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Unrelated administrative note: While revamping my computer set-up, which included complete formatting of my main drive, my wonderfully-curated paper database that I had cumulatively built over 6 years and that contained over 106000 papers got destroyed. The PDFs are unharmed, thankfully, but the actual database sorting them out with proper metadata is gone, and it […]
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I gave an e-lecture on the Orsten fossil locality this morning, as a favour for a crustacean colleague who wanted to give his class a perspective on crustacean palaeontology. I mentioned the Orsten in my Rise of Animals post. It’s a locality originally known from Sweden, now known worldwide, where tiny meiofaunal organisms are preserved [...]
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Papers from this week. [OA] indicates open access, and all are discussable on request. General Interest, Important: Charles Darwin’s Mitochondria. [OA] After he came back from the Beagle voyage, Darwin never set foot on a boat again, and he became a sort of recluse, using a mysterious illness as an excuse to avoid excessive socialising. [...]
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This morning, I was tasked with leading an e-discussion session for a colleague’s MSc. botany course in the UK, by Skype. It lasted around 1.5 hours, the students were fairly hardy. Topic was primary endosymbiosis, which is the process of engulfing a bacterium and incorporating it into the cell, a process most famous for having [...]
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Clicky here. Lots of interesting stuff, with a Dr. Who theme to boot. Reminds me of those times when I taught biology of fantasy and sci fi movies, except the cultureless students didn’t recognise most of the movies and series I was talking about. Anyway, my post on randomness in evolution is in there too, [...]
