Connecting with Alfred Russel Wallace

For many, the name Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is synonymous with all observations and thoughts that originated into the theory of evolution by natural selection. Lately, the name of the fourteen-years-younger cofounder of evolution theory is increasingly recognized: Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). The British naturalist  and geographer Wallace is also known as the founder of the science of biogeography; highlighted by the term Wallace Line or Wallace's Line that refers to the boundary line separating Asia-associated and New-Guinea/Australia-associated ecozones.

The September 2015 issue of Natural History—a special commemorative issue as part of the Alfred Russel Wallace Centenary Celebration—honors the outstanding 19th century explorer and biologist. The ARW Online article in the nature.net section provides various links to discover Wallace and his world:

• people.wku.edu/charles.smith/index1.htm, dubbed the grandaddy of all Wallace websites;
• wallace-online.org, John van Wyhe's Wallace online site with a comprehensive compilation of of specimens;
• www.nhm.ac.uk/wallacelettersonline, George Beccaloni's collection of letters to and from Wallace (see also The Alfred Russel Wallace Corresponence Project at wallaceletters.info and articles written by Wallace scholar Beccaloni at wallacefund.info);
• darwinlive.com/wallace/amnh.html, Richard Milner's nontechnical introduction to and selection of events celebrating Wallace;
• www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/24837130, Sir David Attenborough's “The forgotton story of Alfred Russel Wallace”;
• www.eeb.ucla.edu/arwallace, Feelie Lee's associated Wallace Centennial Celebration at UCLA on Nov. 15, 2014;
• media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/films/OriginSpecies-Theory.html, the movie “The Origin of Species: The Making of a theory”;
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcCP4_R8QBw), a YouTube movie about seeking birds of paradise in Wallace's footsteps.

Reference:
ARW Online. Natural History September 2015, 123 (7), page 5.

An acronym marking the intersection of music and information technology: CCRMA for Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics

Computers are frequently employed these days to generate music. Computers are also used to analyze music. Further, they are used to analyze soundscapes of both urban and natural environments. To close the cycle, composers weave environmental sounds, such as animal sounds, into their musical creations.  A composition that incorporates an imitations of a bird song such as a nightingale melody is a case in point.

A natural soundscape is not just a great stimulation for musical compositions, but constitutes a complex acoustical web, which is not fully understood by humans and remains a rich resource for human enjoyment, recreation and (re)connection to the natural world. At the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, CCRMA—pronounced “karma” (the first “c” is silent), musicians and researchers are teaming up and exploring computer-assisted technology as an artistic medium and as a research tool [1].

Bernie Krause includes the CCRMA innovators into his review of biophonically inspired composers in Chapter Six “Different Croaks for Different Folks” of his book "The Great Animal Orchestra"[2]. Mentioning the British composer Benjamin Britten, some of whose orchestrations are strongly influenced by the urban and natural soundscapes that Britten experienced at his home in East Anglia and during his travels, Krause continues:

And there are others, including works by a few students at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford—where composers and innovators such as John Chowning study the intersection of music and information technology using advanced synthesizers as creative media tools through which they express what they discovered. Some of the students have begun to reexamine the potential of natural soundscapes and early instruments as important sources of compositional stimulus.

The oldest musical instrument known today is a Stone Age flute, carved from bone and ivory at least 35,000 years ago [3]. Neither do we know the ancient natural soundscape of southwestern Germany, where the flute was found, nor do we know what tunes were played on it by the early European humans.  But certainly, listining to the soundscape and making sounds (often too many and too loud) is part of human nature and activities.

Keywords: soundscapes, eco-acoustics, biophony, musical science, anthroplolgy.

References and more to explore
[1] Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics: https://ccrma.stanford.edu.
[2] Bernie Krause: The Great Animal Orchestra. Back Bay Books, New York, March 2013; page 150 in first Back Bay paperback edition.
[3] Archaeologists unearth oldest musical instruments ever found: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/06/24/archaeologists_unearth_oldest_musical_intstruments_ever_found.

Acronym in biology: HHO for Havers-Halberg oscillation

Biological rhythms in animals have fascinated observers of nature for a long time. An example is the circadian rhythm, a diurnal rhythm synchronized with the day/night circle. In mammals, metabolic product rhythms with a twenty-four-hour oscillation pattern are known as the mammalian circadian clock [1]. The concentration of molecular components in body fluids rises and falls on a twenty-four hour cycle.

What about metabolites cycling according to a multidien schedule (multi-day schedule)?  Timothy G. Bromage of the Hard Tissue Research Unit of the New York University College of Dentistry describes findings of his research group showing that certain metabolites in the blood of domestic pigs cycled on a five-day rhythm. Those metabolites belong to two distinct groups: metabolites of one group reached their peak three days later than the other [2,3].

Until recently, such synchronized multi-day rhythms have commonly been overlooked in mammalian chronobiology studies. Most strikingly, the five-day rhythm leaves its marks in enamel and bone structures. The Bromage team found that the pig's teeth show the striae-of-Retzius pattern with a repeat period of exactly five. This evidence suggests a multidien rhythm that regulates growth and body size, which is called the Havers-Halberg oscillation (HHO) by Bromage and his colleagues [2]:

We call this rhythm the Havers-Halberg oscillation (HHO), after Clopton Havers who in 1691 described what we now know are lamellae in bone and striae of Retzius in enamel, and Franz Halberg, father of modern chronobiology. 

Periodic layer structures in hard tissue are documented for various mammal species. Rhythm & stria relationships, which will be similar to the reported correlation between biochemical oscillations and linear marks in pig teeth, can be expected to exist in other mammal species. For humans, the better understanding of such repeat patterns may eventually help to design individual health and healing plans in rhythm with metabolic cycles—think rhythmically tuned diet and medication.    

The English physician Clopton Havers was a pioneer in osteogeny. Anatomists are familiar with Haversian canals traversing compact bone tissue. Havers was born in 1657 in Stambourne, Essex. He is best known for his work on the microstructure of bone. In 1686, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Havers died in Essex in 1702 [3,4].

Franz Halberg was born in 1919 in Bistriz in Romania. In the 1940s, Halberg performed medicinal research at the University of Innsbruck and became a citizen of Austria. In 1948, he immigrated to the United States, where he continued his inqueries in biology and medicine.  Halberg  founded the fields of  quantitative chronobiolgy, chronomics and chronobioethics. He died in 2013 [5].

The term “Havers-Halberg oscillation” honors two outstanding scientists living in different epochs and gaining insight within until recently unconnected domains, which now find their synthesis in a more holistic view in the science community, deepening and advancing cross-subdiscipline understanding in life science.

Keywords: quantitative chronobiology, biological cycles, chronomics, osteogeny, stria of Retzius, life history.

References and more to explore
[1] Caroline H. Ko and Joseph S. Takahashi: Molecular components of the mammalian circadian clock. Human Molecular Genetics 2006, R271-R277 [hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/suppl_2/R271.full].
[2] Timothy G. Bromage: Long in the Tooth: Striation in teeth reveal the pace of life. Natural History June 2015, 123 (5),16-21.
[3] Timothy G. Bromage and Malvin N. Janai: The Havers-Halberg oscillation regulates primate tissue and organ masses across the life-history continuum. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society August 2014, 112 (4), 649-656 [onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bij.12269/abstract].
[4] Jessie Dobson: Clopton Havers [www.boneandjoint.org.uk/highwire/filestream/9782/field_highwire_article_pdf/0/702.full-text.pdf].
[5] The Blog of Funny Names: Clopton Havers, Bone Master [funnynamesblog.com/2015/02/02/clopton-havers-bone-master].
[6] Germaine Cornelissen, Francine Halberg, Julia Halberg and Othild Schwartzkopff: Obituary. Franz Halberg, MD (5 July 1919-9 June 2013) - In Appreciation. Chronobiology International 2013, 1-3 [ctb.upm.es/pdfs/ISC-ObitFH.pdf].

