Tag Archives: City University of New York (CUNY)

Fish biofluorescence evolved more than 100 times in 112 million years

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Before launching into the news announcements, a word about biofluorescence and bioluminesccnce. Biofluorescence is due to optical properties in fish scales, fur, butterfly wings, etc., with these properties usually being due to nanoscale structures on the wings, in the fur, etc. Bioluminescence is due to a chemical reaction, e.g., a reaction in fireflies’ stomachs.

A June 17, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announced new information about the evolution of biofluorescence in fish,

New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History sheds light on the ancient origins of biofluorescence in fishes and the range of brilliant colors involved in this biological phenomenon. Detailed in two complementary studies recently published in Nature Communications and PLOS One, the findings suggest that biofluorescence dates back at least 112 million years and, since then, has evolved independently more than 100 times, with the majority of that activity happening among fish that live on coral reefs.

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A tropical striped triplefin (Helcogramma striata). © John Sparks and David Gruber Courtesy: American Museum of Natural History

A June 17, 2025 American Museum of Natural History news release (also on EurekAlert but published June 16, 2025), which originated the news item, delves further into biofluorescent fish and evolution,

The new work also reveals that in marine fishes, biofluorescence—which occurs when an organism absorbs light, transforms it, and emits it as a different color—involves a greater variety of colors than previously reported, spanning multiple wavelengths of green, yellow, orange, and red.

“Researchers have known for a while that biofluorescence is quite widespread in marine animals, from sea turtles to corals, and especially among fishes,” said Emily Carr, a Ph.D. student in the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School and the lead author on the two new studies. “But to really get to the root of why and how these species use this unique adaptation—whether for camouflage, predation, or reproduction—we need to understand the underlying evolutionary story as well as the scope of biofluorescence as it currently exists.”

For the Nature Communications study, Carr led a comprehensive survey of all known biofluorescent teleosts—a type of bony fish that make up by far the largest group of vertebrates alive today. This resulted in a list of 459 biofluorescent species, including 48 species that were previously unknown to be biofluorescent. The researchers found that biofluorescence evolved more than 100 times in marine teleosts and is estimated to date back about 112 million years, with the first instance occurring in eels.

The team also found that fish species that live in or around coral reefs evolve biofluorescence at about 10 times the rate of non-reef species, with an increase in the number of fluorescent species following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction about 66 million years ago, when all of the non-avian dinosaurs died off.

“This trend coincides with the rise of modern coral-dominated reefs and the rapid colonization of reefs by fishes, which occurred following a significant loss of coral diversity in the K-Pg extinction,” Carr said. “These correlations suggest that the emergence of modern coral reefs could have facilitated the diversification of fluorescence in reef-associated teleost fishes.”

Of the 459 known biofluorescent teleosts reported in this study, the majority are associated with coral reefs.

For the PLOS One study, Carr and colleagues used a specialized photography setup with ultraviolet and blue excitation lights and emission filters to look at the wavelengths of light emitted by fishes in the Museum’s Ichthyology collection. Collected over the last decade and a half on Museum expeditions to the Solomon Islands, Greenland, and Thailand, the specimens in the study were previously observed fluorescing, but the full range of their biofluorescent emissions was unknown.

The new work reveals far more diversity in colors emitted by teleosts—some families of which exhibit at least six distinct fluorescent emission peaks, which correspond with wavelengths across multiple colors—than had previously been reported.

“The remarkable variation we observed across a wide array of these fluorescent fishes could mean that these animals use incredibly diverse and elaborate signaling systems based on species-specific fluorescent emission patterns,” said Museum Curator John Sparks, an author on the new studies and Carr’s advisor. “As these studies show, biofluorescence is both pervasive and incredibly phenotypically variable among marine fishes. What we would really like to understand better is how fluorescence functions in these highly variable marine lineages, as well as its role in diversification.”

The researchers also note that the numerous wavelengths of fluorescent emissions found in this study could have implications for identifying novel fluorescent molecules, which are routinely used in biomedical applications, including fluorescence-guided disease diagnosis and therapy.

Other authors involved in this work include Rene Martin, from the Museum and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Mason Thurman, from Clemson University; Karly Cohen, from California State University; Jonathan Huie, from George Washington University; David Gruber, from Baruch College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York; and Tate Sparks, Rutgers University.

Research in the Solomon Islands was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DEB-1257555.

The Museum greatly acknowledges the Dalio Foundation for its generous support of the inaugural Explore21 Expedition.

The Museum’s Exlopre21 initiative is generously supported by the leadership contributions of Katheryn P. and Thomas L. Kempner, Jr. 

The 2019 Constantine S. Niarchos Expedition to Greenland was generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. 

Research in Thailand was funded by the Museum and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant Number DEB-1938103.

Additional funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DGE-1746914.

I have links and citations for both papers mentioned in the news release. They will be listed in the order in which they were published earliest to latest: first (Nature Communications) and last (PLOS One).

Repeated and widespread evolution of biofluorescence in marine fishes by Emily M. Carr, Rene P. Martin, Mason A. Thurman, Karly E. Cohen, Jonathan M. Huie, David F. Gruber & John S. Sparks. Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 4826 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59843-7 Published: 24 May 2025

This paper is open access.

Marine fishes exhibit exceptional variation in biofluorescent emission spectra by Emily M. Carr, Mason A. Thurman, Rene P. Martin, Tate S. Sparks, John S. Sparks. PLOS One DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316789 Published: June 16, 2025

This paper is open access.

Today (09.16.25) is Pythagorean Triple Square Day—a once in a century event!

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[from Pythagorean Theorem Formula For Kids ar.inspiredpencil.com; Note: I cannot read the Arabic and am not able to credit the artist]

September 16, 2025 is a mathematically significant date as Andrew Paul notes in a September 15, 2025 Popular Science article, Note: Links have been removed,

Pi Day (March 14) is a day of global mathematical celebration, but it’s not the only numerically significant calendar date. It’s far from the rarest, either. In fact, today marks a special occasion that only occurs once this century. Not only is each number in today’s date (9/16/25) a perfect square—their consecutive square roots are also an example of a Pythagorean triple. While an official name has yet to be assigned, “Pythagorean Triple Square Day” encapsulates the moment pretty perfectly.

Here’s the specific math to add it all up: 3 multiplied by itself is 9, 4 squared is 16, and 5 squared is 2025. On top of that, the sum of the first two square roots adds up to 25.

“This date is hiding one of the most beautiful coincidences we will ever encounter,” Terrence Blackman, head of mathematics at Medgar Evers College in the City University of New York, told NPR. “Those numbers, they tell a story that goes back to ancient Greece.”

To be fair, the story actually goes even further back than that. Pythagoras (c. 570—c. 495 BCE) is most famously credited as the first mathematician to discover his namesake theorem. To jog those scary memories of high school math, the Pythagorean Theorem states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides. 

However, both ancient Babylonian and Indian theorists had known the same information for centuries. …

Happy Pythagorean Triple Square Day and if you have a chance do read Paul’s September 15, 2025 Popular Science article in its entirety.

Critical Networked Experience (part of the international Leonardo LASER series) event on October 10, 2024 in Toronto, Canada

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Toronto’s ArtSci Salon, one of the hosts, has announced (in an undated notice) an upcoming event,

LASER Toronto – Critical Networked Experience – Jonah Brucker-Cohen – Oct 10, 2024

Critical Networked Experience. An artist talk with Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Thursday, October 10, 2024
5:30-7:30 pm [ET]
The Fields Institute for research in Mathematical Sciences
222 College Street

