Finding a rare fossilized comb jelly reveals new gaps in the fossil record

They look like jellyfish but they aren’t. They seem inoffensive but are efficient predators — occasionally, they even eat fish. They are gelatinous and very delicate — and extremely rarely do they fossilize! Ctenophores, also known as comb jellies, are colourful, translucent animals, that drift through oceanic waters. Unlike jellyfish, ctenophores don’t have stinging cells, and typically capture prey using long, sticky tentacles. Our research describing a fossilized ctenophore from Eastern Canada, published recently in Scientific Reports, suggests that our creature was a very late survivor from the very dawn of animals. It also means that a very controversial idea about early animal evolution can’t be rejected by the fossil record

Psychological mindedness and abstract reasoning in late childhood and adolescence: An exploration using new instruments

This study introduces two new measures of psychological mindedness, applying them in a study of the growth of abstract thinking in children and adolescents in a developmental design. The capacity to achieve psychological understanding of the self and of others involves comprehension of the motives, attitudes, and characteristics of the self and others. Psychological mindedness toward the self (PS) and toward others (PO) may be seen as complex cognitive capacities that should show a pattern of related development in childhood. Three groups of 60 fifth, eighth, and twelfth graders completed two measures of formal operations and two instruments to assess the two components of psychological mindedness. We find that psychological mindedness and abstract thinking both increase significantly with age, although the relationship between them is complex and varies with gender and age. Because the development of abstract reasoning skills does not correlate with the development of psychological mindedness in a simple way, a more complex model is necessary, taking age and gender differences into account. Performance on the two measures of psychological mindedness is found to be largely unrelated, suggesting that these are two different psychological skills. Implications of these findings are discussed, with special reference to education, peer counseling, and psychotherapy .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45274/1/10964_2005_Article_BF01537075.pd

THE PRESSURE-INDUCED FUNDAMENTAL VIBRATIONAL SPECTRUM OF CHLORINE AT 298∘K298^{\circ} K

Author Institution: Department of Physics, Memorial University of NewfoundlandThe fundamental vibration-rotation band of pure $Cl_{2}$ has been observed in the density range 1 to 7 relative units at $298^{\circ}$K. A red shift of $4 cm^{-1}$ has been observed in the vibrational frequency which has been shown to be not due to isotope effect but to a perturbation of the vibrational energy levels during collisions. The integrated absorption coefficient has been measured and the binary and ternary absorption coefficients determined. From these coefficients it is suggested that the O and S branch intensities of the band are due largely to double transitions

SPECTROSCOPIC EVIDENCE OF A PHASE CHANGE IN SOLID NORMAL HYDROGEN NEAR 1.4∘K1.4^{\circ}K.

Author Institution: Department of Physics, The University of TorontoThe infrared fundamental band of solid normal hydrogen has been investigated over the temperature range 1.3 to $1.7^{\circ}K$. Two features in the spectrum, the $S_{1}(0)$ line and the $S_{1}(1)$ line, vanish at a temperature of about $1.4^{\circ}K$ when the crystal is cooled. The features reappear at about $1.6^{\circ}K$ when the crystal is warmed. The temperature at which the transition takes place upon warming is close to the $\lambda$-a***omaly in the specific heat. The vanishing of the two spectral features can be explained if one assumes a phase transition to a crystal structure possessing inversion symmetry