Topotaxis: geomagnetically driven orientation and navigation above the ocean floor

The composed noun topotaxis is built from the Greek words topos, meaning place, and taxis, meaning order or responsive movement. The word topotaxis refers to the movement of an animal  from place to place (migration) in response to geographical features the animal is able to sense. The term was coined by the marine biologist and sensory physiologist A. Peter Klimley, who wants to find out if sharks and rays can detect changes in local magnetic underwater topography and use these magnetic-field features as their guiding map—instead of the globally-caused, compass-oriented vector of  Earth's magnetic field, as typically hypothesized [1,2].

Islands, seamounts and subsurface ridges are examples of  geographic formations causing distinct local geomagnetic underwater-landmarks. By diving with the sharks and tagging & tracking them to follow their ocean floor navigation, Klimley explains how is idea of geomagnetic topotaxis has surfaced [3]: 

Our survey of the magnetic field surrounding El Bajo [an volcanic underwater mountain in Mexico's Sea of Cortez rising from the depths of the ocean floor to just 20 meters from the surface] revealed that the outbound and return path of the sharks we were studying coincided with these magnetic ridges and valleys, I hypothesized, therefore, that the magnetic variations in the ocean floor presented the sharks with the equivalent of a route map, and in a 1993 paper in Marine Biology [4], I coined the term topotaxis for an animal's orientation to these magnetic-topographic features.

Understanding navigation and resting behavior of sharks and other marine life—driven by topotactic guidance or other means—will help to design marine sanctuaries, which may protect dwindling shark populations and at the same time provide sites for educational and recreational shark ecotourism.

Keywords: magnetic topography, magnetoreception, travel pattern, migration, Baha California.

References and more to explore
[1] A. Peter Klimley, Director of the Biotelemetry Laboratory, University of California, Davis: biotelemetry.ucdavis.edu/pages/bio_klimley.asp.
[2] A. Peter Klimley: Experimental Study of Geomagnetic Topotaxis With Elasmobranchs. Grantome: grantome.com/grant/NSF/IOS-9729195.
[3] A. Peter Klimley: Shark Trails of the Eastern Pacific. American Scientist July-August 2015, 103 (4), pp. 276-287 [www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2015/4/shark-trails-of-the-eastern-pacific].
[4] A. P. Klimley: Highly directional swimming by scalloped hammerhead sharks, Sphyrna lewini, and subsurface irradiance, temperature, bathymetry, and geomagnetic field. Marine Biology 1993, 117, pp. 1-22 [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00346421#page-1].

Acronym in experimental physics: MINOS for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search

Neutrinos are subatomic particles (leptons) with half-integer spin and without electric charge. They come in three types or flavors: electron-neutrino, muon-neutrino and tau-neutrino. The flavor of a neutrino oscillates, while the neutrino is flying through space—for example, after being generated by beta-decay of a radioactive atom. Different neutrino flavors have slightly different masses [1].

Neutrino oscillation has been observed by different experiments.  The oscillation probability of  neutrinos and the exact tiny neutrino masses have not yet been measured with the desired accuracy. The MINOS experiment has the aim to do this: the abbreviation MINOS stands for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search [1-3] .

MINOS is based on two detectors: the first being stationed at the neutrino source at the Fermilab and the second being located 450 miles (735 km) away at the Soudan Underground Mine, a former iron mining site, in norther Minnesota. Frank Close explains the MINOS design in his acclaimed “neutrino cracker” [3]:

