Ancestors and variants: tales from the cryptic

SUMMARY Those who work at the interface of development and evolution are united by the conviction that developmental comparisons can shed light on both the evolution of specific morphologies and the macroevolutionary process itself. In practice, however, the field comprises a diversity of approaches. As the field grows and practitioners attempt to digest a growing mountain of comparative data, the various approaches of "Evo Devo" have themselves evolved. A meeting organized by the authors and held at the University of Chicago in the Spring of 1999 illustrated some of these changes. This review will draw on its content to discuss recent developments in two areas: the reconstruction of common ancestors and the developmental basis of evolutionary change.     

James Edward Smith (1759–1828): first President of the Linnean Society and his herbarium

An account is given of Smith's early life in Norwich, his botanical education, his tour of western Europe, the foundation of the Linnean Society of London, his return to Norwich, Flora Graeca , the Smith Herbarium and its principal contributors. A synopsis of Savage's Catalogue of the Smith Herbarium is presented together with notes on the consultation of the microfiche of the Herbarium (including a summary of the contents of the microfiches). A list of Smith's publications is given together with some sources of further information.     

A new Mississippian problematicum from Ireland and Britain: comparison with the problematicum Draffania

Upper Viséan platform limestones from Ireland and northern England contain occasionally hemispherical to bean-shaped structures attached to fenestellid bryozoan colonies. These problematic structures are described and compared with another Mississippian problematicum, Draffania. Both problematic taxa exhibit a similar skeletal structure, but have some different morphological features. They also have comparable stratigraphic records and occupied similar palaeoecological niches. Possible affinities of this new problematicum with foraminiferans, crinoids, algae, and bryozoans are discussed, but its definite taxonomic status remains to be elucidated.     

Culture of Stone: Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone among the Dani

Culture of Stone: Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone among the Dani. O. W. "Bud" Hampton. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999.331 pp.     

Speaking and Listening with the Eyes: Gaze Signaling during Dyadic Interactions

Cognitive scientists have long been interested in the role that eye gaze plays in social interactions. Previous research suggests that gaze acts as a signaling mechanism and can be used to control turn-taking behaviour. However, early research on this topic employed methods of analysis that aggregated gaze information across an entire trial (or trials), which masks any temporal dynamics that may exist in social interactions. More recently, attempts have been made to understand the temporal characteristics of social gaze but little research has been conducted in a natural setting with two interacting participants. The present study combines a temporally sensitive analysis technique with modern eye tracking technology to 1) validate the overall results from earlier aggregated analyses and 2) provide insight into the specific moment-to-moment temporal characteristics of turn-taking behaviour in a natural setting. Dyads played two social guessing games (20 Questions and Heads Up) while their eyes were tracked. Our general results are in line with past aggregated data, and using cross-correlational analysis on the specific gaze and speech signals of both participants we found that 1) speakers end their turn with direct gaze at the listener and 2) the listener in turn begins to speak with averted gaze. Convergent with theoretical models of social interaction, our data suggest that eye gaze can be used to signal both the end and the beginning of a speaking turn during a social interaction. The present study offers insight into the temporal dynamics of live dyadic interactions and also provides a new method of analysis for eye gaze data when temporal relationships are of interest.     

喜马拉雅地区红矛猛蚁Myopopone castanea (Smith)记述

矛猛蚁属Myopopone Roger分布于东洋界和马来西亚界,目前为止该属仅知1种:红矛猛蚁M.castanea (Smith).首次在中国西藏记录到红矛猛蚁的分布,并系统记述了矛猛蚁属的特征、红矛猛蚁工蚁和蚁后的特征,提供了详尽的测量数据和插图.     

Speech Misperception: Speaking and Seeing Interfere Differently with Hearing

Speech perception is thought to be linked to speech motor production. This linkage is considered to mediate multimodal aspects of speech perception, such as audio-visual and audio-tactile integration. However, direct coupling between articulatory movement and auditory perception has been little studied. The present study reveals a clear dissociation between the effects of a listener’s own speech action and the effects of viewing another’s speech movements on the perception of auditory phonemes. We assessed the intelligibility of the syllables [pa], [ta], and [ka] when listeners silently and simultaneously articulated syllables that were congruent/incongruent with the syllables they heard. The intelligibility was compared with a condition where the listeners simultaneously watched another’s mouth producing congruent/incongruent syllables, but did not articulate. The intelligibility of [ta] and [ka] were degraded by articulating [ka] and [ta] respectively, which are associated with the same primary articulator (tongue) as the heard syllables. But they were not affected by articulating [pa], which is associated with a different primary articulator (lips) from the heard syllables. In contrast, the intelligibility of [ta] and [ka] was degraded by watching the production of [pa]. These results indicate that the articulatory-induced distortion of speech perception occurs in an articulator-specific manner while visually induced distortion does not. The articulator-specific nature of the auditory-motor interaction in speech perception suggests that speech motor processing directly contributes to our ability to hear speech.     

Review of Non-coding RNAs and the epigenetic regulation of gene expression: A book edited by Kevin Morris

Advances in sequencing and detection technology over the past two decades, highlighted by the data explosion brought about by the human genome project, have transformed what was previously assumed to be a relatively simple genetic landscape into a new picture where the so-called “dark matter” of the genome has stolen the spotlight from the not so hip protein-coding genes. The simplified central dogma of molecular biology, in which a gene encodes for a protein via a messenger RNA (mRNA), is still at the core of genetics but is now caught in a much more complex web of regulation by the genomic region previously known as “junk” DNA. Books such as Non-coding RNAs and epigenetic regulation of gene expression, published by Caister Academic Press, become essential guidelines to help us understand the current status of the very fast paced field of RNA research, which has only just started to uncover the roles of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in the regulation of gene expression.