New species: One is human and the other doesn't need oxygen. Plus organ donation and the new new journalism.
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NEW ANIMAL SPECIES FROM THE INCREASINGLY LARGE HUMAN DIVISION. I haven't even caught my breath since reporting on the last new human fossil a couple weeks ago when here comes another one.
This one is accompanied by an irresistible backstory: the fossil of a boy found by . . . a boy. The living boy is Matthew Berger, son of Lee Berger, a paleontologist at the South African dig. The fossil kid was found with a fossil adult female, and of course it's tempting to think of her as Mom.
The paleontologists are, as is their wont, having a joyous time of it, battling each other over whether the fossils are australopithecines (as the reporting paper argues) or members of Homo, and whether the new finds, now known as Australopithecus sediba, are Homo sap's direct ancestors or only collateral relatives. The new fossils have been dated at a little under 2 MYA, about the same time as the genus Homo is thought to have emerged.
Find gobs of debate at Laelaps, Wired Science, and Nobel Intent. John Hawks mentioned the find early this week to bemoan the lack of detail in a couple of Brit articles. These may have been an embargo break. Hawks has not weighed in with his usual extended discussion as I write, but we can probably expect one eventually.
NEW ANIMAL SPECIES FROM THE VERY TINY ANOXIC DIVISION. Arguably far more thrilling than yet another ho-hum hominid is discovery of the first multi-cellular animals that can live without oxygen. And they do it 10,000 feet below the ocean surface, in sediments choked with salt and poisonous gas.
The critters are members of the phylum Loricifera, which range in size from 100 microns up to a comparatively gigantic 1 mm and dwell in what is surely one of the humblest abodes on the planet: between pieces of gravel at the bottom of the sea.
Unlike their previously discovered cousins, the new guys have no mitochondria, cell structures that use oxygen to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for chemical energy. Instead, they appear to get their power from organelles similar to hydrogenosomes, found in single-celled organisms, which produce ATP by a complex process that does not involve oxygen. Useful brief discussions at EcoTone, Wired Science, and 80beats. As Derek Lowe urges, let's sequence these guys.
The new animals are not exactly household pet material, let alone charismatic megafauna. Call them unprepossessing microfauna, being as they are very teeny and consisting as they do mostly of a gut topped with a head-and-mouth sorta thing. But zowie, an animal that doesn't need oxygen. Astrobiologists, eat your hearts out.
FROM ORGANELLES TO ORGAN DONATION. Lynne Lamberg kindly sent along a list of Medscape's 10 most popular blogs. Number 1 is The Kane Scrutiny: Money and Medicine. Perhaps no surprise that money is the top topic among docs. Except that the entries do not seem to be about how to squeeze even more post-waiting room waiting rooms into your office space or how you can avoid accepting Medicare patients. This one is about organ donation, pro and con, and considers whether docs should discuss the issue with patients.
A poll shows that most docs think it's a legitimate subject but few raise the issue because it makes patients squirmy. In some cases state government has stepped in. Some New Jersey tollbooths now have signs encouraging motorists to check the donation box on driver's license renewals. An interesting venue for urging citizens to consider the potential consequences of driving. Especially in New Jersey, where I have spent many harrowing miles.
WELCOME TO THE JOURNALISM OF THE FUTURE. Columbia University is putting together something completely different: its new Master of Science Program in Computer Science and Journalism.
This sounds like something science writers might be particularly well-equipped for. It's a collaboration between Columbia's engineering and J schools, and will start looking at applications in the fall. At Epicenter, Eliot van Buskirk reports that Columbia officials are hoping the program's grads will be able to invent approaches the new news business needs.
These might include automated journalism modules that can perform routine tasks, freeing journalists to do interviewing, analysis, and writing. Hooray, and here's hoping that first on the list will be programs that can transcribe any voice or set of voices without training.
Imagine Dragon Naturally Speaking on steroids, transcribing your interview with that Scientist Whose First Language Is Not English — or even a meeting of multicultural researchers — while you think your deep thoughts about how you'll approach writing it up. Gives me the shivers, and I hope I live to see it happen.
Other items on the 21st Century journalism wish list: better ways of visualizing data, really good data-mining, ways of flagging trustworthy news sites, identifying under-the-radar events like incipient epidemics or goings-on in countries where news is tightly controlled, and next-generation narrative, whatever that might be.
