Evolution – ESIST

Octopuses given mood drug ‘ecstasy’ reveal genetic link to evolution of social behaviors in humans

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According to Latest Science News — ScienceDaily (This article and its images were originally posted on Latest Science News — ScienceDaily September 21, 2018 at 09:29AM.)

By studying the genome of a kind of octopus not known for its friendliness toward its peers, then testing its behavioral reaction to a popular mood-altering drug called MDMA or “ecstasy,” scientists say they have found preliminary evidence of an evolutionary link between the social behaviors of the sea creature and humans, species separated by 500 million years on the evolutionary tree.

A summary of the experiments is published Sept. 20 in Current Biology, and if the findings are validated, the researchers say, they may open opportunities for accurately studying the impact of psychiatric drug therapies in many animals distantly related to people.

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Evolution might favor ‘survival of the laziest’

A new large-data study of fossil and extant bivalves and gastropods in the Atlantic Ocean suggests laziness might be a fruitful strategy for survival of individuals, species and even communities of species. The results have just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by a research team based at the University of Kansas.

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According to Latest Science News — ScienceDaily (This article and its images were originally posted on Latest Science News — ScienceDaily August 22, 2018 at 11:28AM.)

If you’ve got an unemployed, 30-year-old adult child still living in the basement, fear not.

A new large-data study of fossil and extant bivalves and gastropods in the Atlantic Ocean suggests laziness might be a fruitful strategy for survival of individuals, species and even communities of species. The results have just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by a research team based at the University of Kansas.

Looking at a period of roughly 5 million years from the mid-Pliocene to the present, the researchers analyzed 299 species’ metabolic rates — or, the amount of energy the organisms need to live their daily lives — and found higher metabolic rates were a reliable predictor of extinction likelihood.

“We wondered, ‘Could you look at the probability of extinction of a species based on energy uptake by an organism?'” said Luke Strotz, postdoctoral researcher at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum and lead author of the paper. “We found a difference for mollusk species that have gone extinct over the past 5 million years and ones that are still around today. Those that have gone extinct tend to have higher metabolic rates than those that are still living. Those that have lower energy maintenance requirements seem more likely to survive than those organisms with higher metabolic rates.”

Strotz’ co-authors were KU’s Julien Kimmig, collection manager at the Biodiversity Institute, and Bruce Lieberman, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as Erin Saupe of Oxford University.

“Maybe in the long term the best evolutionary strategy for animals is to be lassitudinous and sluggish — the lower the metabolic rate, the more likely the species you belong to will survive,” Lieberman said. “Instead of ‘survival of the fittest,’ maybe a better metaphor for the history of life is ‘survival of the laziest’ or at least ‘survival of the sluggish.'”

The researchers said their work could have important implications for forecasting which species may be likely to vanish in the near term in the face of impending climate change.

“In a sense, we’re looking at a potential predictor of extinction probability,” Strotz said. “At the species level, metabolic rate isn’t the be-all, end-all of extinction — there are a lot of factors at play. But these results say that the metabolic rate of an organism is a component of extinction likelihood. With a higher metabolic rate, a species is more likely to go extinct. So, it’s another tool in the toolbox. This will increase our understanding of the mechanisms that drive extinction and help us to better determine the likelihood of a species going extinct.”

The team found that a higher metabolic rate was a better indicator of extinction probability, especially when the species were confined to a smaller habitat, and less so when a species was spread over a wide geographic area of the ocean.

“We find the broadly distributed species don’t show the same relationship between extinction and metabolic rate as species with a narrow distribution,” Strotz said. “Range size is an important component of extinction likelihood, and narrowly distributed species seem far more likely to go extinct. If you’re narrowly distributed and have a high metabolic rate, your probability of extinction is very high at that point.”

The team also found that cumulative metabolic rates for communities of species remained stable, even as individual species appear and disappear within the community.

“We find if you look at overall communities, and all the species that make up those communities, the average metabolic rate for the community tends to remain unchanged over time,” Strotz said. “There seems to be stasis in communities at the energetic level. In terms of energy uptake, new species develop — or the abundance of those still around increases — to take up the slack, as other species go extinct. This was a surprise, as you’d expect the community level metabolic rate to change as time goes by. Instead, the mean energy uptake remains the same over millions of years for these bivalves and gastropods, despite numerous extinctions.”

Strotz said he used mollusks to study the phenomenon of metabolism’s contribution to extinction rates because of ample available data about living and extinct species.

