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paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

art in science

  • Link parade

    Fri, 2012-10-19 22:02 -- John Hawks

    Here are some stories to entertain, amuse, or depress:

    Bryan Gardiner in Wired Science profiles professional glassblowers who are dedicated to making anatomical models: "Heart of Glass: The Art of Medical Models". The products are beautiful and educational in a way computer models cannot match.

    "The detection of interstellar boron sulfide" blog has "A Motivational Correspondance" from a department's astronomy faculty to their graduate students. I can't believe that it's not a parody (although it is presented as serious) because the whole thing would be such a fat target for a lawsuit.

    First, while some students are clearly putting their hearts and souls into their research, and spending the hours at the office or lab that are required, others are not. We have received some questions about how many hours a graduate student is expected to work. There is no easy answer, as what matters is your productivity, particularly in the form of good scientific papers. However, if you informally canvass the faculty (those people for whose jobs you came here to train), most will tell you that they worked 80-100 hours/week in graduate school. No one told us to work those hours, but we enjoyed what we were doing enough to want to do so. We were almost always at the office, including at night and on weekends. Nowadays, with the internet, it is fine to work from home sometimes, but you still miss out on learning from and forming collaborations with other graduate students when everyone does not work in the same place at the same time.

    From Nature News: "Rejection improves eventual impact of manuscripts". Apparently, articles average more citations when they get bumped from one journal and published in a different journal, irrespective of whether they get published in a higher-impact or lower-impact journal. For all those who have been tweeting the link, do note that the study has a fairly obvious bias: papers that get bumped and then never published aren't counted...

    The Archaeobotanist has a detailed critique of the recent rice domestication paper: "A genome map that is not a map of origins (Rice Genetics Watch returns)". Many of the issues that are problematic in identifying "rice origins" are also problems for identifying human migrations:

    The authors have concluded the the closest wild ancestors to cultivated rice are living wild populations in the Pearl River basin. The problem is that rice was domesticated not from living population but from past populations almost certainly from regions where wild rice is no extinct (technically, we would say, extirpated). This study demonstrated that big science and lots of resources do not inevitably produce answers, but that nuanced analysis and critical thinking, and in this case some knowledge of Chinese history, are necessary to direct analyses.

    The post's final paragraph discusses the use of archaeological evidence as a reality check on the genetics. I don't have any commitment on rice domestication, but the arguments presented here must be understood.

    Clay Shirky in Poynter discusses the media's loss of "trust": "Shirky: ‘We are indeed less willing to agree on what constitutes truth’".

    Consider three acts of mainstream media malfeasance unmasked by outsiders: Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s 1995 Time magazine cover story that relied on faked data; CBS News’s 2004 accusations against the President based on forged National Guard memos; and Jonah Lehrer’s 2011 recycling and plagiarism in work he did for the New Yorker and Wired. In all three cases, the ethical lapses were committed by mainstream journalists and unmasked by outsiders working on the Internet, but with very different responses by the institutions that initially published the erroneous material.

    I don't endorse Shirky's conclusions but the essay is thought-provoking.

    Time magazine's "Moneyland" site has an article by Dan Kadlec: "Why College May Be Totally Free Within 10 Years". The more interesting exchange occurs near the end, where he quotes former Harvard president Lawrence Summers:

    There is a reason that people pay a lot of money to go to an event like the Super Bowl when it is free on TV, Summers offers. They get more out of it by being present. Something similar is true of an on-campus education, where you may attend extra-curricular events and engage more fully with faculty and other students.

    "Unbundling" college -- in the sense of unbundling a cable TV package -- is an interesting analogy raised in the article. I have heard a high-level college administrator make the same argument, that our students enjoy their campus experience and don't want to finish college sooner. I couldn't help but respond to this argument on the spot: If we allow students to spend less time on campus, we can open the educational experience to more students, including many who can't afford to spend four years marking time.

    John T. Tierney in The Atlantic: "AP Classes Are a Scam".

    The traditional monetary argument for AP courses -- that they can enable an ambitious and hardworking student to avoid a semester or even a year of college tuition through the early accumulation of credits -- often no longer holds. Increasingly, students don't receive college credit for high scores on AP courses; they simply are allowed to opt out of the introductory sequence in a major. And more and more students say that's a bad idea, and that they're better off taking their department's courses.

