Evolution is the control of development by ecology

Today is my actual first day of classes. We had MLK Day off, and I have no classes on Tuesday, and today I get to meet the 12 students in my Ecological Developmental Biology course. It should be fun. I plan to present that famous aphorism by Van Valen, “Evolution is the control of development by ecology,” and then I’m done for the entire semester — once they’ve grasped that, there is nothing else left to teach, so we can just coast through February, March, April, and May.

OK, so maybe we should also think about the details. We’re going to spend the first two weeks diving into Lewontin’s The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. It’s short but clears the stage beautifully of any vestige of genetic determinism and primes us with an introduction to some fundamental concepts. Everyone ought to read it!

The rest of the semester we’ll work through Gilbert and Epel’s Ecological Developmental Biology. We’re going to talk about plasticity, epigenetics, symbiosis, developmental physiology, and the book has lots of material on teratogenesis, cancer, and aging (those are all developmental concerns, you know — we’re doing all the interesting and important stuff).

We’re also going to dig into the primary literature. This week, we’re reading a review by Sultan, “Development in context: the timely
emergence of eco-devo” to get everyone filled in with the background, but subsequent weeks will be mainly about primary research papers. There’s going to be a fair amount of reading in this class!

I’ve also made the radical decision to abolish all exams: about 60% of the grade is derived from just showing up, alert and ready to contribute. We’ll see how well that flies.

I’ll let you know. I’m thinking I’ll try to post a weekly wrap-up here, so that if I fail it’ll be visible.

Should I take attendance in my classes?

I’m working on my class policy for next semester. Last semester was rough — I had bent over backwards to provide maximum flexibility, with an online option and no mandatory attendance, and it was fairly typical to have only half, or less, of the class show up. I considered changing the policy mid-semester, but it was written into the syllabus, so I had to stick with it. There will be changes next term, I tell you what.

This little video illustrates my problem.

I really like the prisoner’s dilemma twist in the middle — if only one student shows up, they pass the course and everyone else fails. There was one day fall term where that could have been invoked.

To answer the question in the title: yes, I’m going to take attendance, and it’s going to count. My big class this spring is going to be heavily interactive, and I’ll need people to show up.

iNaturalist has been observing me

iNaturalist does this thing where they’ll give you a graphical summary of your contributions in the past year. Here’s mine.

See all the orange? That’s what they use to color-code arachnid observations. I might have a little bit of a bias there, and I have no idea how any birds and mammals crept in there, and I’m afraid plants don’t exist in my universe. Still, despite my narrow focus, I spotted 68 species this year. That’s not at all impressive. Can you name 68 species? Apparently, I can, and I’ve even photographed them.

I’ve been terrible at contributing identifications, that is, helping others by identifying what’s in their photos. I should aspire to do better at that next year.

Maybe I can strive to look at something other than spiders in the coming year, too, although that might be difficult, since they’re not as interesting.

The problem with Zoom…confirmed!

I was complaining about the effect of Zoom on students — it doesn’t encourage engagement and leads to apathy — and oh, look, someone did a study on “zoom fatigue”.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked for physiological signs of fatigue in 35 students attending lectures on engineering at an Austrian university. Half of the class attended the 50-minute lecture via videoconference in a nearby lab and a face-to-face lecture the following week, while the other half attended first in person, then online.

Participants were monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) instruments that recorded electrical activity in the brain and their heart rhythms. They also participated in surveys about their mood and fatigue levels.

The researchers searched for physical changes correlated with mental fatigue, including distinctive brain waves, reduced heart rate and hints the nervous system might be trying to compensate for growing exhaustion during the lecture.

There were “notable” differences between the in-person and online groups, the researchers write. Video participants’ fatigue mounted over the course of the session, and their brain states showed they were struggling to pay attention. The groups’ moods varied, too, with in-person participants reporting they felt livelier, happier and more active, and online participants saying they felt tired, drowsy and “fed up.”

Overall, the researchers write, the study offers evidence of the physical toll of videoconferencing and suggests that it “should be considered as a complement to face-to-face interaction, but not as a substitute.”

I know, that’s a tiny n, tested on a yet another WEIRD group. I also think that for Zoom to work, you have to completely revamp how you teach, and this is obviously just presenting the same content in two different media. Given those problems with the study though, it aligns with my personal experience, and I’ll use it to further justify my decision to cut Zoom out of my life next semester.

Lectures are boring unless you can get some questions and other interactions during it, and I’ve noticed that, when I make my in-person lectures simultaneously available over Zoom, I get zero responsiveness from the online part of the class. I suspect I’ve put them all to sleep.

