July 2, 2009
Category: Medicine & health • Viruses
The swine flu pandemic is well under way. With the WHO citing almost 60,000 laboratory-confirmed cases at the time of writing, the race is truly on to understand more about the virus. Now, two new studies have painted a fresh but partly contradictory picture about two of the virus's most important aspects - its infectivity (its ability to spread from host to host) and its virulence (its ability to cause disease in a host). These two traits will largely determine the threat that the virus poses, especially in relation to more familiar garden varieties of seasonal flu.
Both groups, one based in the US and the other in the Netherlands, tested the virus's behaviour in ferrets. These animals are affected by flu viruses in much the same way as humans, mimicking both the severity of our infections and ease of our viral transmission.
Both studies found that the new swine flu virus takes a slightly greater toll on its host's health than the usual strains of seasonal flu. These strains limit their infections to a ferret's nasal passages but the new swine flu virus makes its way into the lungs too. The Americans, led by Taronna Maines at the CDC, even found traces of the virus in the ferrets' gut.
This helps to explain the unusual profile of symptoms associated with swine flu. Most patients experience typical mild flu symptoms but an unusually large proportion (around 40% or so) have also suffered from unusual symptoms like vomiting and diarrhoea. Some have also been hospitalised due to severe pneumonia and respiratory failure, occasionally with fatal consequences. A flu virus that is unusually good at infecting the lungs and gut certainly make sense of these cases.
However, when it came to the virus's ability to spread, the two research teams disagree. The Americans found that swine flu is less easily transmitted from ferret to ferret than other seasonal viruses of the same H1N1 subtype. However, the Dutch team, led by Vincent Munster from the Erasmus Medical Center, found that the new virus transmits just as easily as its seasonal counterparts.
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Posted by Ed Yong at 4:00 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Animals • Climate change • Environment • Evolution • Mammals
The island of Hirta, on the western coast of Scotland, is home to a special breed of sheep. Soay sheep, named after a neighbouring island, are the most primitive breed of domestic sheep and have lived on the isles of St Kilda for at least a millennium. They're generally smaller than the average domesticated sheep, and that difference is getting larger and larger. Over the last 20 years, the Soay sheep have started to shrink.
They are becoming gradually lighter at all ages such that today's lambs and adults weigh around 3kg less than those from 1986. Their hind legs have also shortened to a similar degree, suggesting that they have indeed shrunk, rather than fallen increasingly ill.
The reasons behind this downward trend have now been revealed by a group of British scientists led by Arpat Ozgul from Imperial College. Using decades' worth of data, the team showed that natural selection normally favours larger sheep, as the odds of survival increase with body size. But this evolutionary pressure has been overwhelmed by the effects of climate change. Warmer winters have led to easier conditions, and less need to pile on the pounds in the first years of life. The lambs can afford to grow more slowly and they become smaller adults, who are only physically capable of raising small young themselves.
Soay sheep live in a closed population that doesn't have to deal with human interference, predators, migrants (either in or out), or significant competitors. That makes them an ideal population to study if you're an evolutionary biologist interested in how animal populations change over time. One such group, including Ozgul and his colleague Tim Coulson, have been studying the Soay sheep since 1985 and have brilliantly called themselves SLAPPED (short for Studies in Longitudinal Analysis of Population Persistence and Evolutionary Demography).
The group wanted to work out the extent to which the sheep's shrinking size is due to the influence of natural selection and to what extent it is just an ecological response to changing environments. To that end, they developed a mathematical job designed to analyse their 24 years of data and tease apart these contrasting effects.
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Posted by Ed Yong at 2:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 1, 2009
Category: Journalism
What a night.
Tonight, during the gala dinner of the World Conference of Science Journalists, I won the Association of British Science Writers' award for Best Newcomer 2009, collecting a certificate, an award and prize money in the Natural History Museum's central hall. In front of me: hundreds of international science journalists and Dippy the Diplodocus. Behind me: a statue of Charles Darwin. If that isn't reward for efforts in writing about science, I don't know what is.
Anyway, the award was a result of popular vote from members of the ABSW, so my heartiest thanks to anyone and everyone who voted, to Natasha for a lovely introduction and to everyone who came up and said congratulations. It's a superlative honour and it was a pleasure to have met you all. Memo to self: winning an award makes networking, an activity I loathe and dread with a fiery passion, remarkably easy and passive.
I find it incredibly interesting that amid the unsaid conference themes of saving journalism, the rise of new media, and what actually qualifies as journalism, that this award should go to someone who freelances as a journalist but also works in science communication and blogs. I'm going to start describing myself as a triple-reassortant science writer.
Anyway, a couple of amusing things are worth noting. Firstly, my name is spelled wrongly in different ways on both the certificate (Ed Wong) and the tube it came in (Ed Young). A lovely lady from the ABSW took my address down to send me a corrected version, but I may try and see if any particularly wealthy Ed Wongs would like to buy the original.
The book I was given is this, and I have a history with it. I wrote about 2% of it as one of my first ever freelance gigs about two years ago. The cheeky publishers never sent me (nor any of the other contributor, nor indeed the editors) any copies so it's great to finally have one (and amusing to hear screams of, "I never got a copy either!" throughout the evening.
And finally, the setting was really special. I first came to London almost 20 years ago to the day, and the Natural History Museum was one of the things that made me fall in love with the city and, indeed, the country. It was where I saw my first dinosaur skeletons. It was where I first heard of some guy called David Attenborough and bought something called Life on Earth. I go back every year for the photography competition and a spot of ice-skating. The NHM is one of my favourite places and the fact that this happened there just made it that much more special.
If there's one thing I regret, it's that later on in the evening, they played Carmina Burana through the speakers. Not exactly the music-of-choice for a relaxed chat over wine, but also why couldn't they have played it while I was climbing up to get the award? That would have been awesome.
Posted by Ed Yong at 7:17 PM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Animal behaviour • Animals • Insects • Mimicry • Predators and prey • Spiders
It's been just three weeks since I last wrote about the dark-footed ant-spider Myrmarachne melanotarsa, but this is one species that just keeps getting more and more interesting. To quickly recap, M.melanotarsa is a jumping spider that protects itself from predators (like other jumping spiders) by resembling an ant. Earlier this month, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson showed that they bolster this illusion by living in silken apartment complexes and travelling in groups, mimicking not just the bodies of ants but their social lives too.
Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the ant-spider's tale - it also uses its impersonation for attack as well as defence. It also feasts on the eggs and youngsters of the very same spiders that its ant-like form protects it from. It is, essentially, a spider that looks like an ant to avoid being eaten by spiders so that it itself can eat spiders.
Its actively raids the silken nests of other spiders and snatches the eggs and hatchlings within. These youngsters would be safe from any normal ant but being a spider in ant's clothing, M.melanotarsa has no problem with moving through silk. But they still have to get past the parents.
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Posted by Ed Yong at 11:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Journalism
Nick Davies is one of the most interesting figures in UK journalism, not least because of the publication of his excellent book Flat Earth News. On his website, he describes the book as "[taking] the lid off newspapers and broadcasters, exposing the mechanics of falsehood, distortion and propaganda; naming names and telling the stories behind stories."
In a superb session, Davies (ably interviewed by Jeremy Webb of New Scientist) set out his thesis about the broken state of science journalism, littered with pithy turns of phrase and good-natured storytelling.
Davies's key assertion is that journalism is about telling the truth. To him, telling the truth is a "necessary but not sufficient" part of the job. And if the primary function of a journalist is truth-telling, the primary activity should be checking and gathering evidence. Be it through reviewing literature, conducting interviews or checking sources, the final goal is the same - to "construct a story entirely out of statements of fact."
The notion of journalism as truth-telling may be met with surprise and denial by many of you, and Davies would probably sympathise. He has been a journalist for over 30 years and in his mind, things have changed. "News media should be reliable sources of truth", he says, "but they are riddled with stories that appear to be true but actually aren't upon checking." The situation is a lot like the widespread belief that the Earth was flat - a concept that was taken as fact until some serious checking was done. Hence, the name of the book.
