicellular animal is home to numerous fellow travelers, each of which
has its own agenda, which in some cases involves influencing, or taking
control of, part or all of the body in which they temporarily reside.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Tree of life branches out online
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html
The site – called OneZoom – starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk, branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever smaller categories of life. And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you can see exactly which other species it is related to. 'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke Harmon from the University of Idaho. Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life. The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and mammals.
Both the Roy animal kingdom and Biv plant kingdom can appear as branches of a tree as each branch specializes into a new branch. They can also show more cooperative herd animals of Y-Ro groups of nearby branches might remain as part of the same species for interbreeding and are held together by cooperation. For example Ro buffalo might tend to split into different branches of species seen as going up the tree but horizontally these branches near each other continue to mix their genes forming a single species. If they were attacked so much by predators that they had to break up their herds then these different genes might separate again into more separate branches that became different species. For example buffalo of different sizes, speeds, temperaments, colors, etc might stay a single herd by mixing up these gnes and protecting each other against Y predators. If they were overwhelmed by attacks then some might start to split off into separate herds or hide as loners. For example the weaker buffalo might not get protected enough and so they split off into a separate herd that survives better by running faster than the bigger buffalo. Another herd might form with colorings that hide them better in one area while the rest of the herd moves to open Savannah where their cooperation protects them better than camouflage.
However it can also be represented as roots, a Ro herd of buffalo might be one species that formed by different animals that came together to protect each other in the reverse of the previous example of a herd fragmenting. Usually each animal or person has characteristics different from each other, as do their parents down the root structure. These variations can be chaotic, go back far enough and some revolutionary gene mutations will have cause the buffalo to become what they are. This is not the same as evolution which represents incremental changes. Other variations can be random, herd animals sometimes vary in their size and weight so further down the roots they can be deviations from the normal buffalo ancestor. If two then were heavier than the norm then the offspring might be heavier, the next pairing might revert to the mean weight but some might continue randomly to select heavier mates until a species incrementally becomes the new normal of a heavier buffalo. This depends on the actions of predators, the heavier buffalo might have been slower and more vulnerable or their weight might have been an advantage.
The site – called OneZoom –
starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk,
branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you
can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever
smaller categories of life.
And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the
tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into
the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin
name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you
can see exactly which other species it is related to.
'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex
information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar
to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting
objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from
Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke
Harmon from the University of Idaho.
Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life.
The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the
first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for
different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller
branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and
mammals.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
The site – called OneZoom –
starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk,
branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you
can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever
smaller categories of life.
And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the
tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into
the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin
name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you
can see exactly which other species it is related to.
'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex
information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar
to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting
objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from
Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke
Harmon from the University of Idaho.
Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life.
The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the
first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for
different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller
branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and
mammals.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
The site – called OneZoom –
starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk,
branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you
can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever
smaller categories of life.
And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the
tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into
the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin
name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you
can see exactly which other species it is related to.
'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex
information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar
to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting
objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from
Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke
Harmon from the University of Idaho.
Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life.
The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the
first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for
different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller
branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and
mammals.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
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