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Rescooped by ComplexInsight from GIS, Spatial modelling & Plants onto Complex Insight - Understanding our world |
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With the combining increasingly of the Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) technologies with the modern network communication technology, some unique advantages have been displaying in the monitoring, forewarning and disaster...
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A new study of Danish farmers and their livestock uses genetic sequencing to show that antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections travel from animal to human. Maryn McKenna describes the evidence.
ComplexInsight's insight:
Another awesome article by Maryn McKenna. If the analysis presented in the article is correct, then it indicates several sources of potential trouble. The article highlights potential for animal-to-human transmission of resistant bacteria even by animals that are not routinely receiving antibiotics. Finally the potential host range for resitant bacteria that is, the species detected to be carrying mecCMRSA, now mostly being called CC130 extends past farm breeds to include host range to include not just cows and sheep, but horses, rabbits, cats, dogs, deer, seals, rats and wild birds. Worth reading the entire article so click on the image or the title to learn more. Delete the scoop?
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Plans to tackle tuberculosis are failing and a new visionary approach is needed, according to an international group of doctors and scientists.
ComplexInsight's insight:
In Eastern europe up to a third of TB ccases are multi-drug resitant and a more extensively drug resistant form of tuberculosis has now been found in 84 countries. Scary set of implications given rate of evolution of multiresistant strains. Delete the scoop?
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Our knowledge of the tree of life—a phylogenetic tree summarizing the evolutionary relationships among all life on Earth—is expanding rapidly. “Mega-trees” with millions of tips (species) are expected to appear imminently ( for example, see http://www.opentree.wikispaces.com ). Unfortunately, there has so far been no practical and intuitive way to explore even the much smaller trees with thousands of tips that are now being routinely produced. Without a way to view megatrees, these wondrous objects, representing the culmination of decades of scientific effort, cannot be fully appreciated. The field really needs a solution to this problem to enable scientists to communicate important evolutionary concepts and data effectively, both to each other and to the general public. Just like Google Earth changed the way people look at geography, a sophisticated tree of life browser could really change the way we look at the life around us. Our advances in understanding evolution are moving really fast now, but the tools for looking at these big trees are lagging behind. Displaying large trees is a hard problem that has so far resisted solution. We are still waiting for the equivalent of a Google Maps. However, trees with millions of tips, richly embellished with additional data, can now be easily explored within the web browser of any modern hardware with a zooming user interface similar to that used in Google Maps. Via Sakis Koukouvis, Dr. Stefan Gruenwald, Robin Lott Delete the scoop?
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While the links between the study of rocks and fossils and the high-tech field of genetics are not necessarily obvious at first glance, a recent review in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology shows that the connection is perhaps closer than you. often think. The case studies illustrate how the understanding of paleontology can be supported by research from developmental biologists. One case study looks at the relatively small genetic changes that have led to dramatic differences, for example the steps from a four-legged ancestor to a dolphin with two forelimbs and a tail, or a snake with no limbs at all, supported by paleontological findings of transitional fossils that bridge the gaps. Fascinating article and review. click on the image or title to learn more. Delete the scoop?
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What explains the incredible variety of life on Earth? It seems obvious. Evolution, of course! But perhaps not the evolution most people grew up with.
ComplexInsight's insight:
While the headline is slightly sensationalist and misleading, the article is worth reading. In a March 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, Bar-Yam and his co-authors, Brazilian ecologists Ayana Martins at the University of Sao Paulo and Marcus Aguiar at the University of Campinas, modeled the evolution of greenish warblers living around the Tibetan plateau. The warblers are what’s known as a ring species, a rare phenomenon that occurs when species inhabit a horseshoe-shaped range. Genes flow around the ring, passing between neighboring populations — yet at the ring’s tips, the animals no longer interbreed with one another. Bar-Yam and co's model generarted a similar distribution based on continual evoluation and genetic drift rather than localised adaptation. The model echoes of Stephen Hubbell's concepts of neutral genetic drift where random genetic variations that emerge in individuals and spread through populations, can be ‘neutral,’ having no biological function but still drive evolution of species. Good article and interesting ideas that continue to drive the healthy debate on how evolution and speciation work. Delete the scoop?
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Scientists show how the lowly dung beetle will use the Milky Way's band of light in the night sky as a compass.
ComplexInsight's insight:
Possibly my favourite science article of 2013 so far. It makes sense in terms of evolutionary adaption since astral light sources would be an evolutionary environmental constant so adapting to utilize them makes a lot of sense. Proving that dung beetles do this - is just a wow. cool artile worth reading. Delete the scoop?
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Charles Lineweaver ( Australian National University) and Paul Davies(Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University.) have proposed a theory of cancer based on its ancient evolutionary roots. We think that as cancer progresses in the body it reverses, in a speeded-up manner, the arrow of evolutionary time. Increasing deregulation prompts cancer cells to revert to ever earlier genetic pathways that recapitulate successively earlier ancestral life styles. We predict that the various hallmarks of cancer progression will systematically correlate with the activation of progressively older ancestral genes. The most advanced and malignant cancers recreate aspects of life on Earth before a billion years ago. Click on image or title to learn more. Delete the scoop?
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RS and GIS technologies were used in processing of professional meteorological data like MODIS remote sensing images, the doppler radar echoes and the Meteoroloical Information Collecting, Analyzing and Processing System (MICAPS). The system is based on WebGIS and is convenient for the use of the agro-meteorological professionals, who use biological data and monitor weather diseaster events like spring frost, heal and drought. For some model crops some object-oriented user interfaces were developed with functions of the database management, data querying, map displaying, graphics rendering, spatial analysis, the professional data processing, information extraction, figure and table output.
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