Category Archives: Evolution

A battery-assisted luxe bicycle designed for the urban commuter who demands nothing less than the best in their experience of things they own.

Hopping on a bicycle for your early day commute is still the most efficient, environment-friendly and in most cases the fastest option. The number of bicycle riders is going to double in the coming decade owing to all the good reasons more so in the crowded cities and urban centers. No one can deny the number of options when it comes to the most eco-friendly option for commuting on the planet, but are they all practical enough?

This prompted designer Franz Cerwinka to rethink the next generation of luxury bicycling thats perfectly in tune with high-tech features. Thus came into existence the Pilot bicycle designed for the upcoming 5-10 years. Franz set out on designing the bicycle by conducting extensive interviews and testing phases. Interactions with bike owners, students or other people who ride their bikes for daily commutes led to the final design. Talking of shaping and modeling the two-wheeler, this bit took the most chunk of the effort since it was a one-man job.

The final design centered on a lightweight 7005 series aluminum frame and the striking hubless wheel characteristics. To finalize the hubless wheel design that is functional to the last detail, Franz took help from his mechanical engineering colleagues. In the end, the off-center axle design had the additional gear to spin the wheels at proper rate with pedaling motion. This is assisted by the onboard motor for that extra boost on inclines when the throttle is pressed. The Pilot bicycle finally came to life after countless edits and alterations to the design. The next step was to finalize the colors, materials and finishes.

Pilot can be controlled fully with the compatible app right from locking the bike to controlling the built-in lights or securing the battery module. On-board guidance and navigation are left to the center console (wireless charging capable) on the handlebar which docks the smartphone just like a mobile gamepad. The app displays all the real-time information such as speed, distance, calories burned, and more. The battery pack can be easily detached/swapped for external charging/secondary battery replacement.

User safety is paramount so, the bicycle gets a tandem of lights and wheel reflectors to keep other motorists well informed of the Pilot rider. To extend the functionality further, the bicycle gets a rear housing attachment that connects to the bikes hubless wheels for added storage space. Another adapter can be attached to third-party bicycle accessories like kids trailers or wagons.

Designer: Franz Cerwinka

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This sleek hubless bicycle could be the next evolution in the Tesla lineup - Yanko Design

Astronomers solve 16-year old mystery of ultraviolet ring in space

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Data from the GALEX spacecraft suggest that planets around cool dwarf stars may be subjected to intense flares.

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The galaxyUGC 1382 has been revealed to be far larger and stranger than previously thought.Astronomers relied on a combination of ground-based and space telescopes to uncover the true nature of this "Frankenstein galaxy."

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Entangled by gravity and destined to merge, two candidate black holes in a distant galaxy appear to be locked in an intricate dance. Researchers using data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have come up with the most compelling confirmation yet for the existence of these merging black holes and have found new details about their odd, cyclical light signal.

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A new report identifies top-of-the-line tools for studying the fabric of space.

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What makes one rose bush blossom with flowers, while another remains barren? Astronomers ask a similar question of galaxies.

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NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time.

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A duo of astronomers, Dr. Youichi Ohyama (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica or ASIAA, Taiwan) and Dr. Ananda Hota (UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in the Basic Sciences or CBS, India), has discovered a Blue Supergiant star located far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Virgo.

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The light of a red star is warped and magnified by its dead-star companion, as detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope.

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The spectacular barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has ranked among the biggest stellar systems for decades. Now a team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Brazil have crowned it the largest-known spiral based on archival data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission.

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What was once a fairly average star, not much different than our sun, can be seen unraveling at the seams in this new image from the Spitzer and GALEX space telescopes.

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NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where the spacecraft will continue its exploration of the cosmos.

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Explorers are among the lowest-cost missions flown by NASA, but they can pack a big scientific punch. Such is the case with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or GALEX, a mission designed to map the history of star formation over 80 percent of the age of the universe.

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GALEX - Galaxy Evolution Explorer

Human Evolutionary Biology chair Daniel E. Lieberman 86 offered evolutionary insights into physical activity in his virtual lecture, Did We Evolve to Exercise? Wednesday evening.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History hosted the webinar on Zoom as part of its ongoing Evolution Matters lecture series. The series, which has been running for the past 12 years, discusses a variety of topics related to the history of life.

Liebermans research focuses on human physical activity from an evolutionary and anthropological perspective. In the lecture, Lieberman spoke on exercise and why it is increasingly healthy for humans as they age.