Register here

Jonah will discuss his projects and work in the theme of “Critical Networked Experience” that challenge and subvert accepted notions of network interaction and socialization. His presentation will cross themes related to social justice and police surveillance, Artificial Intelligence and the loss of human skills, environmental artwork that challenges notions of sustainability, critical networked interfaces and more. Some projects he will discuss include “BumpList”, an email community for the determined, “Weapon of Protest”, a modified game controller that protests gun violence in the US, “To Protect and Server” a critical modification of Google’s ReCaptcha software to emphasis police brutality and social justice, “Killer Route” a GPS navigation system that integrates live crime data, “Human Error” a series of works that emphasize humanity’s inability to understand technical interfaces, “ContactRot” an iPhone app that challenges our reliance on the cloud, “Alerting Infrastructure!”, a website hit counter that destroys a building, “WordPlay” a public installation for the New York Hall of Science, and he will end with his interactive SMS visualization, “Rhetoricall”, that everyone in the audience can participate in.

About the Artist:
Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Ph.D., is an artist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Lehman College / CUNY in the Bronx. He was a visiting artist at Cornell Tech and designer in residence at the New York Hall of Science. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on “Deconstructing Networks” with works that challenge and subvert accepted perceptions of network interaction. His artwork has been exhibited at venues such as SFMOMA, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Art, MOMA, ICA London, Whitney Museum of American Art, Palais du Tokyo, Tate Modern, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and more. His artworks, “Bumplist” and “America’s Got No Talent” are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has written for WIRED, Make, Gizmodo, Neural and more. His Scrapyard Challenge workshops have been held in over 15 countries in Europe, South America, North America, Asia, and Australia since 2003.
Projects and Work: http://www.coin-operated.com

This event is part of the international Leonardo LASER series 
LASER Toronto is hosted by Nina Czegledy and Roberta Buiani

About Leonardo and more

For anyone curious about LASER and international Leonardo, here’s the scoop starting with international Leonardo. From the “Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology” Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

Leonardo, The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit formed in 1982[1][2][3] as an umbrella organization for the journals Leonardo and the Leonardo Music Journal. In 2018, Leonardo/ISAST was awarded the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica[4][5] as Visionary Pioneers of New Media Art.[6]

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Leonardo/ISAST existed before it became a registered nonprofit according to the About Leonardo webpage on the Leonardo.info website,

Fearlessly pioneering since 1968, Leonardo serves as THE community forging a transdisciplinary network to convene, research, collaborate, and disseminate best practices at the nexus of arts, science and technology worldwide. Leonardo’ serves a network of transdisciplinary scholars, artists, scientists, technologists and thinkers, who experiment with cutting-edge, new approaches, practices, systems and solutions to tackle the most complex challenges facing humanity today.

As a not-for-profit 501(c)3 enterprising think tank, Leonardo offers a global platform for creative exploration and collaboration reaching tens of thousands of people across 135 countries. Our flagship publication, Leonardo, the world’s leading scholarly journal on transdisciplinary art, anchors a robust publishing partnership with MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Press; our partnership with ASU [Arizona State University] infuses educational innovation with digital art and media for lifelong learning; our creative programs span thought-provoking events, exhibits, residencies and fellowships, scholarship and social enterprise ventures.

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I think Arizona State University (ASU) is effectively housing Leonardo/ISAST but they don’t describe it that way, from the About Leonardo webpage,

ASU-Leonardo Initiative(link is external)

The ASU-Leonardo Initiative drives innovation at the intersection of arts, sciences, and technology. As an enterprising think tank, ASU-Leonardo integrates hybrid, creative inquiry and practice as catalysts to solve compelling problems, explore timeless mysteries, and shape a finer future. We build on the history of Leonardo, the International Society of Arts, Sciences, and Technology, and forge new pathways forward for all.

LASER Talks

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) was an initiative started in 2008 by cultural historian Piero Scaruff (according to this now defunct call for papers). The initiative seems to have grown into a series of programmes including LASER Talks.

Finally, LASER Talks is this, from the Leonardo.info/lasertalks webpage,

Leonardo/ISAST LASER Talks is a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of LASER is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 50 cities and 5 continents worldwide.

