Mechanical Translation

Contains reports on three research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant G-24047

Mechanical Translation

Contains reports on twelve research projects.National Science Foundatio

A soft-bodied mollusc with radula from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale

Author Posting. © Nature Publishing Group, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature 442 (2006): 159-163, doi:10.1038/nature04894.Odontogriphus omalus was originally described as a problematic non-biomineralized lophophorate organism. Here we reinterpret Odontogriphus based on 189 new specimens including numerous exceptionally well-preserved individuals from the Burgess Shale collections of the Royal Ontario Museum. This additional material provides compelling evidence that the feeding apparatus in Odontogriphus is a radula of molluscan architecture comprising two primary bipartite tooth rows attached to a radular membrane and showing replacement by posterior addition. Further characters supporting molluscan affinity include a broad foot bordered by numerous ctenidia located in a mantle groove and a stiffened cuticular dorsum. Odontogriphus has a radula similar to Wiwaxia corrugata but lacks a scleritome. We interpret these animals to be members of an early stem-group mollusc lineage that likely originated in the Neoproterozoic Ediacaran Period, providing support for the retention of a biomat-based grazing community from the late Precambrian until at least the Middle Cambrian.Our research was in part supported by a Post-Doctoral Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant (to JBC-2005) and by a Swedish Research Council grant (to CS)

Collections as artefacts: The making and thinking of anthropological museum collections

Collections are artefacts—constructions that come into being when objects are physically or conceptually brought together. As artefacts, collections have properties,among the most obvious of which are the kinds of things they contain and their proportions. Rarely, however, do these properties reflect in a representative way what it would have been possible to collect. A collection consequently both reflects the situation from which it was derived, andpresents a distorted image of that situation. The latter, however, can be highly informative, if only we can determine its character. Since most collections represent samples from unknown universes, this is no easy feat—it requires that we give a presence to the non-present so that what was collected can be compared to what could have been collected to establish the nature of the biases in a collection. Although often difficult, there are nevertheless several ways in which this can be attempted, including through linguistic comparisons. Such an exercise provides the basis for reflecting on a number of matters, theoretical and practical, relating to collections and their creation. These include the very notion of a ‘collection’, differences in kinds of collections, the processes by which an assemblage of items becomes a ‘collection’, and collections as mental constructs, as mentally conceived categories made manifest

Interview of author Walter Satterthwait

Walter Satterthwait, author of a series of contemporary crime novels, talks about his protagonists Joshua Croft and Rita Mondragon, and his novels set in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Satterthwait describes how he came to writing crime stories and why he chose to use a Latina as a main character. He describes his exposure to different cultures, his childhood of frequent moves, how he came to writing, and how he developed his characters. Satterthwait is interviewed by Diana Rivera at the 2005 Left Coast Crime Conference held in El Paso, Texas