A large portion of the lecture was inspired by key points from Exercised, Liebermans book published in January.

Lieberman began the talk by addressing the exercise paradox the difficulty to exercise consistently despite understanding its benefits.

Everybody knows that exercise is good for us, but only about 20 percent of Americans get whats considered to be the minimum amount of physical activity recommended by basically every major health organization in the world about 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week, Lieberman said. The other 80 percent of us dont do it right.

Evolutionary factors may explain why exercise habits are so difficult to build in modern society. While hunter-gatherers were moderately physically active when it was necessary or rewarding, they otherwise conserved energy, according to Lieberman.

He described a longitudinal study on Harvard alumni on the impact of moderate physical activity on death rates in comparison to sedentary lifestyles, highlighting the increasing benefits of physical activity with age.

By the time alumni got into their 50s, the ones who were burning 2,000 calories a week through exercise had 36 percent lower death rates, and by the time they got to be 70 or older, the ones who were regularly exercising had 50 percent lower death rates, Lieberman said.

Lieberman concluded the talk by discussing the applications of his exercise research to life at Harvard. In an interview following the event, he expanded on how the pressures of student life may result in less physical activity.

We think its a tradeoff: Time I spend exercising is time Im going to lose from other important things. But I think the evidence shows that, actually, the time people spend exercising, they get back in increased concentration and better mood and memory, and the short-term benefits are huge, Lieberman said.

Lieberman said even a slight lifestyle change to include more exercise can make a big difference.

Just an hour a week, which is a little bit more than 10 minutes a day, can decrease your risk of mortality by 30, 40 percent. So no matter what level youre at, a little bit of physical activity goes a long way, Lieberman said.

You dont need to run marathons or swim the English Channel or climb Mount Everest. You dont need to do extreme amounts of physical activity, he added. You just need to do it.

Excerpt from:

HEB Prof. Explores Evolution and Exercise in Webinar | News - Harvard Crimson

The workplace is evolving rapidly and the pandemic gets the blame - and the credit.

Although we are still living with the Covid-19 pandemic, thanks to vaccines and masks, people are starting to get back to a normal rhythm of life. Kids are going back to school. People can eat inside restaurants again and many businesses are starting to let workers return to their offices. While some companies continue a level of cautiousness about welcoming their entire staff back to their workplaces, even those companies are signaling that by early next year, their staff will be allowed to work at the office on a flexible basis. Indeed, Amazon stated this week that their corporate staff could work from home indefinitely and come to the office as-needed.

Social scientists are just now starting to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on work, learning, and play. It may take a while to understand the full impact the Covid-19 pandemic had on all of us both personally and professionally. However, the one thing the pandemic has changed is how we work and the future of the workplace.

Had it not been for technologies like Zoom and other video conferencing apps, along with new collaborative software and services, much of our businesses would have struggled to be as productive as they were during the pandemic.

Jacob Morgan, who in 2014 wrote the book, "The Future of Work" and developed a concept he calls "The Evolution of the Employee" seems to have had a crystal ball of our current working world.

He created this chart below to suggest that employees and organizations around the world need to embrace, prepare for and encourage the evolution of the employee.

Jacob Morgan's chart -The Evolution Of The Employee

I don't think Mr. Morgan saw the pandemic coming but he points out that, "Covid has made this evolution a present-day reality."

One part of my job as a technology analyst since 1981 was to cover the evolving world of tech around the globe. Until the pandemic hit, I averaged between 50K and 100K miles traveling each year for 38 years. I have accumulated over four million airline miles during that time and I can tell you from experience that this much world travel takes a toll on one's body.

When the first whole room video conferencing systems debuted in 2000, I had a chance to use a couple of them where we connected with people from a company in other parts of the world. This was an "aha" moment for me as the reality of working with someone via video was now a reality. The only problem was that these conferencing systems cost over $100,000 each and were targeted at large corporations and not the mainstream market yet.

By 2010, we began to see a lot of what I would call small conference room video systems come to market in the $700-$1200 range and ushered in another important bridge to the use of video conferencing for all types of business. However, even though these new low-cost video systems worked, the market demand for them was paltry.

Office workers had engrained into their work-styles a view that face-to-face meetings were preferable to any type of video conferencing, and if traveling was needed to make these meetings happen, so be it.