A huge 5000 tonne detector was built in a new, bigger, cavern in the Soudan mine. This utises yet another detection method. Charged particles passing through plastic, which had been loaded with small quantities of special chemicals, emit flashes of light (scintillate). These scintillations can be collected and delivered to phototubes which are similar in principle to those used to detect the Cerenkov light in the water detectors. By forming the plastic into narrow strips, sandwiched between plates of steel, the path of the charged particles through the detector can be followed, and by magnetising the steel plates, the curvature of the paths and thus the energy of the produced particles can be measured. From all this information, the details of the neutrino interaction, and in particular its energy, can be reconstructed. Then both the distance travelled (the 735 km from Fermilab) and the neutrino energy are known. A very similar (but smaller) detector was also built at Fermilab, so that by comparing the energy distribution of the neutrinos measured at Fermilab with that measured at Soudan, they could measure how any deficit depended on the energy of the neutrinos. If, as expected, this showed an oscillatory pattern, it would measure the difference in mass between the produced and oscillated neutrino.

What are the special chemicals loaded into the steel-plate-sandwiched plastic strips?

Neutrino mass is not included in the Standard Model of particle physics: neutrinos are assumed to have zero mass. But the phenomenon of neutrino oscillation suggests non-zero masses. MINOS is expected to clarify the neutrino mass conundrum and, thus, add new insight to particle physics and beyond.

Keywords:  elementary particles, Cerenkov radiation, oscillation pattern, nuclear physics, cosmology.

References and more to explore
[1] Cambridge MINOS Group: www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/minos.
[2] Fermilab: The MINOS Experiment and NuMI Beamline: www-numi.fnal.gov.
[3] Frank Close: Neutrino. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2010.

Labeling exoworlds: Name an exosolar planet! Try CosmoBlue!

If you want to get involved in naming well-characterized planets that were discovered in exoplanetary systems prior to December 31, 2008, here is your gateway: www.nameexoworlds.org. You may just want to sign up and cast a vote on suggested names as an individual. Community-based, your astronomy-interested club or a public astronomical organization, including planetariums and amateur astronomy groups, will be admitted to submit a naming proposal [1]— ganz offiziell! [2]. The results will be announced in August during a meeting of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) in Honolulu, Hawaii. Daniel Stone writes [3]:

If you've ever wanted to name a planet, now's your chance. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) wants help naming 32 exoplanets—planets that orbit a star other than our sun. Scientific and cultural organizations were asked to submit potential names. The public can rank finalists at nameexoworlds.org until July 15.

The winning public names will not replace scientific designations (usually consisting of a proper noun or abbreviation, sometimes followed by numbers and always followed by a lowercase letter [4]); but will be IAU-recognized  “with due credit to the organization that proposed it” [1].

What names can we expect, or should we not expect, to win?
Names that are trademark-protected or of a principally commercial nature will not be considered. Also excluded are names of living individuals and pets. Offensive words and terms with politically sensitive associations won't have a chance either. Proposed names should be 16 characters or less in length, preferably one word, pronounceable and “not too similar to an existing name of an astronomical object.”

I guess, CosmoBlue would be a name that fits the above criteria. I know a cat named Cosmo, but she is not blue—so, the pet name violation is circumvented. Further, we need to search—at least—trademark databases and astronomical databases such as the IAU's Minor Planet Center. The latter tells me that it does not have any matching documents for CosmoBlue. The name “CosmoBlue” sounds like a distinctive candidate. Yet, I am not sure if such a promising name should be wasted for a non-habitable planet.

Keywords: astronomy, astronomical nomenclature, exoplanet designation, public naming campaign, Zooniverse.

Rules and references
[1] Name exoworlds: Rules and Privacy. [www.nameexoworlds.org/the_process]. 
[2] Jan Hattenbach (Spektrum.de): Benennen Sie einen Exoplaneten und das offiziell! [www.spektrum.de/news/benennen-sie-einen-exoplaneten-und-das-offiziell/1300440].
[3] Daniel Stone: What should the name be? You Decide. National Geography July 2015, 228 (1), no page number. 
[4] International Astronomical Union: Naming of exoplanets [www.iau.org/public/themes/naming_exoplanets/].

