Marcelo Osvaldo Magnasco

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Marcelo Osvaldo Magnasco
BornDecember 14, 1963 (1963-12-14) (age 59)
CitizenshipArgentina, U. S. A.
Alma mater The University of Chicago
Known for Thermal ratchet, Auditory Physiology, dating the Odyssey
AwardsUniversity of Chicago’s Sydney Bloomenthal Dissertation Fellow, William Rainey Harper Dissertation-year Fellow
Scientific career
Fields Theoretical neuroscience
Institutions The Rockefeller University, International Centre for Theoretical Physics
Doctoral advisor Leo P. Kadanoff
Other academic advisors Oreste Piro
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum
Albert J. Libchaber

Marcelo Osvaldo Magnasco is a biophysicist and a professor at The Rockefeller University.

He is known for his work on thermal ratchets as models of biological motors, [1] auditory biophysics, [2] [3] bailout embeddings, [4] neural coding, [5] other studies of biological networks such as leaf venation, [6] and for placing the date of the solar eclipse mentioned in the Odyssey on April 16, 1178 B.C. [7] together with Constantino Baikouzis of the National University of La Plata. [8] [9]

In 2013, Magnasco formed the m2c2 collaboration with cetacean researcher Diana Reiss in order to study marine mammal communication and cognition. [10] [11] Their interdisciplinary team is probing dolphin intelligence using an underwater interactive touchpad at the National Aquarium (Baltimore). [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ungulate</span> Group of animals that use the tips of their toes or hooves to walk on

Ungulates are members of the diverse clade Ungulata which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves. Living ungulates are divided into two orders: the odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla) including horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs; and even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla) such as cattle, pigs, giraffes, camels, sheep, deer, and hippopotamuses. Cetaceans such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises are also classified as even-toed ungulates, although they do not have hooves. Most terrestrial ungulates use the hoofed tips of their toes to support their body weight while standing or moving. Two other orders of ungulates, Notoungulata, and Litopterna, native to South America, became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, around 12,000 years ago.

The 1170s BC is a decade which lasted from 1179 BC to 1170 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bottlenose dolphin</span> Genus of dolphin

Bottlenose dolphins are aquatic mammals in the genus Tursiops. They are common, cosmopolitan members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. Molecular studies show the genus definitively contains two species: the common bottlenose dolphin and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin. Others, like the Burrunan dolphin, may be alternately considered their own species or be subspecies of T. aduncus. Bottlenose dolphins inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide, being found everywhere except for the Arctic and Antarctic Circle regions. Their name derives from the Latin tursio (dolphin) and truncatus for their characteristic truncated teeth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oceanic dolphin</span> Family of marine mammals

Oceanic dolphins or Delphinidae are a widely distributed family of dolphins that live in the sea. Close to forty extant species are recognised. They include several big species whose common names contain "whale" rather than "dolphin", such as the Globicephalinae. Delphinidae is a family within the superfamily Delphinoidea, which also includes the porpoises (Phocoenidae) and the Monodontidae. River dolphins are relatives of the Delphinoidea.

Cetacean intelligence is the cognitive ability of the infraorder Cetacea of mammals. This order includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal cognition</span> Intelligence of non-human animals

Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition.

<i>Lagenorhynchus</i> Genus of mammals

Lagenorhynchus is a genus of oceanic dolphins in the infraorder Cetacea, presently containing six extant species. However, there is consistent molecular evidence that the genus is polyphyletic and several of the species are likely to be moved to other genera. In addition, the extinct species Lagenorhynchus harmatuki is also classified in this genus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common bottlenose dolphin</span> Dolphin in the genus Tursiops

The common bottlenose dolphin or Atlantic bottlenose dolphin is a wide-ranging marine mammal of the family Delphinidae. The common bottlenose dolphin is a very familiar dolphin due to the wide exposure it gets in captivity in marine parks and dolphinariums, and in movies and television programs. It is the largest species of the beaked dolphins. It inhabits temperate and tropical oceans throughout the world, and is absent only from polar waters. While formerly known simply as the bottlenose dolphin, this term is now applied to the genus Tursiops as a whole. As considerable genetic variation has been described within this species, even between neighboring populations, many experts think additional species may be recognized.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neocortex</span> Mammalian structure involved in higher-order brain functions

The neocortex, also called the neopallium, isocortex, or the six-layered cortex, is a set of layers of the mammalian cerebral cortex involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning and language. The neocortex is further subdivided into the true isocortex and the proisocortex.