I have worked with some Taiwanese ODM's in the past and always had to go to Taipei for my meetings with them. I had encouraged some of these companies to install these lower-cost video conferencing systems and on one of my trips, I brought a system with me and installed it in their board room. My goal was to try and reduce my travels to Taiwan as much as possible. But even with this video conference system at both of our sites, they were so used to in-person meetings, they resisted using them to the degree that did not allow me to reduce my travel to their offices.

Then the pandemic hit. All businesses were forced to find new forms of communications and collaboration to stay alive. Many technologies played a role in helping businesses weather the pandemic storm, but none had as great an impact as video conferencing.

If you look at the chart above, video conferencing software like Zoom, Microsoft's Teams, Google Meet, and Cisco's WebEx and others, have enabled work anytime, work anywhere, use any device, share information, collaborate, and democratized learning and teaching. Not bad for a 2014 prognostication.

Tragically, Covid-19 has killed nearly 4.9 million people worldwide to date.

Its impact on families has been devastating. It continues to be a serious health concern that some medical experts say it may never be fully eradicated although they also tell us it can be controlled.The heartbreak of deaths and economic destruction can never be minimized.

But it has also forced the medical and technical worlds to innovate faster. Weve had a Covid vaccine get to market in record time. Tech companies moved faster to expand their collaboration and video conferencing tools to help large and small companies keep working. And these technologies have upset the proverbial face-to-face meetings mentality and broke the resistance to using video conferencing that now allows people to work from anywhere, with any device, and create a new world where flexible work schedules will be the norm, not the exception.

We will look back on this era as one with heartbreak as well as driving positive changes, especially to the workplace. As Mr. Morgan suggests, "...employees and organizations around the world need to embrace, prepare for and encourage," this evolution of work as I sense the workplace has changed forever.

Originally posted here:

The Evolution Of Work - Forbes

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. From skin pigmentation to food preferences to gender identification, there are no limits to the diversity of individual human expression. And whether they be genetic, cultural, or a mix of both, the root causes of all these extraordinary variations have long fascinated our species.

Tracking Traits, a new podcast launched by Penn States Center for Human Evolution and Diversity (CHED), explores the current work of researchers who are forging new pathways to understanding the evolution of human diversity, via a wide variety of approaches.

"Tracking Traits provides a glimpse into scientific curiosity and the attitude we try to bring to all of CHED's work, explained center co-director Nina Jablonski, Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology. Were trying to tackle important and interesting problems in human evolutionary biology. To do this, we want to engage with people of diverse backgrounds and talents, including some of our highly motivated undergraduate research students.

For the eight episodes of the shows first season, three Penn State undergrads conducted the researcher interviews. Samantha Muller is a forensic science major with a minor in anthropology;Hannah Marchok is a biobehavioral health major with a minor in global health; and Amy Mook graduated from Penn State in spring 2021 with a degree in genetics and developmental biology.

I was so excited to be able to interview such an amazing array of scientists from in and around our department, said Muller. Everyone had a unique view to present on, not to mention a unique topic. However, what struck me most was everyones excitement to create a project that would relate all of these interests back to the broad ideas of human diversity.

In addition to episodes that relate the story of CHEDs founding and the research of Jablonski and the centers other co-director, professor of biological anthropology Mark Shriver, Tracking Traits first season explores the following scientists work:

In addition to discussing their science, Tracking Traits student hosts talked with the researchers about their personal stories, including the reasons they decided to pursue research as a career.

I think that's an important part of our program here, noted Shriver. Hearing from the people as people about their lives and how they developed the curiosity. When did that happen, and then when did they see it was going in a good direction, that they could build a career on? Who did they reach out to as mentors? I don't think there's enough of these science storiesout there from scientists. So I think that's going to be a really interesting part of this and probably useful to students.

Muller agreed, saying, All the researchers, whether anthropologists, biologists, or in-between, were so passionate about what they were doing that it made me so excited for my future as a scientist.

TheCenter for Human Evolution and Diversity (CHED)is a joint venture of Penn States Department of Anthropology and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. The scientists interviewed on the show all received 2021 seed grants from CHED and agreed to participate in the podcast in order to educate and inspire others.

For the 2022 seed grant program, CHED seeks proposalsfor multidisciplinary projects aimed at developing innovative methods for visualizing and/or studying the human phenotype (including human behavior) and human contextual information using common handheld and wearable devices.Recipients of these grants will be featured in the next season of Tracking Traits.

Applications for the 2022 cycle of CHED seed grants will be accepted through Friday, Dec. 10. For more information on the program,visit the CHED RFP page.

