An organism living in ocean muck offers clues to the origins of the complex cells of all animals and plants. By Carl Zimmer New York Times Jan. 15, 2020

A bizarre tentacled microbe discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean may help explain the origins of complex life on this planet and solve one of the deepest mysteries in biology, scientists reported on Wednesday. Two billion years ago, simple cells gave rise to far more complex cells. Biologists have struggled for decades to learn how it happened. Scientists have long known that there must have been predecessors along the evolutionary road. But to judge from the fossil record, complex cells simply appeared out of nowhere. The new species, called Prometheoarchaeum, turns out to be just such a transitional form, helping to explain the origins of all animals, plants, fungi — and, of course, humans. The research was reported in the journal Nature. “It’s actually quite cool — it’s going to have a big impact on science,” said Christa Schleper, a microbiologist at the University of Vienna who was not involved in the new study. Our cells are stuffed with containers. They store DNA in a nucleus, for example, and generate fuel in compartments called mitochondria. They destroy old proteins inside tiny housekeeping machines called lysosomes. Our cells also build themselves a skeleton of filaments, constructed out of Lego-like building blocks. By extending some filaments and breaking others apart, the cells can change their shape and even move over surfaces. Species that share these complex cells are

known as eukaryotes, and they all descend from a common ancestor that lived an estimated two billion years ago. Before then, the world was home only to bacteria and a group of small, simple organisms calle archaea. Bacteria and archaea have no nuclei, lysosomes, mitochondria or skeletons. Evolutionary biologists have long puzzled over how eukaryotes could have evolved from such simple precursors. In the late 1900s, researchers discovered that mitochondria were free-living bacteria at some point in the past. Somehow they were drawn inside another cell, providing new fuel for their host. In 2015, Thijs Ettema of Uppsala University in Sweden and his colleagues discovered fragments of DNA in sediments

retrieved from the Arctic Ocean. The fragments contained genes from a species of archaea that seemed to be closely related to eukaryotes. Dr. Ettema and his colleagues named them Asgard archaea. (Asgard is the home of the Norse gods.) DNA from these mystery microbes turned up in a river in North Carolina, hot springs in New Zealand and other places around the world. Asgard archaea rely on a number of genes that previously had been found only in eukaryotes. It was possible that these microbes were using these genes for the same purposes — or for something else. “Until you have an organism, you cannot really be sure,” said Dr. Schleper. Masaru K. Nobu, a microbiologist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, and his colleagues managed to grow these organisms in a lab. The effort took more than a decade. The microbes, which are adapted to life in the cold seafloor, have a slow-motion existence. Prometheoarchaeum can take as long as 25 days to divide. By contrast, E. coli divides once every 20 minutes. The project began in 2006, when researchers hauled up sediment from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Initially, they hoped to isolate microbes that eat methane, which might be used to clean up sewage. In the lab, the researchers mimicked the conditions in the seafloor by putting the sediment in a chamber without any oxygen. They pumped in methane and extracted deadly waste gases that might kill the resident microbes. The mud contained many kinds of microbes. But by 2015, the researchers had isolated an intriguing new species of archaea. And when Dr. Ettema and colleagues announced the discovery of Asgard archaea DNA, the Japanese researchers were shocked. Their new, living microbe belonged to that group. The researchers then undertook more painstaking research to understand the new species and link it to the evolution of eukaryotes. The researchers named the microbe Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum, in honor of Prometheus, the Greek god who gave humans fire — after fashioning them from clay. “The twelve years of microbiology it took to get to the point where you can see it down a microscope is just amazing,” said James McInerney, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nottingham who was not involved in the research. Under the microscope, Prometheoarchaeum proved to be a strange beast. The microbe starts out as a tiny sphere, but over the course of months, it sprouts long, branching tentacles and releases a flotilla of membrane-covered bubbles. It proved even stranger when the researchers examined the cell’s interior. Dr. Schleper and other researchers had expected that Asgard archaea used their eukaryote-like proteins to build some eukaryote-like structures inside their cells. But that’s not what the Japanese team found. “On the inside, there’s no structure, just DNA and proteins,” said Dr. Nobu. This finding suggests that the proteins that eukaryotes used to build complex cells started out doing other things, and only later were assigned new jobs. Dr. Nobu and his colleagues are now trying to figure out what those original jobs were. It’s possible, he said, that Prometheoarchaeum creates its tentacles with genes later used by eukaryotes to build cellular skeletons. Dr. Schleper wanted to see more evidence for this idea. “There are very nice arms on other archaea,” she observed. But those other species aren’t using proteins so similar to ours. Before the discovery of Prometheoarchaeum, some researchers suspected that the ancestors of eukaryotes lived as predators, swallowing up smaller microbes. They might have engulfed the first mitochondria this way. But Prometheoarchaeum doesn’t fit that

