Daily Archives: March 6, 2017

March 6, 2017 by Jon Tennant, Plos Blogs Credit: P. Rschli

One of the unique and most iconic features of many modern turtles is that they can withdraw their neck and head to hide and protect them within their shells. The group name of species which do this, Cryptodira, even means 'hidden-necked turtles' to reflect this unusual adaptation.

Turtles and their ancestors have been around for more than 200 million years now, and are a remarkable evolutionary success story. We know that by studying their fossils, the earliest turtle ancestors had rigid necks though, and were unable to retract them as modern species do.

New research from Jrmy Anquetin and colleagues has provided insight now into the reason this bizarre act evolved in turtles, showing that actually it occurred twice in their long history.

The team investigated a fossil turtle known as Platychelys from the Late Jurassic, around 150 million years ago, of Europe. Europe at this time was completely different to now it was more like an island archipelago, with warm shallow seas inhabited by a range of unusual and now extinct turtle species.

Intriguingly, the neck morphology of Platychelys was remarkably similar to its modern cryptodire relatives, indicating that it was at least partially capable of retracting its neck. It is able to do this by folding the neck muscles vertically, causing the neck to move inwards towards the torso, but apparently not quite enough to actually be of any use for protection.

Although the muscles of Platychelys are not preserved, the researchers were able to infer this based on the broad shape of the neck, or cervical, vertebrae, and the wide spacing between the parts of the bones that the muscles attached to. Cryptodires also have a double articulation on their neck vertebrae, a feature worth pointing out here only because the condition has the awesome name of 'ginglymoidy'.

As well as partially retracting its neck, it also seems that Platychelys was able to shoot it back out again. This is a method to ambush and capture its prey underwater, like some modern turtles are capable of doing, and especially useful to catch rapidly darting fish. This means that neck retraction for protection might even have evolved as a sort of additional, non-intentional function driven by the evolution of this mode of feeding in Platychelys.

As we see this sort of behaviour in modern turtles that are distantly related to Platychelys and separated by around 150 million years, this is an example of what is known as 'convergent evolution'. This is where different species have similar adaptations to their environment or ecology that are acquired independently but for the same purposes. In this case, neck retraction seems to have evolved multiple times to make capturing prey even easier, and originally had absolutely nothing to do with protection, as is commonly thought.

This adds an additional layer of complexity to our understanding of the early evolution of turtles, and the team will investigate this in more detail in the future by examining more fossils and trying to work out their feeding habits.

The article finishes by saying "We hope that this study will inspire other to continue exploring the evolution of cervical vertebrae in early crown group turtles."

Explore further: New insights into the family tree of modern turtles

More information: Jrmy Anquetin et al. A Jurassic stem pleurodire sheds light on the functional origin of neck retraction in turtles, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/srep42376

Journal reference: Scientific Reports

Provided by: PLOS Blogs

This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org.

Animals need to measure the time of year so that they can anticipate and adapt to the arrival of a new season to align reproduction, as well as other vital functions critical for survival. A new study, conducted at the University ...

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University and biomedical researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Magee-Womens Research Institute have established a framework for understanding the mechanics that underlie vesicle formation. ...

A small team of researchers with members from the University of California and the University of Michigan has found that some personality traits unique to a queen wasp are passed down to her offspring, the worker wasps. In ...

A new computational method can improve the accuracy of gene expression analyses, which are increasingly used to diagnose and monitor cancers and are a major tool for basic biological research.

Three species and three genera of birdeater spiders are described as new to science in a paper recently published in the open access journal ZooKeys. In their study, the Brazilian spider experts, Drs. Caroline Fukushima and ...

One of the unique and most iconic features of many modern turtles is that they can withdraw their neck and head to hide and protect them within their shells. The group name of species which do this, Cryptodira, even means ...

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The evolution of turtle neck retraction - Phys.Org

INDIANAPOLIS After repeatedly failing to get creationism through the front door of Hoosier science classes, the Indiana Senate has instead decided to encourage individual educators who take the initiative to teach religious beliefs as fact.

The chamber voted 40-9 last month to adopt Senate Resolution 17, praising educators who "teach a diverse curriculum" and specifically citing those who present alternatives to biological evolution.

State Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Centerville, the sponsor, insisted the resolution only is a recommendation that teachers be allowed to address competing theories on the origin of life if questioned by students about the subject.

"It's not endorsing, necessarily, teaching creationism, or that global warming isn't true. But it is recommending that teachers wouldn't be crucified if they answered a student and conversation ensued in the classroom," Raatz said.