To listen to the entire first season of Tracking Traits and subscribe to the series,visit the Tracking Traits website.

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New podcast tracks the evolution of diverse human traits | Penn State University - Penn State News

The FINANCIAL NYUs Center for Ballet and the Arts and the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University partner to investigate the genetic origin and evolutionary purpose of dance across different species with an eye to developing new clinical therapie.

A new research fellowship, developed in collaboration with NYUs Center for Ballet and the Arts and the Laboratory for Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University, is tackling an age-old question: Why do humans dance?And what can dance teach us about the brain?

According to New York University, research suggests there is overlap between the neurological processes for how humans and non-human species learn complex vocalizationsand thus, develop singing and speech skillsand how these same species also learn to move rhythmically. Now, a new fellowship leveraging the unique resources of both an artistic research institution and a biomedical research university will apply researchers expertise in the neural and genetic mechanisms of spoken language to further investigate what is happening in the brain when we move and dance.

Dr. Constantina Theofanopoulou, a postdoctoral researcher at The Rockefeller University, and Dr. Sadye Paez, a senior research associate in the Neurogenetics of Language Laboratory, will join NYUs Center for Ballet and the Arts for a semester-long fellowship to gather and synthesize evidence on the neurological links between dance and vocal learning; examine how species developed the capacity to coordinate rhythmic sound with movement to unlock theories about the purpose of dance in human evolution; and design experiments and methodologies that will have a range of clinical and research applications and create a better shared understanding of how the neuroscience of language and dance intersect.Theofanopoulou and Paez say their research into the neurological underpinnings of danceand how this links up with what they already know about the neuroscience of vocal learningcan help inform the creation of better clinical therapies for people with a range of neurological movement and spoken language disorders.Research into how certain species synchronize motor movements to particular rhythms (like how a parrot might bop its head to a song) could enhance understanding of how different regions of the brain are linked, allowing health practitioners to employ different therapies to repair certain neural circuits impacted by injury or disease. For example, the way that dance exercises specific motor circuits could have indirect or complementary benefits for patients undergoing existing speech therapies.

Species such as humans, parrots and seals learn to produce complex vocalizations over time. We dont think its a coincidence that these same species are able to train themselves to synchronize their movements with rhythm. It might be that the motor circuit responsible for rhythmic movement in these species evolved as a prerequisite for vocal learning, said Theofanopoulou.The impulse to move is innate, and the continuum of movement is as vast and infinite as the numbers and types of species. Many species crawl, climb, slither, swim, walk, leap, and more. But the ability to move rhythmically, what we call dance or movement to sound, is unique. This distinct ability to purposefully control and coordinate our bodies in response to cadence or tempo has exciting applications, said Paez.

For example, clinically, we know that walking among patients with Parkinsons disease improves dramatically by adding a metronome. Patients are able to better sync their movements when they could match a regular beat. Their strides lengthened and their gait improved. We want to better understand why this happens and what this could mean for people living with a range of neurological disorders, she continued.The research will also tackle a larger, more existential question: Why exactly did humans evolve to dance?Why is it that the non-human apes studied thus far find it so difficult to hear a sound and tap out a rhythm like humans do? What purpose does dance serve? Evolution is a fascinating component of this research, said Theofanopoulou.Many cultures do not distinguish between music and dance, often using the same word for both. Vocal learning and dance overlap in how these behaviors are culturally transmitted from one generation to another, such as in dialects or repertoires of sounds or movements. Thus, it is plausible that vocal learning and dance co-evolved both culturally and genetically, said Paez.

The researchers also plan to sequence the genomes of highly specialized dancers to understand if these dancers have specific DNA variants or genetic commonalities, compared to non-dancers. Both Paez and Theofanopoulou are involved in the Vertebrate Genomes Project, which aims to generate reference genome assemblies of all ~70,000 living vertebrate species to enable the study of how genes have contributed to the evolution and survival of these species.

Using the same technology, they will be able to sequence the dancers genomes and uncover specific characteristics at the full length of their DNA. It remains to be found, for example, whether the genetic similarities between specialized dancers overlap with genetic locations involved in speech learning or speech deficits.

This collaboration is the outgrowth of CBAs The Brain is the Dancer, a half-day symposium co-presented with the Lincoln Center that brought together leading neuroscientists and dancers in a series of conversations and demonstrations. The collaboration will allow the Rockefeller researchers to leverage the full artistic and institutional resources of New York University, including CBAs choreographers and dancers, faculty in the creative arts therapies, and practitioners and researchers in the health sciences.

