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IndyCar released a new computer-generated look at the 2018 car.(Photo: Image provided by IndyCar)

INDIANAPOLIS -- Out with the old and in with the old. That's the idea behind IndyCar's next evolution of race car, whichborrows upon design elements of bygone eras to create a new retro chic look.

IndyCar released Wednesday the latest images of its new car with a uniform body kitthatwill debut in the Verizon IndyCar Series in 2018.

While this remains a work in progress, we are encouraged with where the development of the 2018 car stands,IndyCarpresident of competition and operations Jay Frye saidin a news release.The look of the car is bold, the performance data from simulations is meeting targeted goals and safety enhancements built into the design will be substantial.

Frye said IndyCar still plans to begin testing the car by mid-summer. He also said that teams will be able to choose between Chevrolet and Honda engines next season, but all of the cars will have the same universal kits. The supplier of the universal kit has yet to be announced.

The initial concepts, which outline the bodywork that will cover the Dallara IR-12 chassis,were revealed in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The biggestchange will be that the new car's downforce will originate from the undercarriageinstead of from wings on top, many of which will disappear. This change is designed not only to make the car look sleeker and sexier but also to produce more passing, as drivers will not deal with as much turbulence when closing in on opponents.

An artist's sketches of the 2018 aerokit concepts for IndyCar.(Photo: George Sipple, DFP)

Weve been working on the aerodynamics to suit the look, rather than the other way around, said Tino Belli, IndyCar director of aerodynamic development, in the release.

Were working on creating more of the downforce from the underwing, Belli said. The hole in the floor (of the undertray on this years car) will be sealed for the road courses and short ovals, but will still be open for the superspeedways.

Drivers seem to like the new changes.

Definitely some throwbacks to the old Indy cars and Champ cars of old," James Hinchcliffe said in February."I think its the right direction aesthetically certainly. But the most important things are the performances goals, and if we hit that, then the quality of the racing will be tremendous, as it has been, but we can make it better, and thats what the goal is for the new car."

Graham Rahal added: "I think the new car -- you know, I haven't seen the finished product by any means, but I think it looks pretty awesome,"Rahal said. "I'm excited about it. For me, it's more like what I feel an IndyCar should look like."

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IndyCar reveals new images in next evolution of race car - Indianapolis Star

Reef Top, Great Barrier Reef, Australia Photograph: Daniela Dirscherl/Getty Images/WaterFrame RM

Science and storytelling dont seem like obvious bedfellows but recently theres been a serious vein of science communication research that suggests a strong narrative can help with dissemination, understanding by nonexperts and number one for most publishing scientists, citations.

Of course, sciencing the art of storytelling, with narrativity indices and reader appeal charts does sound typically soul-suckingly dry, but it is at the heart of the science communication movement and many of the Lost Worlds Revisited blogs are retellings of decades of palaeontological research into narratives with a beginning, middle and end.

Tentative justification preamble out of the way, heres a classic fairytale retold as the story of hexacorallian evolution*. Oh it was also National Tell A Fairy Tale Day last month, which I am sure we all celebrated. Now, I hope you are sitting comfortably.

Once upon a time, possibly in the Precambrian there was an ancestral hexacorallian mother who had three little orders** of corals and not enough food to feed them. So when they evolved into distinct orders, she sent them out into the world to seek their fortunes.

The first little order of corals, order Tabulata, appearing in the early Ordovician was very lazy. He lacked distinctive characteristics which created taxonomic problems for palaeontologists and didnt want to work at all and he built his corallites from feeble septa without axial structure. The second little order, order Rugosa, who appeared later in the Ordovician worked a little bit harder but he was somewhat lazy too and he built his corallites out of serial septa with some axial structure. Then, they sang and danced and diversified together the rest of the day.

The third little order, the Scleractinia, which appeared sometime during the Palaeozoic worked hard all day and built his skeleton with lightweight but rigidly supporting cyclic septa. It was a sturdy bauplan complete with a wide diversity of forms and aragonitic skeletons.

In the Late Devonian, dynamic global climate systems happened to pass by the lane where the three little coral orders lived; and he saw the weakly developed septa of tabulate corals, and he smelled the coral inside. He thought the corals would make a mighty fine meal and his mouth began to water.

So he knocked on the door and said:

Little coral! Little coral!

Let me in! Let me in!

But the little coral saw the dynamic global climate systems through the keyhole, so he answered back:

No! No! No!

Not by the mural pores on my modular corallites!

Then the dynamic global climate systems showed his teeth and said:

Then Ill huff

and Ill puff

and through a complex series of climate changes including glaciation caused by the greening of the land, a possible bollide collision and magmatism activity, Ill blow your house down.