Raatz acknowleged there have been no incidents that he's aware of where an Indiana elementary or high school teacher has gotten in trouble for answering student questions.

Nevertheless, Raatz believes the resolution which does not have the force of law sends an important message to teachers who critique scientific norms that state senators support their efforts.

"There's no requirement in this thing; it's simply making a statement," Raatz said. "You don't have to be afraid of answering questions in the classroom."

Every Senate Republican, except state Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, supported the measure; it was uniformly opposed by Senate Democrats.

State Sen. Mark Stoops, D-Bloomington, argued that the resolution actually undermines Indiana's efforts to promote science education and get students to pursue careers in technological fields.

"When I read it, it sounds like we are authorizing teachers to teach creationism in a science class," Stoops said.

State Sen. Frank Mrvan, D-Hammond, pointed out that the broad wording of the resolution also seemingly opens the door for teachers to promote any controversial belief in the classroom, be it the benefits of illegal drug use or the need for the United States to adopt communism.

"It's a big danger," Mrvan said. "They could be talking about anything in the world and they won't be responsible for it."

State Sen. Eddie Melton, D-Merrillville, said he saw the resolution as unnecessary, because there's nothing currently preventing teachers from answering student questions in any way they see fit.

Raatz and state Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, co-sponsor of the resolution and Senate Education Committee chairman, have a history of promoting "teach the controversy" legislation concerning evolution.

In 2012, the Indiana Senate voted 28-22 for a Kruse plan authorizing schools to educate students on "various theories of the origin of life."

That measure died in the House when lawmakers realized all religious origin stories would have to be treated with equal reverence to comply with federal standards.

Kruse and Raatz also worked together in 2015 on an unsuccessful proposal that would have had students review "the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing conclusions and theories," particularly relating to human development.

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Indiana Senate declares support for educators who teach evolution alternatives - nwitimes.com

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Ciscos head of data centres for UK&I discusses data centre evolution and the transformation of the digital core.

Cisco is more well-placed than most to chart the evolution of networking. The giant of networking first burst onto the scene in 1984, launching the now humble router to revolutionise the networking world.

From those humble beginnings in routers, the networking giant today boasts full portfolios in all of the major market segments IoT, Cloud, IT and more. Sitting at the core of todays networking is the powerhouse that is the data centre a key piece of IT infrastructure which Cisco has seen, and helped, evolve.

Data centres of old, born from huge computer rooms, were comprised of early computer systems systems which were complex to maintain and needing a special environment in which to operate. The 1980s internet boom saw computers spring up everywhere and, coupled with the rise of Unix and Linux-compatible PC operating systems, saw the term data centre enter the colloquial language of nearly every big IT department.

However, the data centre of today is an entirely different beast;

Data centres are not just big bricks building, it can be that but its also evolving and I would talk about it more as a digital core which is kind of moving away from that physical entity data centre, Joachim Mason, Head of Data centres at Cisco UK&I, told CBR.

Digital core can be everything that you need from network, compute, storage, software and cloud which is all part of what youre doing to deliver applications and data for customers today.

Indeed, this may be the latest linguistic evolution of the data centre. The dot-com bubble saw the rise of the Internet data centre, then we had the cloud data centre, with each variation of the data centre term becoming more and more blurred until we reached todays ubiquitous data centre.

This latest iteration of the data centre, or digital core as Mr Mason calls it, also calls upon the organisation operating the data centre to evolve, with Cisco a case in point. Where once the networking giant was focussed on hardware, todays customers have different demands.

Its a constantly evolving thing and as technology has changed, so too has the mix of technology changed and what they are actually doing for people changes, said Mr Mason.

Things are evolving and changing and Cisco evolves and changes as we need to. Fundamentally what were most concerned with is solving the problems that our customers have which are technology based, so as their demands grow and their amount of data is growing they need an IT and data centre environment that can scale to fit with that and also be agile enough to be flexible with the demands.

Customer demand is driven by the IT buzzwords of today Cloud, Internet of Things, Big Data and Security. Each area is complex take the IoT for example. Gartner forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use across the world in 2017. That is a staggering 31% increase on 2016 numbers and nearly half way to the research firms 20.4 billion connected things forecast for 2020.

