Adding a little bit of spicy strangeness along those lines, is the phenomenon of ‘convergent evolution’. This is one of those not-so-rare cases when species that aren’t very similar or closely related , turn out to have a feature that is strikingly, almost awe-inspiringly, similar. Wikipedia has a pithy list of examples of convergent evolution, my favorite one being the case of the human eye, and the Octopus eye. See how similar* they look, even though Cephalopods(them) and Vertebrates(us) diverged in evolution millions of years ago, before any eyes of similar nature were invented by the ubiquitous tinkering of evolution.

There are many explanations for why convergent evolution might occur, but they are circumstantial at best, speculative at worst and usually not very convincing. If you are a biologist, you will know that finding out the truth in such cases is intensive enough to just suffice ourselves with Orgel’s Second rule “Evolution is cleverer than you are”, and leave it at that.

But it’s starting to turn out, that while evolution may be a clever tinkerer, there aren't too many ways to skin a cat. A couple of papers published in the last few weeks show that while evolution may create similar characteristics in unrelated organisms, it tends to use the same mechanism at the molecular level to do so. Chan et al report in Science, that sticklebacks in different isolated populations tend to lose a feature of their anatomy: the pelvic girdle, by the same molecular event – the loss of a genetic regulatory element called the Pitx1 enhancer. Now you may say that these are the same species, and not nearly as spectacular as the Octopus-Human comparison, but remember that these populations do not interbreed, and not all populations have sticklebacks lose their pelvic girdle. It is pretty astounding that three populations who lose their pelvic girdle do so in the same manner – by eliminating Pitx1.

More exciting was a paper published in PloS Genetics by Counterman et al. , who examine the genes that produce the color in Heliconius butterflies. In contrast to the earlier paper, Counterman et al. study populations of a species of butterfly called the Small Postman (H.erato), that is a Muellerian mimic of its poisonous relative , the Postman butterfly (H.melpomene). The idea is that birds know that the Postman butterfly is poisonous , and will not eat it. H.erato will try to mimic the appearance of the its toxic cousin, so that birds leave it alone in a case of mistaken identity.  Both H.erato and H.melpomene are poisonous, and have independently evolved similar appearances despite having diverged millions of years ago. The mimicry is a huge benefit to both species, since it ensures that predators have one thing firmly entrenched in their collective memory – if it looks like  Postman butterfly, do not eat it .

[The author of the paper has educated me about the nature of interaction between these two species. See comments for details].

                 Heliconicus melponeme                            Heliconicus erato

Of course, the various populations of H.erato are not all equal, some seem to be better make-up artists and look much more like their miasmatic relative. Counterman et al. perform a population genetic analysis of these, and find, to their surprise that all of them show a dependence on only one site (locus) in the genome of these butterflies.

By doing more intensive analysis on this locus, they are able to determine that in fact, it is only one gene – kinesin, that seems to make most of the difference between a good mimic , and a bad one. Once more, the appearance and nature of a rather complex trait, is shown to be linked to a rather small region of DNA. If you want to look like the Postman butterfly it seems, you need to mess with the Kinesin gene.

In the light of these findings, a hint of a molecular explanation for convergent evolution begins to emerge. As the authors of either paper suggest, there may be evolutionary hotspots in our genome for a given trait. Whenever natural selection pressures the species into changing the trait, it is this genomic hotspot that feels the brunt. At the molecular level, evolution seems to be much more constrained than the medley of phenotypic outcomes lead us to believe.

I wouldn’t be surprised if one day we found that the developmental genes or regulatory programs that make an octopus eye and a human eye are more akin than their tentacles and our hairy heads seem to suggest.

*Note : It is interesting that despite the compelling similarity, the eyes are not completely identical. The retina of the Octopus eye actually has the reverse order of cell layers , when compared to the Human eye. This actually makes the Octopus eye somewhat better, since its optic nerve does not have to penetrate the retina – thus, an Octopus eye has no blind spot! Morever, because its photoreceptors have no obstrcutive cell layer (unlike us), it probably has a higher sensitivity to light as well.

