Arizona and Alaska---how far is the view?

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2008/09/20/20080920dormverdict0920.html

The link above is to a story about a murder in Arizona, a murder of a
college student by her dormitory roommate. This in conjunction with
the high profile of women in the 2008 national elections in the United
States, leads to conclusions about the shifting status of women.
Inevitable and not nearly so clear as people would assume,
conclusions. Conclusions about inconclusiveness.

Species changes habits to survive

Tumors Alter Sex Life, from BBC Science News, Mark somebody July 16 2008
I am quoting the article in full, but you must go to the BBC website
to see a cute picture of a cute Tasmanian Devil.

A disease that threatens to wipe out the wild population of Tasmanian
devils has triggered an abrupt change in their breeding habits, a
study shows.

Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) has led to the animals mating at an
unusually young age and females having just one litter, say
scientists.

The observed changes in the creatures' life cycle could affect the
chances of saving the iconic species, they added.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A team of Australian scientists said they believed it to be the first
known case of an infectious disease leading to increased early
reproduction in a species of mammal.

The researchers, lead by Dr Menna Jones from the University of
Tasmania, analysed data from five sites where devil (Sarcophilus
harrisii) populations had been studied before and after the arrival of
the disease.

"Devils have shown their capacity to respond to this disease-induced
increased adult mortality with a 16-fold increase in the proportion of
individuals exhibiting precocious sexual maturity," they reported.

Devil dynamics

At all five sites, DFTD had significantly changed the age structure of
the devil populations.

DEVILS IN DETAIL
Tasmanian devils (Getty Images)
Weight: males 11kg; females 7kg
Jaws are more powerful than a tiger's
Opportunistic feeders, not specialised predators
Can smell food up to one kilometre away
Devils have at least 11 distinct vocal calls
Became "devils" in 1803 when sailors reported "unearthly" calls

The team noted that before the arrival of the disease, there was a
much higher proportion of adults more than three years old.

They also observed that the disease appeared to influence the number
of litters female devils produced.

Before the emergence of DFTD at one of the sites, the Freycinet
Peninsula on the east coast of the island, a typical female began
breeding aged two, and went on to produce annual litters for three
years, before dying in its fifth or sixth year.

"Females now generally have one breeding opportunity and may not
survive long enough to rear that litter. Hence they are now largely
semelparous [breed only once]."

Symptons of DFTD were first reported in 1996, and by 2007 the disease
had spread to more than half of the species' range on Tasmania.

The cause of the disease, which first appears as lumps or lesions
around the mouth, is unknown. There are no historical records
describing disfigured devils; although cancer was normal in the
creatures, it was usually internal.

There are a number of theories explaining the rapid emergence of the
disease, including pesticides, population dynamics, and a dormant
virus in the animals.

"This consistently fatal disease is an infectious cancer... with
tumour cells spread directly between devils biting," the researchers
explained.

"Evidence shows that most penetrating biting injuries occur among
adult males and females in the mating season."

Populations in areas where the disease has spread have experienced
declines of up to 89%, with the tumours primarily affecting adults
aged two or more, killing the animal within five months of
manifestation.

The team suggested that the disease may be frequency-dependent,
meaning that it did not disappear even when the number of hosts fell
to very low levels.

As a result, they added, there were concerns that the world's largest
carnivorous marsupial could become extinct in the wild within 20-25
years.

"This novel disease could have catastrophic consequences for the
Tasmanian devil," they warned

Despite contempory evidence

Mysticism is not mushy thought. Mysticism is the smartest, tightest,
intellectual endeavor extant on the planet.

Thirteenth Century Dope

An interesting conjunction struck me---the Magna Charta of England was
first signed in 1215, and the Golden Bull of Hungary in 1222. This
latter document is a bit obscure now, but it was very similar to the
Magna Charta. Both bound a king to a rule of law. The Hungarian
document was more extreme---it included clauses exempting all nobility
from taxes, or enforced military service outside the country. Neither
document was very effective for the next few centuries, but both are
rightly considered legal cornerstones in history. What got me was how
they both were signed so close together, and I still suspect we are
looking at evidence of larger transhuman changes. Then an answer
though occurred----the Pope. Though I have not a shred of evidence
that he communicated the English events to the Hungarians, I do
understand the Pope was in communication with both countries. What we
are looking at is the nervous system of Europe some centuries ago,
with the Pope as the apex. (Of course there was also commerce between
countries---as an avenue of communication, but I like my picture of
the Pope as the brain of a nervous system.)

Hamburg bus stop

Quoting a note in its entirety, from the June 11, 2008 edition of
Nature magazine:

" 'We're planning on redesigning the bus stop in a 1960s look.'

Sabine Grünwald of the Mühlenau retirement home in Hamburg, Germany,
ponders how to improve the fake bus stop they installed outside the
facility last year. Patients with dementia who wander off tend to
collect at the stop, where they can be collected by staff. A bus never
actually comes."

Grass Fights Back Against Grazers

The following is an article in New Scientist this week, who apparently got it from Biology Letters.
Anyway, this is just too wonderful not to quote in full:

Grasses have a secret weapon against grazing that packs a surprisingly powerful punch.

Grass can defend itself using tiny nodules of silica – and a field study of voles suggests that the silica could be causing rodent populations to boom and bust. While predators are known to drive population cycles, the new study suggests that plants can have a similarly drastic effect.

Earlier studies had shown that grasses could form deposits of silica in their leaves, apparently as a response to grazing. Voles seem to dislike eating grasses with these deposits, and the defence gets to them in other ways too – it makes them lose weight, apparently by inhibiting their digestion of proteins in the grass.
Important defence

"People suspected that silica might be an important defense, but didn't think that it was able to drive the population cycles," says study leader Susan Hartley of the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

"This is the first evidence from field experiments that silica defence and vole populations might be linked,"she says.

Hartley and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen, UK, have been studying a population of voles (Microtus agrestis) that live in Kielder Forest, in northern England. During the winter, the voles' main food source is tufted hairgrass (Deschampsia caespitosa).

When the number of voles was high, or had been high the previous year, the silica levels in the plants were also high – apparently a response to more grazing, Hartley's team found. But when the voles' numbers had been low before, and grazing was at low levels, the plants had less silica.
Boom and bust

Eating high-silica grass reduced vole body mass by 0.5% per day, an effect that the researchers argue could drive population cycles.

It isn't an instant defence, Hartley says, since it seems to take several months for the grasses to grow the deposits. Nor is it a constant defence.

"It must be quite costly for the plant to extract the silicon from the soil and deposit it [in the leaves]," which would make them less competitive against other grasses not eaten by the voles, Hartley says. "The grass wouldn't want to be on maximum alert all the time."

Other populations of voles may go through booms and busts due to predators, but in England the plants' defence could be driving the cycles.

Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0106)

Bind Moggling

April 23 is the birthday of two men, both unquestionably at the highest ranks of literary production. Nabokov, and Shakespeare share this birth date. Shakespeare and another literary giant Miguel de Cervantes both died on the same date, the one in question -- April 23. (Actually though both died in 1616, Spain was using the Gregorian calendar, and England the Julian, and so they did not actually die on the same day.) And though other details could be quibbled about also, these coincidences are interesting.