The old way of processing the data would see the backhauling of a data feed to a data centre, then pushing the processed data back out to the edge platform. However this way of processing comes up short when you take into account how important speed is for todays business. This has given rise to intelligence at the edge, which pushes the processing as close as possible to the source. This is just one way which data centre demand, network demand, has changed. Another area is security;

Where do you need security on your networks, as it is a thing that touches absolutely everything. It has a role as a platform, as an enforcer, as a sensor in security space and it also has the role of delivering applications and services out to all. So whether youre in front of a laptop or walking around outside, its the network thats giving you [security].

Cloud, big data, IoT all the buzzwords merge in working towards one common goal in the enterprise, Digital transformation. Digital is changing everything, as the UK data centre chief told CBR:

The term digitisation for one is used widely, its real and its happening leading to a lot of change for all industries including our own, so with that youre talking about changing processes mentally, making them more digital and agile in response to being intuitive.

It used to be that the only thing that happened during IT happened in IT organisations and its now at a point where were all much more savvy with technology than we were 10-20 years ago so we can access it from wherever we like without having to seek permission from someone.

This, for Cisco has changed the networking, and data centre, game. The focus now is keeping customers switched on, providing visibility, quick and easy deployment and always-on availability.

The software front end is what customers care about and what they need is for it to be there and connected quick, intuitive and all those things. The minute its not there the whole thing kind of goes to port so thats what we fundamentally care about.

As case in point, Cisco started the year with a new Tetration Analytics offering to deliver various deployment options. For instance, Ciscos ASAP (Analyse, Simplify, Automate and Protect) data centre gives organisations the ability to modernise their data centre and IT infrastructure with a hybrid IT solution.

It enables organisations to gain complete visibility across everything in the data centre in real time. This being part of its aim to also deliver a 100 percent customer visibility offering for network and software-defined network solutions.

Mason said: The delivery of applications will come from different places, so it might come from quite a traditional start with major players like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft that weve all grown up with in the industry and are built on a fairly traditional landscape

Whereas new sorts of applications, web scale and cloud native are kind of built and developed architecture in a different way, scaled in a different way and theres lots of applications that you can use on your phone that have kind of become common practice and natural for you to use. The reality is youve got to find a balance to how you deliver to customers.

Increasing amounts of data combined with a cloud-first approach for many organisations continues to further the evolution of the data centre. As some data centre providers sell up and get out of the business, the likes of Cisco continue to thrive due to its ability to embrace change.

While new technologies and the IT buzzwords will tend to steal the headlines, it is the sometimes unattractive infrastructure piece that makes all of this possible. As new technologies come along itll require continued agility from tech giants like Cisco to evolve the data centre, or digital core, powering future business.

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The evolution of the data centre according to Cisco - Computer Business Review

Monday morning the White House rolled out the latest version of President Trumps immigration policy, with the president signing the revised executive order. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly detailed the revised language, which limited immigration from six majority-Muslim countries and dropped the exception carved out for religious minorities, which was seen by opponents as representing an unconstitutional form of religious discrimination.

The lineage of the order can be traced back to 2015 and the Republican primary, where in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, then-candidate Trump called for temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States. Below is a timeline of the travel bans evolution, from campaign promise to executive order to appeals court to todays revised version.

Dec. 7, 2015: At a campaign event in South Carolina, Trump announces his plans for a ban on Muslims traveling to the United States. By some interpretations, that could have covered not just immigrants but legal residents, even citizens. The statement read, Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what is going on.

Without looking at the various polling data,the statement continued, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.

July 21, 2016: During his address at the Republican National Convention, Trump said, We must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.

When asked whether that quote meant a slight rollback from his original ban promise on Meet the Press three days later, Trump replied: I dont think so. I actually dont think its a rollback. In fact, you could say its an expansion. Im looking now at territories. People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you cant use the word Muslim. Remember this. And Im OKwith that, because Im talking territory instead of Muslim.

Jan. 27, 2017: Late on his first full Friday in the White House, Trump signs an executive order entitled Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States. The order indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) for 90 days.

Jan. 28:A series of protests at airports across the country take place, including a temporary halt in taxi service from JFK Airport in New York City. The ACLU wins an emergency stay on the ban in a New York federal court. Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an Iraqi interpreter who worked with U.S. military forces and had a Special Immigrant Visa, was initially detained at JFK but then released.

Its not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. Its working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over, said Trump when asked about how the order was working.

Jan. 29: The Department of Homeland Security releases a statement saying that green card holders would be exempt from the ban. The White House had initially said that they would be subject to additional screening.

In an interview with Fox News, former New York City mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani said that Trump had asked him about how to legally implement a Muslim ban.