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Upcoming LASER Events

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For some reason the Toronto event is not listed as an upcoming LASER event. One more thing, the Toronto event seems to be an in-person only event.

Bulletproof graphene

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A December 18, 2017 news item on Nanowerk announces research that demonstrates graphene can be harder than diamonds (Note: A link has been removed),

Imagine a material as flexible and lightweight as foil that becomes stiff and hard enough to stop a bullet on impact. In a newly published paper in Nature Nanotechnology (“Ultrahard carbon film from epitaxial two-layer graphene”), researchers across The City University of New York (CUNY) describe a process for creating diamene: flexible, layered sheets of graphene that temporarily become harder than diamond and impenetrable upon impact.

Scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at the Graduate Center, CUNY, worked to theorize and test how two layers of graphene — each one-atom thick — could be made to transform into a diamond-like material upon impact at room temperature. The team also found the moment of conversion resulted in a sudden reduction of electric current, suggesting diamene could have interesting electronic and spintronic properties. The new findings will likely have applications in developing wear-resistant protective coatings and ultra-light bullet-proof films.

A December 18, 2017 CUNY news release, which originated the news item, provides a little more detail,

“This is the thinnest film with the stiffness and hardness of diamond ever created,” said Elisa Riedo, professor of physics at the ASRC and the project’s lead researcher. “Previously, when we tested graphite or a single atomic layer of graphene, we would apply pressure and feel a very soft film. But when the graphite film was exactly two-layers thick, all of a sudden we realized that the material under pressure was becoming extremely hard and as stiff, or stiffer, than bulk diamond.”

Angelo Bongiorno, associate professor of chemistry at CUNY College of Staten Island and part of the research team, developed the theory for creating diamene. He and his colleagues used atomistic computer simulations to model potential outcomes when pressurizing two honeycomb layers of graphene aligned in different configurations. Riedo and other team members then used an atomic force microscope to apply localized pressure to two-layer graphene on silicon carbide substrates and found perfect agreement with the calculations. Experiments and theory both show that this graphite-diamond transition does not occur for more than two layers or for a single graphene layer.

“Graphite and diamonds are both made entirely of carbon, but the atoms are arranged differently in each material, giving them distinct properties such as hardness, flexibility and electrical conduction,” Bongiorno said. “Our new technique allows us to manipulate graphite so that it can take on the beneficial properties of a diamond under specific conditions.”

The research team’s successful work opens up possibilities for investigating graphite-to-diamond phase transition in two-dimensional materials, according to the paper. Future research could explore methods for stabilizing the transition and allow for further applications for the resulting materials.

There’s an artist’s representation of a bullet’s impact on graphene,

By applying pressure at the nanoscale with an indenter to two layers of graphene, each one-atom thick, CUNY researchers transformed the honeycombed graphene into a diamond-like material at room temperature. Photo credit: Ella Maru Studio Courtesy: CUNY

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Ultrahard carbon film from epitaxial two-layer graphene by Yang Gao, Tengfei Cao, Filippo Cellini, Claire Berger, Walter A. de Heer, Erio Tosatti, Elisa Riedo, & Angelo Bongiorno. Nature Nanotechnology (2017) doi:10.1038/s41565-017-0023-9 Published online: 18 December 2017

This paper is behind a paywall.

D-PLACE: an open access database of places, language, culture, and enviroment

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In an attempt to be a bit more broad in my interpretation of the ‘society’ part of my commentary I’m including this July 8, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily (Note: A link has been removed),

An international team of researchers has developed a website at d-place.org to help answer long-standing questions about the forces that shaped human cultural diversity.

D-PLACE — the Database of Places, Language, Culture and Environment — is an expandable, open access database that brings together a dispersed body of information on the language, geography, culture and environment of more than 1,400 human societies. It comprises information mainly on pre-industrial societies that were described by ethnographers in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A July 8, 2016 University of Toronto news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

“Human cultural diversity is expressed in numerous ways: from the foods we eat and the houses we build, to our religious practices and political organisation, to who we marry and the types of games we teach our children,” said Kathryn Kirby, a postdoctoral fellow in the Departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Geography at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. “Cultural practices vary across space and time, but the factors and processes that drive cultural change and shape patterns of diversity remain largely unknown.

