A Ring of Evolution

I have been reading The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins. Quite appropriate reading as we are celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. In his book Richard Dawkins trail our ancestors back in time and identify those points where we start sharing ancestors with other current species and life forms. It starts with the recent evolution of the human race and our most recent common ancestors to the apes. I found this quite rich introductory part one of the most interesting parts of the book. And throughout the book it is exciting to realize that there is an broken chain of ancestors going from myself and all the way back to the first ancient bacteria on earth!

On the way back in time Dawkins tells different stories – or tales – to clarify and emphasize various scientific points of evolution theory. One of those tales is ‘the Salamanders tale’. The purpose of the salamanders tale is to show how species evolve and how it can be very difficult to tell when one species turns into another. For instance it is quite common to say that if two populations cannot interbreed they belong to two different species. But in the development through time of a new species there isn’t any one point in time where a child population would be so different from its parent population that inter-breeding would cause any physiological challenge. This is neatly exemplified through the story of the Ensatina salamanders of the Central Valley of California, and through the analogous story of the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull. Both are examples of so called ring species. The herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull live in my neighborhood, and I would like to share their story with you.

The fact is that in Norway (as in Dawkins England) the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull live side by side. But they are quite distinctly different species. As can be seen from the picture below they have quite different colors, and though they quite often live side by side they do not interbreed.


But if you follow the population of the herring gull around the world, through North America, Siberia and back to Europe, you will observe that the herring gulls gradually turns more similar to the lesser black-backed gulls until the ring is ended and the herring gull has turned into lesser black-backed gulls and the two 'species' live side by side! All the way around the ring there are no two separate populations but rather interbreeding among populations that gradually changes as you keep going east. Of course you could take the opposite journey starting with the lesser black-backed gull and go west until you end up with the herring gull at the end of the ring.

I think this story shows very neatly how new species can evolve, with the normal time dimension replaced by a geographical dimension. Of course there must have been time involved as well. One of the ‘species’ (or rather its ancestor) came first, and evolved over time as it moved east – or west. Incidentally the herring gull is called “grey gull”, and the lesser black-backed gull is called “herring gull” in Norway. Ignorant of the real facts I am tempted to visualize the British herring gull traveling east and evolving into the Norwegian herring gull as it reached the shores of Norway.

Nanomanufacturing for Energy Efficiency - RD&D Pathway for Industrial Applications

This figure is taken from the 2007 Nanomanufacturing for Energy Efficiency Workshop Report. It shows a roadmap for R&D towards nanotechnology giving large energy savings.

The full report is available at http://www.bcsmain.com/mlists/files/NanoWorkshop_report.pdf.

I can also recommend the "twine" for Nano Energy at http://www.twine.com/twine/11lg50t8z-bm/nano-energy

Twine - semantic AI begin to crawl

We haven't seen much of the promised semantic web yet. Some time ago a new internet service was launched that could help change that. Twine combines intelligent software able to pick up meaning from web page entries with a kind of social network where members bookmark interesting web content and tag it to one or more established 'twines'. I have tried it out, and although there is a long way to go, I still think its a step in the right direction. I suggest you try it out!

Robocars

You know the feeling when you have a question that you don't dare to speak out because you are afraid that everyone will think you are stupid? I had the same feeling regarding robotic cars back in the early 1980's. I was in high school, and had just discovered computers. I had bought a computer called VIC-20 - the predecessor of Commodore 64. I shared the enthusiasm of many sci-fi and artificial intelligence fans in those days, having a lot of confidence in the future of computing power and software sophistication. Never the less, I felt my idea (I really thought this was my own idea) of having autonomous cars driving around was a bit over the top, and I didn't bring the subject up in any serious conversations. Today this topic is becoming more and more mainstream. If you're interested, I recommend this entry point - Brad Templeton's blog entry: http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

Progress in medical science

Enormous progress is being made in myriads of areas in medical science. I would love to follow all of it, but that is clearly not possible. News media are helpful in the way that they are professionals in rating news value, but it is not always easy to set important breakthroughs apart from small incremental progress.

I have a few areas that I try to follow more closely than others. Parkinson's, MS, Ankylosing spondylitis (known as Bechterew's disease), AIDS and Alzheimer's disease for instance. And particularly cancer. Cancer is now the the disease that removes most years from the mean expected life span in Norway, and I expect the same is true in most of developed countries at least. It is also the area with most activity and constant reports on discoveries and breakthroughs.

This weeks biggest story would seem to be about multiple sclerosis (MS). This story even made the norwegian broadcasting's evening news. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-10-22-multiple-sclerosis_N.htm?csp=34. This illustrates the difficulty even for professional journalists to sort out what is breaking news and what is not. I have seen many breakthroughs in cancer research that are more important than this one. This doesn't mean that the MS news are unimportant. I have seen MS up close, and I really appreciate any progress in medication and potential cures. But as always the story is not fully told by it's headlines. Stephen Hauser, a University of California-San Francisco neurologist, writes in an editorial that alemtuzumab's "toxic effects … considerably dampen any enthusiasm for its routine use in patients with multiple sclerosis until more is known about its long-term safety and sustained efficacy."

When I look for important breakthroughs I put high value on research that improves our understanding of the problem area, clearifies cause-effect relationships and possibly takes important steps in line with road maps drawn up to permanently solve a problem. The MS story, for all it's promising positives, doesn't quite qualify to get on the list of important breakthroughs all by itself. But maybe further resarch about what makes the medicine work can teach us enough to eliminate adverse effects. That would be truly significant progress.