DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 25, 2016

No More Monkey Business

Humans and monkeys exhibit similar behavior as they age.  Researchers suggest that this similar behavior is genetic for both species.

Humans spend less time monkeying around as they get older, and according to a study published Thursday, so do monkeys.As anyone who has ever hung out with a grandparent, observed a retiring parent, or grown old themselves may know, many people get pickier with age.

 Some go to the same restaurants on the same days every week, some get cranky around too many strangers and instead of playing outside with the grandkids, some watch TV silently. While it’s pretty clear that monkeys aren’t humans — we’re distant relatives, separated by 25 million years of evolution — monkeys too, tend to become less social with age.

What Happened to Mr. Times New Roman?

Do people really need a graphic to figure out that one ton wild animals can cause them injury?

Jackson filmmaker Sava Malachowski, who has made several safety videos on topics as varied as avalanches and winter driving, believes Helvetica Man will convey his message to most Yellowstone visitors. Most visitors, but not all.

“If you string enough of them side by side, someone might pay attention to them,” Malachowski said of the flyer. “They had these posters for years and it didn’t stop the last guy from being gored.”

The origins of Helvetica Man stretch back to Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945) who created easily decipherable icons for international communication. His isotypes (International System of Typographic Picture Education) took official hold in the U.S. when the federal Department of Transportation looked to aid throngs of visitors celebrating the country’s bicentennial in 1976. The American Institute of Graphic Arts, a trade group, and others participated. Designers Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller nicknamed the figure Helvetica Man after a typeface that has a clean modern look.

Brexit and the Environment

And I thought the real damage was to my retirement plan. 

Despite being an issue that knows no borders, affects all, and is of vital interest to future generations, the environment was low on the agenda ahead of the United Kingdom's historic vote to leave the European Union.

The short answer to what happens next with pollution, wildlife, farming, green energy, climate change and more is we don't know—we are in uncharted territory. But all the indications—from the "red-tape" slashing desires of the Brexiters to the judgment of environmental professionals—are that the protections for our environment will get weaker.

The Brexit vote leaves it highly uncertain which protections will remain in place and the prospect of improving them seems remote. UKIP's Nigel Farage, the politician who did more than anyone to force the EU referendum, doesn't even think climate change is a problem and wants to scrap pollution limits on power stations.

Earlier legal action from the EU forced the UK to clean up its sewage-strewn beaches, while many of the protections for nature and wildlife across the nation stem from EU rules. Here again, the people whose job it is to safeguard these wonderful places and reverse the damage of the past think leaving the EU is a mistake: 66 percent say there will be a lower level of legal protection for wildlife and habitats against 30 percent who think it will improve.

The EU has also driven a revolution in recycling and waste. What will happen to that, according to the people who made it happen on the ground? Two-thirds of the professionals think it will go into reverse, with 30 percent saying it will stay the same and just 4 percent thinking it will improve.

Small Space = Small Animals

Makes sense, but proof was needed.

In 1964 a young biologist named J. Bristol Foster published a paper in which he suggested  that large mammals tended to evolve to smaller sizes after colonizing islands, and smaller mammals tended to grow larger. This generalization became known as the “island rule,” or “Foster’s rule”, but in the intervening 50 years this matter has remained a subject of debate.

Now, a group from Aarhus University, Denmark, says they’ve put the subject at rest. The researchers analyzed the size of living and extinct mammals from the last 130,000 years, or around the time humans began expanding and colonizing islands. They found the island rule is not a myth, but an evolutionary reality.

Whether big or small, both tactics come with innate advantages and disadvantages. Big creatures have a wider food choice and tend to dominate other species. You won’t ever see a mouse at the top of the food chain. Smaller creatures, on the other hand, require fewer resources, have generally shorter breeding cycles, and can adapt far quicker — all considerations very important in an island setting where ecosystems are limited.

Evolutionary Similarities

A bird's feathers, a reptile's scales, and a mammal's hairs may seem like very distinct features, but these skin appendages may come from common origins, say scientists.

The mechanism behind the embryonic development of feathers, reptilian scales, and hair is remarkably similar, according to a paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances. This finding suggests that these distinct appendages have their roots in a common ancestor of these three diverse lineages.

A hair, scale, feather, or even a tooth, grows out of an anatomical structure called a placode that forms in the top layer of the skin. When the signal is sent to a particular location in the skin to form a placode, the top layer of the skin begins to thicken in that place, as columnar cells that divide more slowly than normal form.

Scientists had spotted these placodes associated with feather and hair development in bird and mammal embryos, Michel Milinkovitch, one of the study authors and an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Geneva, tells the Monitor in an interview. But finding these structures in scaly reptiles was proving more of a challenge.