it's complicated

Open Archive Day

The evolutionary history of our species used to be simple due to the scarcity of data. We had about seven data points and drew a squiggly line to connect them and that was that (maybe I'm simplifying this slightly). Now we have genomes of modern and archaic humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, increasingly documenting migrations and admixture, so it's getting more complicated as there are so many dots to connect. Plus, finds in Asia could still undermine the whole out of Africa thing.

A year ago, I had a closer look at fresh palaeoanthropology from China, but I suspect things are changing so fast I may have to rewrite this account pretty soon. Anyhow, here it is again, on open access, enjoy it while it is still more or less true:

A new continent for human evolution



A collection of 47 human teeth discovered at Daoxian is anatomically modern yet surprisingly old. (Photo: S. Xing and X-J. Wu.)

weird membranes

Today's issue of Current Biology contains a special section on membranes, and my contribution to that is a feature investigating why the membranes of archaea are so weird (sorry, different from all other membranes). Back in the 90s, I did my PhD work next door to Karl Otto Stetter's Archaea Centre at Regensburg, so it was a bit of a nostalgia trip, but I also learned lots of new things about their evolution.


Archaea cloaked in mystery

Current Biology Volume 28, pages R372-R374, April 23, 2018



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Archaea represent a unique life form whose complexities science is only beginning to understand. Researchers in Regensburg and Munich, Germany, are studying the functions of cellular appendages such as the flagella-like archaella of Methanocaldococcus villosus. (Image: Gerhard Wanner, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich.)

romance of wikipedia

I've been slightly obsessed with Galician and some other Romance languages recently, which must have been a side effect of being exposed to and then inheriting the admin of the amazing Galician Session Oxford. I discovered that the Galician version of Wikipedia is quite amazing (considering the number of speakers of the language), so I looked up some other Wiki versions in Romance languages with a view to use one or the other as study aids, and found that their sizes don't necessarily scale with the numbers of speakers:

1 000 000 +

Français 1 975 000+ articles

Italiano 1 430 000+ voci

Español 1 404 000+ artículos

100 000+

Português 997 000+ artigos

Català 577.879 articles.

Română 385.164

Galego 147 109 artigos.

Latina 128 288 paginarum


10 000+


Occitan 84 312 articles
Asturianu 74 671 artículos
Piemontèis 64 327 artìcoj
Aragonés 32 946 articlos
Sicilianu 25 949 vuci
Nnapulitano 14 516 artícule
Vèneto 11 145 voxe

1 000+

Corsu
Emigliàn–Rumagnòl
Lìgure
Malti*
Mirandés
Picard
Rumantsch
Sardu

* NB: I realise Maltese is a semitic language, but half its vocabulary is of romance origin.



Image: Wikipedia

zoo research by numbers

Open Archive Day

A recent paper claims to be the first to have quantified the scientific output of zoos and aquariums:

Quantifying the contribution of zoos and aquariums to peer-reviewed scientific research



which reminded me of my own more qualitative effort from 2015, which is now in the open archives:

Can zoos offer more than entertainment?



Zoos and aquariums are facing criticism for keeping animals in captivity under conditions that might not always match their requirements. (Photograph: Mike Peel www.mikepeel.net.)

seven years

Open Archive Day

From around 2000 until early 2011, I used to write occasional short to mid-length "news focus" or "news feature" pieces for the front pages of Current Biology. After a slight revamp of those pages in early 2011, the editors asked me if I could do a full length (2000 words) feature for every isssue, i.e. two per month, and I accepted the challenge.

If I have got my maths right, I have now published 167 of these features, so I must have been getting some things right. I only missed 3 issues I think, in 7 years. Here's the first one that appeared in the new format, seven years ago, covering a topic I have dealt with multiple times before and after, and like everything else from the first six years, it's in the open archives):

New fears over bee declines




(Own photo.)

mind Africa's genomes

Africa has been left behind by much of modern biomedical science and biotechnology, so it is always good to see when new initiatives aim to spread the benefits to this continent, as the newly launched NeuroGAP and NeuroDEV programmes for psychiatric genetics do. However, one also has to watch out very carefully, not to create the impression that Western scientists extract samples and scientific insights from the continent in a one-way system. Empowering local scientists and building capacity in situ have to be important parts of any such projects.

I've tried to gain a balanced perspective of all this in my latest feature, which is out now:

Mind the genome diversity gap

Current Biology Volume 28, Issue 7, 2 April 2018, Pages R293–R295

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Sites in South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda are involved in the projects.
Credit : Susanna M. Hamilton, Broad Communications