So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down! Dynamic global climate systems opened his jaws very wide and bit down as hard as he could, but tabulate corals escaped and ran away to hide with the rugose corals.

Dynamic global climate systems continued down the lane and at the end of the Permian he passed by the rugose coralllites with serial septa and with the tabulate feeble septa of the tabulate corals; and he smelled the corals inside, and his mouth began to water as he thought about the fine dinner they would make.

So he knocked on the door and said:

Little corals! Little corals!

Let me in! Let me in!

But the little pigs saw the dynamic global climate systems through the keyhole, so they answered back:

No! No! No!

Not by the dividing walls of my massive coralla!

Answered the rugose corals.

So the dynamic global climate systems showed his teeth and said:

Then Ill huff

and Ill puff

and Ill cause the most severe mass extinction event that has ever been known, causing the extinction of several major groups of terrestrial and marine organisms and at the same time Ill blow your house down.

So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down! Dynamic global climate systems destroyed over 90% of all marine organisms including trilobites, eurypterids, acanthodian fish and blastoid echinoderms. Rugose and tabulate corals also went extinct.

Dynamic global climate systems then merrily skipped down the lane arriving at the robust scleractinian corals at the end of the Cretaceous. The scleractinian corals were very frightened, they knew the dynamic global climate systems wanted to eat them. And that was very, very true. Dynamic global climate systems hadnt eaten all day and he had worked up a large appetite causing mass extinctions and the like and now he could smell the last of the corals inside and he knew that the coral would make a lovely meal.

So the wolf knocked on the door and said:

Little coral! Little coral!

Let me in! Let me in!

But the scleractinian saw the dynamic global climate systems through the keyhole, so they answered back:

No! No! No!

Not by the symbiotic dinoflagellates in our cells!

So the dynamic global climate systems showed his teeth and said:

Then Ill huff

and Ill puff

and Ill bring down an asteroid or two as well as mess around with the Deccan traps and cause eustatic changes which will also, I hope, blow your house down.

So he huffed and he puffed. He puffed and he huffed. And he huffed, huffed, and he puffed, puffed; he destroyed the non-avian dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, the ammonoids and belemnoids, the polyglyphanodontians, the mosasaurs and plesiosaurs and although he destroyed roughly 60% of the scleractinian corals he just could not blow the house down. At last, he was so out of breath that he couldnt huff and he couldnt puff or breathe anymore so he had a bit of a lay down.

The damaged scleractinian corals emerged, repaired their house and went on to diverge into the stony corals we know and love today and they lived happily ever after. Well until anthropogenic impacts started to cause widespread bleaching events but thats a story for another time.

THE END

*Yes, yes I know that perhaps storytelling in science wasnt supposed to be taken quite so literally but its corals were talking about here they need all the narrative index help they can get.

** She had other children who also got into escapades but those are stories for another time.

References

Dahlstrom, M. D. 2014. Using narratives and stroytelling to communicate science with nonexpert audiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. v.111 Supplement 4. Weblink here.

Scrutton, C. T. 1997. The Palaeozoic corals, I: origins and relationships. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, v. 51:177-208. Weblink here.

The rest is here:

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin the evolutionary 'fairytale' of coral - The Guardian

A western lowland gorilla. According to the study, primates that eat fruit have about 25% more brain tissue than leaf-eaters of the same body weight. Photograph: Fiona Rogers/Getty Images

Foraging for fruit may have driven the evolution of large brains in primates, according to research attempting to unpick the mystery of our cerebral heftiness.

The finding appears to be a blow to a long-held theory that humans and other primates evolved big brains largely as a result of social pressures, with extra brain power needed to navigate and engage in complex social interactions. Instead the researchers say it supports the view that the evolution of larger brains is driven by diet.

All of these things are co-evolving: brains are getting bigger, sociality is becoming more complex, diet quality is becoming better, but it is maybe a shift in that focus on what might have been relatively more important, or more consistent throughout [primate] evolution, said Alex DeCasien, co-author of the research from New York University.

Writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, DeCasien and colleagues describe how they analysed the differences in brain size between more than 140 non-human primate species to unpick whether larger brains were linked to diet or to social factors. These factors included group size, mating habits and social system for example, whether a species was solitary or lived in a system where males are surrounded by a harem of females.

After taking into account factors such as body size and the position of species on the evolutionary tree, the team found no evidence that greater sociality is linked to bigger brain size.