The research fellowship will incorporate perspectives from movement science, physical therapy, disability studies, neuroscience and neurogenetics. The research will, in part, investigate hypotheses that are based on the original findings of two independent studies, led by Ani Patel and Adena Schachner, showing that only vocal learning species can learn to dance, moving their bodies rhythmically to the beat of sound in music. Debate exists on the hypothesis, but most can agree that there is a distinction among vocal learners for dancing.

Both Theofanopoulou and Paez are in the laboratory of Dr. Erich D. Jarvis, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and long known for his studies on the neurobiology and evolution of vocal learning.Future developments in the partnership will be announced at a later date.

Originally posted here:

Why Do Humans Dance? New Research Fellowship Explores the Evolution and Neuroscience of Dance FINCHANNEL - The FINANCIAL

Critics of evolution often argue that life, rather than gradually changing over the years through natural selection, was actually created by a so-called "intelligent designer."Their position is that the biological machinery which makes up living bodies is so complex, and so perfectly calibrated to supportour numerous needs, that it had to have been planned out by a deliberate andthoughtful force of some kind.

Yet if God actually did design human bodies according to a plan, they forgot to make sure that we can breathe while we sleep a remarkably crucialdetail to overlook. Whilenot everyone suffers from the aforementioned anatomical glitch,known to doctors asobstructive sleep apnea,it affects 22 million Americansand has become an even more hazardousconditionamid the spreadof a deadly virus that attacks the lungs.

To understand this fault in the human blueprint, imagine your upper airway as a tube that must remain open to do its job. (This is a simplistic reduction for the purpose of analogy.) When you're awake and upright, the tube stays open easily. Yet once you recline say, to sleep one'smuscles around that tube start to relax. The apparatusesaround the tube including one's tongue and soft palate can press down and constrict it, interferingwith the smooth passage of air, akin to a kink in a hose. When one's breathing is reduced, this condition isknown as a hypopnea; if one's breathing stops altogether, it is called an apnea.

To the people in proximity tothe sufferer, the result issnoring, choking and other highly unpleasant sounds during sleep. The sufferers themselves are usually deprived of restful sleep and adequate blood oxygen levels, and their consequent lot in life can beone of abject misery: Constant daytime fatigue, headaches andliving in a mental fog are just three of the most common symptoms. Over the long term, sufferers are at a high risk of heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, strokes, high blood pressure,diabetes and a number of mental health ailments. For a large percentage of the patient's day, their body endures the stress of repeatedly coming close to suffocating, as well as the weariness of never being allowed recuperative sleep.

Why does this happen? In children, the culprit is frequently obstructions from the adenoids or tonsils, and the solution can be as simple as an operation. Obese people may beat a higher risk for sleep apnea, since excess fat deposits around one's throat and chest can further restrict nighttime breathing. Aging is a factor, too, asaging causes one's throat muscles to weaken. Those who makelifestyle choices that weaken therespiratory system, such as smokers, are at higher risk. Finally, some merely havegenetic or anatomical predispositions that, for one reason or another, mess with the proper working of thestructures in the upper airway.

COVID-19 has made being an apnea sufferer a more dire condition. In January, a studyin the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research found that obstructive sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19. Patients with obstructive sleep apnea were at a 2.93 times higher risk of requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 independent of other risk factors for either the disease or the sleep disorder. While this could simply mean that having obstructive sleep apnea givesa patientother risk factors that coincidentally make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 (such as a high BMI), it could also be that the sleep disorder exacerbates COVID-19 on its own, "especially during the night, when decreased oxygen saturation levels occur in" obstructive sleep apnea, the researchers say.

There are treatments for sleep apnea, the most notable of which is the CPAP, or continuous positive airway pressure, machine.CPAP machines work by keeping the upper respiratory tract open with a constant level of air pressure greater than atmospheric pressure. A patient attaches a nasal mask, a face mask or nasal prongs to their airway, and a machine uses water to lubricate a regular pressure stream that persists throughout the patient's sleep.While the apparatus can be difficult to adjust to, those able to make the transition often report significant relief.Many patients say that using a CPAP completely changed their lives, restoring their physical and mental vitality literally overnight. (CPAPs have been in the news lately becausea manufacturing issue in the CPAP machines made by Phillips Respironics has put certain customers at risk of cancer; the company hasissued a recall.)

