DailyDirt: More Than A Little Collaboration Necessary

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Science is getting more and more complicated as we learn more and it becomes nearly impossible for any single human being to understand, let alone perform, all of the experiments necessary to push the boundaries of knowledge out a little further. It seems that the field of particle physics is quite accustomed to publishing papers with "kiloauthors" without a problem, but the practice may be extending to other fields now as well. (Just imagine how long the copyright should last... lifetimes of the authors plus 70 years.)

• The paper describing the first observation of the Higgs Boson has 5,154 authors listed. The Higgs Boson is responsible for imparting everything with mass, and apparently its observation imparts nearly every physicist with credit. [url]
• A recent fruit fly paper named 1,014 authors and sparked a discussion about the meaning of authorship. The names of over 900 undergraduate students were included in this publication, recognizing those students' "significant intellectual contribution" to the project [url]
• The previous record-holder for most number of authors for a scientific paper is "Initial Sequencing and Analysis of the Human Genome" with over 2,900 authors. This paper missed credits for 6 authors and added them to the top of the list. Recognition is always appreciated..... [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: authorship, collaboration, drosophila, fruit fly, genomics, higgs boson, human genome, hyperauthorship, kiloauthors, large hadron collider, science

DailyDirt: Nature Creates Some Cool Stuff

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Insect evolution is pretty amazing in general, but there are a few examples that are almost incredible. For example, people have discovered enormous ant colonies, wasps that can create zombies, and the ways that insects exhibit a collective intelligence that looks surprisingly smarter than any individual bug. Considering that insects, by weight and numbers, surpass humans by at least an order of magnitude, we might want to keep an eye on these invertebrates. Here are just a few more fascinating examples of awesome insect abilities.

• An insect known as Issus coleoptratus apparently beat humans to the invention of the mechanical gear. This bug uses its gear mechanism to lock its hind legs together so that it can jump straight forward, and this is the only known example of a naturally-occurring gear in nature. [url]
• The dung beetle, Scarabaeus satyrus, is an astronomer, using its vision of the entire Milky Way to help it navigate at night. Without a view of our galaxy in the sky, beetles would wander and seem lost in experiments that show that dung beetles use astronomy for navigation. [url]
• Goniurellia tridens is a fruit fly that evolved very detailed images of ants on its wings. When this fly flaps its wings, it confuses its predators -- but some observers say the images are of spiders (not ants) and trick spiders into thinking about mating (not eating). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: ants, astronomy, biology, evolution, fruit fly, gear, insects, nature

DailyDirt: Learning From Nature

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Biology has solved a lot of problems over millions of years, so we might as well try to learn from it. Here are just a few examples of using biological systems to help improve our own technology.

• Slime mold can be used to verify the efficiency of Japan's railroad networks. Creating a food map of Japan and letting mold grow over it sounds like a fun science project for kids! [url]
• Researchers in distributed computing problems are learning from insect nervous systems. By studying how a fruit fly develops its sensory organs, we can learn the strategies of biological evolution and apply similar techniques to technological problems. [url]
• Security software that mimics ant behavior is a project that's been around for awhile. So the bad guys are probably already writing ant-eater malware.... [url]
• To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: ants, biology, computation, fruit fly, security software, slime mold