How to get out of a tight shell
Check out this fantastic video of a large crab squeezing out of its tight shell. As is typical with nature videos, this is more amazing than most fiction. Monster Crab Exits Shell - Watch more Funny Videos
Check out this fantastic video of a large crab squeezing out of its tight shell. As is typical with nature videos, this is more amazing than most fiction. Monster Crab Exits Shell - Watch more Funny Videos
If feels good to swing your arms while walking, and now we know that there is a good biomechanical reason too: it saves energy. This, according to a study by the University of Michigan.
I don't claim to understand most of this Harvard video regarding the inner life of cells, but I'm fascinated by the visuals. This 2006 video by Alain Viel, Robert A. Lue and John Liebler, functions as a biography about you (and me) and brings to mind the following passages from Harold M. Franklin's poetic/scientific book, The Way of the Cell, Page x (2001):
One response to the question, What Is Life?, is simply, Look around! Note the birds and butterflies, zebras and ammonites, the intricate web of life present and past, and joined the unending struggle to ensure its continuance in the face of human arrogance and mindlessness. This has been eloquently said by others, far better than I could, and it is not what I have in mind here. For the past 40 years, I’ve been immersed in research on the biochemistry and physiology of microorganisms, with emphasis on the fundamental aspects such as bioergetics and morphogenesis. In consequence, the central problems of life present themselves to me at the interface of chemistry and biology. How do lifeless chemicals come together to produce those exquisitely ordered structures that we call organisms? How can molecular interactions account for their behavior, growth, reproduction? How did organisms and their constituents arise on an Earth that had neither, and then diversify into the cornucopia of creatures that can live in each drop of pond water? My purpose is not to “reduce” biology to chemistry and physics, but to gain some insight into the nature of biological order. Inevitably, then, this is a personal book–one scientist’s attempt to wring understanding from the tide of knowledge. It grew out of the experience of a lifetime devoted to research, scholarship and instruction; but since my purpose is to make sense of the facts of life rather than to expound the facts themselves, this inquiry walks the edge of science proper. The arguments and conclusions presented here seem to me sound, but they are certainly not the last word on the subject. The most valuable lessons that the discipline of science teaches are to play the game of conjecture and reputation, to appreciate the provisional nature of our knowledge, and to prize doubt! If what I have written here encourages a few readers to look up from their gels and genes to peer at the far horizon, I shall be well content. Of my shortcomings as an investigator, scholar, philosopher and expository I am keenly aware . . .Every month it seems that I hear yet another sad story about someone who has been stricken by a terrible disease or who has recently died. When they hear of these things, most people wonder, "How could this have happened?" Though I also mourn these events, I inevitably find myself wondering how bodies work at all. They seem far too complicated to work for even a second, much less for a lifetime. I know that they work, because I sitting here breathing and writing, but how is it possible that the extensive mechanical-seeming processes taking place within each of my cells successfully scale up to the organism level? Every breath is miraculous and every act of conscious generosity is beyond explanation (including religious "explanation"), at least to those of us who are honest.
A few days ago we upgraded our platform, but things did not go well. It became clear over 48 hours that our platform was no long stable and we were forced to revert back to our former set-up. In the process, we lost a few days of comments, though we were able to recover most of our posts. If you were one of the dozen or so people who submitted comments over the past few days, and if you no longer see your comment, I apologize. Please feel free to resubmit your comments and I will promptly approve them. We learned some lessons about upgrading in the process, and I don't expect this problem to repeat itself. Erich
Robert Seyfarth describes how monkey calls used by Vervet Monkeys might be precursors to language. Vervets give different types of calls in reaction to different kinds of approaching predators. These calls are simple. They are not language, though Seyfarth suggests that these types of calls are precursors to language.