“You need very large data sets with a lot of species and occurrences,” he said. “Many of these bivalves and gastropod species are still alive, so a lot of the data we needed to do this work can come from what we know about living bivalve and gastropod physiology. The reason we picked the Western Atlantic as a study area is because we have excellent large datasets recording distribution of both fossil and living mollusks from this region. I used a lot of fossil material from collections around the U.S.”

According to the research team, a follow-up to this line of inquiry will be to establish the extent to which metabolic rate has an influence on the extinction rates of other kinds of animals.

“We see these results as generalizable to other groups, at least within the marine realm,” Strotz said. “Some of the next steps are to expand it out to other clades, to see if the result is consistent with some things we know about other groups. There is a question as to whether this is just a mollusk phenomenon? There’s some justification, given the size of this data set, and the long amount of time it covers, that it’s generalizable. But you need to look — can it apply to vertebrates? Can it apply on land?”

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Eating bone marrow played a key role in the evolution of the human hand

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According to Phys.org – latest science and technology news stories (This article and its images were originally posted on Phys.org – latest science and technology news stories July 11, 2018 at 11:33AM.)

Student using stone tool. Credit: Erin Marie Williams-Hatala

The strength required to access the high calorie content of bone marrow may have played a key role in the evolution of the human hand and explain why primates hands are not like ours, research at the University of Kent has found.

In an article in The Journal of Human Evolution, a team lead by Professor Tracy Kivell of Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation concludes that although stone tool making has always been considered a key influence on the evolution of the human hand, accessing bone marrow generally has not.

It is widely accepted that the unique dexterity of the human hand evolved, at least in part, in response to stone tool use during our evolutionary history.

Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominins participated in a variety of tool-related activities, such as nut-cracking, cutting flesh, smashing bone to access marrow, as well as making stone tools. However, it is unlikely that all these behaviours equally influenced modern human hand anatomy.

To understand the impact these different actions may have had on the evolution of human hands, researchers measured the force experienced by the hand of 39 individuals during different stone tool behaviours—nut-cracking, marrow acquisition with a hammerstone, flake production with a hammerstone, and handaxe and stone tool (i.e. a flake) – to see which digits were most important for manipulating the tool.

They found that the pressures varied across the different behaviours, with nut-cracking generally requiring the lowest pressure while making the flake and accessing marrow required the greatest pressures. Across all of the different behaviours, the thumb, index finger and middle finger were always most important.

Professor Kivell says this suggests that nut-cracking force may not be high enough to elicit changes in the formation of the human hand, which may be why other primates are adept nut-crackers without having a human-like hand.

In contrast, making stone flakes and accessing marrow may have been key influences on our hand anatomy due to the high stress they cause on our hands. The researchers concluded that eating marrow, given its additional benefit of high calorific value, may have also played a key role in evolution of human dexterity.

The manual pressures of stone tool behaviors and their implications for the evolution of the human hand by Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, Kevin G. Hatala, McKenzie Gordon and Margaret Kasper, all Chatham University, Pittsburgh, USA and Alastair Key and Tracy Kivell, University of Kent is published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

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Arizona state education standards see evolution deleted

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According to Science – Ars Technica

In Arizona, the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction has led a campaign to remove evolution from the state’s science education standards. Diane Douglas has taken the standards, written by educators, and selectively replaced instances of the word “evolution” with euphemisms like “change over time.” The alterations come less than a year after Douglas publicly advocated for introducing religious ideas into biology classrooms. Arizona residents still have roughly a week to submit comments on the changes.

Edited standards

Most states develop educational standards that define their expectations for what students should know at different stages of their time in school. These standards then govern things from the mass purchase of textbooks to the design of instructional plans by individual teachers. For large states like California and Texas, the decisions involved in the formation of educational standards can dictate the structure of textbooks that are released nationwide, as publishers try to develop one book that they can sell everywhere.

Arizona doesn’t have this level of influence, but it has over a million students enrolled. The science standards would govern both the textbooks that could be available to them, how they’ll be instructed, and the content of any standardized testing they receive.

The new standards were developed by a team of over 30 educators, after which they were submitted to the state Department of Education. And that’s where things started to go wrong. According to some of the teachers that wrote these standards, the state normally edits for clarity and grammar and makes changes to document formatting. The changes that were put in place this time were far more substantial.