Instead, they found that big brains appear to be linked to diet. According to the study, primates that eat fruit have about 25% more brain tissue than leaf-eaters of the same body weight. Omnivores were also found to have larger brains than leaf-eaters, although there was no difference when compared to fruit eaters.

DeCasien says the results support the idea that fruit-eating provides more energy than leaf-eating, aiding brain growth. [Fruit] is higher quality, it is more nutrient dense, it requires less digesting time, than the leaves, she said.

At the same time, DeCasien adds, foraging for fruit could be a driver for large brains since finding fruit in a forest, logging its location, knowing how to get into the fruit, and remembering when it is likely to be ripe, all take brain power. That is much more demanding than eating leaves which are relatively abundant all around you, said DeCasien. That might allow, afterwards, then an increase in how complex your social interactions are.

While the study looked only at non-human primates, experts believe that its findings could shed light on why our own species is endowed with a large brain.

[We are the only primate that] is able to get lots of calories from meat really easily from cooking it and making it more digestible, said Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the research. So if diet is really that important it could be that that was important in our own brain evolution that transition to being able to process food and eat meat and take on even more energy which gives us even more opportunity to grow larger brains.

But, Venditti warns, the latest study has its drawbacks, not least that measures of group size might not reflect the degree to which individuals interact with each other, and that the team only looked at the overall relative brain size of different species, rather than the size of the neocortex the area primarily involved in complex cognitive processes such as perception, reasoning and thought.

Different brain regions can evolve independently of each other, said Venditti. If you look at the specific brain region involved in cognition itself it might be that there could be a relationship between [group size and brain size].

Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford agrees, pointing out that neuroimaging studies have shown a link between the size of components of the neocortex and group size in humans and monkeys.

Whats more, he says, it is a mistake to assume that social group size and diet are two alternative explanations for the evolution of big brains, pointing out that one is a cause and the other a constraint.

You cannot evolve a large brain to handle anything, social or otherwise, unless you change your diet to allow greater nutrient acquisition so as to grow a larger brain, he said. But that is not an explanation for why large brains evolved.

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Fruit foraging in primates may be key to large brain evolution - The Guardian

A paper in Nature, A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution, presents fresh ideas about dinosaur relationships that reveal the extent to which dinosaur traits are not distributed in a treelike pattern. One news article calls this a radical shakeup of the dinosaur family tree because it would overturn a century of evolutionary thinking about dinosaurs:

The analysis, which has already sparked controversy in the academic world, suggests that the two basic groups into which dinosaurs have been classified for more than a century need a fundamental rethink. If proved correct, the revised version of the family tree would overthrow some of the most basic assumptions about this chapter of evolutionary history, including what the common ancestor of all dinosaurs looked like and where it came from.

The basic issue is this: For the past hundred years, dinosaurs were classified into two primary groupings. Dinosaurs within Ornithischia, which have hips like a bird, and dinosuars within Saurischia, with hips like a lizard. Before you read any further, dont presume that these old divisions foreshadow the now-popular theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs: the theropod dinosaurs, the group from which birds supposedly evolved, belong to the lizard-hipped Saurischia and are not bird-hipped! This obviously bothered some proponents of the bird-to-dino hypothesis.

The new scheme aims to fix this annoying problem. Under the new classification, theropods are now grouped with dinos that used to be within the bird-hipped Ornithischia, such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops. This new designation, Ornithoscelida, is supposed to create a fundamental group of dinosaurs that is less hostile to the dino-to-bird theory.

The grouping of course pleases longtime dino-to-bird advocates like Kevin Padian, president of the National Center for Science Education. He defends the classification in a News & Views article in Nature, stating that their results cannot be dismissed as simply a different opinion or speculation.

Indeed, The Guardian reports that people are already using this new classification scheme to imagine feathered dinosaurs where they dont exist on totally non-feathered types of dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Triceratops! Consider these comments by the studys lead author, Cambridge University graduate student Matthew Baron:

The findings also support the possibility that dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops, traditionally portrayed as tank-like armoured beasts, may have been feathered.

[]

Maybe we did have fluffy Triceratops and fluffy Stegosaurus, said Baron. It could be that the feathers would have been poking out between the scales, it could have been a beautiful fluffy colourful plumage or scales covered in downy feathers. Its possible.

Such unwarranted speculation hints at what agendas may truly be driving this new classification scheme.