Okay boomer

Winning a Nobel prize does not mean you are a smart guy. It means you have a lot of in-depth knowledge about a very specific, narrow scientific domain, and it’s bad news when people treat you as a universal oracle.

I remind people that Jim Watson and William Shockley were horrible racist bigots — they just knew a bit about the structure of DNA or how transistors work. Kary Mullis was a super flaky space cadet who had an insight into DNA replication. Don’t bother asking them how any other aspect of the universe works.

Now I’ve got another example of bad Nobelists: John Clauser. He won a Nobel in 2022 for his work on quantum mechanics, and I’ll trust that he knew his stuff. Unfortunately, now he’s decided that he’s an expert in climate change. Great news! There is no climate crisis! he says.

During a fiery news conference at the Four Seasons hotel here Tuesday, speakers denounced climate change as a hoax perpetrated by a “global cabal” including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and many leaders of the Catholic Church.

It might have seemed like a fringe event, except for one speaker’s credentials. John F. Clauser had shared the Nobel Prize in physics last year before declaring Tuesday that “there is no climate crisis” — a claim that contradicts the overwhelming scientific consensus.

The event showcased the remarkable shift that Clauser, 80, has undergone since winning one of the world’s most prestigious awards for his groundbreaking experiments with light particles in the 1970s. His recent denial of global warming has alarmed top climate scientists, who warn that he is using his stature to mislead the public about a planetary emergency.

Clauser, who has a booming voice and white hair he often leaves uncombed, has brushed off these concerns. He contends that skepticism is a key part of the scientific process.

I like my skepticism informed and based on evidence, thank you very much. You don’t just run around denying things — you have to actually do the work of showing that those things are wrong. This is a case where someone is making “skeptical” claims on the basis of a false authority and ego. So what is Clauser’s argument?

Clauser, who has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change, has homed in on one message in particular: The Earth’s temperature is primarily determined by cloud cover, not carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. He has concluded that clouds have a net cooling effect on the planet, so there is no climate crisis.

I had to go looking for the scientific basis for this claim, and I found it. It’s NASA. On a site called Climate Kids, it’s for children who want to know more about climate science, so it’s a good match for Clauser’s level of understanding.

Clouds within a mile or so of Earth’s surface tend to cool more than they warm. These low, thicker clouds mostly reflect the Sun’s heat. This cools Earth’s surface.

Clouds high up in the atmosphere have the opposite effect: They tend to warm Earth more than they cool. High, thin clouds trap some of the Sun’s heat. This warms Earth’s surface.

What about when you look at the effect of all clouds together? Cooling wins. Right now, Earth’s surface is cooler with clouds than it would be without the clouds.

Uh-oh…he’s right? Not really. The site goes on to say,

Climate scientists predict that as Earth’s climate warms, there will also be fewer clouds to cool it down. So, unfortunately, we can’t count on clouds alone to slow down the warming.

I’d also point out that clouds are only one factor in climate, and I’d need a quantitative understanding of the relative contributions of clouds vs., for instance, greenhouse gasses. I’d want to get the opinion of a genuine expert in the field, a real climatologist. Like Michael Mann.

Michael Mann, a professor of earth science at the University of Pennsylvania, said this argument is “pure garbage” and “pseudoscience.”

The “best available evidence” shows that clouds actually have a net warming effect, Mann said in an email. “In physics, we call that a ‘sign error’ — it’s the sort of error a freshman is embarrassed to be caught having made,” he said.

Of course, does Michael Mann have a Nobel prize in quantum mechanics? He does not. All he has is relevant expertise in the actual field in question, but no shiny gold medal.

In other embarrassing revelations, we also learn something else about Clauser.

Tuesday’s event was organized by the Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of more than a dozen Catholic organizations that argues “those pushing the anti-God and anti-family climate agenda need to be called out and exposed,” according to its website. Clauser, who is an atheist, needed some convincing to be the keynote speaker, a coalition spokesman acknowledged.

Have I ever mentioned that it’s not just Nobelists, but also sometimes atheists can be big fucking idiots?

Oh come on now

I very much like Scott Manley’s videos: technical, detailed, interesting analyses of space flights, delivered with a pretty accent. He applied his critical eye to the recent SpaceX kaboom, and it was informative. He explains how it improves on the last disaster, which is valid — this time, it didn’t demolish the launch platform, and all the first stage engines fired up this time. Progress!

Except then, he goes on to insist this was a success.