For example, the original standards instructed students to “Gather and communicate evidence on how the process of natural selection provides an explanation of how new species can evolve.” That was changed to providing evidence on “the processes by which a species may change over time in response to environmental conditions.” Instead of being expected to “Obtain, evaluate, and communicate evidence that describes how inherited traits in a population can lead to evolution,” students are now asked to discuss how they can lead to “biological diversity.” Similarly, the instruction to “Gather, evaluate, and communicate multiple lines of empirical evidence to explain the mechanisms of biological evolution” was altered to mechanisms of “change in genetic composition of a population over successive generations.”

Evolution wasn’t gone entirely; in any cases where it remained, the references were changed so that it was discussed as the “theory of evolution.” Even though evolution is both a fact and a theory, this language is often favored by those who hope the public views “theory” as taking its common meaning as conjecture, rather than its scientific meaning as a well-supported and validated explanation for observations.

Evolution wasn’t alone. The standards’ lone reference to the Big Bang was also altered, from “Analyze, interpret, and critique supporting evidence for the Big Bang theory and the scale of the Universe” to focus on evidence for “theories related to the scale and expansion of the Universe.”

Who did this?

The changes were enough to cause the Department of Education’s director of K-12 science education to resign.

Multiple press reports have indicated that Superintendent Diane Douglas was responsible for the changes. She’s certainly defended them. “Evolution is a theory in many ways,” Douglas told reporters. “And that’s what our children should understand, that while there are parts and pieces of it that are, we can I think agree, are proven science, there are other areas of it that are very theoretical, and if we’re going to educate our children instead of just indoctrinate them to one way of thinking, we have to be able to allow them to explore all types of areas.”

However, it’s not clear that Douglas understands what a scientific theory is. “You know, once upon a time people said the Earth was flat and it couldn’t possibly be round,” the same interview quotes her as saying. “You know? I don’t know.” A local TV station also received audio of Douglas speaking at a Republican candidates’ forum, where she said “Should the theory of intelligent design be taught along with the theory of evolution? Absolutely.”

Historians and the US court system have determined that intelligent design is not a scientific theory but a strategy used by biblical creationists who would like to insert their ideas into the science classroom. In her more recent interview, Douglas said she didn’t follow through on that: “We have absolutely nothing in these standards in reference to intelligent design or creationism or whatever anybody else wants to call it.” But limiting discussion of evolution and removing references to its factual nature accomplishes some of the goals of the people who have promoted intelligent design.

There is a week left in the public comment period for the proposed standards. Citizens residing in Arizona have the opportunity to let Douglas know how they feel about the alterations, though it’s not clear she’ll be interested in listening.

‘All In’ on AI, Part 2: Driving the Evolution of 8K Picture Quality and Advanced Sound on TV through AI

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According to Samsung Global Newsroom

What do you consider important when watching the Olympic Games on TV? Vivid picture and sound quality on your TV would be able to provide you a lifelike experience just as if you were onsite at the Games. The artificial intelligence (AI) technology which Samsung Electronics recently unveiled at CES 2018 promises to deliver this kind of experience, with picture quality nearly the equivalent of 8K (7,680 × 4,320) resolution, as well as optimized sound, for real-time and other video content.

The new AI technology achieves close to 8K resolution and enhanced sound quality by aligning with the unique characteristics of the specific content, a step up from typical upscaling technology used to improve image quality. So how exactly does it work? Let’s take a closer look.

Enjoy any content in 8K through Machine Learning

The world’s first 8K AI Technology that realizes a definition nearly the equivalent of 8K is based on Machine Learning. Computers or smartphones run according to directive values that humans enter. In contrast, Machine Learning refers to the way AI learns certain patterns and gives optimized answers based on various examples.

Samsung’s Machine Learning Super Resolution (MLSR) utilizes AI technology to compare low and high-quality versions of the same content to learn the technological differences between the two and form a vast database. It analyzes millions of pieces of video content and finds a correlation. Based on its analysis, it can select the optimum filters that support brightness, the level of blackness, spread and other errors from all inputs, and transform low-definition content to close to 8K high definition.

The input content is recognized as ‘real-time’ based on a frame and is enhanced by scenes, which makes it possible to upgrade image and sound quality immediately, regardless of whether the video source is live streaming or OTT (Over The Top).

8K picture quality through AI, what’s the difference?