“D-PLACE will enable a whole new generation of scholars to answer these long-standing questions about the forces that have shaped human cultural diversity.”

Co-author Fiona Jordan, senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Bristol and one of the project leads said, “Comparative research is critical for understanding the processes behind cultural diversity. Over a century of anthropological research around the globe has given us a rich resource for understanding the diversity of humanity – but bringing different resources and datasets together has been a huge challenge in the past.

“We’ve drawn on the emerging big data sets from ecology, and combined these with cultural and linguistic data so researchers can visualise diversity at a glance, and download data to analyse in their own projects.”

D-PLACE allows users to search by cultural practice (e.g., monogamy vs. polygamy), environmental variable (e.g. elevation, mean annual temperature), language family (e.g. Indo-European, Austronesian), or region (e.g. Siberia). The search results can be displayed on a map, a language tree or in a table, and can also be downloaded for further analysis.

It aims to enable researchers to investigate the extent to which patterns in cultural diversity are shaped by different forces, including shared history, demographics, migration/diffusion, cultural innovations, and environmental and ecological conditions.

D-PLACE was developed by an international team of scientists interested in cross-cultural research. It includes researchers from Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human history in Jena Germany, University of Auckland, Colorado State University, University of Toronto, University of Bristol, Yale, Human Relations Area Files, Washington University in Saint Louis, University of Michigan, American Museum of Natural History, and City University of New York.

The diverse team included: linguists; anthropologists; biogeographers; data scientists; ethnobiologists; and evolutionary ecologists, who employ a variety of research methods including field-based primary data collection; compilation of cross-cultural data sources; and analyses of existing cross-cultural datasets.

“The team’s diversity is reflected in D-PLACE, which is designed to appeal to a broad user base,” said Kirby. “Envisioned users range from members of the public world-wide interested in comparing their cultural practices with those of other groups, to cross-cultural researchers interested in pushing the boundaries of existing research into the drivers of cultural change.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

D-PLACE: A Global Database of Cultural, Linguistic and Environmental Diversity by Kathryn R. Kirby, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, Fiona M. Jordan, Stephanie Gomes-Ng, Hans-Jörg Bibiko, Damián E. Blasi, Carlos A. Botero, Claire Bowern, Carol R. Ember, Dan Leehr, Bobbi S. Low, Joe McCarter, William Divale, Michael C. Gavin.  PLOS ONE, 2016; 11 (7): e0158391 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158391 Published July 8, 2016.

This paper is open access.

You can find D-PLACE here.

While it might not seem like that there would be a close link between anthropology and physics in the 19th and early 20th centuries, that information can be mined for more contemporary applications. For example, someone who wants to make a case for a more diverse scientific community may want to develop a social science approach to the discussion. The situation in my June 16, 2016 post titled: Science literacy, science advice, the US Supreme Court, and Britain’s House of Commons, could  be extended into a discussion and educational process using data from D-Place and other sources to make the point,

Science literacy may not be just for the public, it would seem that US Supreme Court judges may not have a basic understanding of how science works. David Bruggeman’s March 24, 2016 posting (on his Pasco Phronesis blog) describes a then current case before the Supreme Court (Justice Antonin Scalia has since died), Note: Links have been removed,

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It’s a case concerning aspects of the University of Texas admissions process for undergraduates and the case is seen as a possible means of restricting race-based considerations for admission.  While I think the arguments in the case will likely revolve around factors far removed from science and or technology, there were comments raised by two Justices that struck a nerve with many scientists and engineers.