References

Chan, Y., Marks, M., Jones, F., Villarreal, G., Shapiro, M., Brady, S., Southwick, A., Absher, D., Grimwood, J., Schmutz, J., Myers, R., Petrov, D., Jonsson, B., Schluter, D., Bell, M., & Kingsley, D. (2009). Adaptive Evolution of Pelvic Reduction in Sticklebacks by Recurrent Deletion of a Pitx1 Enhancer Science, 327 (5963), 302-305 DOI: 10.1126/science.1182213

Counterman, B., Araujo-Perez, F., Hines, H., Baxter, S., Morrison, C., Lindstrom, D., Papa, R., Ferguson, L., Joron, M., ffrench-Constant, R., Smith, C., Nielsen, D., Chen, R., Jiggins, C., Reed, R., Halder, G., Mallet, J., & McMillan, W. (2010). Genomic Hotspots for Adaptation: The Population Genetics of Müllerian Mimicry in Heliconius erato PLoS Genetics, 6 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000796

                          

Disclaimer : The following is an excerpt from Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses". This particular excerpt is , to my knowledge , in the public domain.

At the oasis of Yathrib the followers of the new faith of Submission found themselves landless, and therefore poor. For many years they financed themselves by acts of brigandage, attacking the rich camel-trains on their way to and from Jahilia.

Mahound had no time for scruples, Salman told Baal, no qualms about ends and means. The faithful lived by lawlessness, but in those years Mahound — or should one say the Archangel Gibreel? – should one say Al-Lah? – became obsessed by law. Amid the palm-trees of the oasis Gibreel appeared to the Prophet and found himself spouting rules, rules, rules, until the faithful could scarcely bear the prospect of any more revelation, Salman said, rules about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one's behind. It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free.

The revelation – the "recitation" – told the faithful how much to eat, how deeply they should sleep, and which sexual positions had received divine sanction, so that they learned that sodomy and the missionary position were approved of by the archangel, whereas the forbidden postures included all those in which the female was on top. Gibreel further listed the permitted and forbidden subjects of conversation, and earmarked the parts of the body which could not be scratched no matter how unbearably they might itch. He vetoed the consumption of prawns, those bizarre other-worldly creatures which no member of the faithful had ever seen, and required animals to be killed slowly, by bleeding, so that by experiencing their deaths to the full they might arrive at an understanding of the meaning of their lives, for it is only at the moment of death that living creatures understand that life has been real, and not a sort of dream. And Gibreel the archangel specified the manner in which a man should be buried, and how his property should be divided, so that Salman the Persian got to wondering what manner of God this was that sounded so much like a businessman.

This was when he had the idea that destroyed his faith, because he recalled that of course Mahound himself had been a businessman, and a damned successful one at that, a person to whom organization and rules came naturally, so how excessively convenient it was that he should have come up with such a very businesslike archangel, who handed down the management decisions of this highly corporate, if non-corporeal, God.

After that Salman began to notice how useful and well timed the angel's revelations tended to be, so that when the faithful were disputing Mahound's views on any subject, from the possibility of space travel to the permanence of Hell, the angel would turn up with an answer, and he always supported Mahound, stating beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was impossible that a man should ever walk upon the moon, and being equally positive on the transient nature of damnation, even the most evil of doers would eventually be cleansed by hellfire and find their way into the perfumed gardens, Gulistan and Bostan. It would have been different, Salman complained to Baal, if Mahound took up his positions after receiving the revelation from Gibreel; but no, he just laid down the law and the angel would confirm it afterwards; so I began to get a bad smell in my nose, and I thought, this must be the odour of those fabled and legendary unclean creatures, what's their name, prawns.

The fishy smell began to obsess Salman, who was the most highly educated of Mahound's intimates owing to the superior educational system then on offer in Persia. On account of his scholastic advancement Salman was made Mahound's official scribe, so that it fell to him to write down the endlessly proliferating rules.

"All those revelations of convenience", he told Baal, "and the longer I did the job the worse it got. Anyway," Salman said near the bottom of the bottle, "finally I decided to test him."

"Little things at first. If Mahound recited a verse in which God was described as "all-hearing, all-knowing", I would write, "all-knowing, all-wise". Here's the point, Mahound did not notice the alterations. So there I was, actually writing the Book, or rewriting, anyway, polluting the word of God with my own profane language. But, good heavens, if my poor words could not be distinguished from the Revelation by God's own Messenger, then what did that mean? What did that say about the quality of the divine poetry?

Look, I swear, I was shaken to my soul. It's one thing to be a smart bastard and have half – suspicions about funny business, but it's quite another thing to find out that you're right. Listen, I changed my life for that man. I left my country, crossed the world, settled among people who thought me a slimy foreign coward for saving their, who never appreciated what I, but never mind that.