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So how did naturebring us to a point where, for millions of people, the only effective way to breath while sleeping (aside from major surgery) is to literally force air down their throats? How did evolution let this happen?

The answer, as it turns out, has to do with evolutionary trade-offs. Humans evolved to be highly intelligent, walk upright and communicate through complex vocalizations. Those giftscame with a price.

As Allen J. Moses, Elizabeth T. Kalliath and Gloria Pacini wrote in the dental journal Dental Sleep Practice, lower animals are fortunate to have "evolved structures of nearly perfect design" for tasks like breathing, swallowing, smelling and chewing.Humans, by contrast, need to balance a large cranium (housing a large brain) on a spinal column that remains vertical to the ground to allow them to walk on two legs. They also need equipment in their necks that permit them to produce sounds for talking, and those organstake up more of the already-limitedamount of real estate in the neck. The tongue, for instance, descends deeper into a human'sneck than it does for any other mammal. Even pioneering biologist CharlesDarwin was aware of the absurdity of evolution in allowing food to potentially go down the wrong pipe in your throat;"every particle of food and drink we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea with some risk of falling into the lungs," he wrote.

If the human body were a building, our neck would arguably be the most poorly conceived room in the house, overflowing with functionally mismatched organs stuffed there to accommodate other design priorities. "Significant evolutionary changes to the human head are flat face, smaller chin, shorter oral cavity, changes in jaw function, repositioning of ears behind jaws, ascent of the uvula and descent of the epiglottis, right angle bend in tongue, creation of compliant, combined, flexible airway-footway, and speech," the researchers write in the aforementioned journal.

Perhaps in part because scientists assumed humans could not possibly have such an absurd inherent design flaw, the symptoms of these structural deficiencies most conspicuously snoring were for centuries perceived as innocuous or, at worst, merely annoying. It wasn't until the mid-20th century that scientists began to figure out that those periods when sleeping people struggle to breathe actually pose a serious health problem. Even then, a common approach was to perform a tracheotomy, a drastic measure in which a hole is punched into the throat to facilitate breathing. The CPAP was invented after one patient refused to undergo the procedure but was willing to try his doctor's new air-pressure machine. Chronically unable to sleep before using the world's first CPAP, he reported feeling utterly refreshed the following morning. Humanity's architectural flaw had been exposed.

Before long, Japanese scientists were learning how even minor alterations in the size and position of the pharynx drastically altered the likelihood of developing a sleep disorder. Scientists were even figuring out the precise role of obesity in contributing to the disorder. (Obesity enlarges tissues in the already cramped throat.) Within decades, obstructive sleep apnea has become a common diagnosis and a main condition that sleep health professionals look for in their patients.

These problems existed before the COVID-19 era and, despite being worsened by the pandemic, will almost certainly persist after it is over. After all, obstructive sleep apnea has been a literal and figurativepain in the neckfor as long as humans have hadnecks as we currently know them. Aside from the immediate knowledge humans have acquired about our own anatomical deficiencies, the existence of obstructive sleep apnea is a reminder to embrace humility. Millennia after the ancient Greeks created modern medicine, we are still learning surprising new things about the bodies we inhabitevery day.

See the article here:

The human neck is a mistake of evolution - Salon

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Multiple evolutionary origins and losses of tooth complexity in squamates - Nature.com

The 49ers can't get their story straight when it comes to Brandon Aiyuk.

Everyone agrees he's not producing up to expectations. The 49ers traded up to take him in Round 1 last season and he performed well as a rookie, but now he's a total afterthought in the offense.

Reporters have been asking the 49ers since Week 1 what's the deal with Aiyuk, and their story keeps changing.

On Sept. 17, head coach Kyle Shanahan said this:"No, it's not a doghouse. He would've got his spot completely back; tweaked his hamstring before the third preseason game. Planned on rotating him; we did. and you get a big reaction to that. It's not personal. Things are a bigger deal because of fantasy football."

Translation: This is a non-story created fueled by fantasy football player and hot-take journalists. Aiyuk simply was coming off an injury and we're were being careful with him. We'll get him involved in the offense as the season progresses.

On Sept. 22, here's whatJimmy Garoppolo said about Aiyuk: "Honestly, he does a great job in practice every day. He brings it, right attitude, right mindset. I think it's honestly just a matter of time. I know there's a lot of panic in the air, but if you were at practice every day consistently and you saw what he could do. It's really one of those things that, one week it's this guy's game, the next week it's anothers. That's just kind of how the offense goes. But I think it's truly just a matter of time."