Jan. 30: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates is fired by Trump for refusing to defend the order. At present, wrote Yates in a letter to Justice Department lawyers, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful. Consequently, for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.

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Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration, read the White House statement announcing her termination. It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.

It was later reported that Yates had also advised the White House about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynns contact with Russian officials.

Trump tweets, If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the bad would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad dudes out there!

The revised order signed Monday doesnt go into effect for 10days.

Former President Barack Obamas office releases a statement:

President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country, Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said. In his final official speech as president, he spoke about the important role of citizens and how all Americans have a responsibility to be the guardians of our democracy not just during an election but every day.

Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake. With regard to comparisons to President Obamas foreign policy decisions, as weve heard before, the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.

The state of Washington announcesit is suing Trump over the ban, attempting to have it declared unconstitutional and asking for a temporary restraining order against its enforcement. It is joined by Minnesota.

Jan. 31: White House press secretarySean Spicer argues at a White House press briefing that the order is not a ban.

I think the president has talked about extreme vetting and the need to keep America safe for a very, very long time. At the same time, hes also made very clear that this is not a Muslim ban. Its not a travel ban. Its a vetting system to keep America safe. Thats it plain and simple, and all of the facts, and a reading of it, clearly show that thats what it is, Spicer said.

Yahoo News pointedout that Giuliani did not say the ban was based on religion, but instead suggested that it arose as a result of a desire for a Muslim ban.

Then you should ask Mayor Giuliani, Spicer replied. Thats thats his opinion. Im just telling you what the president has said, and what the president has done has been to focus on making sure that we keep the country safe and that the executive order that was drafted does just that.

Feb. 3:Federal Judge James Robart rules in favor of the states of Washington and Minnesotain a national halt of the executive order. The executive order adversely affects the states residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel, Robart, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote. These harms are significant and ongoing.

The White House responded with a written statement: At the earliest possible time, the Department of Justice intends to file an emergency stay of this outrageous order and defend the executive order of the President, which we believe is lawful and appropriate. The presidents order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people.

The White House later issued a revised statement without the word outrageous.

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned! said Trump via Twitter.

What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.? continued Trump. Because the ban was lifted by a judge, many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country. A terrible decision. The judge opens up our country to potential terrorists and others that do not have our best interests at heart. Bad people are very happy!

U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton rules in favor of the ban in a suit filed by the ACLU of Massachusetts, refusing to issue the stay because he believed the administration was likely to prevail, on the grounds that the president has broad powers over immigration.

Feb. 9: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules 3-0 to uphold Robarts stay. The three judges said the states had shown that even temporary reinstatement of the ban would cause harm and that the U.S. government had not offered any evidence of national security concerns to justify banning travel from the seven countries.

Trump responded by tweeting, SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!

Feb. 10: At a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump is asked about how he would respond to the Ninth Circuit ruling against his order: Well be doing something very rapidly having to do with additional security for our country. Youll be seeing that sometime next week. In addition, we will continue to go through the court process, and ultimately I have no doubt that well win that particular case.

Feb. 16:In a press conference, Trump says that hell institute a new immigration order, backing away from attempting to take the original immigration ban case to the Supreme Court.

Rather than continuing this litigation, the President intends in the near future to rescind the Order and replace it with a new, substantially revised Executive Order to eliminate what the panel erroneously thought were constitutional concerns, wrote Justice Department lawyers. In so doing, the President will clear the way for immediately protecting the country rather than pursuing further, potentially time-consuming litigation.

Feb.21: In a town hall on Fox News, White House policy adviser Stephen Miller says that the new immigration order will be fundamentally the same as the original order.

One of the big differences that you are going to see in the executive order is that it is going to be responsive to the judicial ruling which didnt exist previously, said Miller. And so these are mostly minor, technical differences. Fundamentally, you are still going to have the same, basic policy outcome for the country.

March 1: Plans to sign the executive order are pushed back following Trumps joint address to Congress. A senior administration official told CNN, We want the [executive order] to have its own moment.

March 6: Trump signs the revised immigration ban, which includes the original seven countries except for Iraq. The order goes into effect March 16 and revokes the Jan. 27 order.

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Timeline: The evolution of Trump's travel ban - Yahoo News

City People Notebook. Will Eisner Studios, Author provided

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of American cartoonist and writer, Will Eisner. Important exhibitions have been organised to commemorate his artistic legacy including one in Angoulme, France at the Muse de la Bande Dessine and another in New York at the Museum of Illustration.

