Linky and the Brain: Neural Dust to Dust

Hello all – back from a nuptial break! Here are some of the eye-catchers that have drifted across my screen recently:

Erik Vance at The Last Word on Nothing blog reminds us why we should all be fish nerds in A Dinner Guide to Saving the Ocean.

Annalee Newitz, editor of io9, has a nice response to the most recent eruption of an age old debate: Is Spirituality Really the Opposite of Science?  (By the way, I recently met Annalee at a PLoS event – she's awesome and loves chatting with scientists. Get in touch!)

Also on io9, Ramez Naam is delighted that a recent proposal for a wireless "neural dust" brain machine interface recently proposed in arXiv quantitative biology (http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.2196) approximates the "brain-linking nano-drug" called Nexus from his latest scifi novel.

This month's issue of the new science magazine Nautilus discusses all things transitory, from animal migration to exoplanets. Beautiful as always!

I was also delighted by "Fooled by your Own Brain" in last month's issue on Uncertainty, which provided a great set of optical illusions, attentional tricks, and other great candidates for introductory neuroscience classes.

Bora Zivkovic of Scientific American Mind tweeted earlier today about a new science news magazine called Quanta associated with the Simons Foundation – it'll be worth keeping an eye on!

Speaking of which, Carl Zimmer headlines the first Quanta issue discussing the evolutionary origins of biological complexity.  Intelligent Design advocates have argued that complex structures like the eye could not have evolved from simpler ones, but Zimmer explains nicely how evolutionary processes can produce such amazing natural forms – though maybe not through gradual selection alone.

That's all for tonight. Happy Wednesday!