Human–animal communication is the communication observed between humans and other animals, ranging from non-verbal cues and vocalizations to the use of language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cetruminantia</span> Taxonomic clade

The Cetruminantia are a clade made up of the Cetancodontamorpha and their closest living relatives, the Ruminantia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal consciousness</span> Quality or state of self-awareness within an animal

Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within a non-human animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tool use by animals</span> Animal use of any kind of tool

Tool use by animals is a phenomenon in which an animal uses any kind of tool in order to achieve a goal such as acquiring food and water, grooming, defence, communication, recreation or construction. Originally thought to be a skill possessed only by humans, some tool use requires a sophisticated level of cognition. There is considerable discussion about the definition of what constitutes a tool and therefore which behaviours can be considered true examples of tool use. A wide range of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects, are considered to use tools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artiofabula</span> Clade of mammals comprising pigs, cows, hippos, and whales, among others

Artiofabula is a clade made up of the Suina and the Cetruminantia. The clade was found in molecular phylogenetic analyses and contradicted traditional relationships based on morphological analyses.

Xiaowei Zhuang is a Chinese-American biophysicist who is the David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Professor of Physics at Harvard University, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is best known for her work in the development of Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), a super-resolution fluorescence microscopy method, and the discoveries of novel cellular structures using STORM. She received a 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for developing super-resolution imaging techniques that get past the diffraction limits of traditional light microscopes, allowing scientists to visualize small structures within living cells. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019 and was awarded a Vilcek Foundation Prize in Biomedical Science in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oreste Piro</span>

Oreste Piro is a dynamical systems theorist and biophysicist. He is at the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB) in Palma de Mallorca.

Microdocodon is a genus of docodontan mammaliaform from the Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota. It contains only a single species, Microdocodon gracilis, known from the Daohugou locality. It is unique for preserving the hyoid bone, which is almost unknown in the early mammal fossil record.

In the theory of dynamical systems, a bailout embedding is a system defined as

Julyan Cartwright is an interdisciplinary physicist working in Granada, Spain at the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute of the CSIC and affiliated with the Carlos I Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics at the University of Granada.

References

  1. Maddox, John (Sep 16, 1993), "Making Models of Muscle Contraction", Nature, 365 (6443): 203, Bibcode:1993Natur.365..203M, doi:10.1038/365203a0, PMID   8371773, S2CID   5602010
  2. Ball, Phillip (Nov 2, 2001), "Canaries Change Their Tune", Nature News, doi:10.1038/news011108-2
  3. Cho, Adrian (Jun 16, 2000), "What's shaking in the ear?", Science, 288 (5473): 1954–1955, doi:10.1126/science.288.5473.1954, PMID   10877709, S2CID   118174911
  4. Julyan H. E. Cartwright, Marcelo O. Magnasco, and Oreste Piro "Bailout embeddings, targeting of invariant tori, and the control of Hamiltonian chaos", Phys. Rev. E 65, 045203(R) (2002).
  5. Complexity Digest 2000.19, Complexity Digest, Feb 19, 2001
  6. Lichtman, Flora (Feb 19, 2010), Lighting Up Leaves, Science Friday, archived from the original on 2011-09-28
  7. Baikouzis, Constantino; Magnasco, Marcelo O. (June 24, 2008), "Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (26): 8823–8828, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0803317105 , PMC   2440358 , PMID   18577587
  8. Bär, Nora (July 1, 2008), "Hallan precisiones astronómicas en la poesía de Homero]", Diario la Nacion, Edicion, Diario La Nacion, retrieved 2008-01-07
  9. Minkel, JR (Jun 23, 2008), "Homer's Odyssey Said to Document 3,200-Year-Old Eclipse", Scientific American (News)
  10. "Marcelo Magnasco – m2c2" . Retrieved 2019-08-14.
  11. Marine Mammal Communication and Cognition Laboratory Website
  12. Scientists to probe dolphin intelligence using an interactive touchpad (PDF), May 25, 2017