    I have some experience working with the new AP biology guidelines, which were formulated following the "Vision and Change" document from the National Academies, and is guiding biology education reform at both secondary and undergraduate levels. So I don't agree with Tierney's criticisms about the "stultification" of the curriculum. But it is clear that AP courses are not treated with any consistency by universities, and results in other disciplines vary widely.

    Tags: 
    art in science
    journalism
    metascience
    domestication
    education

  • Composite tools

    Sun, 2012-10-14 21:26 -- John Hawks

    What if you took flaked stone implements, scanned them in three dimensions, designed specially fitted accessories, which you then printed with a 3-d printer and assembled into a composite? "modern stone + flint tools by ami drach + dov ganchrow".

    through a method of three-dimensionally scanning and printing, the ancient artifacts are digitally outfitted with custom-designed handles, encapsulating the rugged forms in a perfectly enclosed case. by juxtaposing the polarities of the manufacturing processes in computer generated forms, an intersection of material technologies and functionality coincide on a tangible scale.

    These are elegant and well-designed, truly art. Still, despite the fancy fabrication, the concept itself was known to the Neandertals.

    (via Neatorama)

    Tags: 
    art
    art in science

  • "We're not, as a whole, introspective"

    Sun, 2012-09-09 11:04 -- John Hawks

    The Guardian has a profile of the "inventor of the pill", who in his later years has turned to fiction as a novelist and playwright: "Carl Djerassi: 'Scientists aren't just Frankensteins or Strangeloves or nerds'".

    The piece fits with my recurring writing topic of science in art, and Djerassi's voice is unique:

    Above all, he's interested in describing what he calls the "tribal behaviour" of scientists – and he's critical of the scientific community for being reluctant to explain that behaviour to the outside world. "I'm a member of that tribe," he says, "and it's a tribe that does not advertise its behaviour – not because they want to keep it secret, but because they're not interested in discussing it. We're not, as a whole, introspective, because we're so focused on what we're doing. But it means that people outside science have a very limited idea about who we really are, and how we think."

    Tags: 
    art in science
    profiles

  • Bodies in art, art in bodies

    Sat, 2012-08-25 11:18 -- John Hawks

    Ewen Callaway compares two exhibits that feature animal anatomy in prominent ways [1]. "Animals Inside Out", at the Natural History Museum, London, features the work of German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, famous for his "plastination" technique. A career retrospective from British artist Damien Hirst is showing at Tate Modern, also in London. As Callaway reflects, both shows feature preserved animals, and Hirst suffers in comparison:

    Many of Hirst's best-known pieces are tame by comparison. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a 4-metre-long, formaldehyde-fixed tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier), floats in its vitrine with skin like rumpled denim, misshapen fins and a gaping mouth revealing rounded, un-razor-like teeth. The iconic Mother and Child Divided (1993) features a cow and calf, each halved lengthways, hovering in four formalin-filled glass cases. The work bears a fleeting similarity to von Hagens' creations until you walk between the split carcasses. Instead of brilliant reds and purples, the wilted organs are a dull grey.

    It is tempting to say that the British artist could learn a thing or two from the idiosyncratic German about preserving animals, but that would miss the point of these particular pieces: that death is ugly, awful, inevitable, and to doll it up is misguided.

    Reflecting on this, I would say that Hirst is giving his rich clients something that any scientist can walk behind the doors of a museum and see. Sure, these animals are pickled on a massive scale, but the preparation is uninspired. It's a "cabinet of curiosities" approach, meant to impress the viewer of the strangeness but not convey new information about the animals themselves. In this sense, the animals are wasted on the viewer.

    Von Hagens' approach is more populist. His technique brings new information out of the anatomy, making what would be invisible to the average viewer suddenly visible. The scale is similarly massive, and some people would use "spectacle" as a pejorative for the show. But if we take the old French criterion for great art, plaisir et instruire, von Hagens wins by comparison.

    References

    1. Callaway E. Anatomy: Flayed, pickled, plastinated. Nature. 2012;488(7412):456 - 457.
    Tags: 
    art in science
    art

  • Art appreciation

    Tue, 2012-05-01 09:50 -- John Hawks

    Jonathan Jones muses on two exhibitions of Leonardo's work, one on paintings and the other on anatomical drawings ("Is Leonardo da Vinci a great artist or a great scientist?"):

    Yet every vein he draws is a miracle of art. He is never more an artist than when he is most a scientist. Even as he patiently reveals the nature of heart valves, he draws with such tender beauty that you gasp at the complex artistic achievement, the subtle textures and three-dimensional illusions, even as you marvel at his insights into the human body. For me, Leonardo's anatomical drawings are both icons of science, and wonders of art.

