…and this is a 
Student Post: What I learned in skool today...
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Posted on: October 22, 2007 12:03 AM, by Katie Glasrud
... well not today. I learned very little today , but generally, here are some interesting things I've picked up in class:
-If you sever a cat's cerbral cortex from its hindbrain it can still walk on a treadmill (in a harness that compensates for the poor feline's lack of balance). This was the topic of one of PZ's many tangents.
-One way to inhibit the HIV virus is to make a drug that targets a protein our cells make. The key is to identify a protein the virus needs but that we do not. CYC202, a cyclin-dependant kinase inhibitor, may be one such drug.
-"HIV virus" is redundant, but hey, so is the genetic code.
-If you race flatworms in a maze, grind up the fastest ones, and feed the product to flatworms having yet to try the maze, you might find that they run the maze faster than their non-cannibal counterparts. Of course, you would consider that flatworm may simply be highly nutritious, because you're a scientist, and that's what they pay you the big erlenmeyers for.
-Badger culling. That's right. Badger. Culling. It's used to decrease badger/cow contact in Great Britain as badgers function as a bovine tuberculosis infection reservoir for cattle.
-EtOH and H20 are miscible. Whew... and to think I almost made myself an acetone martini...
Comments
""HIV virus" is redundant"
Like ATM machine.
Posted by: Phill | October 22, 2007 1:34 AM
There's more detail at the DEFRA site. I like the way the DEFRA took a scientific approach to the problems - conduct large trials, and look at the results, consult with people who know their stuff (not just the scientists - farmers as well), and produce advice that is sensible and down to earth. And hopefully works.
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | October 22, 2007 1:41 AM
This is the best student post yet. Especially the flatworm comment.
Posted by: Vitis01 | October 22, 2007 2:03 AM
Hey! Flatworms!
Wasn't there a publication for a while called the Worm Runners' Digest? Seems to me that a psychology professor of mine back in the '70s mentioned this fellow who did some sort of research on learning in flatworms, where worms who were fed worms that had learned something seemed to have learned it as well--the way I recall it, at least, the results turned out not to be terribly reproducible, and as a reaction to being criticized and having trouble publishing, he started his own journal ("The Journal of Physical Psychology"? Something like that) and then printed the Worm Runners' Digest on the back.
And, I was told, there was a logo: a globe, surrounded by planaria with their little fins touching (imagine "it's a small world after all" but with planaria instead of children), and the motto below...ready...
"This is the dawning of the age of planaria."
Now, I may have a lot of those details confused and messed up, but that's what I remember, anywho...
Posted by: Kurt Denke | October 22, 2007 2:16 AM
Well, I can personally testify that eating gound-up flatworms does absolutely nothing for your ability to solve Sudoku.
Not truthfully, of course.
Posted by: Brownian | October 22, 2007 2:17 AM
It's a great post, but considering amputated cats, ground worms, culled badgers and the may or might of current HIV treatment, I think I take the miscible martini. But I'm sure it is an interesting class. :-P
Btw, on the amount of PZ's tangents, are you implying that his educational style is mirrored in his blog? Damn, but that would be distracting:
"Aarh, aarh, aarhe you all remembering your Halloween tasks? Dismembering squids for lab sushi and dressing up as pirates for easy wash protection. Not the other way around."
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 22, 2007 2:53 AM
... and the corresponding PIN number.
Posted by: Woof | October 22, 2007 3:00 AM
Like "Sahara Desert."
Like "irritating creationist."
Posted by: Ed Darrell | October 22, 2007 3:26 AM
The effectiveness of culling badgers (to tackle bTB) is disputed.
Releasing man-eating badgers, on the other hand ...
Posted by: SEF | October 22, 2007 3:39 AM
Speaking of diseases transmitted by unprotected contact, it seems PZ caught Dave Barry's WoW spammer from the crosslinking a while back. You gotta remember protection when you crossblog like that...
Posted by: uknesvuinng | October 22, 2007 3:47 AM
"HIV virus" is redundant"
don't forget "MIDI interface"
Posted by: Brian W. | October 22, 2007 4:00 AM
Badgers? We don' need no steenkin' badgers! :) :)
Posted by: jeffox backtrollin' | October 22, 2007 4:01 AM
Badger culls are ineffective. Tighter controls on cattle movement in infected areas are effective -- but it's always easier to blame one's problems on an external population, preferably an animal population that one can go and hunt. Like the fishermen around here blaming falling fish catches on the seals.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | October 22, 2007 5:29 AM
Pickling up on what SEF has said, the evidence that badgers are a TB threat to cattle is disputed, not least because what evidence there exists is not conclusive. A recent pilot study of culling badgers in the West Country (Devon/Cornwall/Dorset/Somerset) found no significant decrease in cattle infection levels between those areas where culling was taking place and those it was not. However the data may well have been skewed because a number of illegal cullings occurred in the control areas.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | October 22, 2007 5:29 AM
Luna, Miracles do happen. I think I find myself in agreement with you!
Posted by: Matt Penfold | October 22, 2007 5:38 AM
To chime in with other commenters: the conclusion of the UK government's Independent Science Group looking into the issue is that a cull would actually make things worse if anything, as it would cause the surviving badgers to travel further thus increasing their efficacy as carriers.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/isg/index.htm
Unfortunately there's huge pressure still coming from the old Politician's Syllogism: we must do something, this is something, so we must do this. In particular the National Farmer's Union seems wedded to the idea of a cull despite all the evidence.
Posted by: Paul Crowley | October 22, 2007 7:02 AM
Paul Crowley:
If DEFRA wants to cull something else than cattle, I imagine the NFU is probably rather pleased. For once, the vengeful God will accept wild animals for its yearly holocaust and they won't have to sacrifice their own. Badgers to them must be looking very much like Ann Darrow did to the natives of Skull Island.
