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Freshwater crustacean Daphnia (water flea) is a common research organism in ecology, toxicology, evolutionary developmental biology, and other fields. Credit: Projecto Agua Many crustaceans, including lobsters, crabs, and barnacles, have a cape-like shell protruding from the head that can serve a variety of roles, such as a small cave for storing eggs, or a protective shield to keep the gills moist. This shell (carapace), it has been proposed, did not evolve from a similar structure in a crustacean ancestor, but emerged de novo (or suddenly) through the rather random co-optation of genes that also determine insect wings. However, in a new study from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Research Associate Heather Bruce and Director Nipam Patel provide evidence for an alternative view: The carapace, along with other plate-like structures in arthropods (crustaceans, insects, arachnids, and myriapods) all evolved. from the lateral toe lo

WOOD HOLE, Mass. – Many crustaceans, including lobsters, crabs, and barnacles, have a cape-like shell protruding from the head that can serve a variety of roles, such as a small cave for storing eggs, or a protective shield to keep the gills moist. This shell (carapace), it has been proposed, did not evolve from a similar structure in a crustacean ancestor, but emerged de novo (or suddenly) through the rather random co-optation of genes that also determine insect wings. However, in a new study from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Research Associate Heather Bruce and Director Nipam Patel provide evidence for an alternative view: The carapace, along with other plate-like structures in arthropods (crustaceans, insects, arachnids, and myriapods) all evolved from the lateral toe lobe in a common ancestor. This evidence underpins their proposal for a new concept of how new structures evolve – which suggests that they are not so new. A study of the carapace of Daphnia crustaceans, a

Pick up any physics textbook and you’ll find formula after formula that explains how things sway, fly, turn, and stop. The formula describes actions that we can observe, but behind each can be a series of factors that are not immediately apparent. Now, a new AI program developed by researchers at Columbia University appears to have found its own alternative physics. After being shown videos of physical phenomena on Earth, AI did not rediscover the current variables we used; instead, it actually comes up with a new variable to explain what it sees. To be clear, this does not mean that our current physics is flawed or that there is a more suitable model to explain the world around us. (Einstein’s laws have proven to be very powerful.) But they can only exist because they are built on a pre-existing ‘language’ of theories and principles established by centuries of tradition. Given an alternate timeline where other minds tackle the same problem from a slightly different perspective, wou

The first step to understanding physics is to identify the relevant variables. Columbia Engineers developed an AI program to address a longstanding problem: is it possible to identify state variables only from high-dimensional observational data. Using video footage of various physical dynamic systems, the algorithm discovers the intrinsic dimensions of the observed dynamics and identifies a candidate set of state variables — with no prior knowledge of the underlying physics. Energy, Mass, Speed. These three variables make up Einstein’s iconic equation E=MC 2 . But how did Einstein know about these concepts? The first step to understanding physics is to identify the relevant variables. Without the concepts of energy, mass, and velocity, even Einstein could not have discovered relativity. But can such a variable be found automatically? Doing so can greatly speed up scientific discovery. This is the question that researchers at Columbia Engineering are asking on a new AI program.