Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Larry Moran at Sandwalk talks about chromosome drift: One of the characteristics of evolution is change in chromosome number and organization. These large-scale changes are often associated with speciation events although it would be a mistake to assume that there's a causal relationship. One particular chromosomal rearrangement has been getting a lot of press recently because it has been featured on blogs and in some recent trade books on evolution. Humans (H) have only 23 pairs of chromosomes while most other apes, such as the chimpanzee (C), have 24 pairs. Evidence for a fusion of two of these ancestral chromosomes into a single chromosome 2 in humans has been well supported by genome sequence data. Our fusion chromosome contains remnants of telomeres at the fusion point and it has another centromere-like region at just the right position.


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East goes off topic to talk about Hubble: NASA's newly-repaired Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colourful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the core of the giant star cluster, Omega Centauri. And who cares if I'm off topic. This is awesome.


• Phil Plait blogs at Bad Astronomy, but something has changed his mind: ZOOLOGY IS THE BEST SCIENCE. ESPECIALLY AMPHIBIANS. WE SHOULD ALL SUPPORT AND OBEY AMPHIBIANS.


• Mark Liberman at Language Log blogs on a stunning development in neuroscience: This is beautiful work, showing that certain areas in the brain of mature Atlantic Salmon "light up" when the animal is asked to categorize the emotions expressed by a set of (human) faces. More amazing still is the fact that the fish performed this task while dead.


• Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True blogs on a a tiny T Rex and a rare cat: Two bits of science news today. First, my Chicago colleague Paul Sereno and his team have revealed the fossil of a tiny Tyrannosaurus-rex-like dinosaur. Named Raptorex kriegsteini, it’s 1/100th the size of T. rex (they’re talking body mass here, not linear dimension). Over at the Guardian, you can read a precis of the Science Express article and watch a video of the ever-telegenic Sereno describing the beast, its significance, and how he procured it. ... And what would science news be without felids? The BBC News reports that the rare and elusive African golden cat (Profelis aurata), has been photographed in the wild for only the second time in history, deep in the Ugandan jungle.

Enjoy!