milhayser | June 9, 2012Spring is in the air, and Clostridium tetani is in the earth. On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk writes "with playing in the dirt comes minor injuries that you really don’t want to turn into anything nasty." Infection through open wounds can be fatal, as the bacterium releases a neurotoxin that causes uncontrolled muscular contractions. So if it's been ten years or more since your last vaccination, now is a good time for a booster. Meanwhile, Dr. Dolittle shares the amazing winning images of the inaugural Bio-Art competition on Life Lines. From the discharge of electric fish to the…
milhayser | June 8, 2012On EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse says his new book Among the Creationists: Dispatches From the Anti-Evolutionist Frontline is now available with turnable pages and a hardcover binding. Rosenhouse calls the book "a collection of stories and anecdotes from my experiences attending creationist conferences over the last ten years" as well as an exploration of religious and scientific viewpoints. Electronic versions of the book were released in February. On Uncertain Principles, author Chad Orzel reflects on the anti-trust suit filed by the US Department of Justice against major ebook publishers…
milhayser | June 6, 2012On Earth Day, Greg Laden took the opportunity to thank BP for the “modifications made to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico” by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Surviving specimens of coral “have been provided with hip new color schemes (mainly black and blackish),” while creatures such as shrimp and crabs exhibit physical deformities “which will surely make them easier to catch and, according to BP, does not affect their edibility.” Crude oil is organic, after all, as Kevin Bonham reminds us on We Beasties. He says “it turns out that nearly million barrels of oil naturally seeps out of the…
milhayser | June 4, 2012By gluing radio chips to the backs of 800 honeybees, researchers proved that Neonicotinoid pesticides interfere with their behavior. Greg Laden reports that bees exposed to the common aphid-killer "forage abnormally, have 'olfactory memory' problems, are easily disoriented and become poor learners." Fewer of them return to the colony. Laden observes, "One thing that strikes me as especially interesting here is that many bees don't make it back over a fairly long period of time even under normal conditions, and that some bees stay out overnight!" Another likely contributor to Colony Collapse…
milhayser | June 1, 2012
On Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson sifts through Hubble's vast catalog of stars, gas, and galaxies, looking for a diamond in the rough. Many images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope have never really been looked at; Sigurðsson says "In some cases the PI died before doing so. More usually these are engineering test images, or 'parallel images,' where a second camera was set to take images of wherever it happened to be pointed." The European Space Agency wants your help to search through these pictures. In 2004, Hubble resolved the famous Ultra Deep-Field with 10,000 galaxies across…
milhayser | May 30, 2012Day and night, the sun is something most of us take for granted. But on Respectful Insolence, disciples stare at it intently in order to gain its energy. Orac writes "sun gazers seem to think that mammals are like plants in possessing an ability to absorb energy directly from the sun"—and diehard gurus claim to have lived for years without food or water. Earnest practitioners risk blindness, dehydration, starvation and death. Orac says "Sun gazing also leaves out the fact that plants get the organic building blocks they use to produce their actual structures from the ground in which they grow…
milhayser | May 25, 2012
According to UN Water, "Each of us needs to drink 2 to 4 litres of water every day. But it takes 2000 to 5000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food." If that seems like a lot, it is. But it's funny how much depends on your perspective. A graphic from the USGS shows what it would look like if all the water on Earth were gathered into one drop. On A Few Things Ill-Considered, Coby Beck discusses the even smaller drop that represents all fresh water. Coby writes, "A full 74.5% of that much smaller ball is locked away in ice caps and glaciers and 24.7% is groundwater (much of that…
milhayser | May 24, 2012
On Denialism Blog, Mark Hoofnagle argues that unless homeschooling is better regulated, it should be banned altogether. He writes "universal primary and secondary education is part of why our country has been so successful." While Rick Santorum can teach his kids that global warming is a hoax and the earth was created in a day, other parents can withhold sexual education, or, in one example, forbid their daughters from getting a GED. Hoofnagle concludes, "for parents to say it's a matter of religious freedom to deny their children education, or a future outside their home, can not be…
milhayser | May 24, 2012
On the Weizmann Wave, researchers have made a discovery surrounding exons—"bits of genetic code that are snipped out of the sequence and spliced together to make the protein instruction list." When a cell needs to make a protein, it pulls exons out of pre-messenger RNA and stitches them together to form messenger RNA. Alternating sequences called introns are left out. By tracking the unused introns, researchers observed that "in some cases, pre-mRNA production shot straight up - to ten times or more than that of the mRNA that followed." They call this "production overshoot," for when "the…
milhayser | May 22, 2012Cause and effect weave a tangled web, but a new data analysis tool called MIC can help make sense of it all. The Weizmann Institute writes that "Large data sets with thousands of variables are increasingly common in fields as diverse as genomics, physics, political science, economics and more." Evaluating pairs of variables from among the thousands, MIC assigns each a score based on the strength of the relation between its variables. For example, while combing through an incredibly complex dataset from the World Health Organization, MIC observed that "obesity increases monotonically with…