Other upscaling techniques require human input to compare low-resolution and high-resolution scenes and find ways to reconstruct them. However, Samsung’s AI Technology enables it to self-study millions of images on its own using MLSR, allowing much-improved accuracy compared to conventional technologies.

There are three elements to improving picture quality on displays. First is ‘Detail Creation’ that sharpens the detail of expression and improves the texture to areas with low definition that have become blurry after compressing the file. Second, ‘Edge Restoration’ defines the edges of text, people or objects in a video, moving pixels on the borders to thin them down to increase legibility and visibility. For example, if text context is spreaded along the edges, the video will be adjusted around the text for clarity. In a video that shows the moon, Edge Restoration improves details of the moon’s shadow and enhances the darkness of the background for a clear distinction. Lastly, ‘Noise Reduction’ gets rid of static noises generated during high compression or recompression of files. In order to transmit an image, it is necessary to compress the image. In this process, various ‘noises’ such as a jiggling point or a squared dot can be effectively removed according to the image characteristics.

AI delivers immersive sound effects

When watching dramas or movies, realistic, immersive sounds are as important as picture quality. Samsung’s AI technology not only transforms low-definition into high-definition, but also optimizes the sound quality of content.

Conventional TVs provide multiple view settings such as movie mode and sports mode according to the genre of content. With Samsung’s new AI technology, content can be automatically analyzed by characterizing scenes to provide optimum sounds.

For example, let’s say you were watching a movie that includes musical performances. AI technology can highlight the music in a way that allows you to experience the sound as the actual characters would. When the crowd applauds after the performance is over, you would hear the clapping the same way as if you were in the crowd in the movie. When characters are speaking, AI adjusts the sound to make sure the lines are communicated clearly.

Imagine you were watching a relay broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics that started last week. AI will enhance the voice of the announcer so that you don’t miss who’s up next. When a game has started, AI will increase the background sound to deliver the liveliness of the actual game. With this tailored sound adjustment scene by scene, audiences can enjoy the best sound quality for any genre of content.

Samsung developers plan to continue to improve sound quality according to the preferences of individual viewers so that each viewer can enjoy the best TV viewing experience, right for them. Because volume patterns differ for every user, and the viewing environment can change according to the time of day and other factors, the sound will be accordingly adjusted and optimized to provide the most enjoyable experience to each individual viewer.

Why does 8K AI technology matter?

As customer needs for high-definition TVs and content increases, some terrestrial broadcasting stations have committed to working towards UHD delivery, and various IPTV and cable channels have initiated 4K UHD (3,840 × 2,160) services. However, even as the TV industry begins to launch 8K (7,680 × 4,320) TVs, the reality is that 4K content is, as of yet, still not fully utilized in homes.

In this context, Samsung has proposed a new direction for TV technology by combining 8K UHD display technology and premiere content through AI. Samsung has developed an AI algorithm that automatically enhances picture quality to solve the problem of limited high-quality content. As example, AI technology plays a key role in the 85-inch 8K QLED TV technology that Samsung introduced at CES 2018.

Samsung will begin the process of applying AI technology to its 8K QLED TVs from the second half of this year, and viewers will soon be able to enjoy UHD quality video that is nearly 8K in resolution and delivers optimized sound for any type of content. A genuine 8K era is now on the horizon, and Samsung will continue to lead the way.

Mutant crayfish got rid of males, and its clones are taking over the world

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According to Science – Ars Technica

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It’s possible to infer many species’ origins from things like fossils and DNA sequences. But for one creature, we have a specific date: 1995. That’s when the first marbled crayfish appeared in a pet shop in Germany, mixed in with similar-looking animals that had originally come from streams in the US South.

When it came to selling pets, the marbled crayfish had a big advantage over its relatives: it doesn’t need males to reproduce. Instead, females are able to produce genetic copies of themselves, allowing any fish tank to become a factory for an army of crayfish clones. Now, researchers have confirmed that these clones have spread throughout Europe, gotten as far as Japan, and begun invading the streams of Madagascar.

Ostensibly, the publication that describes these results is about the completion of the genome for the marbled crayfish. And the genome is what has allowed researchers to confirm that crayfish from around the world are essentially clones. But the real story in Nature Ecology and Evolution is the evolution and global spread of an entirely new species in less than 25 years.

Pet shop girls

We know it’s less than 25 years because the species originated in a German pet shop. The shop had been selling a species (Procambarus fallax) that originated in the streams of Georgia and Florida, when a different-looking crayfish appeared in their midst. Named “marmorkrebs,” or the marbled crayfish, it had a feature that made it especially appealing for the pet trade: it was parthenogenic, meaning that it was an all-female species that produces viable eggs. Put one in a tank and it would eventually fill up with offspring that could all be sold as pets.

As we’ve seen in far too many cases, however, pets often end up reintroduced to the wild. And for marmokrebs, the same feature that made it good for pet stores meant that a single escaped or abandoned crayfish could eventually populate an entire stream. Marmokrebs has now been found from Sweden to Italy and from the Netherlands to the Ukraine. It’s established itself in Japan and Madagascar, and it’s been introduced back into the US as a pet, which means it’s a matter of time until it ends up back in the wild here, too.

How does parthenogenesis work, and how can it produce a brand new species? Normally, when animals make eggs and sperm, they get rid of one of their two sets of chromosomes. That way, when egg and sperm combine, they re-establish the normal collection of two sets of chromosomes. In parthenogenic animals, the females never get rid of one of the sets of chromosomes. The eggs end up with two sets, both from their mother—from a genetic standpoint, they’re clones of the mother.

In the case of marmokrebs, its origin and the parthenogenesis seem to be related. The species seems to have three sets of chromosomes instead of the usual two. This could come about if a female produced an egg with two sets of chromosomes and then had it fertilized by a male that added a third.

The new genome sequence confirms that this was the case, as marmokrebs carries two sets of nearly identical chromosomes, along with a third that’s more distantly related. (Since crayfish apparently have a lot of chromosomes to begin with, this means that these animals carry around 276 individual chromosomes). Having an extra copy of every gene is probably useful, too, as a lack of sexual reproduction makes it impossible for reproduction to remove damaged genes from the marmokrebs genomes.

It’s possible that the original failure to divide up chromosomes during egg production was genetic, so the offspring of this mating would be prone to doing so as well. But it’s also possible that a process that evolved to divide two sets of chromosomes in half simply choked when faced with three sets of chromosomes. In either case, the female offspring of this mating started producing eggs that included all three sets of chromosomes and were capable of developing into viable adults. In essence, the organism evolved a way to clone itself.

Globalization

And marmokrebs has been remarkably successful, as ecological studies suggest that its range in just one country (Madagascar) has expanded from 1,000 square kilometers to 100,000 in just a decade. While still closely related to its American cousins, marmokrebs has picked up enough genetic changes to be distinct from them at the DNA level. Meanwhile, populations from around the world are nearly identical—the authors tested lab strains from the US and Germany, pet shop and wild samples from Germany, and a number of animals obtained from different areas in Madagascar. Put differently, the globe is now filled with imperfect clones of a pet shop accident.

Normally, success in a wide range of ecosystems relies on a fair bit of underlying genetic diversity, which enables traits that help organisms adapt to local peculiarities. But in this case, marmokrebs seems to be managing it with minimal adaptation, despite invading environments as diverse as Madagascar and Sweden. There are interesting genes in the sequence obtained by the authors; for example, marmokrebs has enzymes that can break down cellulose, which is the rugged polymer that makes up plant walls and gives wood its strength (most other animals rely on bacteria to digest this). But these genes seem to be shared by other crayfish.

This rapid spread may be a problem for ecologists that are trying to preserve native species, but it’s fascinating for biology. To begin with, the populations around the globe will gradually adapt to their new environment, and the new genome provides a baseline that we can use to identify the genetic changes that enable this. In addition, we’re only aware of a handful of non-microbial species that have managed to forgo sexual reproduction for a long time. We know what genetic changes have enabled those species to survive without sex, so we can watch to see if any of the same things evolve in these crayfish.

Guide: Pokemon Go has a new Eevee evolution trick for Umbreon and Espeon

‘Tamao’ and ‘Sakura’ respectively

Remember the Pokemon Go Eevee trick where you could get a specific evolution based on names from the TV show (Rainer for Vaporeon, Sparky for Jolteon, Pyro for Flareon)? Well it’s back alongside of the Generation 2 update that hit this week.

All you have to do is name your Eevee “Sakura” if you want to evolve it into an Espeon, or “Tamao” if you want an Umbreon. That’s it! As per the previous trick you can only use it once before it randomizes from then on — so make sure you have your perfect creature before you pull the trigger.