In the course of his long career, Eisner (19172005) had a lasting influence on comics, not only through his works from The Spirit in the 1940s to A Contract with God in 1978 but also by initiating new ways of thinking and talking about comics. Championing and teaching sequential art, he also contributed to popularisation of the term graphic novel.

This catch-all label now refers primarily to the format, but also a literary genre, the most celebrated examples of which are marked by a sense of seriousness and ambition Art Spiegelmans Maus, for example. As the term has spread since the 1980s, however, its outlines have become blurry. The ambition of the expression graphic novel was initially one of distinction its promoters wanted to break with a mainstream comics production they saw as childish.

The expression graphic novel was born in the 1960s, introduced by the comic critic Richard Kyle in 1964 in a small-press article about the future of comics. It then circulated through various fan publications. There were just a handful of direct and explicit uses of this expression in published works between 1971 and 1978.

In late 1971, The Sinister House of Secret Love, a DC Comics book, put the expression on the cover of its second issue. This very brief attempt at a gothic romance comic was the first publishing use of the graphic novel label.

Then in the summer of 1974, comics creator Jack Katzs black-and-white magazine The First Kingdom, orignally presented as a long science-fiction and fantasy story, was rebranded as a serialized graphic novel.

In 1976, the label was used in the paratext (title pages, flaps of cover jacket) of two large-format hardcover books in black and white, loosely related to the 60s underground comix movement. Beyond Time and Again by George Metzger reprinted pages from a science-fiction strip which previously appeared in the West Coast alternative press. In Bloodstar, Richard Corben adapted in comics a fantasy short story of Robert Howard, creator of Conan.

Also in 1976, the digest periodical Fiction Illustrated was launched by editor and writer Byron Preiss. On its back cover it claimed to be Americas first adult graphic-novel revue. Over four issues it published standalone comic stories in colour.

At last, in 1978, Will Eisners A Contract with God was published. In a book format with sepia-tone pages, it offered four semi-biographical stories about a Bronx tenement and its inhabitants in the 1930s. Its cover presented it as a graphic novel.

All of these books are quite different from our contemporary Eisner-influenced definition of the graphic novel. Theyre also quite different from one another. In black and white or in color, in classical frame sequences with balloons or using other text/image combination, serious or satirical in tone, periodical or one-shot, large or small, these books dont look like each other, either in format or in form.

Their diversity reflects the main currents of the then-emerging US comic-book field. Their inspirations reveal the shared structuring influences of the actors of this field. These are not autobiographical tales or memoirs like one imagines when considering contemporary classic graphic novels such as Maus or Fun Home, for example. On the contrary, theyre genre stories (science-fiction, fantasy, noir), building on themes, narrative tropes and references taken from comic books, from their pulp magazines ancestors or from cinema.

But above all, these books be it The First Kingdom, A Contract with God or Bloodstar all share a similar ambition for their form, the comics.

In 1964, R Kyle wanted to bring the comic book out of the juvenile field, for it to take its place in the literary spectrum. In 1976, Byron Preiss, in the introduction to the first issue of Fiction Illustrated, set a similar goal for his initiative:

Fiction Illustrated aspires to be adult in its audience and approach, to be a place where new concepts and characters can be presented without concession to the needs of a childrens market or a particular genre.

When one considers the early graphic novels mentioned, it appears that the claim for works to be adult is understood differently by their creators. They form a homogeneous group only in their common rejection of the mainstream production of their time. They try first and above all to distinguish themselves from mainstream comic books because they consider that its format, newsstand distribution and themes (chiefly superheroes) prevent any hope for artistic freedom and recognition. In Fiction Illustrated #1, Byron Preiss wrote:

Most of the comic books are marketed to and identified with children because theyre produced for children.

In a similar manner, in his preface to A Contract with God, Will Eisner considered that:

Certainly, there was more for the cartoonist [] to deal with than super heroes who were preventing destruction of the earth by super villains.

The common feature of these graphic novels is then in what they try not to be: not to be a comic book (but a magazine, a digest, a hardcover book), not to be a super-hero story (but a space opera or heroic fantasy saga, a detective story or a realistic life account), not to be childish.

Of all the graphic novels discussed here, only Eisners had a real symbolic and editorial destiny. A Contract with God is considered a landmark in the evolution of the form and has been constantly reprinted since its first publication. The others have rarely or never been reprinted; theyre seldom discussed and considered in the modern historiography of graphic novels.

