Good vibrations: living with the motions of our unsettled planet

Coping with our cold planet.

Good Vibrations

How and where the brain forms associations between sensation and action are crucial questions in the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this issue of Neuron, add to an already impressive body of work elucidating the neural mechanisms responsible for forming categorical decisions about vibrotactile stimuli that guide behavior. Here they show that single neurons in premotor cortex represent, rem...

Prestin and the good vibrations

In a recent paper published in the Biochemical Journal, Lolli et al. presented evidence that the C-terminal STAS (sulfate transporter and anti-sigma factor antagonist) domain of the motor protein prestin possesses an anion-binding site. This discovery might shed light on an aspect of the function of this mysterious and fascinating protein that is crucial for the human hearing system.

Our Crowded Planet

This is an important book but unfortunately the people who need most to read it are the least likely to do so. It consists of a series of short essays by an unusual group of scholars ranging from biologists, historians and economists to lawyers, statesmen and clergymen. The population problem is approached from the various and varied points of view represented by these contributors, all of whom...

Not so good vibrations

Pliny the Elder was one of the first to record it 2,000 years ago: termites are noisy eaters. Their loud chewing generates acoustic emissions that have been proposed to be a method of detecting cryptic attack. But a team from the Commonwealth worker termites might be able to detect vibration/acoustic signals generated by their foraging and use these signals to determine the size of the piece of...