The truth is that what I expected when I made that first tiny change, "all-wise" instead of "all-hearing' – what I wanted -was to read it back to the Prophet, and he'd say, "What's the matter with you, Salman, are you going deaf? "And I'd say, "Oops, O God, bit of a slip, how could I", and correct myself.

But it didn't happen; and now I was writing the Revelation and nobody was noticing, and I didn't have the courage to own up. I was scared silly, I can tell you. Also, I was sadder than I have ever been. So I had to go on doing it. Maybe he'd just missed out once, I thought, anybody can make a mistake. So the next time I changed a bigger thing. He said "Christian", I wrote down "Jew".

He'd notice that, surely; how could he not? But when I read him the chapter he nodded and thanked me politely, and I went out of his tent with tears in my eyes. After that I knew my days in Yathrib were numbered; but I had to go on doing it. I had to. There is no bitterness like that of a man who finds out he has been believing in a ghost. I would fall, I knew, but he would fall with me. So I went on with my devilment, changing verses, until one day I read my lines to him and saw him frown and shake his head as if to clear his mind, and then nod his approval slowly, but with a little doubt. I knew I'd reached the edge, and that the next time I rewrote the Book he'd know everything. That night I lay awake, holding his fate in my hands as well as my own. If I allowed myself to be destroyed I could destroy him, too. I had to choose, on that awful night, whether I preferred death with revenge to life without anything. As you see, I chose, life. Before dawn I left Yathrib on my camel, and made my way, suffering numerous misadventures I shall not trouble to relate, back to Jahilia. And now Mahound is coming in triumph; so I shall lose my life after all. And his power has grown too great for me to unmake him now."

Baal asked, "Why are you sure he will kill you?"

Salman the Persian answered, "It's his Word against mine."

                          

This is just a quick post to warn people that Twitter messages are being used for phishing people's Twitter passwords.

I recieved a "Direct Message" on Twitter from @AccessDNA that went as follows : 

"hi. this you on here? http://blogger.djhxkcs.com " (Warning! Do not enter details on the linked page)


Of course, out of curiosity I visited the link , and waiting for me was a page that looked exactly like Twitter's Sign in page – except that it was posting the information to a different address , and would thus send any details I entered to some database. In time, I would expect my Twitter account to be usurped.

Watch out for suspicious messages and pay attention to the address, secure-connection icons and such, people.

                          

He has a unique style of reciting his poetry, and as for this particular one , you can hear him recite it, or watch him recite in video here .

I was the better at getting and keeping,
You were the better at spend and spend;
I was the better at grubbing and heaping,

But who was the better man in the end?
Yes, who was the better man, my friend?
Who was the better man?

You were the better with lords and ladies,
I was the better at pillaging Troy;
You were the better at kissing the babies,
I was the better at search and destroy.

But who was the better man, old boy?
Who was the better man?

I was the better at improvisation,
You were the better at spinning the plate;
I was the better at procrastination,
You were the better at quiet debate.

But who was the better man, old mate?
Who was the better man?

You were the better at rolling a reefer,
I was the better with coke and rum;
Remember that night on the beach at Ibiza?
The Maori twins with the tattooed bum?

So who was the better man, old chum?
Who was the better man?

Now we come down to it, relatives grieving
Out in the hall with their crocodile tears;
Now that you’re out of it, now that you’re leaving,
Now that they’ve sealed your arse and your ears,
What I’ve been meaning to tell you for years,
And years, and years, and years, old friend…
Is that you were the better man, in the end;

You were the better man,
My friend.

- Felix Dennis

                          

Ubiquity is an “intelligent” command-line and natural language parser for Firefox. Its hard to explain because of its ubiquitous features( everything from Twitter posts to Maps and email), so I’ll leave that to the excellent screencast on their site.

I thought it would be cool to have a Ubiquity command that uses the Readability project and fixes your web-based reading material. Turns out, its easy to have it, and the results are very satisfactory to me.

The screenshot shows how a cumbersome page can be viewed cleanly using Ubiquity.

Ubiquity can be downloaded from Mozilla Labs . Once Ubiquity is installed , Ctrl+Space (be default) opens the Ubiquity panel.

For an easier method to start using the Readability command , just visit this page , and in the bar where Firefox tells you it has found Ubiquity commands, click “Subscribe”.

You can manually add the command to Ubiquity as well. To install custom commands such as this one : type command-editor in Ubiquity, which will take you to your custom command editor page.

