Beetle Byte (29 August 2014 edition)

As another summer, woefully, comes to a leaf-reddening and freedom-rending end – and I (hopefully) get back to regular-ish blogging – I’m equally hopeful that I’ll get around to regular-ish weekly Beetle Bytes as well. Here’s a start.

 

Sympatric speciation

At the center of the new findings is an evolutionary concept called sympatric speciation, the possibility “for a species to split into two species without any geographic separation,” Schultz says. “That’s usually been criticized and usually been rejected. It’s a very hard thing to prove.”

But Rabeling and Schultz believe they’ve done it.

 

Mites! On your face! And on mine too!!

They live in our hair follicles, buried head-down, eating the oils we secrete, hooking up with each other near the surface, and occasionally crawling about the skin at night.

 

Project Wild Thing

Stop buying iPads. Take your children outdoors. You’ve bought enough iPads now.

(Perhaps somewhat ironically, iOS and Android apps are available.)

 

Speaking of the internet…

…there is currently no evidence to suggest that Internet use has or has not had a profound effect on brain development. If we want to know how this highly connected world is impacting our brains, we will need to conduct studies that investigate brain measures and their relationship to behavior, cognition, and well-being in a representative sample of the population. 

 

ةيلمع Operación Operation Opération 作业 Oперация

…a poem by Moez Surani consisting of the names of military operations carried out by UN member states. The poem spans 193 countries and 69 years, and in March 2014 contained the names of more than 2,300 operations.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *