Joining us on April 17^th for the Integrative Biology seminar was Gene Hunt, a curator at the Smithsonian Institute, whose parents must have known when they named him what occupation he would be getting into. Specifically, he “hunts” changes in the “gene” pool of Ostracoda, a bivalved crustacean that, on average, has a length that is smaller than the thickness of a dime.  The genus Hunt investigates, Poseidonamicus, is found at a water depth below one kilometer in every part of the world except the Arctic and the Mediterranean and has a fossil record worth bragging about. Additionally, the fossils carry several distinct morphological traits that can be compared over evolutionary time. These factors enable Poseidonamicus to provide immeasurable insight on how evolutionary changes occur.

Charles Darwin’s monumental publication, On the Origin of the Species, provoked great criticism because it proposed a linear evolution of change not supported by fossil records at the time. In 1859, there were only 51 dinosaur fossils recorded in scientific literature, leading Darwin to argue that the intrinsic lack of data made it difficult to draw any tangible conclusions about how species change over time. The worldwide fossil collection has taken an exponential increase since the time of Darwin, finally allowing paleontologists to observe and measure morphological changes in a species over time.

One of the reasons that fields such as biology and chemistry can be difficult for non-scientists to understand is that the objects and processes they study are far too small to be seen with the naked eye.  Envisioning what something like endocytosis might look like is as much an exercise in creativity as reality. However, technology is beginning to bridge this gap, and the result is every bit as fascinating as we could have imagined.

At the University of Cambridge, the “Under the Microscope” project aims to detail the beauty and complexity of biology at its tiniest.  Take, for example, this image of a “Killer T-cell” attacking a cancerous cell in the body:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jgJKaP0Sj5U

In this video, we see the Killer T-cell (in green) identify and attack a cancerous cell beneath it (in blue).  While watching it, two things immediately came to my mind.  One was the accuracy of the T-cell in carrying out its duty of destroying the cancerous cell.  The environment was filled with all kinds of tiny cellular neighbors, and yet our hero knew what to aim for and how to get there.

There is no shortage of advice on how to recover from a bad break-up: keep busy, don’t contact your ex, go out with friends, make a break-up mix (preferably one that includes “I will survive”), etc. But according to a new study, something important is missing from this list.

In the study, led by David Sbarra and published in Psychological Science, participants who had recently separated from their spouses were recorded talking for four minutes in a stream-of-consciousness format about the separation. Then four judges rated the extent to which these statements included evidence of self-compassion, which involves treating yourself with kindness and understanding rather than beating yourself up when things go wrong.