    Tags: 
    art in science
    art
    anatomy

  • The art of Neandertal teeth

    Fri, 2012-03-02 11:35 -- John Hawks

    I want to point everybody to this slideshow at Scientific American, which features the "The Science and Art of Neandertal Teeth". The accompanying article by David Frayer gives the background to the show, which was featured at the University of Kansas last fall.

    Recently, Zagreb-based artist Luka Mjeda photographed all the original teeth for a permanent record as part of an open-source platform for information about Pleistocene humans called the NESPOS project (www.nespos.org). Jakov Radovčić of the Croatian Natural History Museum in Zagreb led the Krapina part of the project. Mjeda later manipulated the photographs to create remarkable, artistic renderings of the tooth surfaces. Although Gorjanović probably never considered the aesthetics of the Krapina teeth, we think he would have appreciated this new view of them through the eyes of an artist. Mjeda and I recently mounted an exhibition of the images in Lawrence, Kansas. They are available for purchase from TeethasArt@gmail.com

    A sample:

    Luka Mjeda image of Neandertal tooth

    Image courtesy of and © Luka Mjeda, 2012

    It's great to see these works brought to a broader audience, and I hope that more artistic representations of the science of human origins will take hold!

    Tags: 
    art
    art in science

  • Charles R. Knight biography

    Fri, 2012-01-06 17:20 -- John Hawks
    knight-neandertals-osborn-1911

    Brian Switek reviews the book, Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time, by Richard Milner: "Charles R. Knight’s Prehistoric Visions".

    Knight’s successes were hard-won, but, as Milner’s biography illustrates, the artist could not have done anything else. Knight’s undeniable passion was painting prehistory into life. A few snippets in the book provide some insights into Knight’s process. For dinosaurs, at least, Knight would often study the mounted skeletons of the animals and then, on the basis of this framework, create a sculpture. He could then study this three-dimensional representation for the play of shadow across the body under different conditions, and from this model Knight would then begin painting.

    Tags: 
    art
    art in science
    history of paleontology

  • Taxonomy through art

    Sun, 2011-10-23 11:50 -- John Hawks

    Within paleoanthropology, we often witness taxonomic clashes. Species that were named on the basis of a single fossil are later discarded. Now with genomics, we can see that the fossil "species" we named for Late Pleistocene humans in fact extensively interbred with each other. I have found it interesting over the last year to talk with artist reconstructors about the way they incorporate this information into their works.

    I was pointed to an essay by James Prosek, a biological artist best known for his books illustrating fish (James Prosek's Amazon page). As he matured as an artist, he discovered that the lines in nature are sometimes blurry, and science sometimes changes much more than nature. The essay was originally printed in the March 2008 issue of Orion ("The failure of names").

    As I painted trout through my late teens, major shifts in trout taxonomy were taking place. Through genetic analysis, which was fairly new in the early ’90s, it was discovered that rainbow trout (from the Pacific coast) and brown trout (introduced from Europe) were not as closely related as once thought. The genes showed that the rainbow trout was more closely related to Pacific salmon, fishes that die when they spawn, of the genus Oncorhynchus. The brown trout was more closely related to the Atlantic salmon, and remained in the genus Salmo. The native trout of my home state, Connecticut, the brook trout, was actually a whole separate genus, Salvelinus, more closely related to the Arctic char than to the rainbow or brown trout. Technically, it was no longer correct even to call the book I was working on Trout. I found myself wanting to ignore the namers because they were getting in the way of my own personal vision.

    The essay recounts how Prosek surpassed this clash with taxonomy. He travelled extensively during the research for his second book, Trout of the World, and explored the variability within (and continuities among) taxonomic groups. His artistic process led him to experiment with visual forms that could communicate both the natural variation and science's

    After drawing curvilinear lines, first emanating from the points on the body of a seahorse, I realized the lines were helpful as visual aids to point out particular parts of a creature that I wanted to bring attention to. The lines activated the space around the animal in a satisfactory way, erasing the need for the name to be written beneath. In this way, the lines became a very personal visual taxonomy, replacing the lingual one.

    (via Karen James)

    Tags: 
    art in science
    species concepts
    taxonomy

  • Blombos pigment workshop

    Fri, 2011-10-14 02:23 -- John Hawks

    I know that some readers are starting to wonder if I've forgotten about paleoanthropology lately. Let's just say that the Neandertal and Denisova genomes have me very busy, and I don't think you'd want it any other way.