milhayser | March 28, 2012There are many factors that can drive an organism to drink. Some might have a genetic predisposition—others might want to poison a parasitic wasp before it consumes them from the inside out. On ERV, new research shows "the epigenetics of the cells in the brains of alcoholics is messed up;" specifically, alcoholic brains express transposable genetic elements (such as endogenous retroviruses) more frequently. Smith writes "the authors think that ERVs are not just a marker of the damage caused by alcoholism, but that the ERVs are actively contributing to the brain damage due to alcoholism." But…
milhayser | March 19, 2012
We've all heard of bird and swine flu, but bats, which comprise "about a fifth of all known mammalian species," also carry a diverse host of viruses. By swabbing the rectums of little yellow-shouldered bats, researchers in Guatemala discovered a new influenza virus that defies easy classification. Flu viruses are described by two key genes—hence the name 'H1N1.' Tara C. Smith writes "The novel bat virus was a completely new H type—type 17 (provisional, they note, pending further analyses). The NA gene was also highly divergent." Smith continues "the authors did do some molecular work…
milhayser | March 12, 2012
Science publishing is at a crossroads. On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham says that early scientists "communicated amongst themselves in person or in letters or in books. They shared discoveries freely and it was possible for an individual human to be aware of almost the entire sum of human knowledge." As the pace of discovery accelerated, scientific journals became instrumental in recording and disseminating knowledge. But today, while earnest researchers must "publish or perish," and millions of students stand to benefit from open access, publishers themselves are focused on turning a profit…
milhayser | March 1, 2012
On Denialism Blog, Mark Hoofnagle writes that a wide array of drugs, from antibiotics to steroids to diuretics and chemotherapeutics, are in short supply around the country. Hoofnagle explains, "The drugs affected span all classes, what they have in common is they are all generic." Because of the low profit margin on generic drugs, "manufacturers try to cut costs where they can, they export production abroad (and away from FDA oversight), and keep supplies low." Quality suffers, and with only a few companies producing certain drugs, disruptions can have far-reaching (and deleterious)…
milhayser | February 27, 2012
On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk writes "counter-intuitively, demographers generally find that the conditions necessary for people to choose fewer children include radically lower child, infant and maternal mortality. [...] The less certain you are your children will live to adulthood, the more likely you are to have more of them." This makes reassuring health care vital to a world that already has seven billion human mouths to feed. But should high technology be the automatic standard? Compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has a higher rate of death in childbirth—a rate that…
milhayser | February 21, 2012
On Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson flags a few foreboding articles on the future of NASA. Sigurðsson says the orbiting telescope Galex, or Galaxy Evolution Explorer, will be shut down later this year despite continuing to function. NASA has withdrawn from the international research mission known as ExoMars, and many other "2011-12 programs appear effectively suspended pending the 2012-13 budget, to the point where an entire funding cycle will be lost for some lines." Meanwhile, Ethan Siegel conjures up an apt scenario on Starts With a Bang, writing "Let's pretend that, for all of our…
milhayser | February 16, 2012
On The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski surveys a new report on chronic illness released by the Institute of Medicine. Borkowski writes, "diabetes and heart disease are what leap to my mind—in part because they're so tied to the lifestyle factors of smoking, inadequate exercise, and poor nutrition, and in part because they cost our health system so much money." But other physical (and mental) afflictions beleaguer tens of millions of Americans (116 million of which, for example, suffer from chronic pain). In total, the IoM report "highlights nine 'clinical clusters' that together 'encompass and…
milhayser | February 15, 2012
The Fordham Institute recently released their assessment of state science standards with a handy color-coded map—and California was the only state to receive a solid "A," along with the District of Columbia. On Pharyngula, PZ Myers wonders how his state will ever get into college with a lowly "C." He writes, "The Institute does a fairly thorough breakdown, so there are some bright spots: Minnesota is doing a good job in the life sciences, but where we got dinged hard was on the physical sciences, which are 'illogically organized' and contain factual errors." But at least Minnesota wasn't…
milhayser | February 14, 2012
On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham reports that scientists have genetically enabled E. coli to digest a sugar found in algae. Bonham writes, "Scientists have been picking this bug's locks for decades, and it's already been engineered to make not just ethanol, but many other useful products as well." With the ability to metabolize sugar from a source as prolific, low-maintenance, and renewable as algae, E. coli could become a much bigger player in biofuel production. Meanwhile, Greg Laden considers the State of the Union address from an environmental perspective. Laden gives President Obama a…
milhayser | February 2, 2012Posted to the homepage on January 20, 2012
On Aetiology, Tara C. Smith shares the results of her latest study into methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. She and her team "looked at not only conventional meats, but also 'alternative' meat products" labeled "raised without antibiotics" or "raised without antibiotic growth promotants." Smith writes, "In our previous paper, we found MRSA on 1.2% of 165 meat samples. In the current study, we found a higher prevalence—6.6% of 395 samples were contaminated with MRSA." She believes the current, higher number more accurately reflects the…