In any case, the official reason for the new view of dinosaurs is that it better explains the distribution of traits among various dinosaur species. For example, the technical paper explains that the old Ornithischia/Saurischia division required convergent evolution to clarify the hand anatomy of early dinosaurs a problem the authors claim to solve:

Recent studies have led to a general consensus that the earliest dinosaurs were relatively small and bipedal, and this idea finds further support within our hypothesis, as both basal sauropodomorphs and basal ornithoscelidans are small bipeds. Manus anatomy in many early dinosaurs also appears to be very similar, with supinated, non-weight-bearing, grasping hands appearing in basal saurischians such as Herrerasaurus and basal ornithoscelidans such as Heterodontosaurus and Eoraptor. As pointed out in several previous studies, these similarities were often considered to represent convergences given the supposedly distant relationship between taxa such as Heterodontosaurus and Herrerasaurus. Within our new framework, the supinated, grasping hands seen in some early taxa are interpreted as the primitive dinosaurian condition.

But solving one problem sometimescreates another, and it does so here. By reorganizing major parts of the dinosaur tree, evolutionary paleontologists are now confronted with the prospect of rampant convergent evolution among traits found in various carnivorous dinosaurs as required by their new phylogeny. The technical paper in Nature explains these difficulties:

This new tree topology requires redefinition and rediagnosis of Dinosauria and the subsidiary dinosaurian clades. In addition, it forces re-evaluations of early dinosaur cladogenesis and character evolution, suggests that hypercarnivory was acquired independently in herrerasaurids and theropods, and offers an explanation for many of the anatomical features previously regarded as notable convergences between theropods and early ornithischians. Herrerasauridae is recovered as the sister clade to Sauropodomorpha, suggesting that some of the theropod-like features of their anatomy have evolved independently of those found in theropods. This is most likely a direct result of their fully carnivorous feeding strategy; in our hypothesis a fully carnivorous feeding strategy is not recovered as the plesiomorphic condition for Dinosauria and we are forced to interpret some of the anatomical similarities between herrerasaurids and theropods as convergences. The convergent evolution of hypercarnivore morphology within Dinosauria raises interesting questions about the drivers of early dinosaur evolution. For example, did a dentition composed exclusively of sharp, recurved and serrated teeth, such as those that are present in representatives from both of these clades, evolve independently of each other? The earliest representatives of each of the major dinosaur clades often possess at least some recurved, serrated teeth, most commonly as part of a heterodont dentition. However, no known members of Sauropodomorpha or Ornithischia exhibit dentitions that are exclusively composed of recurved, serrated teeth, nor does the early theropod Eoraptor. Hence, it seems probable, within our new framework, that at least some of the recurved, serrated teeth that make up the dentition of derived theropods and herrerasaurids have convergently adopted this morphology. Furthermore, the rostral extension of the dentary tooth row appears also to be convergent between theropods and herrerasaurids; in members of both clades, the dentary tooth row extends to the rostral tip of the dentary.

And then of course there is the fact that lizard-hipped dinosaurs are now separated into two different groups. Presumably that also would require convergent evolution.

Convergent evolution is a problem for Darwinian evolution because it means that biological similarity does not necessarily result from inheritance from a common ancestor. This undermines the basic logic used to construct phylogenetic trees, and casts into doubt the entire project of tree-construction.

The reality is that no matter what classification scheme you use, a dinosaur tree is going to require convergent evolution. This is because key dinosaur traits are not distributed in a tree-like manner.

Because of the convergent evolution it requires, the new hypothesis has already proven controversial. As Nature Newsreports:

Hans-Dieter Sues, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, says the study should stoke discussion. But I caution against totally reorganizing the dinosaur family tree just yet, he says. For one thing, palaeontologists analyses of relations among species are keenly sensitive to which species are considered, as well as which and how many anatomical features are included, he says.

The discovery of new dinosaur species or more complete specimens of those already known might also drive future analyses back toward more currently accepted arrangements of dinosaur lineages, Sues says.

Whats fascinating is that this whole kerfuffle was started by the discovery of a new species of dinosaur named Saltopus elginensis. But when you consider the poor quality of this fossil, it casts more doubt on the proposal, as The Guardian, again, explains:

Langer argues that, while Saltopus might be statistically a good candidate for a common ancestor, given the patchy nature of the fossil it is a poor choice. Rather than attempting to identify the true ancestor of all dinosaurs which can never be known scientists aim is to find an animal that is a decent approximation of the general form and traits displayed by that ancestor we know must have existed.

The fossil, found in a Lossiemouth quarry, comprises a pair of legs, some hip bones, and vertebrae, all of which have been badly squashed.

It looks like a chicken carcass after a Sunday roast, Baron acknowledges.

The Guardian finds scientists who are skeptical of the new proposal:

As anticipated, the conclusions have been met with robust criticism from some rival scientists, including Max Langer, a respected palaeontologist at the University of So Paulo in Brazil.