"Sorry kid, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time!"
Posted by: Arnaud | October 22, 2007 7:17 AM
Back to worm running. I never knew how seriously to take all those worm running studies. They reminded me of the studies where people measured love, fear, and loathing in house plants using lie detectors. The well-fed worm hypothesis does not explain why they also ran the maze better when injected with wise worm's RNA.
There is a discussion of it here:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=826389
Posted by: sailor | October 22, 2007 8:04 AM
-If you race flatworms in a maze, grind up the fastest ones, and feed the product to flatworms having yet to try the maze, you might find that they run the maze faster than their non-cannibal counterparts. Of course, you would consider that flatworm may simply be highly nutritious, because you're a scientist, and that's what they pay you the big erlenmeyers for.
So what happens when you feed the flatworm one of the losers instead?
Posted by: Dianne | October 22, 2007 8:05 AM
So what happens when you feed the flatworm one of the losers instead?
I think it is unethical to feed scientists to flatworms.
I could be wrong, though.
Posted by: Anon | October 22, 2007 8:09 AM
"grind up the fastest ones, and feed the product to flatworms having yet to try the maze, you might find that they run the maze faster"
This is officially the most disgusting thing I've learned this month.
Posted by: Meg K. | October 22, 2007 9:38 AM
Snort. Come up with a better handle than "anon" and you might just have a shot at the next Molly.
Posted by: xebecs | October 22, 2007 10:05 AM
Speaking of grinding up worms, it reminded me of something I heard in class - this one was a fish parasite class. Having a fish tapeworm in your gut used to be quite a common affliction in Northern Europe. The worm consumes most of the vitamin B12 from your diet and can cause a dangerous anemia. Guess where they got the dose of B12 needed to cure this anemia before synthetic vitamins were easily available?
Posted by: windy | October 22, 2007 1:32 PM
Anon: Cut that out! It's not nice to make people laugh uproariously in a library.
Posted by: Dianne | October 22, 2007 2:01 PM
In case the song has managed to escape anyone's head:
http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/
Posted by: Thanny | October 22, 2007 3:25 PM
My recollection is that the RNA-eating-planaria effect was identified as caused by later runs happening in mazes that had been incompletely sanitized. The "smart" planaria were following trails left by the earlier worms.
Posted by: DaveL | October 22, 2007 3:35 PM
Way back in my freshman year, I did training experiments on flatworms, and the little buggers outsmarted me, finding a goal by an indirect route that the books would put beyond their capability. I have it on good authority, though, that the worms hadn't read those books.
Posted by: Darby | October 22, 2007 3:36 PM
Guess where they got the dose of B12...
I give up - dunno. I did recall this episode of "House, M.D." portrayed such a gut worm, vividly altho not entirely accurately. That critical site links to current medical treatments for same.
Posted by: thwaite | October 22, 2007 3:40 PM
I know - that is how they develop Mad Worm disease. Will we never learn?
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 22, 2007 3:54 PM
If you sever a cat's cerbral cortex from its hindbrain it can still walk on a treadmill (in a harness that compensates for the poor feline's lack of balance). This was the topic of one of PZ's many tangents.
One neuroscientist's tangent is another's clinical correlation. In the motor systems section of med neuro, we discuss "decorticate" vs. "decerebrate" posturing or rigidity in human patients, as a means of approximating the extent of a brain lesion (e.g. a tumor, or a hemorrhage). Decorticate rigidity is characterized by extension of the lower extremities and flexion of the upper extremities, and is consistent with a lesion above the tentorium cerebelli (supratentorial: meninges again!). If the lesion spreads through the tentorial notch, the patient exhibits decerebrate rigidity, with extension of both upper and lower extremities; this, according to Haines in Fundamental Neuroscience, is "an ominous sign" (great PhD understatement there).
In animal models, decorticate rigidity results from transection of the brainstem rostral to the superior colliculi of the midbrain, sparing the rubrospinal system and its inputs from cerebellum, whereas decerebrate rigidity results from a more caudal transection between superior and inferior colliculi, leading to unopposed hyperactivity of extensor muscles in upper and lower limbs (reticulospinal system still intact).
Neither option sounds very pleasant, actually. :-(
Posted by: Barn Owl | October 22, 2007 4:31 PM
Guess where they got the dose of B12...
On further recall, confirmed from this obviously biased source here (.pdf) and others:
Good stuff, beer is, and in sub-Saharan Africa is subsidized by governments (as we do milk), and further fortified with more calories - cheapest way to get 'em out there.
Posted by: thwaite | October 22, 2007 6:40 PM
Posted by: J Myers | October 22, 2007 7:02 PM
The journal is "Journal of Irreproducable Results" which is still being published. I think years ago we had the original editor, ? Brown, maybe, in for a seminar on worm running. Vague memory of worms doing one thing in the morning hours and the reverse in the afternoon hours. Whatever.
One time I looked up ethanol and water mizing and found a site which described how they mix. They actually don't mix very well.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | October 22, 2007 10:03 PM
Here is the link. http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/70methanolmix.html
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | October 22, 2007 10:06 PM
Hey, Katie! It looks like you made SEED's Daily Zeitgeist with this post. Way to go!
Posted by: LisaS | October 23, 2007 12:13 AM
Guess where they got the dose of B12...
Oh, you innocent people. Beer was a good guess, though, but maybe large amounts of beer were deemed unsafe for anemia patients back then (around WWII). They gave you some medicine to kill the worm, waited until it 'emerged', and then ground it up and fed it to you.
Posted by: windy | October 23, 2007 5:16 AM
Heh, windy, it was obvious by the way you asked that. Nice to know we have other sources now...
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 24, 2007 4:36 PM