Seeing little Easter eggs like this helps make the game shine a little bit, even if it has a lot of the glaring issues it’s had since launch — like a wonky gym system and a lack of real head-to-head PVP and trading.

[Thanks Robert!]

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This article was posted on destructoid.com

by Chris Carter

Plant discovered that neither photosynthesizes nor blooms.

Gastrodia kuroshimensis discovered on Kuroshima.

Credit: Copyright Kenji Suetsugu

Project Associate Professor Kenji Suetsugu (Kobe University Graduate School of Science) has discovered a new species of plant on the subtropical Japanese island of Kuroshima (located off the southern coast of Kyushu in Kagoshima prefecture) and named it Gastrodia kuroshimensis. This research was published on October 14 in the Phytotaxa.

Non-photosynthetic mycorrhizal plants, or mycoheterotrophic plants, have long attracted the curiosity of botanists and mycologists. However, a common feature of most mycoheterotrophic plants is their extreme scarcity and small size. In addition, most species are found in the dark understory of forests, only discoverable during the flowering and fruiting period when aboveground organs appear through the leaf litter. As such, we still have scant knowledge on the precise taxonomy of the mycoheterotrophic group.

Professor Suetsugu is involved in documenting the distribution and classification of mycoheterotrophic plants in Japan. In April 2016, during his research trip in the lowland forests in Kuroshima, he came across approximately one hundred individuals of an unfamiliar mycoheterotrophic species. He collected a specimen, carried out a detailed examination of the plant’s morphological characteristics and found that it was indeed a new species.

The description of a new flowering plant species in Japan is itself a very rare event as the flora of this region have been thoroughly investigated. However, G. kuroshimensis was a particularly special discovery because it is both completely mycoheterophic, deriving its nutrition not from photosynthesis but from host fungi, and completely cleistogamous, producing flowers that never bloom.

Cleistogamy, literally meaning ‘a closed marriage’, refers to plants that produce flowers in which self-fertilization occurs within closed buds. This mechanism of reproduction has intrigued botanists since the time of Darwin, and is now recognized as an important mechanism of self-pollination that is found in a diverse range of plant taxa. However, most cleistogamous species also produce chasmogamous (cross-pollinating) flowers. Cleistogamous flowers are considered a bet-hedging strategy, since they require less resources than chasmogamous flowers, and because they can provide reproductive assurance by setting seeds in the absence of pollinators and under disadvantageous environmental conditions. In addition, cleistogamous flowers can also promote adaptation to local habitats, as both maternal sets of genes can be passed onto the progeny, purging deleterious alleles (gene variants which are generally harmful). However, this is a somewhat risky strategy as the progeny are also less able to adapt to changes in spatially and temporally heterogeneous habitats.

The evolution of complete cleistogamy is therefore somewhat of a mystery. Chasmogamous flowers are an important factor in the success of most plants as even a small degree of outcrossing can result in a relatively rapid decline in linkage disequilibrium across the genome, and is sufficient to overcome the negative effects associated with an absence of effective recombination, such as the accumulation of deleterious mutations and a slowdown in the rate of adaptation. The discovery of G. kuroshimensis, therefore, provides a useful opportunity to further investigate the ecological significance, evolutionary history, and genetic mechanisms underlying the evolution of complete cleistogamy.

Story Source: Materials provided by Kobe University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Original article on ScienceDaily

Study finds straightforward way to model growth of vein networks

Evolution tends to create simple rules that can work in organisms of all kinds. These rules are often all that nature needs to build some of the most complicated parts of biology through thousands of years of adaptation.

Vascular systems, for example, must efficiently deliver nutrients throughout an organism’s body but must be adaptable to allow those organisms to grow into different shapes and sizes.

A new study by Eleni Katifori, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy of the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences, and Henrik Ronellenfitsch, a postdoc in her lab, described how a simple rule guides the development of the vasculature in both animals and plants.

They used mathematical modeling to show that this rule, known as adaptive feedback, can produce the most efficient possible network of veins for any organism.

Their findings were published in Physical Review Letters.

The idea of adaptive feedback has been known in biophysics for some time. It refers to when plants and animals use the rate of liquid flow through their veins to decide to increase the size of the pathways and where to get rid of them.

“It’s a very simple rule,” Katifori said. “You use the vessel or you lose it.”

A model using the rule of adaptive feedback alone, however, wasn’t able to predict the kind of efficient vascular systems that appear in real-life organisms. There was a discrepancy in the field between development models predicted by adaptive feedback and the systems predicted to be most efficient.