description. Dr. Nobu’s team often found the microbe stuck to the sides of bacteria or other archaea. Instead of hunting prey, Prometheoarchaeum seems to make its living by slurping up fragments of proteins floating by. Its partners feed on its waste. They, in turn, provide Prometheoarchaeum with vitamins and other essential compounds. Dr. Nobu speculated that a species of Asgard archaea on the seafloor dragged bacteria into a web of tentacles, drawing them into even more intimate association. Ultimately, it swallowed the bacteria, which evolved into the mitochondria fueling every complex cell. Dr. McInerney was skeptical that Prometheoarchaeum could provide a clear picture of how our ancestors took in mitochondria two billion years ago. “This is an organism alive today in 2020,” he said. As Dr. Nobu’s team continues to study Prometheoarchaeum, they’re also hunting for its rela tives in their seafloor mud. Those microbes may turn out to be even closer to our own ancestry — and may offer even more unexpected clues. “We hope this will help us understand ourselves better,” Dr. Nobu said.

Lynn Margulis with Michael Dolan, PhD. at the lab’s Winogradsky column.

Lynn studies plates culturing Spirochaeta perfilievii sp. nov., an oxygen-tolerant,. sulfide-oxidizing, sulfur- and thiosulfate-reducing. spirochaete isolated from a saline spring by Russian microbiologist, Galina Dubinina.

Petri dish versus Winogradsky column: a longue dure´e perspective on purity and diversity in microbiology, 1880s–1980s Mathias Grote Abstract: Microbial diversity has become a leitmotiv of contemporary microbiology, as epitomized in the concept of the microbiome, with significant consequences for the classification of microbes. In this paper, I contrast microbiology’s current diversity ideal with its influential predecessor in the twentieth century, that of purity, as epitomized in Robert Koch’s bacteriological culture methods. Purity and diversity, the two polar opposites with regard to making sense of the microbial world, have been operationalized in microbiological practice by tools such as the ‘‘clean’’ Petri dish versus the ‘‘dirty’’ Winogradsky column, the latter a container that mimics, in the laboratory, the natural environment that teems with diverse microbial life. By tracing the impact of the practices and concepts of purity and diversity on microbial classification through a history of techniques, tools, and manuals, I show the shifts in these concepts over the last century. Juxtaposing the dominant purity ideal with the more restricted, but continuously articulated, diversity ideal in microbial ecology not only provides a fresh perspective on microbial classification that goes beyond its intellectual history, but also contextualizes the present focus on diversity. By covering the period of a century, this paper outlines a revised longue dure´e historiography that takes its inspiration from artifacts, such as Petri dish and the Winogradsky column, and thereby simple, but influential technologies that often remain invisible. This enables the problem of historical continuity in modern science to be addressed and the accelerationist narratives of its development to be countered.

Evolution, the ‘Mechanism’ of Big History - The Grande Synthesis John S. Torday, Department of Pediatrics, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

Abstract: Big History traces the Cosmologic arc from the Singularity/Big Bang to the present. Similarly, evolutionary biology, as “all of biology”, represents the arc of life from its origins. There is mechanistic consilience between Quantum Mechanics, The First Principles of PhYsiology and evolutionary biology that is perpetually centered on the unicellular level. The phenotypic adaptations in reaction to geophysical and geochemical changes that culminate in culture are forged at the level of the recapitulating unicellular zygote. This perspective offers a synthesis for the animate and inanimate alike as Big History. The cell as the mechanistic basis for both evolution and Big History offers a novel synthesis for Humanism and Science. Correspondence | John S. Torday, jtorday.@ucla.eduTorday, J. S. (2019) Evolution, the ‘Mechanism’ of Big History- The Grande Synthesis Journal of Big History

From SLATE WhatifCompetitionIsn’tAs“Natural”AsWeThink?Scientistsareslowlyunderstandingcollaboration’sroleinbiology,whichmightjusthelpliberateourcollectiveimaginationintimetobetteraddresstheclimatecrisis.ByJohnFaviniJan23,2020

You have probably heard the story of Darwin’s intrepid voyage to the Galapagos Islands. On those rocky outcroppings far off the South American coast, Darwin noticed small variations in the beaks of a few finches, unlocking, we are told, the mystery of life’s variation over time and space. “The struggle for life,” Darwin deduced, would naturally select those beings whose hereditary mutations made them most fit to a specific environment. Over successive generations, scientists came to see the driving force behind evolution as perpetual competition between discrete individuals, a biological arms race to eat and reproduce in a world of scarcity.

Though Darwin articulated his theories of evolution over decades, and though he traveled far and wide during his years on the HMS Beagle, few accounts of his theories fail to mention the Galapagos, their wild remoteness and exotic biota. It’s important to us that Darwin went somewhere “out of the way” to discover the nature of life. We can imagine Darwin to be observing nature directly, unmediated by human interference.

Stephen Bell, Lynn Margulis, and Richard Dawkins at the Oxford debate on evolution. Used with permission.

Yet, like all humans, Darwin brought culture with him wherever he traveled. His descriptions of the workings of nature bear resemblance to prevailing thinking on human society within elite, English circles at the time. This is not a mere coincidence, and tracing his influences is worthwhile. It was, after all, the heyday of classical liberalism, dominated by thinkers like Adam Smith, David Hume, and Thomas Malthus, who valorized an unregulated market.

REWORLDINGIntroducingLovelockandMargulis’sCoEvolutionQuarterlyarticlewasa17th-centuryillustrationlikeningtheoceansandatmospheretoanexternalizedcirculatorysystem.

BIGHISTORYATSYMBIOSISSCHOOLFORLIBERALARTSIndiaisapowerhouseofinnovativedevelopment,withculturalandintellectualtraditionsreachingbackthousandsofyears.Symbiosisisanembodimentofthisheritageandenterprise,atrulymodernsynthesis.SituatedalongtheMula-MuthaRiver,itssixcampusesinthecityofPunelieontheDeccanPlateau,600metersabovetheArabianSea.Foundedin1971,Symbiosiswasbegunwiththeintentofprovidinga‘homeawayfromhome’forAfricanandAsianstudentsstudyinginIndia.Ourconferencewillbeco-sponsoredwiththeSymbiosisSchoolforLiberalArts(SSLA),oneoftheuniversity’smostinnovativeprogrammes.

Essay review James E. StrickMetaphors and other slippery creaturesKarl Matlin, Jane Maienschein and Manfred Laublicher (eds.), Visions of Cell Biology: Reflections Inspired by Cowdry’s General Cytology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. 400. ISBN: 978-0-2265-2048-3. Andrew Reynolds, The Third Lens: Metaphor and the Creation of Modern Cell Biology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. 267. ISBN 978-0-2265-6312-1.What are cells? How are they related to each other and to the organism as a whole? These questions have exercised biology since Schleiden and Schwann (1838–1839) first proposed cells as the key units of structure and function of all living things. But how do we try to understand them? Through new technologies like the achromatic microscope and the electron microscope. But just as importantly, through the metaphors our culture has made available to biologists in different periods and places. These two new volumes provide interesting history and philosophy of the development of cell biology. Reynolds surveys the field’s changing conceptual structure by examining the varied panoply of changing metaphors used to conceptualize and explain cells – from cells as empty boxes, as building blocks, to individual organisms, to chemical factories, and through many succeeding metaphors up to one with great currency today: cells associal creatures in communication with others in their community.

Photo:BruceClarke

At the end of July, Donna and I attended the Lovelock Centenary meeting in Exeter, England. We were happy to be there with our friends Tyler Volk and Amelia Amon, and Peter, Judith, and Hanna Westbroek, and to rendezvous with Sophia Aguiñaga of One Project. The meeting drew several hundred attendees and garnered British press attention. Lovelock himself turned 100 that weekend. He came to the meeting for an hour-long interview led by Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, followed by a birthday celebration complete with enormous cake. Lovelock was as sharp as ever—a phenomenon.Writing Gaia. Immediately after the Lovelock meeting, Sébastien Dutreuil and I stayed in Exeter several more days to work on our collaborative project Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. The meeting afforded us an opportunity to discuss our project with a

number of attendees—in particular, John Gilbert, Stephan Harding, Tim Lenton, Bron Szerszynski, and Bruno Latour. Seb and I composed an updated prospectus for the volume. With the assistance of Seb’s colleague Rasmus Winthur, we sent it to Cambridge University Press. In September, CUP accepted our proposal and is now taking the lead in working out the legal details.

From Bruce Clarke’s report of his year as Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology

Antonio Lazcano and Lynn Margulis at student organ-ized Spring break symposium at National Autonomous University of Mexico

Friends/colleagues of the biosphere,The history of the formation of the “United States of America” is one, as we all know, which was built upon by invasions of citizens from Europe onto a vast land inhabited by at least 350+ indigenous Nations/“tribes”. They existed here well before Columbus in relatively positive ways with their provider, Nature. This display of hubris and white supremacy grew yet further in the years leading up to the Industrial Revolution and beyond and included not only breaking treaties with indigenous peoples but seeking out dark-skinned indigenous peoples from portions of Africa to be sold as slaves in the USA homeland. This mindset and actions were consistently supported by elected Presidents, including those presidents who were and still are revered. For example, near today's date about 150 years ago, 38 members of the Dakota Nation were publicly hanged en masse as per order of President Lincoln. They were among 300 natives captured and sentenced to death for their violent attack on foreign “white” settlers who earlier had invaded and attacked them in order to “own” their Dakota land. — all part of what is known as the Dakota (Nation) Wars. Historian Helen Cliff has emphasized, after careful research, that from 1778 to 1871 there were over 500 treaties between various sovereign Native Nations and the United States government, and all were ignored, nullified or severely altered by United States leadership to suit their goals/interests.As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz implied in her award winning Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, genocide from the first attacks by the new settlers (aka invaders) became an ongoing 250-year mentality and even policy(s) against all the endemic residents of the laternamed“USA”.

Dougls Zook writes About a Day in Infamy

John Feldman [right] searches my photos and videos, and the files of the Lynn Margulis Archive for his internationally acclaimed documentary Symbiotic Earth - How Lynn Margulis Rocked the Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution. It is now available on Amazon Prime. Photo: J. MacAllister

New science blooms after star researchers dieMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyDeaths of prominent life scientists tend to be followed by a surge in highly cited research by newcomers.The famed quantum physicist Max Planck had an idiosyncratic view about what spurred scientific progress: death. That is, Planck thought, new concepts generally take hold after older scientists with entrenched ideas vanish from the discipline."A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it," Planck once wrote.Now a new study co-authored by MIT economist Pierre Azoulay, an expert on the dynamics of scientific research, concludes that Planck was right. In many areas of the life

sciences, at least, the deaths of prominent researchersare often followed by a surge in highly cited research by newcomers to those fields. Indeed, when star scientists die, their subfields see a subsequent 8.6 percent increase, on average, of articles by researchers who have not previouslycollaborated with those star scientists. Moreover, those papers published by the newcomers to these fields are much more likely to be influential and highly cited than other pieces of research."The conclusion of this paper is not that stars are bad," says Azoulay, who has co-authored a new paper detailing the study's findings. "It's just that, once safely ensconsed at the top of their fields, maybe they tend to over‐stay their welcome."The paper, "Does Science Advance one Funeral at a Time?" is co-authored by Azoulay, the International Programs Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Christian Fons-Rosen, an assistant professorof economics at the University of California at Merced; and Joshua Graff Zivin, a professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego and faculty member in the university's School of Global Policy and Strategy.It is forthcoming in the American Economic Review.

AcommemorativetileneartheLoneWolfcaferecognizesAmherstfamousresidentLynnMarguliswiththequote,“Lifeactuallyformsandchangesitsownenvironmeni.”LynntoldJimMacAlliterthatsheneveractuallywroteorsaidthis.

To conduct the study, the researchers used a database of life scientists that Azoulay and Graff Zivin have been building for well over a decade. In it, the researchers chart the careers of life scientists, looking at accomplishments that include funding awards, published papers and the citations of those papers, and patent statistics. In this case, Azoulay, Graff Zivin, and Fons-Rosen studied what occurred after the unexpected deaths of 452 life scientists, who were still active intheir disciplines. In addition to the 8.6 percent increase in papers by new entrants to those subfields, there was a 20.7 percent decrease in papers by the rather smaller number of scientists who had previously co-authored paperswith the star scientists.Overall, Azoulay notes, the study provides a window into the power structures of scientific disciplines. Even if well-established scientists are not intentionally blocking the work of researchers with alternate ideas, a group oftightly connected colleagues may wield considerable influence over journals and grant awards. In those cases, "it's going to be harder for those outsiders to make a mark on the domain," Azoulay notes. "The fact that if you're successful, you get to set the intellectual agenda of your field, that is part of the incentive system of science, and people do extraordinary positive things in the hope of getting to that position," Azoulay notes. "It's just that, once they get there, over time, maybe they tend to discount 'foreign' ideas too quickly and for too long."Thus what the researchers call "Planck's Principle" serves as an unexpected -- and tragic -- mechanism for diversifying bioscience research. The researchers note that in referencing Planck, they are extending his ideas to a slightly different setting than the one he himself was describing. In his writing, Planck was discussing the birth of quantum physics -- the kind of epochal, paradigm-setting shift that rarely occurs in science. [more at the link at top]Richard Wilkie sends this in as a geosciences lesson for biologists. Wilkie is a geographer. Morse is a geologist.SWIFTWATER DIARYSong 3: Music and RocksBY S. A. MORSEOne morning in November I woke up hearing in my head a very familiar tune, a string quartet that has had a long history in my life. It wasn’t till afternoon that I kicked myself for not naming it right away. So I will save the reader any further mystery and say right off that it was the glorious Trout Quintet of Franz Schubert, who died young just a year after Beethoven. Why glorious? Well, you can’t know till you hear it, but

© M. Pagoro

(Right) Lynn on the way to her early morning swim in Puffers Pond.

for one thing there is a repeating theme, and when you suddenly hear the piano being jazzed up to fast-fast you laugh and then begin to shake with pleasure. And why the long history? Well, that is a bit of a story.Back in the days when I taught the science of petrology (the study of rocks) there was always an emphasis on my favorite igneous rock named troctolite. Why favorite? Because it occurs fresh from glaciation on the coast of Labrador, among a number of similar bodies. And one spectacular body is a world-famous igneous layered intrusion named “Kiglapait” after the Inuit name for the range of mountains that form its northern flank. It is all troctolite at the bottom and then gabbro and other, cooler-crystallizing rocks untilthe top it is syenite, a rock composed mostly of alkali feldspar and iron-rich olivine. It is conveniently tipped up at the edges so we can see all the layers of rocks. Mind you, this intrusion came into its home among older rocks as a great quantity of melt, probably taking several thousand years to fill up. And then it took a million years to crystallize, from 1240 degrees C at the bottom to 1020 degrees at the top. The syenite top was some 10 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, covered by older rocks. Now 1.3 billion years later its top has been cleaned off by a glacier and then exposed for us to see.This intrusion was given to me as a PhD student at McGill University by a mining company called BRINEX. It has kept us busy for lo these many years. In the first year it gave me Dorothy. And it was on a sheltered sea edge of that body that Dorothy and I built a house and lived there for two separate summers sampling the rocks, with daughters in diapers learning rock climbing on troctolite. Eventually the house blew out to sea in winter. So I threatened students that IF they might possibly forget the name of this plagioclase feldspar and olivine rock called troctolite, I might sing or whistle the theme of the Trout Quintet. That threat spread like wildfire, and once to a dinner party.