Translation: Aiyuk is a good player who practices hard and does everything right. It's an anomaly that he hasn't gotten the ball much yet. We'll get him the involved in the offense as the season progresses.

Here's what JohnLynch said about Aiyuk on Oct. 13: "Its important you earn your opportunities. You do that during the week. Its not as if Brandon isnt working hard. For whatever reason, he hasnt made the strides we expect him to. We probably hold him to higher standards because he has so much in his body."

Translation: Aiyuk isn't practicing well, and he currently is less reliable than Mohamed Sanu and Travis Benjamin. So that's why he's not playing. He absolutely is in the doghouse.

Could the 49ers please pick a story and stick to it? It's getting hard to believe anything they say this year. They contradict themselves from one month to the next.

What will be their next excuse for playing a washed-up veteran wide receiver over Aiyuk?

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The Evolution of the 49ers' Narrative about Brandon Aiyuk - Sports Illustrated

Assembly theory an approach that characterises molecular complexity has been used by scientists in the UK to investigate how selection emerges in chemistry. The method offers new possibilities for making compounds with desired properties in a minimum number of steps based on evolution. By using assembly theory to follow a given path of, say, molecular evolution of a natural product that is a useful drug, we can predict how that product will evolve and literally jump ahead in time to get the new molecule rather than waiting, says Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow, UK, who invented assembly theory and led the study.

Chemical space includes every possible compound all the drugs and materials we already know and those that are still to be discovered so it contains an almost infinite number of molecules. But many of the potential products may be unstable or synthetically inaccessible, so exploring the vast range of possibilities to find useful molecules can be a huge and challenging task. The method developed by the research team could make things easier.

Assembly theory extracts evolutionary information from the structure. The scientists considered that simple living organisms only need a few hundred different types of special small molecules to function, indicating that the chemical space relevant to biology is only a tiny fraction of the chemical space that is possible. The main issue is then to find out what makes the molecules both thermodynamically possible and biologically accessible.

To study this, the scientists created molecular trees by taking different molecules, cutting them into bits and arranging the pieces in order, from smallest to largest, to make the end target. Such molecular trees are like family trees that identify a compounds parents and offspring. When you take two or more molecules and cut them apart, you can overlay them to find common units and then look to see how you can combine the trees to not only make the two molecules but also novel hybrids, explains Cronin.

He adds that the method can be used to combine related molecules but also totally unrelated ones. This approach allows you to find potentially more interesting molecules because youre accounting for the interesting features that have been selected by evolution and also using the assembly tree to keep to that path rather than getting too lost.

Aln Aspuru-Guzik, a computational chemist at the University of Toronto in Canada, says that this is a new way of thinking about chemical space. The authors introduce the concept of assembly trees to analyse proximity in chemical space, he comments. This methodology seems promising to understand molecular complexity.

But looking for molecular trees can be a hard mathematical problem, especially as the molecules get bigger, so the researchers developed a Monte Carlo algorithm to help them with the search. Taking simple building blocks, and by connecting or overlapping them with each other, the algorithm proceeds to find the shortest, non-trivial pathways of assembly for given molecules, Aspuru-Guzik says. By exploring these pathways in families of molecules, assembly graphs can help explore chemical spaces.

The team applied the approach to study a class of potent but addictive painkillers opiates. These molecules were an important target as were interested in exploring chemical space for effective new opiates that arent addictive and hence so dangerous, Cronin says. In the study, nine natural and synthetic compounds were grouped together and broken into assembly pools that could then be used to explore new possible drugs while keeping all the features necessary for the molecules to work.

The authors generated 1000 opiate-like compounds using the assembly tree as well as 1000 random compounds considering the bonds present in opiates. They found that the molecules obtained from the assembly pools showed a much higher similarity to opiates than the random compounds. The products generated using the assembly tree also exhibited similar levels of drug-likeness to opiates, as opposed to random molecules which were less drug-like.

The scientists also demonstrated the potential of the new method in areas such as prebiotic chemistry, genetics and environmental chemistry. It remains to be tested how these new ideas work in a practical design application, mentions Aspuru-Guzik. But they can provide a good theoretical framework to think of chemical space.

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Exploiting evolution to explore chemical space shows promise for drug discovery - Chemistry World