Of the different and competing approaches taken by the early graphic novels, its the one championed by Eisner that prevailed. From our contemporary perspective, a true and literary ambitious graphic novel could hardly be, like Bloodstar, about a barbarian fighting a giant worm. Yet a historical examination reminds us that works that pioneered the use of the term graphic novel didnt so much try to emulate legitimate literature as aim for a distinction and an emancipation within the comics field to be able to freely tell stories, whatever they may be, without having to take into account an audience of children or to limit ones ambitions.

But its no surprise that only the work that most closely conforms to literature is the one thats remembered.

To celebrate Eisners legacy, Will Eisner Week takes place the 6th of March annually.

Jean-Matthieu Mon, Matre de confrences en sciences de linformation et de la communication, CREM, Universit de Lorraine

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Will Eisner and the evolution of the graphic novel - Raw Story

Daniel Dennett maintains cheerfully that there is no such thing as I. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

Daniel Dennett thinks of what we think of as mind as a trillion mindless robots dancing. Not one of those robots gives a hoot what we think, but collectively they unwittingly choreograph the illusion that we have a self that is in control. In that respect, Dennetts own personal compendious chorus line has been remarkably in step for the past 50 years of a stellar and pugnacious academic career (in which he has taken on heavy hitters including Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky and John Searle and always come out swinging). For most of that time, Dennett has been professor of philosophy at Tufts University, Massachusetts, and ever since he determined 40 years ago that his field of study would be the application of evolution Darwins dangerous idea to theories of consciousness, he has strayed from that righteous path only to debunk counter-arguments based on a vestigial sense of mystery or on religious faith.

This latest volume in that thrilling lifelong argument is yet another magnum opus, the latest distillation of all that Dennett holds to be true. As such, it is required reading for anyone remotely curious about how they came to be remotely curious. The title is a reddish herring. Dennett doesnt have much to say about the minds of bacteria, because they have no idea they are bacteria, and Bach only really gets a walk-on part because our brains are seduced by the alliterative play of language in titles. Dennett starts by disarming Ren Descartes, the first great philosopher of modern science. Descartes, in his theory of everything, The World, proposed a model of mind as being composed of something other than matter. He offered the thought that thinking was not the preserve of chemicals and neurons, but some other magic feat that operated outside the bounds of the normal physical world. That theory of Cartesian dualism proved so persuasive that, nearly 400 years on, Dennett is still fighting what feels like a back-to-the-wall battle to say it isnt so. In response to cogito ergo sum, Dennett maintains cheerfully that there is no such thing as I, beyond another cunning Darwinian ruse that has evolved to trick us into preserving our selfish genes. I is a fiction conjured and maintained by the mind, the greatest story we are never told.

Dennett shares with his fellow traveller and friend Richard Dawkins a great gift for communicating abstruse theory in seductive stories. He and Dawkins are, in this sense, among what he calls the pre-eminent memeticists of our times: their minds have made themselves skilled at having ideas that spread to colonise other minds. These viral ideas (memes, Dennett like to call them, although the moniker itself hasnt quite caught on) are the currency of our collective intelligence as a species. They compete constantlyin a survival of the fittest in the arena of culture, a Darwinianspace.

Such is the winning reverse engineered simplicity of natural selection as an idea that there is hardly any subject the philosopher cannot marshal to his cause. Dennetts brilliant career has seen him colonise all aspects of human activity with Darwinian logic. Here he takes the campaign into such diverse fields as linguistics (words themselves become the simplest and most indestructible memes, constantly spreading and mutating in their built-in mission to describe the world) and, most tellingly, into the concepts of artificial intelligence and thinking tools and their products, what he calls ourbrainchildren.

Some of these forays are easier to follow than others. At one point, Dennett takes on Steven Pinkers contention that it is ludicrous to describe human inventions wheelbarrows, Hamlet, iPads in Darwinian terms since they are created by the intelligent designer in the individual brain, with an end in mind. Dennett is having none of it, which leads to conclusions like this one: Pinker is right that the human brain is really a designer but his should not be seen as an alternative to the memetic approach, but as a continuation of the memetic approach into the age of gradually de-Darwinising semi-intelligent design. It is worth persevering through such thickets. More often than not, rereading Dennetts arguments brings them into focus, and you have the pleasure of observing your mind being won over by another of the philosophers seductive memes.

From Bacteria to Bach to Back by Daniel C Dennett is published by Allen Lane (25). To order a copy for 18.75 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

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From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel C Dennett review memes of making you think - The Guardian