    But on the paleoanthropological front, Science has released a paper by Chris Henshilwood and colleagues [1] describing two toolkits used by ancient MSA people more than 100,000 years ago to grind pigment and mix it with animal fat, presumably for painting.

    I want to share a picture from the article (credit G. Moéll Pedersen), which shows one of the two toolkits in situ. I want to make a point about it that would be difficult without seeing the photo:

    That photo shows Tk1, the first toolkit. Now, here's the description of what Henshilwood and colleagues were able to interpret from the artifacts in the photo:

    We infer that manufacturing proceeded as follows: Pieces of ochre (FS1 and FS2) were rubbed on quartzite slabs to produce a fine red powder, and some were knapped with large lithic flakes. The ochre chips resulting from the latter were crushed with quartz, quartzite, and silcrete hammerstones/grinders. Quartzite grinders were used to crush goethite or hematite-rich lutite. Medium-sized mammal bone was crushed, probably with a stone hammer. The red or reddish brown color and cracked, flaky texture of some of the trabecular bone suggest that it was heated before crushing, probably to enhance the extraction of the marrow fat. The hematite powder, charcoal, crushed trabecular bone, stone chips, and quartz grains and a liquid were then introduced into the Haliotis shells and gently stirred (figs. S5, S25, and S26). Charcoal is rare in the layer-CP matrix, suggesting that it was a deliberate addition to the mix. The quartz and quartzite chips, produced during the action of crushing the ochre, and the quartz grains may have been incidentally incorporated.

    You can see how the complex interpretation was made possible by finding these things in association as part of one feature. If one or two of these pieces had been found separately, many archaeologists would be skeptical of such a story. Indeed, even the interpretation of this toolkit might appear incredible were it not for the second toolkit also found at the site. Archaeologists are conservative that way, they don't like to overinterpret the evidence. Even this series of events -- grinding, heating, mixing, and so on -- isn't very complicated compared to many activities that humans do every day. It's an example where Henshilwood and colleagues have advanced what archaeologically can show beyond a shadow of doubt about ancient people, but still leaves a gap in our understanding of the ancient cultural system.

    A complex behavioral pattern that is actually found cannot have been an isolated instance. Complexity implies a tradition of which these toolkits are only miniscule remnants.

    In this light, I should point out that the Blombos evidence is by far earlier than other evidence of pigment grinding and heating, but not unique in the South African MSA. Last year I linked to a Jennifer Viegas story about red ochre production at Sibudu Cave, South Africa. This is Lyn Wadley's work [2], and the research paper has since been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Also in that journal last year was a paper by Francesco d'Errico and colleagues [3], which described pigment nodules found in the Middle Paleolithic in Mt. Carmel site of Skhul, Israel. We have quite a lot of circumstantial evidence about pigment use in these early contexts both inside and outside Africa, and more is building all the time.

    The archaeological record is bad in many ways. The wooden artifacts preserved at Abric Romani, Spain, are another example of an exceptional archaeological find. I've been meaning to write about them since Julien Riel-Salvatore mentioned them last month. Archaeologists have been working the Middle Paleolithic for nearly 150 years, yet we know next to nothing about wooden artifacts. Abric Romani is not entirely alone, but is enough to show the existence of a broader tradition occupying this blind spot, because the extensive shaping of artifacts and labor used to create them implies a cultural knowledge and utility.

    References

    1. Henshilwood CS, d'Errico F, van Niekerk KL, Coquinot Y, Jacobs Z, Lauritzen S-E, Menu M, Garcia-Moreno R. A 100,000-Year-Old Ochre-Processing Workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Science. 2011;334(6053):219 - 222.
    2. Wadley L. Cemented ash as a receptacle or work surface for ochre powder production at Sibudu, South Africa, 58,000 years ago. Journal of Archaeological Science [Internet]. 2010;37:2397–2406. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.04.012
    3. D'Errico F, Salomon H, Vignaud C, Stringer C. Pigments from the Middle Palaeolithic levels of Es-Skhul (Mount Carmel, Israel). Journal of Archaeological Science [Internet]. 2010;37:3099–3110. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.07.011
    Tags: 
    wood
    art
    art in science
    Blombos
    South Africa
    Abric Romani
    Spain
    Europe
    MSA
    Synopsis: 
    Complex toolkits from Blombos, South Africa, show pigment processing before 100,000 years ago.

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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.