Both Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts raised questions about the validity of having diversity where science and scientists are concerned [emphasis mine].  Justice Scalia seemed to imply that diversity wasn’t esential for the University of Texas as most African-American scientists didn’t come from schools at the level of the University of Texas (considered the best university in Texas).  Chief Justice Roberts was a bit more plain about not understanding the benefits of diversity.  He stated, “What unique perspective does a black student bring to a class in physics?”

To that end, Dr. S. James Gates, theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, and member of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (and commercial actor) has an editorial in the March 25 [2016] issue of Science explaining that the value of having diversity in science does not accrue *just* to those who are underrepresented.

Dr. Gates relates his personal experience as a researcher and teacher of how people’s background inform their practice of science, and that two different people may use the same scientific method, but think about the problem differently.

I’m guessing that both Scalia and Roberts and possibly others believe that science is the discovery and accumulation of facts. In this worldview science facts such as gravity are waiting for discovery and formulation into a ‘law’. They do not recognize that most science is a collection of beliefs and may be influenced by personal beliefs. For example, we believe we’ve proved the existence of the Higgs boson but no one associated with the research has ever stated unequivocally that it exists.

More generally, with D-PLACE and the recently announced Trans-Atlantic Platform (see my July 15, 2016 post about it), it seems Canada’s humanities and social sciences communities are taking strides toward greater international collaboration and a more profound investment in digital scholarship.

Sciences Goes to the Movies closes out season one with zombies and opens season two with nanotechnolgy

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Thanks to David Bruggeman’s March 9, 2016 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog for the latest about ‘Science Goes to the Movies’,

The 13th episode of Science Goes to the Movies is now available online, and showing some restraint, the show waited until the end of its first season to deal with zombies.

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In other show news, the second season will premiere on CUNY [City University of New York] TV March 18th [2016].  It will focus on nanotechnology.

You can find the 13th episode (running time is almost 30 mins.) embedded in David’s post or you can go to the Science Goes to the Movies webpage on the City University of New York (CUNY) website for the latest video and more information about the episode,

In episode #113 of Science Goes to the Movies, series co-hosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Faith Salie talk with Mark Siddall – a curator at the American Museum of Natural History and President of the American Society of Parasitologists – about zombies!

… Siddall describes different types of parasites that manipulate behavior in a host in order to complete a life cycle or other essential task – including a type of “Dementor” wasp, named after the monster in Harry Potter books, that changes behavior in a cockroach by stinging it. Whether or not zombifying parasites have a taste for brains is also considered, with reference to a species that takes over the bodies of ants, replaces their brains, and uses the ant to complete its life cycle, and The Guinea Worm, a parasite that targets humans for their own reproduction. Siddall then distinguishes between parasites and viruses and explains their similarities.

The Haitian voodoo practice of ingesting neurotoxins to create the effect of “waking from the dead” provides the basis for the next part of the discussion. Dr. Berlin defines neurotoxins and how they work in the brain to block neurons from firing. Tetrodotoxin, in particular, is explained as having a zombifying effect on humans in that its overall paralysis doesn’t affect the brain or the heart, leaving a person fully conscious throughout.

The Wade Davis [emphasis mine] book, The Serpent and The Rainbow, is brought into the discussion, as well as a story about a man kept in a zombie state for two years by ingesting a combination of neurotoxins and hallucinogens. Dr. Berlin breaks down the plausibility of the story and introduces the idea of the “philosopher zombie,” whose zombie status is more conceptual in nature.

28 Days Later and World War Z are discussed as examples of zombie movies in which the cause of the apocalypse is a zombie infection, and Siddall shares news about a cancer with contagious qualities. A recent Centers for Disease Control ad campaign, warning people to prepare for the zombie apocalypse, is mentioned and the real-life potential for human zombies, given the creativity of evolution, makes for the final topic of the show. Before finishing, though, Dr. Berlin and Siddall each share an idea for an original zombie movie.

Written and Produced by Lisa Beth Kovetz.

Wade Davis is a Canadian anthropologist who now teaches at the University of British Columbia.

Should you care to search, you will find a number of posts concerning zombies on this blog.