A main-belt asteroid named after forest-canopy scientist Margaret D. Lowman

A Mont-Blanc-size main-belt asteroid, orbiting near Jupiter and discovered by astronomer couple Carolyn S. and Eugene M. Shoemaker at Palomar in 1988, is named after American canopy ecologist Margaret D. Lowman: 10739 Lowman (1988 JB1) [1,2].

The orbit of botanist Margaret Lowman (b. 1953, New York)—known as Canopy Meg—includes Australia, Africa, Peru, Panama, Belize and Florida, where she explores and studies what is happening at the tops of trees [3]. As a pioneer of the science of canopy ecology, Meg is also nicknamed the “real-life Lorax” by National Geographic and “Einstein of the treetops” by Wall Street Journal [4].

Richard Preston writes in his canopy-guided nonfiction page turner The Wild Trees [3]:

In 1978, Margaret D. Lowman, a young American graduate student in botany at the University of Sydney, in Australia, decided to write her dissertation on treetops. She had been anxious about choosing a topic, and she thought that at least nobody had tried this one. Lowman wanted to climb the trees, but she had no idea how to do that. She joined a caving club in Sydney, and the other members taught her how to climb a rope using Jumar ascenders. Lowman sewed a climbing harness for herself made out of seat-belt straps, and welded some pieces of iron together to make a slingshot. She then went into a forest near Sydney and used the slingshot to shoot a fishing line over the branch of a tree, after which she attached a thin nylon cord to the fishing line and dragged the cord over the branch. Then she attached a rope to the nylon cord and pulled it over. Lowman began making solo ascents into the rain-forest canopy of eastern Australia. “When I first started out climbing trees, I had no idea that they held fifty percent of the life on the planet,” Lowman said to me. “We had no clue that the forest canopy is this amazing hot spot for biodiversity.” 

[Richard Preston, 2007]

During an evening tree climb in New South Wales, “Treetop Meg” once slipped and fell off a branch; fifteen feet to the ground in free fall. She got badly bruised, but without suffering any broken bones [2]. It was time to design smart devices and structures that support safe canopy access and observation.

How did the canopy-asteroid connection arise?
Margaret Lowman has designed hot-air balloons for over 30 years.  The balloons advanced the exploration of canopy worlds, but not asteroid belts. This was the realm of planetary scientist Carolyn Shoemaker (b.  1929, Gallup, New Mexico), a leading discoverer of comets and asteroids and co-discoverer of  the to-be-named asteroid. Shoemaker, who “loves to name real estate in outer space after woman whose work I admire” [2], honored Canopy Meg by coining one of “her” asteroids Lowman,  Thus, an outer-space object got named for a woman dedicated to understand life at the delicate interface between outer space and the human landscape—at Earth's fragile and fractal arboreta branching out into the universe.

Keywords: Minor Planet Lowman, astronomy, planetary science, terminology, honoring female scientists, name giving.

References and more to explore
[1] Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Small-Body Database Browser: 10739 Lowman (1988 JB1) [ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=10739+Lowman].
[2] Richard Preston: The Wild Trees. Random House Trade Paperbacks, New York, 2008; pp. 53-55.
[3] The Official Web Site Of Margaret D. Lowman, Ph.D., aka: Canopy Meg [canopymeg.com/].
[4] Oxford Centre for Tropical Forest: Margaret D Lowman, Ph.D. [www.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk/people/269].

More on naming and classifying orbiting objects in planetary science:

• Official labeling scheme for newly discovered minor planets
• A new verb is making its orbit: to pluto
• Two Pluto moons discovered in June 2005 named Nix and Hydra by IAU
• Acronym in astronomy: TNO for trans-Neptunian object
• Europe versus Europa
• Jupiter moon Europa named after Jupiter's mythological “irregular loves”
• Dysnomia, a moon of the Kuiper belt object Eris, named after the spirit of lawlessness
• Uranus moons named after characters in Shakespearean plays
• Mars moons Deimos and Phobos named after the Greek god of fear and his twin-brother