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IMPLANTING MEMORIES. “Researchers said the ability to implant a false memory was a scientific milestone. "We would have every reason to expect this would happen in humans exactly as it happened in mice." (Ramirez et al.). https://lnkd.in/diVvWVr View in LinkedIn

THIRD SURPRISE. "Thirdly, the tiny deeply incised megaphylls of the rare early-Devonian plant Eophyllophyton bellum from Chinese rocks shows that plants had the capacity to produce a simple megaphyll. Why were plants unable to release this morphogenetic potential?" http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

RESTORING MEMORIES. “If your brain is a library and the books are memories, does Alzheimer’s eat away at the librarian so you no longer have access to those memories, or does it eat away at the books themselves? What it seems to be is it’s actually possible to go in and artificially restore memories that were thought to be gone.” https://lnkd.in/dmPXzVD View in LinkedIn

SECOND SURPRISE. "Secondly, the same interval marks an unparalleled burst of evolutionary innovation in the history of plant life, which witnessed the rise of trees from herbaceous ancestors, and the evolution of complex life cycles, including the seed habit." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

FIRST SURPRISE. "Surprise in the delayed appearance of a seemingly simple developmental modification is 3-fold. First, palaeontological evidence shows that the structural framework necessary for assembling a simple laminated leaf blade (meristem, vasculature, cuticle and epidermis) was in place long before the advent of large megaphylls." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

LATE ARRIVAL OF LEAFED PLANTS. "Surprisingly, plants continued to remain leafless for the next 40–50Myr, with megaphylls finally becoming widespread at the close of the Devonian period (360 Myr ago)." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

FIRST PLANTS WERE LEAFLESS. "The earliest ancestral vascular plants, dating to the late Silurian 410 Myr ago, were composed of simple or branched axial stems with sporangia but no leaves." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

GLOBAL SUCCESS. "Evidently, leaves are a global success. However, the advent of large megaphylls took place some 40–50 million years (Myr) after the origination of vascular land plants, suggesting that they were far from an evolutionary inevitability." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes this weekend on the theme of the plant leaf. Few structures have so exemplified life on Earth, nor caused such massive changes as plant leaves, from the vast grasslands to the dense forests. And the more we learn, the more sentient and knowing image of plants have emerged, departing from a stereotype of insensate dumb vegetation. Revisit your smart planetary neighbor with fresh eyes. View in LinkedIn

PRIMARY SOURCE OF ENERGY. "A true measure of their success in terrestrial environments is the capacity of leaves to endure climatic extremes between the tropics and the tundra whilst simultaneously facilitating the global scale net fixation of approx. 207 billion tonnes of CO2, 56.4 x 10(15) g C year(-1). This primary production provides energy for virtually all forms of terrestrial life on Earth, especially tetrapods and insects, and links many ecosystem and biogeochemical processes." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn