Biology

Marcel Weber:
"I argue that the originally interest-relative dispositional concept of biological functions can be narrowed in a way that makes functions natural but holistic properties of self-reproducing systems. The additional constraint needed is a coherence relation that obtains exactly between those capacities of an organism's parts that, together, best explain how the organism can self-reproduce. The basic relation that gives rise to this kind of coherence is the contribution that a certain capacity makes to another capacity of the contain- ing system. After developing this account, I show that a system of functions so construed shows the characteristics of a holistic system, strongly resembling a system of beliefs as conceived by semantic holists. The implications for a general conception of holism such as Michael Esfeld's are discussed."

Nasal sebum, also known as nose grease/oil, is grease removed from the surface of the human nose.

The OBO Foundry is a collaborative experiment involving developers of science-based ontologies who are establishing a set of principles for ontology development with the goal of creating a suite of orthogonal interoperable reference ontologies in the biomedical domain. The groups developing ontologies who have expressed an interest in this goal are listed below, followed by other relevant efforts in this domain.

The Colourful Geometry of Nature
This website promotes recent research concerning the mathematics of natural imagery, art, and biology. The goal is to combine ideas from chaotic dynamics, iterated function systems and image science to provide a new geometry of form and colour. Topics include colour stealing, fractal transformations, orbital pictures, the chaos game, superfractals, laminations, textures, area-preserving maps and more.

Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan

An interactive open-access journal for the communication of all peer-reviewed scientific and medical research. To find out more and to keep up-to-date with the latest developments, visit everyONE—the PLoS ONE blog.