The rock name Troctolite actually relates to the species of fish known as trout. And if codfish or salmon are among our favorite things to eat, trout is right up there. The rock was given that name because at the type locality in German Silesia, the rock was dark and mottled with red or orange spots (from exposure to the atmosphere) and locally called forellenstein (trout rock).In Labrador the rock is not spotted, because it is only weathered enough to have yellow olivine. But when a truck-sized piece broke off a mountain and landed a few hundred yards from our tent one night, my assistant and I scrambled up in the morning to see it, and found that all the olivine crystals were beautifully green. When you tapped this rock with a hammer, it rang like a bell.As to the dinner party, that wants a bit of telling. Lynn Margulis, the late sublime student of the origin of life on Earth, came to teach at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Because she was interested

Heinz Lowenstam and Lynn (peering into field microscope) in Baja Mexico.

in ancient life, she liked being part of our Geosciences Department, while having her lab among the biologists. By chance I was a member of the Dean’s Committeewhen her name was brought up for possible hire, and being the one who knew most about her work (although it was far from my own), I became the Pro argument for her hire. It was not a very tough job, with a vita like that. And so I became her sponsor. At her inaugural reception, she asked Dorothy what she did, and Dorothy said she was not a scientist and was just a wife with three daughters. ISN’T that ENOUGH? said Lynn. And thereby won a friend forever. Actually two friends.So one day we were invited to a party at Lynn’s house to meet a friend of hers who worked in forestry. And after introductions among many guests, Lynn was busy working in the kitchen, and she suddenly said to me: Are you listening to the music? And then I paid attention and realized it was the Trout Quintet. She knew all about the threat to the students. I guess I gave her a hug.There’s a big, wild painting of the origin of life on a corridor wall in our Geosciences Department with a great photo of Lynn and a tribute to her memory.______________________________

S. A. Morse writes his Swiftwater Diary as from Goose Lane Farm in Swiftwater (6 Feb 20) Printed Littleton Courier Op-Ed p. 5 12 Feb 2020

Sushi Science and Hamburger ScienceTatsuo Motokawa

I am a biologist, visiting the United States from Japan. My stay in a North Carolina town has been full of surprises. What struck me most is the difference in the behavior of the people. The way they talk, the way they think, the way they laugh, the way they express their anger—all are different from those I have been used to. The daily experiences and observations of these differences have led me to notice that there exist some differences even in science and the way it

© Sean Faulkner

Lynn Margulis at the base of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco examining possible biologically mediated rock formations with her graduate student Sean Faulkner.

is done. I had always regarded science as universal and believed there are no differences in science at all between countries. But I was wrong. People with different cultures think in different ways, and therefore their science also maywell be different. In this essay, I will describe differences I have observed between Western science and Eastern science. Let me start with a parable.A man visited the United States from Japan. The first trouble he had was with foods. He found all the dishes served at restaurants too spicy, too hot, too salty, or too sweet. He was horrified to see someone cover a steak with salt like piles of snow. The man was a fish eater, as most Japanese are. He tried several seafoods. Most of them were deep, deep fried denatured protein once called fish; a blackened red fish: it was nothing but charcoal. The conclusion he drew was that the cuisine of the West is overcooked (see fig. 1). Of course there are good dishes in the West. He loved the fancy French cuisine, for example. Someone claimed that French chefs can make a good dish out of the soles of shoes! They really have an art of cooking. Japanese dishes seem to have no art of cooking at all. Sashimi and sushi are raw fish. "What savage people they are to eat raw fish!" would be a common impression, if one does not know what sushi is like. Although sashimi and sushi use uncooked fish meat, they are one of the most difficult dishes to prepare among Japanese cuisines. Fine skill in cutting meat really makes the difference in taste; extremely fresh fish is needed, which means fishermen, dealers, and cooks must know how to catch, transport, and store the fish in a very fresh condition. A lot of skills are hidden behind the no-cook. This is really an art, and definitely a different kind of art than that found in Western cooking. Some Western cuisines are great: we taste the skills of chefs. Sushi is also great: we taste the materials themselves (fig. 1). Chefs' skills are hidden: they are devoted to keeping the fresh and natural flavor of the materials. These are two different attitudes toward cooking, and I see in them a reflection of the aesthetics of different cultures. Similar differences are found also in science. To read more click here.

Sights along the way and from the top of 500 vert foot promitory called Sugarloaf in Sunderland, MA. from my last walk.