Making Rocks Swim

Fish Swim, Rocks Sit, and Lungs Breathe: Expert-Novice Understanding of Complex Systems

Making a Swim Central Pattern Generator Out of Latent Parabolic Bursters

A plethora of vital rhythmic motor behaviors, such as heartbeat, respiratory functions and locomotion are produced and governed by neural networks called central pattern generators (CPGs) [Selverston, 1985; Bal et al., 1988; Marder & Calabrese, 1996; Frost & Katz, 1996; Kristan et al., 2005; Katz & Hooper, 2007]. A CPG is a microcircuit of interneurons whose mutually synergetic interactions aut...

Ribosome Rocks

If we are to talk about molecules of life, the ribosome, made of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and protein, is a key: it stands at the junction between information and action, i.e. between nucleic acids and proteins. It is an extraordinarily sophisticated machine that takes the information present in mRNA and uses it to build proteins, containing over 250K atoms, and measuring more than 200 in every dir...

Lunar Rocks

The Moon, like the Earth, is made of rocks. To learn about the Moon and its history, one has to learn something about lunar rocks—what they are made of, how they are studied and classified, and how our experiences in interpreting rocks on the Earth have been applied to rocks on the Moon. The lunar samples have provided our only direct information about the Moon’s minerals, chemical composition,...

Mesosaurid Swim Traces

Despite subaqueous fossils tracks of tetrapods being quite common in the fossil record, few studies discuss their classification and morphofunctional interpretation. Even with their simple morphology, some important information about the trackmakers can be retrieved from these tracks. Subaqueous traces were found in Brazil in the Irati Formation (Cisuralian, Permian), Paraná Basin, and describe...