EOL goes live!

Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

Well, almost:

Our official launch date was February 26th. However, due to phenomenal load on our servers, we reverted to our pages served prior to launch. We are working hard to remedy the situation and will resume momentarily.

Encyclopedia of Life

Good ideas can have drawbacks. When information is freely shared, good ideas can stunt innovation by distracting others from pursuing even better ideas, according to Indiana University cognitive scientist Robert Goldstone.

"How do you structure your community so you get the best solution out of the group?" Goldstone said. "It turns out not to be effective if different inventors and labs see exactly what everyone else is doing because of the human tendency to glom onto the current 'best' solution."

The downside of a good idea

Evolutionary biologists have for years attempted to explain why people have powerful emotional reactions to imaginary tales.

They have failed mostly because they don’t understand how narrative works.

"Comeuppance" uses game theory and evolutionary psychology to explain why people find pleasure in both the happy and tragic lives of fictional characters.

New from Harvard University Press:

With Comeuppance, William Flesch delivers the freshest, most generous thinking about the novel since Walter Benjamin wrote on the storyteller and Wayne C. Booth on the rhetoric of fiction. In clear and engaging prose, Flesch integrates evolutionary psychology into literary studies, creating a new theory of fiction in which form and content flawlessly intermesh.

Fiction, Flesch contends, gives us our most powerful way of making sense of the social world. Comeuppance begins with an exploration of the appeal of gossip and ends with an account of how we can think about characters and care about them as much as about persons we know to be real. We praise a storyteller who contrives a happy or at least an appropriate ending, and fault the writer who refuses us one. Flesch uses Darwinian theory to show how fiction satisfies our desire to see the good vindicated and the wicked get their comeuppance. He conveys the danger and excitement of reading fiction with nimble intelligence and provides wide reference to stories both familiar and little known.

About the book, Harold Bloom says:

Comeuppance is a surprising excursus into what I might have thought an impossible project. What Flesch undertakes with skill and cunning is what might be called the conversion of sociobiology into its aesthetic analogs. By means of this transposition, we are given a surprisingly fresh account of the workings of high literature.

Consider it alongside Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction

Now out in paperback:

The strange history of auditory hallucination throughout the ages, and its power to shed light on the mysterious inner source of pure faith and unadulterated inspiration.

From Booklist:

Daniel B. Smith's father and grandfather both heard voices, and thereby hangs the tale Smith tells at the outset, and also his interest in the phenomenon of hearing people speak when no one else can and without otherwise sensing them. Research indicates that hearing voices isn't all that rare; that many cope well with it, belying its association with madness; and that so many parts of the brain are involved in audition that finding those responsible for hearing voices may be impossible. Smith proceeds from present-day science to the nineteenth-century labeling of hearing voices as hallucinatory, and then to famous cases of it, most of them preceding but one during its pathologization. Socrates (Smith posits that the voices the philosopher heard affected his sentencing to death), Joan of Arc, and a German jurist who largely recovered from schizophrenic voice hearing are the three figures about whom Smith writes so intelligently and absorbingly that one wishes he had covered others he notes, especially William Blake, as fully. One also wants to read more of him, on any subject he chooses.

Watch his Colbert interview from last year.

Consider this in light of The New Autism, in the latest Wired:

Traditional science holds that people with severe autism are prisoners in their own minds, severely disabled, and probably mentally retarded. Don't tell that to Amanda Baggs, an autistic woman who achieved viral fame with her YouTube video "In My Language," which has so far received more than 350,000 hits. Wired contributor David Wolman gets inside the life that Baggs has created for herself, which includes blogging, hanging out in Second Life, corresponding with her friends, and a "constant conversation" with the world around her. Wolman's conclusion: Much of past research about autism and intelligence is catastrophically flawed.

From the NYT review of "Muses":

Smith sets (but does not explore) a provocative challenge: Had antipsychotic medication been available, would Moses have dismissed Yahweh’s demands at the burning bush “as his dopamine system playing tricks on him?”

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity

Forthcoming from David Attenborough, narrator of Planet Earth.

Advance Praise:

Admirably illustrated ... fascinating detail ... a treasure trove ... delightful ... excellent, outstanding, informative and beautiful.

About the book:

Life in Cold Blood offers a rare glimpse into the peculiar world of amphibians and reptiles, the first vertebrate creatures to venture forth from the primeval waters millions of years ago, yet which today include species that are the most at risk of extinction. Join acclaimed naturalist Sir David Attenborough as he travels to the far corners of the Earth to tell the epic story of these animals in this companion to the television series. Discover the secrets of their astounding success -- and the profound implications of their uncertain future.

Amphibians and reptiles once ruled the planet, and their descendants exhibit some of the most colorful variety and astounding behavior known to the animal kingdom. What are the origins of these creatures? How have they transformed themselves into the beautiful and bizarre forms found today? In this gorgeously illustrated book, Attenborough gets up close and personal with the living descendants of the first vertebrates ever to colonize the land, and through them traces the fascinating history of their pioneering ancestors. He explains the ways amphibians and reptiles have changed little from their prehistoric forebears while also demonstrating how they have adapted and evolved into diverse new forms, some of them beyond our wildest imaginings. And Attenborough raises awareness of the threats global warming and other man-made environmental changes pose to many of these creatures. Life in Cold Blood inspires a genuine sense of wonder about amphibians and reptiles and the marvels of the natural world around us.

