Unity in Diversity: The Virtues of a Metadisciplinary Perspective in Liberal Arts Education

Remember the story of the blind men and the elephant? Each man touches a different part of the animal (its side, trunk, tusk, leg, ear, and tail) and pronounces his find a wall, a snake, a spear, a tree, a fan, or a rope. As the poet Godfrey Saxe (1816-1997) wrote of the blind men in his retelling of this ancient Indian parable, “Though each was partly in the right, they all were in the wrong” (Galdone, 1973). This allegory quickly encapsulates the benefits, and the challenges, of seeing, or not seeing, something through multiple perspectives—in short, it illuminates the perils of hasty reductionism. Consider that when people ask “Can I see that?,” 99% of the time what they truly mean is “Would you please hand that object to me so I can hold it in my own hands and turn it around, to see and feel and otherwise experience all sides of it?” This is what most of us mean by “seeing”: looking at something not from a distance or from one angle but closely, from all perspectives. Then, too, blind people do “see” with their hands, just as infants and toddlers “see” objects with their mouths. You can conduct your own “elephant” exercise in the classroom, both with blindfolded and “sighted” students, preferably using an unusually shaped or otherwise complex and unfamiliar item that cannot be described or understood from a single perspective

How do complex phenotypes evolve? Solving the “gene for X” problem with atavisms, homeosis, and other evo-devo surprises

Helping students learn how major phenotypic shifts evolve is a major hurdle for biology educators. Fortuitously, teachers can exploit the oft-misunderstood “gene for X” concept to explain how evolution, and complex phenotypes, often turn on single changes to regulatory genes governing expression of structural genes during development. This explains how one gene can make a big difference, and relates microevolution relates to macroevolution, a frequent hang-up for evolution deniers. Although complex traits such as intelligence do not derive from a single gene, minor tweaks in gene regulators produce atavisms (sudden appearance of “throwback” features), homeotic mutants (whose altered features stem from shifts in developmental timing and location), and other major changes in organismal morphology. Biology educators must explain how evo-devo mechanisms profoundly shift the course of evolution and drive phenotypic change. An adult form does not evolve into another, but underlying development readily evolves

Notes from the Field: Baskeet Phonological Sketch and Digital Wordlist

National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Soziopragmatik von unser bei Rufnamen im Westmitteldeutschen.: Zum Gebrauch sprecherassoziierter Referenzausdrücke

Speakers of Western Central German dialects frequently use the first person plural form of the possessive article unser with proper names (e. g. us Dietmar ‘our Dietmar’). But conditions of use are so far totally unclear. This paper focuses on form and use of unser with proper names in Moselle Franconian dialects. The findings are based on interviews. They show that unser is primarily used to refer to blood relatives. However, consanguinity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for unser. In particular, its use is triggered by social closeness and the assumption of responsibility by the speaker

How do baleen whales stow their filter? A compoarative bioimechanical analysis of baleen bending

Bowhead and right whale (balaenid) baleen filtering plates, longer in vertical dimension (3-4+ m) than the closed mouth, presumably bend during gape closure. This has not been observed in live whales, even with scrutiny of videorecorded feeding sequences. To determine what happens to baleen as gape closes, we conducted an integrative, multifactorial study including materials testing, functional (flow tank and kinematic) testing, and histological examination. We measured baleen bending properties along the dorsoventral length of plates and anteroposterior location within a rack of plates via mechanical (axial bending, composite flexure, compression, and tension) tests of hydrated and air-dried tissue samples from balaenid and other whale baleen. Balaenid baleen is remarkably strong yet pliable, with ductile fringes and low stiffness and high elasticity when wet; it likely bends in the closed mouth when not used for filtration. Calculation of flexural modulus from stress/strain experiments shows baleen is slightly more flexible where it emerges from the gums and at its ventral terminus, but kinematic analysis indicates plates bend evenly along their whole length. Fin and humpback whale baleen has similar material properties but less flexibility, with no dorsoventral variation. Internal horn tubes have greater external and hollow luminal diameter but lower density in lateral relative to medial baleen of bowhead and fin whales, suggesting greater capacity for lateral bending. Baleen bending has major consequences not only for feeding morphology and energetics but also conservation given that entanglement in fishing gear is a leading cause of whale mortality