That’s the most generous definition of “success” ever. All the engines fired on the first stage, and it successfully uncoupled from the second stage…then it exploded spectacularly. The second stage went on to also explode. Victory! This is not to say that they didn’t learn things from the failed mission, but it’s still a dramatic failure. Unless the intent was to loft the most expensive firework ever, it’s still not a success.

Little victories

A few things made me feel good at work this week.

#1: We’re wrapping up the Evolution section of my Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development course. After a month of lectures and tree drawing exercises and discussions about good examples of evolution, I gave the students an overview of human evolution and a primary research paper, the Lee Berger stuff about Homo naledi. They were asked to critically evaluate the claims: did they really have fire? Did they bury their dead? Did they create crude art? As you probably know, Berger is emphatic about answering “YES!!”, but I urged them to think carefully…and they did. They stated some concerns and doubts, and talked about what they’d like to see to confirm the claims, like good little scientists. Then I gave them a paper by Martinon-Torres and others, “No scientific evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead and produced rock art,” and they saw what an active debate in science looks like. Warmed my heart, it did. This is what a good science class is about, tricking students into thinking for themselves.

#2: I’ve had nightmares about this one thing. Our university enrollment has been way down — I’m teaching a second year required course in cell biology, and I have TEN (10!) students enrolled. Most years I’ve had 50. Sure, a small class is nice in many ways, but not so great if you want to get active participation and discussion going. It took about 12 weeks to get the class warmed up and regularly asking questions! What was causing me some anxiety, though, is that I’m offering a 4000 level elective in ecological developmental biology next semester, the kind of course that lives or dies with student engagement, and really needs a critical mass of students if it was going to fly. I’d been dreading getting 3 or fewer students signed up (the administration would cancel it), or perhaps worse, 5 or 6 students, and I’d have to struggle all semester to get them active while not throwing too much of a burden on individuals. My ideal class size for this kind of course is 10-12 students, and I was dreading getting too few students for all the work involved.

Spring term registration started this week. I’ve already got 10 students enrolled! Maybe next semester will be fun, after all.

Sometimes there are little defeats, too. Our football team qualified for the NCAA DIII playoffs, and will be playing at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse tomorrow. This is a very big deal! So I get to my cell bio class this afternoon…I’ve got two students. One has to leave early for an interview. So I get to lecture to a nearly empty room.

This sort of thing happened early in the semester and I just cancelled class, but I warned them that next time I’d go right ahead and lecture to empty seats, so that’s what I did. At least now I have a set of questions that will definitely go on the next exam.

Interesting news from outer space

You know we sent a probe, OSIRIS-REx (ugh, it’s a contrive acronym — I hate the name), to an asteroid name Bennu (better), and it has returned to Earth with a load of debris. It’s a big deal to crack this probe open, because they really want to avoid contamination, and we won’t see the results of a thorough analysis for a while yet, but NASA has examined the stuff outside the main container, and it’s promising.

So what’s the big deal about recovering pristine samples from the surface of an asteroid? The big deal is that Bennu, an asteroid in a near-Earth orbit that is about one-half kilometer across, is believed to be a time capsule for the types of rocks and chemicals that existed when the planets formed in our Solar System more than 4 billion years ago. By studying Bennu, scientists are looking back to that primordial era when Earth began transitioning from an extremely hot world with a hellish surface environment into something more like a mud ball.

Poking these pebbles and rocks with sophisticated equipment here on Earth may allow Lauretta and the other scientists to answer questions about how terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars formed and possibly whether asteroids seeded Earth with the building blocks for life.

In a preliminary analysis of some of the dust, Lauretta said scientists hit the jackpot with a sample that is nearly 5 percent carbon by mass and has abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals. It is highly plausible that asteroids like this delivered the vast majority of the water now found in Earth’s oceans, lakes, and rivers billions of years ago.

By piecing together clues from the asteroid dust—both its water and organic molecules—the scientists believe they may better understand how Earth went from an uninhabited mudball to the world teeming with life today.

“This is incredible material,” said Daniel Glavin, a co-investigator on the mission. “It’s loaded with organics. If we’re looking for biologically essential organic molecules, we picked the right asteroid, and we brought back the right sample. This is an astrobiologist’s dream.”

Cool, but not at all surprising. This is what we’d expected — we already knew space was full of organic molecules, this isn’t the 19th century when vitalism and the belief that organic chemistry could only be perpetrated by living organisms.

I look forward to the results, but I predict that they will find…amino acids, nucleotides, simple sugars, etc. All the basics you need to make an apple pie. The universe provides.