Life in Cold Blood

For scientifically minded fans of The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory.

Having caught, by chance, the broadcast of a multi-car NASCAR crash on television, Nebraska University physics professor Diandra Leslie-Pelecky found herself compelled to understand why it happened. Soon, a growing list of scientific questions ("How do you build an engine...that can run at 9,000 rpm for three hours without blowing up?") steer her to meetings with engineers, ground crews and drivers who work together "at the limits of what we understand about aerodynamics, structural engineering and even human physiology." The first part of the book deals with materials, and looks at how combustion, power and aerodynamics work together to maximize speed. But it's the driver and his crew who win the race, and Leslie-Pelecky gets plenty of time with the men behind the machines, joining Ray Evernham's crew to watch him race, and taking a turn behind the wheel herself. Along the way, the nanotech specialist becomes an unlikely racing fan; this fun physics primer should give any NASCAR aficionado a similar appreciation for science.

See also the companion web site, Stock Car Science, or check out the book blog (only a week old, though).

The Physics of NASCAR: How to Make Steel + Gas + Rubber = Speed

Truth be told, Barash's line of inquiry, like Richard Dawkins' or Steven Pinker's, does result in bracing and unsettling ideas. Through the lens of evolutionary psychology, we are forced to face our ancient self, that bestial creature that knows nothing of atomic bombs or jihad, marriage or MySpace, but still haunts our body, fuels our emotions and rules our lives — our genetic identity. For this single-minded creature, monogamy is a myth, free will is doubtful, and so-called altruism is merely a misguided attempt to protect people who might be carrying our genes. (Since humans once lived in small, closely related packs, protecting others made genetic sense.) In a recent article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Barash wrote about how electrocuted rats develop ulcers and swollen adrenal glands unless they are allowed to fight other "innocent" rats. In short: Random acts of violence are never actually random; we are merely obeying a million-year-old code of behavior, a code of displaced aggression that Barash finds in The Iliad, in Sweeney Todd and in our current war in Iraq. Barash's latest book, Natural Selections, published by Bellevue Literary Press (a small press run out of the oldest public hospital in the United States, Bellevue in Manhattan), seeks to follow the concepts of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology to their logical conclusions. "Many people claim to accept the tenets of evolution," he says, "but few actually look at where these premises lead."

I talked with Barash by phone about his book, his science and his philosophy.

Tyranny of the Natural: David P. Barash's Natural Selections

Having a large network of friends and family, a new study suggests, may help surgical patients experience less anxiety and pain before their operations and a quicker recovery afterward.

Prognosis: Large Social Networks May Help Surgical Patients

Practitioners, however, have another purpose. They wish to know how to make their patients better. But until we can organize a compendium of mental illnesses according to a better working knowledge of the brain, the therapeutic revolution in psychiatry will have to wait. Neuroscientists and psychiatrists have certainly made prodigious strides -- and yet we are far from grasping how those swirling galaxies of neurons and molecules make us who we are, both in sickness and in mental health. Even as we gather light, we are still struggling in the dark.

From the archive:

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85 percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty happy.

What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?

Are some people lying, or are they simply afraid to be honest in a culture in which the status quo is nothing short of manic bliss?

The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder

Broiler (meat) chickens have been subjected to intense genetic selection. In the past 50 years, broiler growth rates have increased by over 300% (from 25 g per day to 100 g per day). There is growing societal concern that many broiler chickens have impaired locomotion or are even unable to walk. Here we present the results of a comprehensive survey of commercial flocks which quantifies the risk factors for poor locomotion in broiler chickens. We assessed the walking ability of 51,000 birds, representing 4.8 million birds within 176 flocks. We also obtained information on approximately 150 different management factors associated with each flock. At a mean age of 40 days, over 27.6% of birds in our study showed poor locomotion and 3.3% were almost unable to walk. The high prevalence of poor locomotion occurred despite culling policies designed to remove severely lame birds from flocks. We show that the primary risk factors associated with impaired locomotion and poor leg health are those specifically associated with rate of growth. Factors significantly associated with high gait score included the age of the bird (older birds), visit (second visit to same flock), bird genotype, not feeding whole wheat, a shorter dark period during the day, higher stocking density at the time of assessment, no use of antibiotic, and the use of intact feed pellets. The welfare implications are profound. Worldwide approximately 2x10^10 broilers are reared within similar husbandry systems. We identify a range of management factors that could be altered to reduce leg health problems, but implementation of these changes would be likely to reduce growth rate and production. A debate on the sustainability of current practice in the production of this important food source is required.

Leg Disorders in Broiler Chickens: Prevalence, Risk Factors and Prevention