Theres nothing special about this guy, he said. Saltopus is the right place in terms of evolution but you have much better fossils that would be better candidates for such a dinosaur precursor.

[]

Vinther, whose background is in mollusc research, said that unlike most dinosaur scientists he was not invested in any particular result, but added: Ive heard a bit of murmuring already from people who are not too thrilled about this hypothesis.

Given the controversy thats already brewing, it seems likely that over time critics will adduce further reasons to doubt this new dinosaur classification scheme.

Photo: Triceratops,Houston Museum of Natural Science, by Agsftw (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Dinosaur Phylogeny Gets a Radical Shakeup, Requiring Convergent Evolution - Discovery Institute

CLEVELAND - It seems like every day another major store is announcing it's closing multiple locations.

So what does the future of shopping look like?

Flying cars, teleporting, robots for workers it sounds like a fantasy world, but believe it or not, its the way were going, even right down to the way we shop.

RELATED: With major retailers closing, could this be the end of malls?

That is why retailers are starting to shift their approach and experts say they better do it sooner rather than later.

The days of shopping carts and bags are slowly becoming a thing if the past.

Most of us including myself do not have endless hours in which to go shopping for the various things that we need," said Richard Klein, Sales Expert & Professor at Cleveland State University.

In 2011, the Harvard business review reported e-commerce is nearly $200 billion in revenue and accounted for 9 percent of retail sales. Those numbers, sales experts say, are continuing to climb.

Online retailing has taken a good percentage, a good chunk out of the market that once existed for brick and mortar type stores," said Klein.

So what exactly does the future hold?

Cleveland State's Richard Klein saysmillennials want the latest and greatest in technology when they shop and, because of that demand, retailers are kicking it up a notch. Even the way we try on clothes will change.

He says there are talks of virtual dressing rooms, where you'll be able to literally swipe a TV screen of clothing options and, without even trying it on, see how it will fit.

BBC VIDEO:Japan's 'virtual dressing rooms'

You have to project beyond just now," he said.

He also said if retailers don't get with it, they'll be left in the dust.

For traditional retailers to survive they are not only going to have to become technically savvy at what consumers want and how they want it. They're also going to have to be very much aware of what the consumers want in terms of kinds of items," said Klein.

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Are virtual dressing rooms next in the evolution of shopping? - newsnet5.com

Slide: 1 / of 4. Caption: Skip Sterling/Quanta Magazine

Slide: 2 / of 4. Caption: Caption: Simon Ho, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, found that evolution takes place at varying rates.Courtesy of University of Sydney

Slide: 3 / of 4. Caption: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

Slide: 4 / of 4. Caption: Caption: Aris Katzourakis, a paleovirologist at the University of Oxford, dated a class of viruses to the era before the sea-to-land transition.Gillman & Soame

In the 1950s, the Finnish biologist Bjrn Kurtn noticed something unusual in the fossilized horses he was studying. When he compared the shapes of the bones of species separated by only a few generations, he could detect lots of small but significant changes. Horse species separated by millions of years, however, showed far fewer differences in their morphology. Subsequent studies over the next half century found similar effectsorganisms appeared to evolve more quickly when biologists tracked them over shorter timescales.

About

Original storyreprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of theSimons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences

Then, in the mid-2000s, Simon Ho, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, encountered a similar phenomenon in the genomes he was analyzing. When he calculated how quickly DNA mutations accumulated in birds and primates over just a few thousand years, Ho found the genomes chock-full of small mutations. This indicated a briskly ticking evolutionary clock. But when he zoomed out and compared DNA sequences separated by millions of years, he found something very different. The evolutionary clock had slowed to a crawl.

Baffled by his results, Ho set to work trying to figure out what was going on. He stumbled upon Kurtns 1959 work and realized that the differences in rates of physical change Kurtn saw also appeared in genetic sequences.

His instincts as an evolutionary biologist told him that the mutation rates he was seeing in the short term were the correct ones. The genomes varied at only a few locations, and each change was as obvious as a splash of paint on a white wall.

But if more splashes of paint appear on a wall, they will gradually conceal some of the original color beneath new layers. Similarly, evolution and natural selection write over the initial mutations that appear over short timescales. Over millions of years, an A in the DNA may become a T, but in the intervening time it may be a C or a G for a while. Ho believes that this mutational saturation is a major cause of what he calls the time-dependent rate phenomenon.

Think of it like the stock market, he said. Look at the hourly or daily fluctuations of Standard & Poors 500 index, and it will appear wildly unstable, swinging this way and that. Zoom out, however, and the market appears much more stable as the daily shifts start to average out. In the same way, the forces of natural selection weed out the less advantageous and more deleterious mutations over time.