Ronellenfitsch theorized that using adaptive feedback alone was not enough to predict how veins develop, and he set out to find what other variables he needed to explain it. It only took one other factor to set the model straight: growth. Ronellenfitsch found that, when he factored in the growth of an organism over time, the model fit real-world vein networks.

“Once I had the derivation, the rest was almost straightforward,” Ronellenfitsch said. “It came as a surprise that it works as well as it does.”

The model he devised not only reflected real life vein networks but also was the most efficient possible design. It predicts that, as an organism grows, a series of smaller and smaller veins spread out to carry nutrients to the new areas.

“You start off with a main vein that develops first,” Ronellenfitsch said,” and then secondary veins that branch off of the main vein development, third order veins that branch off of those, and so on and so on.”

Katifori thinks this finding is especially remarkable as it can be generalized across animal and plant species. Because these rules are so ubiquitous in biology, she predicts that this model could have implications beyond the biological world.

It is likely that this model can be applied to other systems that distribute resources through a network, such as a power grid running electricity through its system.

“This study implies,” Katifori said, “that whenever you have a system that transports liquids, energy, and maybe other things we haven’t looked at, if you have growth then you will get something close to the best possible network—the absolute best one, not just a good one.”

While this model helps explain how vein networks form, it does not provide the whole picture. The model does not yet include redundant veins that make it possible to recover from tissue damage, which is an important feature of biological systems.

“In our model, if you cut something, everything downstream from that vein is dead,” said Ronellenfitsch, “and that’s not a feature that vein networks have. Real networks are highly redundant.”

Future research from the group will go toward understanding how different organisms build in redundancies, which could help further explain the underlying rules of evolution.

Original article on phys.org

Provided by: University of Pennsylvania

Researchers shed light on evolutionary mystery: Origins of the female orgasm

Female orgasm seems to be a happy afterthought of our evolutionary past when it helped stimulate ovulation, a new study of mammals shows.

The role of female orgasm, which plays no obvious role in human reproduction, has intrigued scholars as far back as Aristotle. Numerous theories have tried to explain the origins of the trait, but most have concentrated on its role in human and primate biology.

Now scientists at Yale and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have provided fresh insights on the subject by examining the evolving trait across different species. Their study appears Aug. 1 in the journal JEZ-Molecular and Developmental Evolution.

“Prior studies have tended to focus on evidence from human biology and the modification of a trait rather than its evolutionary origin,” said Gunter Wagner, the Alison Richard Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary biology, and a member of Yale’s Systems Biology Institute.

Instead, Wagner and Mihaela Pavličev of the Center for Prevention of Preterm Birth at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital propose that the trait that evolved into human female orgasm had an ancestral function in inducing ovulation.

Since there is no apparent association between orgasm and number of offspring or successful reproduction in humans, the scientists focused on a specific physiological trait that accompanies human female orgasm—the neuro-endocrine discharge of prolactin and oxytocin—and looked for this activity in other placental mammals. They found that in many mammals this reflex plays a role in ovulation.

In spite of the enormous diversity of mammalian reproductive biology, some core characteristics can be traced throughout mammalian evolution, note the researchers. The female ovarian cycle in humans, for instance, is not dependent upon sexual activity. However, in other mammalian species ovulation is induced by males. The scientists’ analysis shows male-induced ovulation evolved first and that cyclical or spontaneous ovulation is a derived trait that evolved later.

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Article photo via: clarebainstudio

Source: Researchers shed light on evolutionary mystery: Origins of the female orgasm

Pokemon Go: here’s how to choose one of three evolutions for Eevee | ESIST

Pokemon Go players can evolve their Eevee into one of three creatures of their choosing using a particular nickname for each. According to various reports, all noted on reddit, those who catch Eevee can evolve it into first-gen Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flar…

According to various reports, all noted on reddit, those who catch Eevee can evolve it into first-gen Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon.

They way it’s done is by giving Eeeve a different nickname for each evolution.

Jolteon – give nickname Sparky
Vaporeon – give the nickname Rainer
Flareon – give the nickname Pyro

These nicknames should sound familiar to Pokemon fans: the Eevee Brothers in the original anime were named Sparky, Rainer and Pyro.

You can see the changes in action in the YouTube video above from skinzfan602.

Source: Pokemon Go: here’s how to choose one of three evolutions for Eevee | VG247

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