The key question then becomes why we produce stories with "falsehood, distortion and propaganda"? He says, "There are certainly a lot of lazy hacks out there - some of them are drunk as well. But that's a relatively small factor." To Davies, it's a "structural problem". Modern journalism has been saddled with a structure that is likely to produce inaccurate stories. As he so eloquently put it, "Newsrooms are taken over by corporations that have injected logic of commercialism and rejected the logic of journalism."
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Posted by Ed Yong at 7:30 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 30, 2009
Category: Journalism
In the opening salvo of the World Conference of Science Journalists, three speakers debated the role of new media in the science journalism of tomorrow. What follows is an account of the session and personal opinions on some of the issues raised.
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Posted by Ed Yong at 6:46 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Journalism
For the next three days, I will be at the World Conference of Science Journalists live-tweeting the sessions I'm attending. The talks so far have been excellent but so far, the live-tweeting experience has been a revelation. I have Word open on the right of my screen for note-taking and Tweetdeck on the left for tweeting and collating what others are saying with the #wcsj hashtag. I was initially very sceptical of doing this but the perks have been numerous.
Most of all, it's a strangely exhilarating experience to hear what other people think and respond to while the talks are actually happening. No more hushed inaudible whispers or knowing, ambiguous glances with the person next to you. In its place comes real-time, direct feedback on the event, like a group of people having their own silent simultaneous discussion. Does anyone remember the show Mystery Science Theatre 3000, where three characters would provide voiceovers over bad B-movies? Following a conference hashtag on the go is a remarkably similar experience.
The price of that is, of course, distraction - occasionally missing out on important points that people have raised. But what's this? Other people have tweeted what I've missed and some way or other, it arrives in my brain.
The benefits really come into their own during breakout sessions. Today, there was a toss-up between a discussion on the science journalism crisis and Nick Davies's talk about his Flat Earth News theory (more on that later). I switched over to the latter at the last minute, but about five minutes in, realised that Tweetdeck was providing me with a summary of the best bits from the other session too. The only thing holding me back from going to every breakout at the same time is a lack of active Twitter users among the gathered delegates.
Yesterday, I was worried about choosing which of the simultaneously scheduled sessions to attend. Tomorrow, I'm going to go to all of them.
For anyone who's interested, you can follow my 140-character-long rambles. Otherwise, I'll be writing up some of the themes of the day shortly...
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:38 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Animal behaviour • Mammals • Monkeys
In a classic episode of the Simpsons, Homer's brain explains to him that "money can be exchanged for goods and services". That's obviously true for humans (even cartoon ones) but monkeys use an altogether different form of payment - grooming. It's as close to a currency as monkeys have and it can be redeemed against a wide range of goods and services including more grooming, a free pass from aggression, permission to handle babies, back-up in fights and even sex.
The purposes of these exchanges go well beyond cleaning. Grooming, it seems, is also an enjoyable activity that releases brain signalling chemicals involved in pleasure and rewarding feelings. It's a social bonding activity, the monkey equivalent of a human hug. Grooming does have costs though, despite its appearance as a leisurely activity. For a wild monkey, time spent cleaning a peer is time that's not spent foraging yourself or watching out for predators. So it pays an individual to groom only as much as it needs to.
Cecile Fruteau from the University of Tilburg has been studying the exchange of grooming among wild vervet monkeys in South Africa's Loskop Dam Nature Reserve. Through her experiments, she has shown that vervet grooming works like a biological market, governed by the laws of supply and demand. The amount that any individual is willing to give in exchange for a service depends on how rare or abundant it is.
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Posted by Ed Yong at 7:30 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category:
100 in four months - not too shabby.
A fitting way to mark a week of blogging with pure caffeine replacing my bloodstream. 3 posts up already, three more written and two further on the way. It's a good news week.
That and I'm off to the World Conference of Science Journalists to discuss the future of science news reporting with a bunch of (possibly) like-minded people. I may or may not live-tweet it in which case my musings will be found here. I'll probably end up blogging reports of the conference.
See you then.
Posted by Ed Yong at 6:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