Hos discovery of the time-dependent rate phenomenon in the genome had major implications for biologists. It meant that many of the dates they used as bookmarks when reading lifes sagaeverything from the first split between eukaryotes and prokaryotes billions of years ago to the re-emergence of the Ebola virus in 2014could be wrong. When this work came out, everyone went Oh. Oh, dear, said Rob Lanfear, an evolutionary biologist at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The time-dependent rate phenomenon wasnt fully appreciated at first. For one thing, it is such a large and consequential concept that biologists needed time to wrap their heads around it. But theres a bigger stumbling block: The concept has been all but impossible to use. Biologists have not been able to quantify exactly how much they should change their estimates of when things happened over the course of evolutionary history. Without a concrete way to calculate the shifts in evolutionary rates over time, scientists couldnt compare dates.

Recently, Aris Katzourakis, a paleovirologist at the University of Oxford, has taken the time-dependent rate phenomenon and applied it to the evolution of viruses. In doing so, he has not only pushed back the origin of certain classes of retroviruses to around half a billion years agolong before the first animals moved from the seas to terra firmahe has also developed a mathematical model that can be used to account for the time-dependent rate phenomenon, providing biologists with much more accurate dates for evolutionary events.

Other scientists are excited by the prospect. Its like Einsteins theory of relativity, but for viruses, said Sebastin Duchne, a computational evolutionary biologist at the University of Melbourne. The time-dependent rate phenomenon says that the speed of an organisms evolution will depend on the time frame over which the observer is looking at it. And as with relativity, researchers can now calculate by how much.

Katzourakis has spent his career trying to pin down the origin of HIV and other so-called retroviruses, which are made out of single strings of RNA.

When he looked at the mutation rates of HIV, he found that it is among the fastest-evolving viruses ever studied. The speedy mutation rate makes sense: Double-stranded molecules like DNA have molecular proofreaders that can often correct errors made during replication, but HIV and other single-strand RNA viruses dont. Spelling errors occur on top of spelling errors.

Because of this, virologists can directly study only the recent history of viruses like this. Older samples have reached mutation saturation, with so many accumulated spelling errors that scientists cant account for them all. Taking the history of retroviruses back thousands or millions of years would require a different way to measure mutation rates.

Katzourakis turned to another technique. He searched for something akin to viral fossils inside the DNA of their hosts. Retroviruses often insert copies of their genetic material into their hosts cells. Most of the time, the information dies with the host. On rare occasions, however, a retrovirus hits the evolutionary jackpot and slips inside the genome of a sperm or egg cell. Nestled securely in its hosts DNA, the virus gets passed down through the generations.

Katzourakis used these viral relics to study the ancient origin of retroviruses. But when he did so, he got a big surprise. The rate of evolution of these retroviruses over long periods appeared to slow dramatically, nearly matching that of humans and other complex lifeorganisms that have proofreader machinery and thus should change at a much slower pace.

If the viruses were evolving much more slowly than scientists thought, it could imply that the viruses were much older than expected as well. After all, a slowly evolving virus will need more time to change by the same amount as a quickly evolving virus.

So he set out to find an accurate date for the origin of retroviruses. To do this, he turned to a group of the most ancient retroviruses, the so-called foamy viruses, which infect everything from monkeys to cows. This promiscuity enabled Katzourakis to calibrate his evolutionary clock to determine precisely when foamy viruses emerged. If two species shared a foamy-virus sequence, the virus must have infected their common ancestor, before the two species diverged.

It gives us a way to date events in deep evolutionary history thats independent of the sequences themselves, Katzourakis said.

Researchers in labs around the world had slowly pushed back the date of origin of foamy viruses to 100 million years ago. But Katzourakis found hints that the virus had infected reptiles, amphibians and even fish far earlier than 100 million years ago. To conclusively show that retroviruses were older than the accepted date of 100 million years, however, Katzourakis would need to date the virus itself.

He dived into Hos papers on the time-dependent rate phenomenon, hoping to figure out how to apply it to viruses. He also wanted to create a general model that would allow researchers to input the timescale they were observing and get back details about the organisms evolutionary rate.

Katzourakis and his student Pakorn Aiewsakun tried out four different ways to quantify how quickly the evolutionary rate appeared to change based on timescale. They found that a power law rate-decay model fit their data best and showed that evolutionary rates decrease exponentially as the timescale increases. A subsequent study of 396 different viruses revealed that the evolutionary rate slows at the same rate across almost all genome types and replication strategies. Existing evolutionary clocks, which fail to account for the time-dependent rate phenomenon, inaccurately date ancient viruses as being much younger than they really are.