                          

Wikipedia defines it as : An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

But in this particular case, that terse and proper definition doesn’t do justice to the hilarity of some of the hate I’ve received :

The Euphemist

Speaking as a woman who is currently 9 months pregnant and enduring physical challenges you cannot even imagine, I have many possible responses to what you’ve said about pregnancy and estrogen. However, since nearly all of them use obscenities or blasphemies, I shall refrain.

At : Isis the Scientist blog

The I-don’t-agree-with-you-on-purely-subjective-issues-and-therefore-must-insult-you form :

I wrote : “that is her biological function”

They wrote : What the fuck are you smoking, asshole?

I wrote : “ I think it would be much more constructive for women to acknowledge the special treatment, accept and utilize the privilege rather than demand it as a right.”

They wrote :

Nash, please give me some of that cheap weed that you are smoking. You have no motherfucking clue what you are talking about. 6-8 weeks of maternity leave is a privilege?!? Hahahahahaahaaaa! Let me tell you how I’d love to pass this “privilege” on to my husband any day of the week. I am astounded by the sheer motherfucking ignorance of what you say.

At : Isis the Scientist blog

The Confessor-in-Denial

Strangely, you seem to be attempting to convince me of something by rational argument against my throw-away reaction. What?

At : Twitter

The I-am-asking-to-be-pwned category

Where the hell did you get the news that Hindi is not official National Language? Its seems that you did not get your primary studies in India or may not very well aware of Indian constitution.
Please DON’T SPREAD MISCONCEPTION AMONG INDIANS.

At : Jai Hind Blog

And I am quite sure there will be more to come. Don’t hesitate to post your own experiences in the comments.

                          

xkcd – A Webcomic – Correlation

You have to be a geek to get this

                          

I myself use this script now, and it is done much better. The author also commits to updating the script periodically.

Cheers and thanks for the support !

I’ve arrived at a quick and absolutely dumb solution, which is to simply merge jtulloch’s script with mine , thus nuking ads in a fell-swoop while retaining the ThreadLinks box using his code.

So to all those who’d like to use the ThreadLinks box , you can download a newer version of the script here.

The older version is still available for people who don’t want to mess with their navPane.

So I whipped up a small script that will remove advertisements in the message reading pane and widen the concerned pane to take up the full area that was intended for it. You will need the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox, to use this script.

You can obtain Greasemonkey here .

After installing Greasemonkey, click here to install the Remove Gmail Ads and Widen Message view script, for a cleaner Gmail.

You can also right-click the link and choose to see the source.

                          

Cosmic Variance , a blog on Discover Magazine, had a post about Mr.John McCain’s snide and sarcastic remark on his Twitroll  "nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy" – he quips. Cosmic Variance puts it down as an appeal to a feeling many average citizens have "Scientists are not You and Me", a sociopsychological reason for the relative unpopularity of science among the bourgeoisie.

There is another reason. It is purely my personal observation that many scientists are unambitious, happy to relax into a comfortable zone the moment they achieve tenure or another position in their career that is secure. The culture of science , as some people have mentioned, actually promotes lethargy after a certain point, because typically, very senior (in terms of years spent) scientists do not often have to justify themselves to anyone, much less the taxpayer.

This astounding lack of passion on the part of such scientists is actually worse than not being good communicators . It undermines the faith people have in science, thereby, relegating science to one of those fields where smarter than average people do what they want, for their own reasons. I imagine, if Albert Einstein asked for a grant to do a certain project, the taxpayers would have no apprehension , considering his public image – wierd, brilliant, and someone who has been so right.

As a graduate student, watching post-docs approach their mid fifties in some cases is not encouraging at all. I am not saying they are incompetent, but they certainly are not inspiring. To put it briefly, science is not “cool” to most people. Society being what it is, fostering religious dogma, not understanding what science is about and watching a fraction of uninspired lab toilers – there is no way they are going to see science as inspiring.

Our thinking and society needs to become more technocratic , for which scientists will have to be brilliant at showing off first (something not apprieciated in today’s science culture). It is little surprise that scientists of our time, who actually thrust themselves into the limelight (Craig Venter, or Dean Kamen, for instance) leave the strongest mark on the social psyche. For the part of the non-scientists, they need to adopt science for what it is, not as a “field” , “ideology” or “competitor to religion” – but simply the systematic study of EVERYTHING.

Pimp Your Science !

*the title of this blog post comes from a review on cell biology my supervisor wrote, titled ‘Pimp my Cell’