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Octopi started as Duo-pi

Artist's reconstruction of Nectocaris pteryx, courtesy Marianne Collins

The half-billion-year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale preserve a remarkable diversity of some of the earliest complex animals on Earth. However, some of these animals are so strange that, on first look, paleontologists can't tell front from back or which end goes up. Only after careful examination of many fossils can connections be made to their evolutionary descendants. Martin Smith, a Ph.D student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Royal Ontario Museum has done so with a small soft-bodied creature, called Nectocaris pteryx, which he says is the earliest known cephalopod - the family of animals that includes squid, octopi and nautiluses. Nectocaris was up to five cm. long, had two long tentacles, fins on its side like cuttlefish or squid, and, most importantly, a tube connected to its gills for the jet-propelled emergency propulsion that's characteristic of modern cephalopods.

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Related Links 
Paper in Nature
News report from Nature
News release from the Royal Ontario Museum
News release from University of Toronto
Pharyngula blog
Not Exactly Rocket Science blog
CBC News story
Martin Smith's web page

What's the Matter with the Universe?

The Fermilab accelerator complex, Credit: Fermilab

Physicists at the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron Collider near Chicago have been trying to answer the question of why is there matter in the universe and not its opposite, antimatter? It is part of a collaboration involving over 500 physicists called the DZero Experiment. One of the scientists is Dr. Wendy Taylor, a Canada Research Chair in Experimental Particle Physics and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York University in Toronto. She and her colleagues have come up with an important new clue that helps explain why enough matter survived after the Big Bang to allow for the existence of the galaxies, planets and ultimately people.

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Related Links 

Paper at arXiv
News release from York University
News release from FermiLab
The DZero Experiment 
Dr. Taylor's web page

What's Shakin' Kermit?

Frog model, courtsy M.S. Caldwell

Dr. Michael Caldwell set out to answer an important question: What is that frog doing with its butt? Dr. Caldwell studies the red-eyed tree frog, which perches on stems and small branches, calling hopefully to females. But when competing males approach, the male shakes his tail end. Since all this happens in the dark, it wasn't clear to Dr. Caldwell that this was a visual signal. So, with the help of accelerometers to detect movement and a "robo-frog" to imitate the butt-shaking, Dr. Caldwell discovered that the frogs weren't just shaking their booties. In fact, they were shaking the plants they were on, in order to send intimidating vibratory messages to competing males.

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Related Links 
Paper in Current Biology
Story at ScienceNow
Not Exactly Rocket Science blog


Termites Rule

The green grass of a termite mound in Kenya. Dr. Todd Palmer

The termite of the African savanna is not the pest it was once thought to be. In fact, biologists like Dr. Todd Palmer from the University of Florida in Gainesville feel that termites, like the ones he studied in Kenya, play a vital role in building ecosystems. They  live in mounds that are 10 to 30 metres in diameter and are mostly below ground. Their cycle of eating decayed material and then defecating  adds phosphorous and nitrogen to the mostly clay soil. Also, the termites' network of tunnels help with both soil aeration and irrigation. The result is that the mounds become fertile patches that promote vegetation. The vegetation attract a variety of insects, as well as lizards and larger animals, including zebras. Satellite images of the individual mounds indicate a checkerboard pattern of termite mounds, built 60 to 100 metres apart to avoid competition and maximize growth.

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Related Links 
Paper in the PLoS Biology
News Release from the University of Florida
Dr. Palmer's web page
The Palmer Lab
CBC News story

The Eerie Silence

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of an international research program known as SETI - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. And so far, they've discovered - nothing. Not a beep, not a sound, not a tweet. Absolutely nothing. So does that mean that there is no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Or have we just been looking in the wrong places, using the wrong tools, and making some bad assumptions about alien intelligence? Those are the questions that Dr. Paul Davies poses in his new book, The Eerie Silence: Renewing our Search for Alien Intelligence. Dr. Davies is a cosmologist and astrobiologist, and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona Sate University. 



Related Links 
The Eerie Silence - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Beyond Center at Arizona State University
Dr. Davies web page
SETI Institute
Quirks panel: What If ET Calls Us


Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein. 
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