Katzourakis and Aiewsakun then used the newly developed mathematical framework to recalculate the emergence of foamy viruses. Using their newly developed model, the scientists showed in a paper published in January that foamy viruses emerged somewhere between 460 and 550 million years ago. Independent work by the University of Arizona virologist Michael Worobey, published in Virus Evolution nearly simultaneously, also suggested that these viruses originated earlier than expected. These studies established the oldest date for any known group of viruses, although Katzourakis believes other viral groups may be even more ancient.

The findings have implications far beyond the earning of a trophy for the oldest virus. A convergence on the same date of origin for foamy viruses provides evidence that the time-dependent rate phenomenon isnt just a relic of statistics or the methods researchers use to date species. Katzourakiss model also gives researchers a tool to quantify the effects of the time-dependent rate phenomenon, which will prove key to understanding the factors that drive this phenomenon.

More broadly, the work by Katzourakis and Ho challenges the idea of a steadily ticking evolutionary clock. This changes the way we conceive of molecular evolution, Duchne said. It shows that there is no universal rate of evolution. Even the same organisms have rates that vary over time.

It also means that scientists may need to revise the dates of evolutionary events in the deep past, as they likely underestimated how long ago they truly happened, Katzourakis said. He is trying to understand whether the pruning of mutations by natural selection and mutational saturation is the sole contributor to the time-dependent rate phenomenon, or whether other factors play a role in how and why the phenomenon emerges.

Is it a limitation of our tools, or is there something that weve overlooked? If we can understand this process, it will give us some big evolutionary insights, Katzourakis said.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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Evolution Is Slower Than It Looks and Faster Than You Think - WIRED

WOODBERRYMatalie R. Deanes picturesque paintings are as scenic as the beautiful, historic campus of Woodberry Forest Schoolthe location of her latest exhibit.

In one of her many paintings, Deane creates vibrant green leaves on towering trees that overlook the Woodberry Forest Schools chapel.

The Charlottesville native displayed about 45 pieces of her artwork during Fridays reception held inside the Baker Gallery, Walker Fine Arts Center.

Her vast selection of landscapes, seascapes, animals, historic buildings and plein air paintings will remain on display at the all-boy boarding high school until April 29. Deanes Progression exhibit also features images of her compilation of postcard paintings.

Deanes specialty is using watercolors on canvas.

I love painting water. I havent mastered it yet, but Im still working on it, said Deane, during her brief speech. I also enjoy plein air painting. I havent mastered that either, but I enjoy painting it. Its sort of like fishing, sharing things with individuals.

For Deane, the joy of painting started when she was a child.

When I got a box of crayons, I wouldnt let anybody have any of mine because I just loved my box of crayons so much, said Deane. As a kid, I just loved drawing and painting. If you gave me pen and paper, I was happy as a lark.

Woodberry art teacher Kelly Lonergan, who organizes the art exhibits, thanked the crowd for coming out to see the beautiful show.

He added that Deanes paintings are also for sale.

During the show, Deanes brother Dan Griffin played melodic tunes on his collection of accordions.

Deane said she started drawing something every day in 2014, working on design and colors. The following two years, Deane worked specifically on paintings and drawings, which became part of her evolution of her work in her Progression exhibit.

Deane received her bachelors degree in applied art from James Madison University in 1973. While, Deane works as a respiratory therapist, her passion for art still flourishes.

Deane has exhibited her works in a group and/or solo show since 2000, being judged in Maryland and Virginia, winning several awards.

For more information about purchasing a painting, contact Kelly Lonergan at 540/672-3900.

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The art of evolution: Matalie Deane's works on display at Woodberry Forest School - The Daily Progress

The Hindu

A brewing debate on evolution theory picks up in India - The Hindu The Hindu Is 'niche construction' a revolutionary concept in evolutionary biology? and more »

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A brewing debate on evolution theory picks up in India - The Hindu - The Hindu

Patch.com

UConn Bus Evolution: From Horses to Horsepower to Powering Up Patch.com STORRS, CT University of Connecticut officials last week showcased a new transit bus that is a virtual study hall on wheels. And it is a far cry from the old ag school horse and buggy. UConn transit buses have essentially evolved from those horses to ...

