For a 50th Harvard College Reunion Seminar on EO Wilson’s proposal to conserve half Earth, Jesse Ausubel and Mark Stoeckle, assisted by Elizabeth Munnell, conducted a survey of vertebrates in three locations in the Charles River and two in Boston Harbor. The 14 slides on The Charles River and Boston Harbor Then and Now tell a story of remarkable ecological recovery.
News
New software for visualizing the whole animal kingdom
Swiss bioinformatics wizard Wandrille Duchemin and PHE Guest Investigator David Thaler publish PyKleeBarcode: Enabling representation of the whole animal kingdom in information space in PLoS One. The computational advances in the paper open the way to calculating DNA-relatedness of all animal species, as the figure below for mammals suggests.
Fig 2. A. View of the structure matrix of the mammalian dataset and taxonomic structure of Mammalia. B. Phylogenetic tree structure of the taxonomic groups retrieved from NCBI taxonomy.
The paper builds on the pioneering work done earlier in the PHE by Larry Sirovich and Mark Stoeckle:
L Sirovich, MY Stoeckle, Y Zhang. A scalable method for analysis and display of DNA sequences. PLoS ONE 4 (10): e7051, 2009
L Sirovich, MY Stoeckle, Y Zhang. Structural analysis of biodiversity. PLoS ONE 5 (2): e9266, 2010
MY Stoeckle, C Coffran. TreeParser-Aided Klee Diagrams Display Taxonomic Clusters in DNA Barcode and Nuclear Gene Datasets . Nature Scientific Reports 3 (2635): 2013
Guest investigator David Thaler co-authors paper with novel idea for biological diaries
Published Open Access in Frontiers in Epidemiology: The Coronavirus Calendar (CoronaCal): a simplifiedSARS-CoV-2 test system for sampling and retrospective analysis by Manija A. Kazmi, David S. Thaler, Karina C. Åberg, Jordan M. Mattheisen, Thomas Huber and Thomas P. Sakmar
The paper concludes that sampling saliva on simple paper provides a useful method to study the natural history and epidemiology of COVID-19 (and probably many other microbes). The “CoronaCal” collection and testing method is easy to implement, inexpensive, non-invasive and scalable. The approach can inform the historical and epidemiological understanding of infections in individuals and populations.
The idea for the paper arose from efforts in the Leonardo Da Vinci DNA Project about stable preservation of genetic material on paper.
PHE joins group to publish letter on forest data integrity in Nature Climate Change
Working with foresters in the US and the EU, PHE researcher Iddo Wernick co authored a letter in Nature Climate Change, Ensure forest-data integrity for climate change studies regarding the data used for National Forest Inventories.
Guardian newspaper feature on Quiet Ocean Experiment
Science and environment report Alice Hutton has written an exceptionally lively and informative article for the UK Guardian newspaper about the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, a program on which we have worked hard and long:
Listen to a toadfish’s grunt! AI helps decode a ‘symphony’ of ocean sounds
Burg & Ausubel publish “Jewish population trajectories between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea”
Continuing our exploration of human populations with logistic wavelets, David Burg and Jesse Ausubel publish Jewish population trajectories between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea Open Access in the journal Israel Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2206247
ABSTRACT This article re-examines Jewish population in what is now Israel using historical estimates from Ottoman, Mandatory British and United Nations sources and recent data from the Israeli census bureau. A logistic model generates backward extrapolations and forward projections. The model quantifies three waves of Jewish immigration totalling about 3.5 million. Subtracting immigrant data from total population numbers gives the main empirical trajectory for non- immigrant native-born population. A multi-logistic model combining migrant and native populations projects a Jewish population of about 10 million in 2050, a level low in the range of estimates made by others.
Some other relevant papers
IK Wernick. Jews in Time and Space (PDF). International Journal of Anthropology 31 (1-2): 93–109, 2016
PS Meyer, Ausubel JH. Carrying Capacity: A Model with Logistically Varying Limits (PDF). Technological Forecasting and Social Change 61 (3): 209–214, 1999
C Marchetti, PS Meyer, JH Ausubel. Human Population Dynamics Revisited with the Logistic Model: How Much Can Be Modeled and Predicted? Pp. 1–30 in Technological Forecasting and Social Change vol. 53, 1996
Wernick essay on energy & materials scenarios for Asia in 2050 published in RealClear Energy
RealClear Energy posted an article by Iddo Wernick on consequences of nations choosing different energy trajectories in the Indo-Pacific region in the year 2050. See The Indo-Pacific in 2050: Alternative Energy Scenarios and Security
“Peak Human?” booklet by Ausubel-Curry posted
Based on Jesse’s Nierenberg Prize lecture, Jesse and Alan Curry, who led research on human performance enhancement for the Program for the Human Environment for several years, have created a compact version with about half the visual exhibits in the lecture. We retain the title “Peak Human? Thoughts on the Evolution of the Enhancement of Human Performance.” Thanks to Dale Langford for editorial assistance and the beautiful layout.
News from the Quiet Ocean Experiment
Terry Collins artfully summarizes the progress in this news release about the International Quiet Ocean Experiment. The news was picked up by
Agencia EFE: Artificial intelligence listens to the habits of marine life (in Spanish)
Independent (London): Scientists eavesdrop on underwater creatures to gain insights on ocean life
Earth.Com: Monitoring ocean life through underwater soundscapes
Portal R7 (Brazil) Biólogos marinhos captam zumbido não identificado que pode ser uma nova espécie de peixe Marine biologists capture unidentified tinnitus that can be a new species of fish
Vice / Motherboard (USA) Scientists Recording Ocean Sounds Picked Up a Mysterious ‘Buzz’ They Can’t Identify
ORF Online (Austria) Unterwassermikrofone belauschen Fische Underwater microphones eavesdrop on fish
Scientias, Netherlands Moet je horen! Vissen maken fascinerende balts- en eetgeluiden, vooral bij volle maan You have to hear! Fish make fascinating balts and eating noises, especially at full moon
Interim Evaluation of International Quiet Ocean Experiment
Jesse co-authored this Interim Program Self-Evaluation of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment for the International Scientific Steering Committee meeting upcoming 26-27 April 2023.