The Earth's original atmosphere held very little oxygen. This began to change around 2.4 billion years ago when oxygen levels increased dramatically during what scientists call the "Great Oxidation Event." The cause of this event has puzzled scientists, but researchers writing in Nature* have found indications in ancient sedimentary rocks that it may have been linked to a drop in the level of dissolved nickel in seawater.

"The Great Oxidation Event is what irreversibly changed surface environments on Earth and ultimately made advanced life possible," says research team member Dominic Papineau of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory. "It was a major turning point in the evolution of our planet, and we are getting closer to understanding how it occurred." 

The problem of how to model a biological system has been staring me in the face every day in recent months, and I need a place to indulge in baseless speculation. So if you stick around here at Adaptive Complexity for the next few weeks, you are going to get treated to a dose of half-baked, semi-coherent (at best), partially thought-out musings on what it takes to model a biological system.

There isn't a lot that can pull me away from a hockey game.* Such is the power of Wired magazine, and really freaking cool science.

When people see the optical illusion known as "the hollow mask" - a concave face, like the back side of a hollow mask - they see a normal convex face, according to a Wired Science post (see photo below). But the approximately 1 percent of the population with schizophrenia see the concave face.

Nearly half of all hayfever sufferers are more irritable while they are suffering from hayfever symptoms and that impacts their relationships, according to a new survey published today.[1]  The survey suggests that up to 2 million people with hayfever[2] feel less affectionate in relationships and up to 600,000 people with hayfever have had an argument due to their hayfever symptoms. Even potential new relationships are at risk, with 6% having cancelled a date or prior arrangement because of their symptoms and 75% feeling self conscious about their appearance.(*)

The findings, announced today, arose from a survey of 787 people with hayfever conducted by YouGov on behalf of Schering-Plough last summer.

One more book to pile on my to-read list. Via Carl Zimmer (go follow the link for a bloggingheads video interview), a fascinating book on bioengineering, Learning to Fly, by Rob Carlson, is coming out this fall.

He has some insightful thoughts:

The past few months, it has been difficult to watch TV, browse the internet or any other form of media viewing without some mention of the Octamom. If you are wondering why the villain from Spiderman 2 is on TV so much, then you need to readjust your POV.

In January, Nadya “octamom” Suleman made history when she gave birth to octuplets with the help of in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

A team of Oregon State University researchers say they have implemented a classroom-based intervention that reduces the amount of violent TV that children watch - by 18 percent among first- through fourth-grade children.  And that's good, they say, because youth violence is a big issue, though not so much as 30 years ago when everyone assumed we would be living out scenarios from either "The Warriors" or "Escape From New York" by now. 

Galileo Galilei Linceo was, among other talents, a solar physicist. While not the first to observe sunspots, he sketched (in 1612) some of the earliest surviving tracings of sunspots. Observing their daily motion, he deduced that a) they were on or near the surface of the sun and b) that the sun was rotating.

Geneticists have tackled a question that has perplexed humanity since the dawn of time: does love at first sight truly exist?

Maybe, according to a study published in the April 2009 issue of the journal GENETICS.  A team of scientists from the United States and Australia say they have discovered that, at the genetic level, some males and females are more compatible than others, and that this compatibility plays an important role in mate selection, mating outcomes, and future reproductive behaviors. In experiments involving fruit flies, the researchers found that before mating, females experience what amounts to "genetic priming," making them more likely to mate with certain males over others.

Weight discrimination appears to add to the glass ceiling effect for women, according to a new study in the British journal Equal Opportunities International.

Overweight and obese women are significantly underrepresented among the top CEOs in the United States, according to the research.   However, while obese men were also underrepresented, overweight men were actually overrepresented among top CEOs.

The different results for women and men suggest weight bias may contribute to the glass ceiling on the advancement of women to the top levels of management, said Mark Roehling, Michigan State University associate professor of human resource management.