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UConn Bus Evolution: From Horses to Horsepower to Powering Up - Patch.com

Slide: 1 / of 13. Caption: Caption: The Formula 1 World Drivers' Championships formally kicked off in 1950, but the front engined cars of the day would be unrecognizable to a modern viewer. Alfa Romeo dominated the inaugural season. This is the British Grand Prix, at Silverstone. Alamy

Slide: 2 / of 13. Caption: Caption: By the mid 1950s, regulations had started to limit engine size, though teams could use turbo or superchargers. In 1958 year, new rules meant every car had to burn standardgasoline fuel, rather than the alcohol-based fuels they'd used before. This is Stirling Moss in Rob Walker's Cooper at Goodwood. Getty Images

Slide: 3 / of 13. Caption: Caption: 1968 saw aerodynamic effects used in a big way as teams slapped hugewings on struts several feet high (seen here on a Rob Walker Racing TeamLotus inthe German Grand Prix). "They stole the idea from American Can-Am races," says motorsport historian Don Capps. It was also a particularly deadly year, claiming five drivers' lives---the bosses banned the high wings and introduced other safety rules. Grand Prix Photo/Getty Images

Slide: 4 / of 13. Caption: Caption: The 1970s marked the start of Formula 1 as fans know it today, and the technological innovations came thick and fast. Mario Andretti won the 1978 Formula 1 World Drivers Championship in this Lotus 79 which used 'ground effect' aerodynamics, effectively turning the underside of the car into the equivalent of the huge wing for gobs of downforce.Don Heiny/Getty Images

Slide: 5 / of 13. Caption: Caption: Renault's RS01 was the first modern racer to use a turbocharger, although regulations had allowed themfor over a decade. Initial reliability problems earned it the name the "yellow teapot" for the frequent clouds of white smoke. It proved itself in 1979, and other teams quickly adopted the turbo. Here it's competingin 1978 in Long Beach, California.Getty Images

Slide: 6 / of 13. Caption: Caption: John Watson's 1981 McLaren MP4/1 may not look revolutionary, but it was the first to be made as a single carbon-fiber composite monocoque, rather than a metal chassis. That made the car unbelievably light, stiff and strong. Early on, other teams worried about its crash safety, but it quickly become the standard way to build a racecar.Getty Images

Slide: 7 / of 13. Caption: Caption: In 1983 extreme ground effects had been completely banned, so Nelson Piquet's Brabham BMW BT52, here at the Italian Grand Prix, used heavily trimmed side pods, and a flat underside. By now the cars were all running very thirsty turbo engines, so pit stops were re-introducedfor refueling. They didn't last long, and were banned again in 1984.Getty Images

Slide: 8 / of 13. Caption: Caption: It was all change again in 1989. After several seasons of limiting boost pressure to try to rein in the insane power of F1 engines and make races safer and more entertaining, turbos were banned altogether. Naturally aspirated engines were back in, up to 3.5 liters, and 8 to 12 cylinders. This is legendary driver Ayrton Senna in his McLaren MP4/5 at the 1989 British Grand Prix.Getty Images

Slide: 9 / of 13. Caption: Caption: Formula 1 had gone a decade without a fatality when F1 great Ayrton Senna, shown here in the Williams FW16, died in a crash at the 1994 San Marino GP---after warning the banning of electronic driver's aids would prove dangerous. His death sparked another round of power restrictions and track adjustments.Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Slide: 10 / of 13. Caption: Caption: By the late 2000s, the races were becoming boring to watch, thanks to evenly matched, reliable cars. So the bosses updated the regs yet again, reducing engine rev limits and allowing adjustable wings to change aerodynamics mid-race This Ferrari F150, shown testing at Spain's Ricardo Tormo Circuit, was one result.Paul Gilham/Getty Images

Slide: 11 / of 13. Caption: Caption: 2014 marked a shift towards smaller engines (turbocharged 1.6-liters with six cylinders), but heavier use of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. During braking, KERS stores energy by spinning up a flywheel, then releases it during acceleration to boost performance. Infiniti Red Bull Racing shows its new RB10 during day one of winter testing in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Andrew Hone/Getty Images

Slide: 12 / of 13. Caption: Caption: For the 2017 season, the focus is back on overtaking, with an unwinding of many of the aerodynamic restrictions. F1's head honchos want cars to be faster through the corners, though viewers aren't convinced that'll make the races more exciting. The cars, like this one from reigning champions, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, are lower and sleeker, with much wider tires. Daimler

Slide: 13 / of 13. Caption: Caption: What comes next? More evolution. In late 2015, McLaren showcased one view of the future, with the MP4-X. It's electric, charged by the sun, and drivers steer it by thought. It's an extreme concept, but as the last six decades have demonstrated, Formula 1 tech doesn't stand still for long. McLaren

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Photos: The Evolution of Formula One Race Cars | WIRED - WIRED