tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71375992175184769172024-03-08T05:00:10.386-08:00Think ScienceI don't know all the answers. I don't even know all the questions. But, together we can try to figure them out. Science is for everyone.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-65383240807801845682011-07-13T15:09:00.000-07:002011-07-13T15:11:11.632-07:00It's the ClimbIn homage to my daughter, I will say that Miley Cyrus had it right…it’s the climb. In this case, by Bar-headed Geese.<br /><br />Bar-headed Geese journey each breeding season from India, which is at sea-level, up over the Himalayan Mountains, on their way to Asia. That is quite a trek for a little breeding.<br /><br />The journey is long, but more interestingly it is high. Bar-headed geese fly over the tallest mountains in the world. These are mountains where the air is so thin that avid climbers die on their peaks. The bodies largely remain there because it is too strenuous to bring them back down, given the available oxygen, and the air is too thin to support things like helicopter flight. Yet, the geese make it not only to the tops of the mountains, but over them.<br /><br />It was long thought that the geese used tail winds to push them up and over the peaks. <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/the-most-extreme-migration-on-ea.html?rss=1">But, now with the advent of satellite tags, placed directly on the geese</a>, we know that they pump their way up and over all by themselves. They fly when the winds are calm. They can travel up the peaks at amazing speeds of 1.1 vertical kilometers per hour. They can go from sea-level up and over a peak of 6000 meters in just 7 or so hours.<br /><br />So, how do they do this? They have a larger than average wingspan for their size. That means more lift when they fly. They have a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-headed_Goose">special form of hemoglobin in their blood</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemoglobin">Hemoglobin</a> is the molecule that carries oxygen and gives our blood the characteristic red color. It is an iron-based molecule, which is why iron is so important in our diets. The goose’s hemoglobin allows them to pull available oxygen from the air better than you and I, or any other bird or mammal for that matter. And, they breathe more deeply and more efficiently under low oxygen conditions.<br /><br />You’d think with that kind of ability such a species would be protected from almost any kind of threat. But, Bar-headed Geese were, sadly, also one of the first victims of avian flu. On their nesting grounds their eggs are prone to predation by foxes and other small mammals as well as ravens and seagulls. And, females even raid the nests of other females. So, while they a high-fliers in one respect, in other areas they are just another goose.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-535424534701424812011-06-02T21:02:00.000-07:002011-06-02T21:03:52.804-07:00Top 10 New Species for 2011It is that time of year again. The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University released the <a href="http://asunews.asu.edu/20110523_top10newspecies">top 10 new species of 2011</a>. <br /><br />Last year I wrote about my favorite on the 2010 list, the Dracula minnow. Measuring just 17 millimeters long when fully grown, this little minnow, while tiny, is a close relative of the common goldfish, the carp, and the other minnows you might have known from childhood. Many of your pet store variety fishes are in this group of carps and carp-like fishes. And, if you have looked closely at Goldy residing in your child’s fish bowl, you might have noticed Goldy has no teeth. This group of fishes has been around for a long time, and, in fact, lost anything even resembling true teeth nearly 50 million years ago. But, the Dracula minnow has developed bony spurs on its jaws that project through the skin and look just like nasty fangs.<br /><br />My favorite for 2011 is, of course, another fish. This year it is the pancake batfish. Batfish are all-around oddly cool fish. They are flat, live on the bottom, and rarely swim. Instead, they walk. Their paired fins, normally located on the sides of a fish, are located more or less underneath the fish. And, they walk on these fins, like feet. They walk all over the bottom of the ocean. <br /><br />This particular batfish is pretty special because it was only discovered because of the Gulf Oil Spill. Turns out it lives pretty much only where the oil was. Scientists had not explored the region that intensely prior to the spill, and upon investigating the spill’s impact, found this little critter. <br /><br />This year’s list also contains a cricket that pollinates orchids, a fruit-eating monitor lizard that measures over 6-feet in length, a glowing fungus, an iron-eating bacterium discovered on the hull of the Titanic, a jumping cockroach, and a species of antelope called a duiker, a leech with teeth so large it is named after the famed T. rex.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-75382100244598281202011-04-28T12:58:00.000-07:002011-04-28T13:02:12.739-07:00Bird BrainsEver wonder why there is a plethora of pigeons frequenting most downtown areas and not a bunch of smaller, nicer, or prettier birds? It turns out that pigeons are smart. Recent research has revealed that most birds that are urban, meaning they live in the city, have bigger brains than birds that live in the country. And, big-brained birds have a greater potential for what we like to call street smarts.<br /><br />Of course, people who own pigeons, nice domesticated ones as opposed to the trash-eating ones on the street, have known this for a long time. Pigeons are highly trainable and have been used to carry messages during wartimes for many countries, including the US. In fact, 32 individual birds have actually been awarded medals for their service to the British military. Pigeons are also bred for sport, such as racing, and we have attributed many a romantic tradition to doves, even though doves really are just small pigeons (in fact, the name ‘pigeon’ and ‘dove’ are used interchangeably by scientists)<br /><br />Why study bird brains? Alexei Maklakov and his European colleagues were actually interested in the <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/04/scienceshot-smart-birds-live-in.html?rss=1">effects of increased urbanization</a>. As our human population booms, more and more areas are going to be urban instead of rural. They wanted to know which sorts of species fared well in this steadily enlarging urban setting. Brain size was linked to the ability to survive in novel and changing habitats, such as the city.<br /><br />So, if city birds are smarter than country birds, does this mean the country birds are in trouble? The research shows that smaller brained birds tended to avoid urbanized areas. This means that as these areas get smaller, the available habitat for such birds is shrinking. That we are losing much of our wild lands is nothing new. However, the notion that bird brains just cannot cope with the change, is new. This research suggests that the smaller birds simply have trouble adjusting to change.<br /><br />Makalov and colleagues suggest that street smarts ‘help birds find innovative solutions to problems such as a lack of trees, ubiquitous plate glass windows, and deciding whether or not to eat street-cart hot dogs off the sidewalk’.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-72538753500135827082011-02-17T14:42:00.000-08:002011-02-17T14:44:31.732-08:00Cat got your tongue?Most of us who have pets have, at one time or another, watched them lap up water or some form of liquid from a bowl. Cats and dogs, unlike us, do not have complete cheeks, therefore they cannot form suction to draw the water out of the bowl the way we can, for instance with a straw. It is also why they cannot give us a big smooch and we have to accept a sloppy swipe of the tongue as a ‘kiss’. In order to drink, we have assumed that they use their tongues much like a soup ladle and scoop water from the bowl. Judging from the mess of water constantly spread around our dog’s bowl, this is certainly true, at least for dogs.<br /><br />But, recently, <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/11/cats-tongues-employ-tricky-physi.html?ref=hp">a scientist from MIT</a> (in Cambridge, Mass), sat at breakfast watching his own cat drink from her bowl. And, he was intrigued. Subsequently, he recruited a few colleagues and, on their own time (not funded by university time or funds), they filmed the cat, and later nine others, drinking. The high-speed video revealed that cats do not make ladles with their tongues.<br /><br />Instead, they employ a tricky combination of physics principles, inertia and surface tension pitted against gravity.<br /><br />Cats simply dip their tongue into the water and pull it back up. The water tends to adhere to the tongue and be drawn upward into the mouth because 1) the tongue has imparted some upward motion onto the water, called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia">inertia</a>, and 2) because water molecules like to stick together. The ‘stickyness’ of water is due to molecular forces holding the atoms together. Water likes to adhere to itself, a simple phenomenon we know as ‘<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension">surface tension</a>’. We see surface tension all around us. For example, when water beads up and runs down our windshields, it is the surface tension forming the beads. The beads readily contact and merge with other beads, forming larger droplets. <br /><br />In the cat’s case, gravity will eventually win out, and impart a force larger than the forces maintained by surface tension. And, the water will fall back into the bowl. But, hopefully not before some of the water has made it into the cat’s mouth along with the tongue. A careful trick of timing maximizes the amount of water that makes it into kitty’s mouth.<br /><br />A trip to the local zoo revealed that all felines may in fact use this unique physics trickery to get a drink. Lions and tigers both showed this same behavior. Just goes to show you, even our household pets have something new to teach us if we pay attention!Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-27397427548477940852011-01-14T20:11:00.000-08:002011-01-14T20:14:24.654-08:00Black Holes and White Galaxies<a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/the-solar-system-swallower.html">The largest black hole that we know of</a>, at least in nearby galaxies, is the black hole in galaxy M87. <br /><br />M87 is not our galaxy. Earth and the other planets we know and love are part of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way">Milky Way Galaxy</a>, so named because of the dense band of stars that passes through it creating a milky-white colored path. This milky white band of stars is only apparent as such from a certain vantage point. From here on Earth, all of the stars we see in the night sky are actually a part of the Milky Way. As such, our galaxy is a relatively light place.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole">Black holes</a> are areas of the universe so dense that not even light can penetrate them. Thus, these areas appear as black regions, and appear to literally suck the light from surrounding regions inward. The idea that black holes such everything inward is a bit of science fiction. However, they are literally so dense that they can in essence have their own level of extreme gravity. Once objects get close enough to the black hole they can only go onward into the hole because of this gravitational effect. The point of no return, beyond which light or other objects will go forward into the hole, is called the Event Horizon, so named because any event (light emission or other) that happens beyond this point will not be observable outside the hole. Therefore it is impossible to determine if the event occurred at all.<br /><br />The black hole in the Milky Way Galaxy is a mere 2 billion solar masses, or 2 billion times the mass of our sun. Some estimates place this at closer to 4 billion. But, even that number pales compared with the black hole in M87. The black hole in M87 is now estimated to be 6.6 billion solar masses.<br /><br />These super massive black holes are probably formed by merging smaller black holes. Smaller black holes are commonly formed by collapsing stars. Once a star runs out of fuel to burn, it cannot maintain itself and collapses in on itself, succumbing to its own gravity. If the star was dense enough, it will form a stellar black hole as a result of this event. <br /><br />M87 appears to be the result of hundreds or more mergers of smaller black holes, and could now swallow our whole galaxy. In fact, it could swallow more than 4 of them. But, we are in no danger. The M87 black hole is also more than 50 million light years away from Earth.<br /><br />In addition to being the largest black hole on record, M87 provides physicists their best chance to study black hole physics, which, by and large, is still only theory at this point.<br /><div><br /></div><div><i>Consider donating to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>, the source of information for many of the links found here.</i></div>Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-5616283921050550752010-12-16T21:20:00.000-08:002010-12-16T21:21:09.543-08:00Can we still make a difference?Global warming, climate change, rising sea-level…oh my. Some believe it is real, some believe it is a myth. Regardless of what you believe, it seems we hear about it constantly these days. You cannot escape it.<br /><br />I personally think that some level of global climate change is real. We just cannot possibly be emitting that much pollution and smoke and carbon products into the atmosphere and not have some impact. How big is the impact? I don’t really know. But I am willing to try to do my bit to make the impact a little less. Whether you believe the earth is a gift from a Creator, or that it was created by the Big Bang, either way it is now ours to care for and we should indeed do our best to do so.<br /><br />The problem is that this global climate change stuff is so hyped up by the media that we have become numb. The ‘doom and gloom perspective’ is that things are so bad, you just cannot think about the repercussions of all this global change without basically wondering why we should even bother. It is the only alternative. If you believe the doom and gloom, and lets face it, the media is driven by such extremes, then it almost paralyzes you with fear. If you think about it too hard, it could send you into a full on panic. What will our kids’ lives be like? Our kids’ kids? <br /><br />And, so, we are largely numb to the problem. So numb that it has become almost hip to not care. It is like a defensive mechanism we collectively have evoked.<br /><br />So, it is wonderfully reassuring to read a story where we find we can still make a difference. Recent research into the fate of the polar bears and the retreating sea ice gives us that hope. Polar bears, as a species, were given a fatal diagnosis a couple of years ago. With the loss of sea ice, they were losing their habitat, and were predicted to be extinct by 2050. <br /><br />The most recent models still support that result, as reported <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/12/how-to-save-polar-bears.html?rss=1">by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado</a>. However, they also have begun to experiment with the effects of reductions in green house gasses. The good news is that rather moderate reductions, like those being planned by some countries, would actually slow the ice loss to a point that major areas of polar bear habitat would be protected.<br /><br />Are we going to be able to do that – to reduce emissions? Only time will tell. But it is sure reassuring to know that we can still stop the effects of what is so often pitched as ‘the end of the world’Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-71443732401577419322010-12-01T23:14:00.000-08:002010-12-01T23:16:27.210-08:00Wikipedia – Why you should care…Today’s column is not so much a scientific rant, like I normally provide, but a plea:<br /><br />Support <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedi</a><a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">a</a>.<br /><br />What is Wikipedia? It is an on-line encyclopedia of sorts. It is the 5th most visited site on all of the internet. More than 400 million people use Wikipedia and its sister sites every month, so they claim. It has information on just about everything. I use it often when I teach, admittedly checking the facts against my own understanding of a subject before referring students to the site, but it is nearly always correct. It has a level of accuracy, I think, that shames the entire rest of the internet, all sites combined.<br /><br />Why is Wikipedia amazing? It provides information, for free, to anyone and everyone that wants access. And, after all, that is my motto, Science Is For Everyone. Although wikipedia is not just science, it is a collection of facts that has the same appeal as science, at least for me.<br /><br />John Goma, an editor for Wikipedia, recalls “I found a Wikipedia article on a topic that I had studied when I was a math student. I noticed that a few important points were missing. I hit the edit button, made some changes, and I've been writing and editing ever since. “ He states “Wikipedia is the sum of all those moments of discovery by millions of editors like me. People across the world add their time and energy to the vast, ever-growing store of knowledge that Wikipedia has become. But what's really remarkable about Wikipedia is that it's the product of volunteers working one entry at a time. And because Wikipedia is free of advertising, those of us who create and use Wikipedia have to protect and sustain it.”<br /><br />Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's Wikimedia’s commitment. The Wikimedia Foundation is the foundation raising the funds to keep Wikipedia alive.<br /><br />Want to know where your money would go? A donation to Wikipedia/Wikimedia supports technology and people. The Wikimedia Foundation develops and improves the technology behind Wikipedia and nine other projects, and sustains the infrastructure that keeps them up and running. The Foundation has a staff of about fifty, which provides technical, administrative, legal and outreach support for the global community of volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia.<br />Many people love Wikipedia, use it every day, but a surprising number don't know it's run by a non-profit.<br /><br />Just type Wikipedia in your browser search bar and you’ll be there. Support the quest for knowledge and free access to it.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-40312127245193970492010-10-28T21:21:00.000-07:002010-10-28T21:25:13.603-07:00For the love of ChocolateContinuing with the Halloween theme, today I write about candy. And, not just any candy - chocolate. Almost everyone likes chocolate, and some of us love it. I know I am certainly guilty of raiding my kids’ trick or treat bags in search of the good stuff; which in my book is the solid chocolate without anything else getting in the way. No peanuts, no nuts, no crispies, no crunchies, no wafers, and not even caramel. Just chocolate.<br /><br />What is it about chocolate that makes so many of us crave it. Turns out there is some solid science behind this apparent madness.<br /><br />First of all, there is the chemistry. Scientists have discovered several properties of chocolate that literally lead us to crave it. One, it has opioids. Opioids are also found in opium. So, not surprisingly, chocolate, like opium, serves to dull pain and give a general feeling of calm and happiness. Of course, it is present in pretty small doses, so chocolate is a lot safer way to get these feelings! Two, chocolate has caffeine, which is an upper, which tends to make your heart beat just a little faster.<br /><br />Second – the psychology. Because we tend to give gifts of chocolate to people we love, some theorize that eating chocolate can induce feelings of comfort and/or love for purely psychological reasons. Given the chemistry above, and the biological responses, it is no wonder people have associated chocolate with love. But our resulting cultural association of chocolate with love has trained our emotional responses as well. Even without the underlying chemistry, giving, receiving, or just eating chocolate tends to induce happiness.<br /><br />Third – the biology. Chocolate really is good for you, at least in moderation. Chocolate contains antioxidants, and flavenoids, both of which are thought to increase your life span through their cardiovascular benefits. In simpler terms, chocolate is good for your heart, biologically-speaking. And, we know that our bodies tend to crave the things that are good for us. It is our bodies’ way of telling us we are short on particular nutrients. <br /><br />Of course, we also routinely crave what is not so good for us, and too much chocolate definitely falls into that category as well. Chocolate has lots of fats, and sugars. The fact that it contains all those fats, which make it smooth, may also explain some of why we like it so much - the sensation of eating it. <br /><br />So whatever the reason, enjoy!Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-85877260884860093302010-10-15T11:55:00.000-07:002010-10-16T19:21:32.799-07:00Spooky Spiders…October seems the appropriate month to continue on the theme of spiders and other creepy crawlies who happily decorate our homes right now in larger-than-life form. Last time I wrote about spider silk, and its amazing strength. Spiders are biological wonders from several other perspectives as well. Notably, their long and leggy legs.<br /><br />First, have you ever noticed that when you find a dead spider, that its legs are all curled up (so long as it is not smashed, that is)? Their legs roll inward towards their bodies and form a sort of ball. This is because spider legs are hydraulic, like pistons. They are held rigid by the fluid inside them, and that fluid must be maintained at pressure in order for them to hold the spider up and allow it to move around. Once the spider dies, the pressure cannot be maintained, and the legs collapse.<br /><br />To move, the spider has muscles within the legs that allow the seven (yes seven) sections of each leg to bend inward a coordinated manner. But, to straighten the leg, there are no opposing muscles in most spiders, because there is nothing to attach them too. Remember spiders have no bone, just their tough exoskeleton that makes up what we think of as their crunchy skin or shell. The fluid pressure in the leg is changed via changes in the spider’s blood pressure. Increases in pressure straighten the leg, decreases allow it to bend.<br /><br />Jumping spiders are by far the best at this feat. They can quickly change the blood pressure in the legs which allows them to spring upwards, travelling as far as 25 times their body length. That’d be 25 to 30 feet for the average human. None of us can pull that off.<br /><br />Running spiders are special again in their own way. They have given up web building entirely for the purposes of capturing food, and obtain their meals hunting them down and then overtaking them with sheer speed. Our common wolf spiders often hunt this way. Luckily, even the largest of wolf spiders is only about an inch long, because spiders running you down is enough to unnerve just about anyone. They play an important role in the control of other insects, however, so be thankful that they are there.<br /><br /><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_3_109/ai_61524418/">Fishing spiders</a>, however, win the award for amazing legs. Fishing spiders can literally walk on water. They do this by abusing the laws of physics, and taking advantage of simple surface tension. Surface tension is the tendency of particles of water to stick together. This is why you see a drop of water form a round, bead-like drop, and not just scatter into its infinitesimally small molecules. Fishing spiders have tiny leg tips, and light bodies, and when they press these leg tips to the surface of the water, they are able to stay atop the surface, and not break the surface tension. This is due largely to a waxy coating on the legs. You see a small dimple form on the water from the pressure of the leg, but the tension does not break, unless the spider wants it to. These spiders can dash out onto the water to grab prey such as insects, or reach below the surface to grab even small fish. And, when they really need to move, they can rise up on two legs and gallop across the water, reaching speeds of about 30 feet per second, or 2 miles per hour. The average running speed for a person is 6 miles per hour. The world record 100 m dash clocked in at 28 miles per hour. But, when they are just hanging around, or casually need to move from place to place, fishing spiders can also place their legs on the water and sail with the wind.<br /><br />Not a bad way to get around.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-20173926792227998002010-10-02T13:48:00.000-07:002010-10-02T13:51:00.610-07:00Stronger than steel...The strength of nature can be an impressive thing. Biologists, physicists, engineers and chemists alike often spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what makes things as strong as they are. What makes the shell of a clam rigid and tough? What makes the silk of a spider pliable yet strong?<br /><br />This is an area of research called biomaterials. The study of biological substances and their physical properties in terms of measurements like strength and stiffness.<br /><br /><a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/malagasy-spiders-spin-the-worlds.html">Recent research by scientists at the University of Puerto Rico</a> has revealed that the toughest material on the planet is spider silk. In particular, the trophy goes to the web-spinning silk of the Darwin's bark spider, which lives on the island of Madagascar. This spider spins enormous webs that extend across rivers. Therefore, they must stretch and contract as the trees (to which they're anchored) move in the wind.<br /><br />Spider silk, in general, is amazing stuff. It is a protein. It is both strong, meaning it resists breaking, and it is elastic, meaning it can deform and then recover its shape. Many materials have to trade off these properties. A substance can be very strong, like steel. But, steel is not elastic. If you bend steel, it will not return to its original shape. Spider silk, on average, has the same tensile strength as steel. But at the same time, it is very ductile, and can stretch about one and a half times its own length before breaking.<br /><br />The bark spider of Madagascar spins fibers that are stronger than the strongest known man-made substance, which is Kevlar. Kevlar can resist about twice the force of steel. This is why they make bullet-proof vests from the stuff.<br /><br />Spiders also can change the properties of their silk, by changing the water content of the silk. Most spiders can also weave more than one kind of silk, generally speaking there is strong silk that creates the support for the web, and sticky silk that catches the prey in the web. When you put these two abilities together, you end up with about a dozen distinctly recognizable kinds silk that can be produced by just one spider depending on the job at hand. The silk used to wrap up prey is even stronger than the silk used to support the web, and the silk used to form egg sacs is stronger still. Therefore, both of these silks are stronger, on average, than steel. At the other end of the spectrum, many spiders, particularly those that have just hatched, can extrude long, very thin strands of gossamer silk used for ballooning to new locations to settle and build their own webs.<br /><br />The impressive properties of spider silk make it popular for study by engineers hoping to mimic Mother Nature. Unfortunately, it is not possible to create spider ranches so that the spiders can do the work for us. Spiders are not like docile cattle, making them extremely poor candidates for domestication. Spiders are aggressive and will eat one another, making it inadvisable to keep many spiders together in the same space. Reproducing the properties of the silk with man-made mimics is the only viable option, though scientists have created transgenic goats that will produce spider silk (I’ll save the ethical debate about that sort of process for a later article!). <br /><br />For right now, the score is still Mother Nature 1, Humans 0 in terms of who can make the stronger substance.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-66996731796377792542010-09-17T14:10:00.000-07:002010-09-17T14:14:39.875-07:00Getting a Kick out of PhysicsI’ve written before about the physics of baseball, and in particular how curve balls curve. But, this year’s World Cup Futbol (that’s Eurospeak for soccer you know) got me thinking about the physics of soccer and scoring goals. And, since it is that season for some of you parents, youth soccer season, that is, here you go…<br /><br />The famous goal that recently <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/impossible-soccer-goal-explained.html">got headlines again</a>, in terms of the underlying science, was actually scored 13 years ago. In the June 3, 1997, match between France and Brazil. In the last seconds of the game, Brazilian Roberto Carlos scored what was later named the impossible goal. He kicked a ball towards one end of the goal, apparently way off target, that banked at the last second and dropped into the net. It tied the game and changed the team’s fate that year. It has the stuff of the mysterious dropping fastball in baseball.<br /><br />The secret was finally revealed this year by a team of French (of course) scientists. <br /><br />Soccer balls tend to curve or arc when kicked for much the same reason that curve balls curve in baseball. When they are kicked (or thrown) they tend to rotate. So, one side of the ball is rotating in the same direction as the ball itself, while the other side of the ball is rotating against the direction of motion. The side of the ball that is rotating against direction of motion gets slowed down, just a little, by the resulting friction, and the path of the ball starts to curve to that side. This is called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect">Magnus effect</a>, which explains the gently curving motion we typically see in tennis balls, golf balls, etc. What about the radical change in direction, like with old-fashioned spit-balls and this famous soccer goal?<br /><br />Spit-balls change drastically because the shape of the ball is altered. This causes the spin to be asymmetrical, and things start to wobble. Just think of your washing machine on the spin cycle with the load out of balance. It just takes one wobble to throw things really out of whack. If your washing machine drum were not attached to the machine, it would take one strong turn, and crash through your laundry room wall.<br /><br />Something quite different apparently happened with this soccer ball. No alteration of the ball was required. It was simply that the ball was kicked from so far away that the Magnus effect went into overdrive, so to speak. The forces on the right and left side of the ball got so out of balance that it started to wobble on its own, and the result was just like a dropping curve-ball. <br /><br />The key was that the kick was from really far away, 35 meters to be exact, and only a player like Roberto Carlos could deliver that kick with enough speed for it to actually make it to the goal, estimated at 130 kilometers per hour. Hence, you almost never see this happen. You never see it in baseball or tennis, the ball does simply not get to travel far enough. And, it is obviously incredibly rare even in soccer, kickers rarely deliver 100+ km/hr kicks. <br /><br />In fact, scientists did not know this was the outcome of the Magnus effect until seeing that goal, and spending many years since then studying it. It has now been replicated in the lab. We have yet to see if improvements in player training technology will yield more Carlos-style performances.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-74743667981381054302010-08-27T12:21:00.000-07:002010-08-27T12:35:20.380-07:00The cost of going organicA <a href="http://asunews.asu.edu/20100825_business_organicprices">recent study publicized at Arizona State University</a> really hit home the pros and cons of the organic food movement.<br /><br />This research revealed that most stores, grocery stores at least, now carry some form of organic foods for their customers. The number of organic offerings has been steadily increasing, and prices are slowly, ever so slowly, coming down.<br /><br />Why are the prices so high? I had always assumed that it was because of a reduction in the amount of product on the market. I am drawing here on my old Econ 101 course, which is rusty, at best. But, supply and demand theory dictates that if there is less supply, demand will go up, and prices will increase. I like that Economics works just about like Ecology, just with money instead of animals. Competition is competition. When resources are scarce, they become more valuable, competition becomes more intense. In fact, the mathematical concepts we teach students about population growth were developed by a banker interested in the nature of compounding interest on investments. But, I digress…<br /><br />Demand. Without fertilizers, the crops might yield less. Without pesticides, the crops might yield less. Less product, more demand. Demand is there in the first place because of public perception. People perceive that eating organic is better for them, and better for the environment. However, in this case, demand is out-pacing supply, and driving prices way up (think of gasoline as another example; people will typically pay whatever the price is at the pump, and frequently that price has nothing to do with the current price of a barrel of crude, and everything to do with the location of the gas station and if it is summer and people are going on driving vacations).<br /><br />Now, it IS more expensive to produce organic products, produce in particular was the focus of this research. Taking a traditional farm and re-fitting it, and its day-to-day practices, to organic standards is not easy, or cheap. So, naturally, the wholesale price of produce is higher. But, these researchers found that the profit margin did not come from the markup from wholesale to retail. Grocers typically make around a 75% profit on conventionally grown produce. They make only a 7% profit on organic produce. Yet, the grocers still sell the products because of the demand.<br /><br />This realization that the profit may lie in the hands of the producers is enticing more people to grow organic, despite the costs. This is actually a good thing, that the growers/suppliers should actually possess the market power. And, as this happens, and more product hits the market, good ol’ Econ 101 predicts that prices should fall. This means such produce will be more readily accessible. <br /><br />The real cost to you and I may come in the form of the foreign markets. Already, there have been suits brought against bargain grocery chains that claim to sell organic, when the product was not. The foreign growers are anxious to get in on a market where the power favors the growers. Indeed, cruising through most local stores these days reveals that much of the organic foods are not local, or American, in origin. There is a great debate among food purists about getting local, versus getting organic. The benefit of choosing local sources is that it keep your money local. The risk of foreign sources is that the foods may not be grown to the same standards. <br /><br />The old adage, you get what you pay for, still applies here, and if it seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.Swims With Fisheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15241577891280483969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-21911777377237372872010-07-26T15:27:00.000-07:002010-07-26T15:50:37.780-07:00What in the World?Or not.<br /><br />We, the inhabitants of this world we call Earth, have tended to think of our little planet as being rather special. It is the only one, or at least the only one that we know of, that harbors life.<br /><br />This is particularly special for me as a Biologist. Biology is the study of life. As such, I would be unemployable on any other planet. And, well, also likely dead. But, I digress…<br /><br />At a <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/data-leak-galaxy-rich-in-earth.html?rss=1">recent conference</a>, a scientist who is part of NASA’s <a href="http://kepler.nasa.gov/">Kepler</a> scientific team announced they had discovered many earth-like bodies in outer space. In fact, of the planets now discovered, planets that are earth-like dominate in terms of number. There are more earth-like planets than any other planets.<br /><br />What might it mean? Well, so far, no one knows. The earth-like planets are simply those that are nearly the same size as earth. That is the point of the <a href="http://kepler.nasa.gov/">Kepler satellite mission</a>. To map the galaxies, using size as first cut for determining which planets might be like our own little rocky planet, and might be habitable, or even inhabited. The Kepler satellite is looking specifically for earth-sized planets orbiting a star, just as we orbit our sun.<br /><br />But, finding earth-sized planets, in and of itself, is a pretty amazing finding. These apparently litter the Milky Way. And, until now, most of the new planets that have been discovered are more like the gas giants, like Jupiter and Neptune.<br /><br />The fact that we are a little rocky planet, by comparison, is actually pretty important, and pretty fundamental in the maintenance of life. Our planet has a surface that we can live on. We are the only planet with liquid water. And, we have an atmosphere that facilitates temperature and moisture regimes that we can tolerate. These things are not possible on large, gassy planets. So, it helps that these potential planets are earth-like in size.<br /><br />However, we do not yet know if they are rocky. Nor do we know if they are orbiting too close to, or too far from, their suns to maintain suitable temperatures. We do not know if they have water, or any sort of atmosphere.<br /><br />But, at least there is exciting new potential. Kepler scientists recently revealed that there might be more than <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/kepler-unveils-first-partial-lis.html">700</a> earth-like planets out there orbiting another star.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-50765583598132872512010-06-03T19:56:00.000-07:002010-06-03T20:09:27.502-07:00Dracula MinnowRecently I wrote about the <a href="http://swimswithfishes.blogspot.com/2010/01/vampire-squid.html">vampire squid</a>, and I argued that I really didn’t have to look any further for a more flashy, eye-grabbing title.<span style=""> </span>I stand corrected.<span style=""> </span>A group of scientists recently discovered a new minnow, and it has got a pair of choppers projecting from its jaws that earned it the name ‘dracula’. <a href="http://species.asu.edu/Top10">International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University</a> recently named it <a href="http://species.asu.edu/Top10">one of the top 10 new species of 2010</a>.<p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">Measuring just 17 millimeters long when fully grown, this little minnow, while tiny, is a close relative of the common goldfish, the carp, and the other minnows you might have known from childhood.<span style=""> </span>Many of your pet store variety fishes are in this group of carps and carp-like fishes.<span style=""> </span>And, if you have looked closely at Goldy residing in your child’s fish bowl, you might have noticed Goldy has no teeth.<span style=""> </span>This group of fishes has been around for a long time, and, in fact, lost anything even resembling true teeth nearly 50 million years ago.<span style=""> </span>But, the dracula minnow has developed bony spurs on its jaws that project through the skin and look just like <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2009/march/dracula-minnow-has-teeth-almost28552.html">nasty fangs</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">Just the male has these fangs.<span style=""> </span>Why?<span style=""> </span>It is completely unknown.<span style=""> </span>This little fish is completely transparent.<span style=""> </span>And, it is so small because its development was apparently truncated somehow.<span style=""> </span>So, the adults look like they are still larval fishes.<span style=""> </span>They possess at least forty fewer bones than other closely related adult fishes.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">Other species on <a href="http://species.asu.edu/Top10">this list</a> include an amazing carnivorous (yep, meat-eating) sponge, and bug-eating slug, an electric fish, <span style=""> </span>a psychedelic frogfish, a tiny new mushroom with the scientific name <i style="">Phallus</i> (I’ll let you Google it to see why it earned this name, though you probably don’t have to think too hard to figure it out), a new species of yam from Madagascar, a giant orb-weaving spider in which the female is four times larger than the male (they managed to figure out the male and female were of the same species), a deep-sea worm that shoots glowing green blobs of goo at its predators, and a giant carnivorous pitcher-plant the size of a football.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-55418962577739304492010-04-18T12:08:00.000-07:002010-04-18T12:15:22.478-07:00Got allergies? Get worms?I heard about something this week that literally grossed me out.<span style=""> </span>That is pretty difficult to do.<span style=""> </span>I routinely gross other people out – occupational hazard.<span style=""> </span>I talk about unsavory biological subjects at the dinner table (and just recently caused an innocent 9-year-old to lose her appetite).<span style=""> </span>So, if I hear something that is too much even for me, you know it has got to be truly gross.<span style=""> </span>It also means the gross thing is probably about parasites, because that is just about the only thing that sends me right over the top.<br /><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://topics.npr.org/article/0fI8dKD5mB83U">NPR</a> recently featured a story about a gentleman who had bad allergies and asthma, and intentionally infected himself with hookworms as a way to “cure” them.<span style=""> </span>I have allergies and asthma, and I am absolutely unwilling to infest myself with hookworm, or any other parasitic worm.<span style=""> </span>But, I was intrigued.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The basis for this man’s actions was the observation that allergies and asthma are pretty rare in undeveloped countries; countries where parasite infestations are rampant.<span style=""> </span>And, this is quite true.<span style=""> </span>But, are parasites the reason for the low incidence of allergies?<span style=""> </span>There are lots of other factors that could be at work here.<span style=""> </span>For example, the first thing that springs to my mind is that we are simply too clean here in the US.<span style=""> </span>Many studies have pointed out that we have sterilized our environment for our children to the point that they don’t build up immunity to the world around them as well as they used to.<span style=""> </span>We are too clean.<span style=""> </span>And, when they encounter the routine “stuff” floating around out there in the world, it affects them more strongly than it might otherwise.<span style=""> </span>Simply put, our kids need to be allowed to get dirty.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But, it turns out there is some merit to this allergy-parasite trade-off.<span style=""> </span>Parasites infect their hosts, but don’t want to kill them.<span style=""> </span>If the parasite kills its host, then it too will die.<span style=""> </span>A good parasite just knocks down the host’s immune system to the point that the host doesn’t attack it.<span style=""> </span>And, so the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19106698">theory</a> goes, with your immune system slightly impaired, you are also less likely to develop allergic responses.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Only a handful of clinical trials have been conducted because it is difficult to work with human subjects and to intentionally infect them with parasites.<span style=""> </span>The FDA won’t allow it in fact.<span style=""> </span>But, a few researchers in Europe have managed to try a few studies with something close to rigorous experimental conditions.<span style=""> </span>The results, so far, are mixed. <span style=""> </span>Work at the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19128351">University of Nottingham</a> suggests a reduced sensitivity to skin-prick tests in individuals infested.<span style=""> </span>However, studies at the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20030661">same institution</a> found only slight, and not scientifically significant, improvements in airway response.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, if you are an allergy sufferer right now, I would suggest that infesting yourself with hookworms is, perhaps, extreme, and gross.<span style=""> </span>But, there are strong leanings towards the notion that perhaps we can learn what hookworms do to their hosts, and mimic that, as an effective treatment for allergy sufferers.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-66900316436238559242010-04-02T12:30:00.000-07:002010-04-02T12:32:25.924-07:00How to mend a broken heartNope, this isn’t advice for the forlorn. I am referring to an actual physically broken heart. And, this represents cool science at its finest.<br /><br />Researchers have long been interested in animals that can repair themselves. Lizards and salamanders can drop their tails if they are caught by a predator, and then re-grow them. Fish can repair damaged fins. But, we humans cannot re-grow a limb if lost. Can we figure out how these other animals do this and put it to work?<br /><br /><a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/03/how-zebrafish-mend-a-broken-hear.html">Recent work</a> at the Salk Institute in San Diego purposely maimed the hearts of zebrafish (cute little aquarium fish you can find at your local pet store), and found they could regenerate up to 20% of that organ. That is a lot of heart to re-grow. <br /><br />The heart is probably the most important organ in your body. I say probably because your brain is right up there in terms of keeping things going from minute to minute. If your heart is damaged, and you are losing blood, you’ve got only a few minutes left. But, zebrafish can stop the bleed, and then slowly, over days, repair the damage eventually producing a heart that was as good as the former.<br /><br />How are they doing this? Science has long speculated that this is the work of stem cells. Stem cells are those cells that are not ‘determined’, meaning the kind of cell they are to become has not been decided yet by the body. They do not know yet what their job in life will be, be it bone cell or skin cell. Therefore, theoretically, we can use stem cells to initiate repairs. <br /><br />Stem cell research has gotten a lot of attention lately, much of it controversial. The problem is, philosophically, where stem cells come from. We have some stem cells as adults, such as in our bone barrow; they don’t divide as well, cannot turn into as many things, and do not initiate repair as well as embryonic stem cells. Back in the 70’s scientists were able to make embryonic stem cells divide, meaning they can make more of them. Embryonic stem cells are completely undetermined, as opposed to adult stem cells, and most of our understanding of organ development and tissue repair has come from this line of work. Though, we have made breakthroughs in the last couple of years with adult stem cells. There is terrific coverage of this research and the controversy at the <a href="http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/.">NIH website</a>.<br /><br />But, the amazing thing about <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/03/how-zebrafish-mend-a-broken-hear.html">this heart research</a> is that it is not stem cells initiating the repair. Adult heart cells are doing the work. The adult heart cells initiate a repair response, much like a stem cell, and then divide rapidly to do the work. Other researchers tried this study in mice, to see if mammals could do what the fish could. They found out that the mammalian adult heart cells went back into a sort of stem cell like state and began to initiate repairs, but the cells did not proliferate, they did not divide. So, there were not enough of them to do the job. The trick now is getting them to proliferate. And, that is probably going to take some more research on stem cells to figure out how and why they proliferate, when the adult cells cannot. <br /><br />In the meantime, try to keep your heart intact for a little while longer. We don’t have the fix quite yet.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-64475475497892058342010-01-27T21:34:00.000-08:002010-01-27T22:10:01.161-08:00Vampire SquidWith a name like vampire squid, I really don’t have to look any further for a flashy, eye-grabbing title. Yep, there is a squid out there actually called the vampire squid. Have you seen it? If you have not, you really should. How can you resist with a name like that?<br /><br />Luckily, you can see this fab deep-sea denizen thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (<a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.mbari.org">MBARI</a>) and their incredible remotely operated vehicle (ROV) technology that allows them, and now you, to watch these animals in their natural habitat. Some of this incredible footage was just placed on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J8eTT8xvaQ">YouTube</a> for everyone to see.<br /><br />The vampire squid, or <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampyroteuthis</span>, is actually not considered a true squid, but is a close relative of both squids and octopods, all of which form the group known as cephalopods. There are many true squids in the squid family, and many octopods in the octopus family, but only one <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampyroteuthis</span>. A single species that, in and of itself, makes up the last remaining member of its family. It is considered a phylogenetic relic; a remnant of a group of organisms that has long since gone extinct.<br /><br />You probably wont see this creature on display at the <a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/">Monterey Bay Aquarium</a> any time soon. It routinely lives between 2000 and 3000 feet, in a region called the Oxygen Minimum Zone, or OMZ. This is a hard habitat to replicate, not to mention how difficult it is to capture and transport one of these fragile animals successfully.<br /><br />And they are, in fact, fairly fragile. They reach only a foot in length when fully grown. They’re sort of squishy and gelatinous. They swim slowly, and spend much of the time drifting passively. Swimming fast probably isn’t something they can pull off too often. Because they live in cold, oxygen-poor regions of the deep-sea, <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampyroteuthis</span> has a very low metabolism, the lowest of any cephalopod.<br /><br />The vampire squid also does not suck blood, or turn into a bat at night. However, it does have wing-like fins on the sides of its head, which propel <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampyroteuthis</span> through the water. And, it has webbing between its legs that almost give it the appearance of being wrapped in a cape or cloak. It is dark reddish black in color, and lives in the deep ocean where there is virtually no light from the sun.<br /><br />Light from the sun, however, is not needed for <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampyroteuthis</span>. Instead, it makes its own light, as it is covered with light producing organs called photophores. It has highly sensitive eyes. Cephalopod eyes, in general, have many of the same features as the vertebrate eye (that’s your and my eye). Therefore, they have very good vision, and a relatively well-developed nervous system for processing that information.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Vampyroteuthis</span> also lacks two abilities common in other cephalopods. It cannot change color. And, it does not ‘ink.’ However, these two features are hardly needed in the deep-ocean habitat.<br /><br />Be sure to check out the links!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-61473852059607365812010-01-25T19:38:00.000-08:002010-01-25T20:16:59.795-08:00Anniversaries and New ConnectionsIt is the one year anniversary of publishing my column in the Marina Gazette. When I started writing the column I re-dedicated this blog to the same effort. In honor of both of their first birthdays, I have started a new <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Think-Science/270577516236?ref=nf">Facebook</a> page to share the information more easily. I hope you enjoy the expanded venue!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-3802181981323641442010-01-19T14:23:00.000-08:002010-10-15T13:01:14.044-07:00What is the Meaning of This?Today we will chat about words; their history, their common usage, and their evolution within language. This is the science of etymology. My inspiration from this comes from my eldest, dearest darling of a child (insert whatever brand of personal sarcasm you prefer here), the young Mr. Think Science, Jr.<br /><br />Each Monday TS Jr. comes home with a list of spelling/vocabulary words that he is meant to write several times, and then look up in the dictionary and define. Now this dictionary that we use at home is rather sentimental, as dictionaries go. It was my mother’s in college, and she gave it to me in high school. It is huge, and heavy, and literally fifty years old. The fact that it is huge and heavy causes some complaining when it must be dragged to the kitchen table, and I am secretly convinced that it gains at least twenty pounds in weight whenever touched by my dear child, or so you would think based upon how he carries on about having to drag this hulking beast from his room. Personally, I think this is ‘character building’, and I think he should have to carry this dictionary in his backpack to school, walking uphill both ways, like I did as a child…in the snow…in Arizona…but I digress. I may have to change my stance on this.<br /><br />I recently learned the limitations of a 50-year old dictionary. For one, it does not have words in it that were invented in the modern age, such as ‘unfriend.’ You might recall from previous posts that this was The Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2009. The second limitation is really the same limitation, and that is that this dictionary was written in a different era.<br /><br />At little background is needed about now - I have been harping on TS Jr. to choose the first definition given for each word, since that is usually the most common definition. He, of course, chooses whichever definition is the shortest. Therefore, many words on his list, prior to my scrutiny, have simple, but not inaccurate, definitions such as ‘noun.’<br /><br />The word of the moment, whose true and detailed meaning we were anxiously waiting to reveal, was ‘chartreuse.’ And, in my 50-year-old dictionary, the definition for chartreuse is ‘a green or yellow aromatic liqueur’ (insert dramatic pause here to simulate new conundrum for mostly politically correct parental unit, aka me). I did not even know there was a liqueur called Chartreuse.<br /><br />Darling TS Jr. subsequently won the battle that ensued about changing the definition to a more ‘school-appropriate’ definition, since, as he aptly pointed out, that WAS the first definition. So, that is the definition on his homework. I believe this is what they call ‘eating your words’ and TS Jr. skipped all the way to class, backpack sans giant dictionary, with the revelation that never again would he be held to the first definition of a word and might yet be able to get away with such concise and profoundly accurate definitions as ‘noun.’<br /><br />Chartreuse is a French liqueur that contains 132 herbal extracts. Produced by monks, the alcohol gets its name from their home, the Grande Chartreuse monastery located in the Chartreuse Mountains. Chartreuse was originally thought to be an elixir of long life, stemming from a recipe obtained by the monks in 1605, and was 71% alcohol. The more modern Green and Yellow varieties, which tend more towards green and yellow coloration respectively, range from 55 to 40%. Sadly, the monks were expelled from France in 1903 when the French government attempted to take over both the monastery and the highly profitable Chartreuse production business. The monks simply moved to Spain and kept on making Chartreuse under a slightly different label. Attempts to reproduce the monk’s secret recipe failed miserably, the company went bankrupt, and the monks were allowed to return in 1927. The monastery was destroyed by a mudslide in 1935 and production was moved to nearby Voiron where it continues today. Thank you, Wikipedia. None of that information was in any of the dictionaries that I consulted.<br /><br />The color that we refer to as ‘chartreuse’ comes from the color of the original alcohol, a very bright color between green and yellow. Today we might refer to this color as fluorescent green. The greenish color comes from the chlorophyll in those 132 herbs. And chlorophyll, does, in fact, fluoresce. Recall from your basic biology that chlorophyll is the green pigment that plants use to absorb light for photosynthesis, which is the process by which they produce new tissue and grow - you just knew I’d slip the science there somehow.<br /><br />My note to the teacher along with the homework - Please don't suspend my child. I will buy a new dictionary this weekend.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-69434165918377142922009-12-28T20:27:00.000-08:002010-01-27T22:09:22.938-08:00What's In a Name?Names are important - they tell us what things are, and what they are not.<br /><br />Recently, two high-schoolers from Trinity High School in New York undertook a most amazing science project. With the help of <a href="http://phe.rockefeller.edu/barcode/dnahouse.html">Rockefeller University</a> and the <a href="http://congen.amnh.org/research.html">American Museum Of Natural History</a>, they collected objects around them to determine their DNA identities. They compared the DNA sequences from their objects to a DNA library known in the scientific community as <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/">GenBank</a>.<br /><br />Their first finding was, unfortunately, not unusual among such studies. They found that 17% of the food products that they tested were actually misrepresented by the names on their labels (see <a href="http://phe.rockefeller.edu/barcode/FINAL%20DNA%20House.pdf">press release</a>). Such food products included a brand of sheep's milk cheese that was actually made from cow's milk, venison dog treats made of beef; gourmet sturgeon caviar that was actually Mississippi paddlefish, a delicacy called “dried shark” which was freshwater Nile perch, dried smelt that was instead Japanese anchovy, and “Caribbean Red snapper” that turned out to be Malabar blood snapper from Southeast Asia.<br /><br />Their study is the latest of many papers that have cast doubt on the foods we eat, particularly some of the more extravagant ones. Last year, two <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/science/22fish.html?_r=1">other students from Trinity High School</a> tested the sushi in local restaurants and found that other fish species were often substituted from some of the higher end ones. Of course, despite being rather underhanded, this may work out in the fishes’ favor, as the cheaper fish tend to be more abundant (which is why they are cheaper), and are perhaps less threatened by fishing pressure. But, this is not universally so. Fish that cannot be traded legally often get processed and sold under pseudonyms. A full 25% of fish tested in that study proved to be entirely other fish. Of these, at least one was a species that is farmed and on the <a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx">Monterey Bay Aquarium’s ‘safe’ list</a> (but it is not nearly worth the price of the species it was masquerading as), and another was a federally listed endangered species.<br /><br />Their second finding was truly inspired. The pair discovered what is potentially a new species of cockroach. If it proves to be new to science, the two will get to choose its name. This means both a common name, and its scientific name - the name that will be recognized by scientists the world over, no matter what language they speak, as belonging to this species and this species only.<br /><br />The scientific name is a latin name consisting of two parts; a binomial consisting of the genus and species names. For example, we are <span style="font-style: italic;">Homo sapiens</span>, of the genus ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">Homo</span>’, and the species ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">sapiens</span>’. Note that species are never referred to as just their species name. So, we would never call ourselves just ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">sapiens</span>.’ We are <span style="font-style: italic;">Homo sapiens</span>, or <span style="font-style: italic;">H. sapiens</span>. Also note that the species portion of the binomial is not capitalized; only the generic, or genus, name. And, that the genus and species names are italicized.<span style=";font-family:";" ></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -13.5pt;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->The name of the common cockroach in New York City, the American cockroach, is known the world over as <span style="font-style: italic;">Periplaneta americana</span>. The cockroach was, in fact, named by Carl Lineaus, the Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who developed the binomial naming system. He named and classified over 1200 species of plants and animals. Many of those names, like <span style="font-style: italic;">Periplaneta americana</span>, are still in use today. Hopefully, the name for this new species of cockroach will persist for as long.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-78108027868391680642009-12-18T10:18:00.000-08:002009-12-18T10:25:41.313-08:00When Science Has it all WrongIt is human nature to look around us and try to make sense of what we see. So, of course, when observers of the natural world long ago realized that there were female crab spiders that came in different colors, they wondered why. It appeared that yellow spiders lived in yellow wildflowers and white spiders lived in white wildflowers. Therefore, the obvious conclusion, color differences must be for camouflage. Yellow spiders resting on yellow flowers are practically invisible – to us.<br /><br />Crab spiders eat wasps (this is one spider I would not mind having in my backyard). They sit in the center of the wildflower, and wait. Wasps come to the flower to collect nectar, and the perfectly camouflaged spider is waiting there, and happily collects dinner.<br /><br />It is completely logical and downright sensible. In an homage to Rudyard Kipling, I argue that this is the perfect ‘just-so’ story. So much so, why would any scientist bother to test this? <br /><br />But, it turns out that this idea has never been tested. That the spiders eat wasps as described above is known. But, is the camouflage important? Do yellow spiders on yellow plants actually do better at capturing wasps than yellow spiders on white plants, or white spiders on yellow plants? Shockingly, they do not, as featured in the journal <a href="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/science-shots/">Science's ScienceShots</a>. The camouflaged spiders are no better than non-camoflauged spiders. Yellow spiders on white, yellow, or purple flowers all have the same success, as do white spiders.<br /><br />So, why do the spiders come in different colors? They both eat the same food (wasps), so it is not food causing the color change. They cannot actually change colors when they move to different flowers, so it is something they are born with, and they must then choose the right flower in order to be hidden effectively. Perhaps the spiders are camouflaged in order to be protected from their predators, whatever organism is seeking them out for dinner. I am guessing birds. Or, perhaps it is as the <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/10/29/rspb.2009.1632.abstract">authors of this research</a> speculate; not about camouflage at all. The different colors have differing UV protective qualities. The point is – we’ve got no idea.<br /><br />I recently gave a presentation of my own research to my group of graduate students at our weekly meeting. I was interrupted a few minutes into my presentation by a student who asked “wait a minute, this relationship seems so obvious, don’t we already know this?” Turns out, young grasshopper, that we do not. And, the conclusion was not as it would have seemed to be, on the surface of it all.<br /><br />That we do not yet know all there is to know about the natural world is reassuring to me. One – job security. Two – the natural world still contains the greatest mysteries of all time. It is enough to keep me entertained for probably the rest of my days.<br /><br />So, why does the giraffe have a long neck? Giraffes, it turns out, have not evolved long necks in order to gather leaves from tall trees, though those necks are still darn handy in that regard. Long necks are a sexually-selected trait. Meaning, females prefer males with long necks, and have, with their choosiness, driven the course of evolution. Much like the infamous Tule Elk, whose antlers are so large that the largest males cannot lift their heads off the ground. Biology isn’t always logical, but those female Tule Elk sure like large antlers. <br /><br />Are blue whales the largest animals ever to roam the earth? And, does the fact that they are in the water, and do not have to bear their weight on land, allow them to get so large. There is pretty convincing evidence now that there were dinosaurs much heavier than blue whales, and that they lived on land. <br /><br />As for how the leopard got its spots, well Rudyard Kipling had this one pretty close to right in his Just So Stories. The hunter in the story observed that the animals, without their stripes and spots, “ought to show up in this dark place like ripe bananas in a smokehouse.” I’m pretty sure he is spot on.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-47214347708303763972009-12-01T14:53:00.000-08:002009-12-18T11:37:46.447-08:00The Science of…Facebook?After writing about YouTube and Twitter last week you knew I’d have to get to Facebook eventually. A recent study <a href="http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/facebook-profiles-capture-true-personality-according-new-psychology-research-27773.html">about to be published</a> in the journal Psychological Science has revealed something I find intrinsically fascinating – that Facebook profiles actually capture people’s true personalities.<br /><br />Now, I am not suggesting that Facebook provides you with some deep understanding of a person and can in anyway replace meaningful, in-person interaction. Even as a regular Facebook user, I will put this caveat right up front. But, what this study revealed is that people essentially tell the truth about who they are when they create their profiles, take those little quizzes, and so on. I find that downright amazing. Isn’t this the standing fear with on-line dating, that you will show up to meet the person (since you cannot have an on-line marriage…but maybe you can now with Facebook), and they’ll be totally different from how they advertised themselves in their profile?<br /><br />Case in point: Facebook allows you to post whatever picture you want. And, I view the posting of that picture as something akin to attending my high-school reunion. I have not seen these people in a long time, some of them were mean and snooty, and I want to impress them when they see me. And, I do not mind admitting that I would like to impress them with my clearly adorable and smart children, my own obviously stunning intellect, and of course my age-defying good looks. And, this is why there is currently a cartoon version of me on my Facebook page. One that is 20 pounds lighter than the actual me (though not nearly as witty and smart because she’s really very two-dimensional).<br /><br />I do love that Facebook has allowed me to find old school classmates from across the globe and reconnect with them. And, I am somewhat amazed that when I do find the time to take those little quizzes that I do answer them honestly. Based upon their findings, the authors of the study suggest that this is because “online social networks are not so much about providing positive spin for the profile owners, but are instead just another medium for engaging in genuine social interactions, much like the telephone."<br /><br />The researchers claim that the psychology behind the success of sites such as Facebook comes from the basic human need to be known by others. If the information people got from Facebook could not be trusted, then it would quickly fall out of favor because we wouldn’t actually know each other at all.<br /><br />What I am equally surprised by is my own observation of just how much people will put “out there” on Facebook. I’ve seen posts by people blasting their spouses, posts by students blasting their professors, and by employees blasting their bosses. In many of those cases I know/work with/like both the post-er (plaintiff) and the post-ee (defendant) and think to myself “Oh dear, should I know this? Should I do something?” Of course, there is really no need for me to say anything because there is one thing that Facebook obviously isn’t. It isn’t private. Do our usual filters that prevent us from making career- or relationship-ending statements shut down because it is just us and the computer, mano-a-machino, when we are typing? Are we under the impression that the 200 or so people we have “friended” are our circle of dearest and best friends that should all be trusted with our most intimate thoughts the very moment that we have them?<br /><br />Additional research published in <a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122659025/HTMLSTART">Psychological Science</a> suggests, oddly, that people tend not to adopt “stable disclosure strategies,” and reveal too much information in situations such as on-line social websites. People tend also not to reveal enough information when they most need to, such as admitting unhealthy habits to a physician during an exam. They attribute this to a level of fluency – which they describe as the ability to process information. We are comfortable and process information easily in our little Facebook worlds. We are often uncomfortable, and don’t necessarily understand the medical jargon being used, in our doctor’s offices. In the latter setting, we don’t process information easily, and we are less likely to reveal information about ourselves.<br /><br />In closing, I add this lovely tidbit. Each year new words are added to the dictionary as new colloquialisms are added to our language. The <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/bizarre&id=7123419">Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year</a> for 2009 is “unfriend”, as in "To remove someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-9233652311676268712009-11-13T18:00:00.000-08:002010-01-19T14:31:31.447-08:00Viral VideoScience, Twitter, and YouTube? Seems like one of these things is not like the others (remember the old Sesame Street song?). But, sure enough, internet tools like Twitter and YouTube are being used to convey science to the world, and not just scientists.<br /><br />Two recent, and most fabulous, examples hit my e-mail inbox today, and could not demonstrate the phenomenon more aptly.<br /><br />The first came in the form of a message from a friend and colleague, with a link to his colleague’s blog post. These two colleagues co-teach a course. My friend showed a neat video as part of his lecture, to demonstrate a fascinating bit of evolution, about the sling-jaw wrasse. Like the name implies, the sling-jaw wrasse has developed a series of hinges and joints in the head that allows it to literally throw its jaws at its prey. This is what I do for a living – study how animals work. I was sent the message because I had worked a little bit on this particular species (but I was not the one to discover the most amazing biological feat I just told you about). <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDU4CQWXaNY">Check it out</a>. Or, just do a search for “Epibulus” in Youtube.<br /><br />The sling-jaw wrasse is amazing. What I find more amazing is that the colleague posted a twitter feed that went something like this “My co-instructor showed this crazy sling-jaw wrasse video in our class today” with the link above. A few folks tweeted back. It hit a couple of blogs, including Discover Magazine….then web news sites, then the London Telegraph (a newspaper), and a week later there had been 165,000 views of the YouTube video.<br /><br />The second example hit my inbox just one hour and twenty-six minutes earlier, courtesy of ScienceNow. This is about bone worms. You know with a name like bone worms, these have got to be cool animals. Researchers right here in Monterey Bay, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, have been studying these worms that show up at food falls in the deep sea. Whales die, sink, and become an important source of nutrition for the next several years for species like bone worms. These worms arrive at the carcass as larvae, and metamorphose into adult females. Additional larvae that arrive after that point settle on the females and become males, living in a sort of harem serving the female (there is just something quite fabulous about that). Researchers have been sinking carcasses that wash up on the beach for the last few years and tracking who shows up. Turns about there are at least 15 species of these worms in Monterey Bay, most of them new to science. Check out the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URi8KccVkks">bone worms in action</a>. Or, just search for “MBARI bone worms” in YouTube.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-17670742103230345652009-11-13T17:59:00.000-08:002010-01-19T14:32:27.806-08:00Sustainable Sushi?I’m flying the friendly skies as I prepare this latest entry for you all, and I am motivated by a feature I have just read in the magazine in the seat pocket in front of me. It is a piece about sustainable sushi by Jane Black (Hemispheres Magazine, October 2009).<br /><br />These types of articles usually draw my attention for several reasons. However, it is not because I am a marine scientist and want to read about the ocean all the time (that could not be farther from the truth). Mostly, I am curious to see what sort of angle they will take. Usually they are fatalistic. The world is going to hell in a hand-basket, oh my. And, thusly I am drawn to them as a scientist much like spectators to a train wreck. I just cannot look away. At this point I must note that I, for one, do not think the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. While I do think we humans have created some real serious problems, I don’t agree with the twisted, sensationalist, non-scientifically based claims that say, for example, the entire ocean will have run out of fish in a decade. This article has the familiar undertones, but is remarkably optimistic, so I read on.<br /><br />So, the points made by this particular article include that bluefin tuna populations are in bad trouble. Yep, that one is irrefutable and completely true. And, farmed salmon is bad for the environment. Yep, also true. They make the point that only certain types of fish should be avoided. I could not agree more. There is a trend now among hip sushi restaurants in places like New York and San Francisco to offer alternatives. Chefs are creating tasty new versions of sushi from fish that are sustainably harvested and these are as delicious as the traditional toro and unagi.<br /><br />That these particular fish should be avoided, however, has been known by scientists and management agencies for a rather long time. Why has it taken so long for this to get the public’s attention? Especially when people are already becoming quite used to reading labels and looking for clues that the food you are buying is healthy and safe. It was suggested that people see the beautiful pieces of sushi on the plate and don’t connect them to the real world out there. They don’t realize that they are fish, part of the natural world and part of an interconnected web that sustains the planet. I suppose that could be part of it. But, I doubt it. Sushi is unmistakably fish. At least it is to me. Occupational hazard? Very likely.<br /><br />I suggest that the reason people are not vigilant about their sushi in a way that they might be vigilant about the other things they buy and ingest is because of the culture of sushi itself. Sushi is an art as mush as it is a meal. Sushi celebrates the ocean. And, it is, generally speaking, among the healthiest meals you can find. Patrons step into this world and worrying about labels is a worry left behind. It is replaced, instead, by a sense of trust. How can something that celebrates so much goodness possibly be bad?<br /><br />I’ve written about this type of security before. Many grocery store chains bearing healthy names and healthy slogans also pack their isles, and frozen fish cases, with environmentally unfriendly products. Some of these are also downright unhealthy. Some farmed fishes, for example, are fed artificial diets and pack the wrong kind of omega fatty acids, and therefore can do more harm than good to your cholesterol levels.<br /><br />In terms of what you should or should not eat, it is really a case-by-case basis. If you are not carrying a Seafood Watch card, download one, or stop by the Monterey Bay Aquarium to get yours for free. It is among the handiest little tools out there. There is also a free app if you have an iPhone or similar device (just a little plug to keep my Apple stock on the rise).<br /><br />Wild-caught Alaskan salmon, for example, is considered a pretty good choice. If you can find out what your favorite sushi chef is serving, you stand a pretty good chance of enjoying a meal of sushi that is good for you, and for the environment.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137599217518476917.post-15732262798107421652009-11-13T17:55:00.000-08:002009-11-13T17:59:21.616-08:00Moving Time and SpaceThis past week I had the pleasure of experiencing Washington DC with my extended family and my children. I lived in the greater DC area for several years as a child, and have fond memories of the National Museum of Natural History and the gigantic whale suspended from the ceiling. Though I have had many opportunities to return to DC for work, I have been waiting until I thought my own children would be old enough to remember the trip to take them. This week, with MPUSD in recess, was it.<br /><br />We did the requisite trips to see the memorials and monuments. The Washington Monument reflecting on the water is still incredible, and the Lincoln Memorial still takes my breath away. The sight of the White House, lit at night, is a truly patriotic thing no matter what political party you belong to. I’ve stood there with Democrats and Republicans in power, and the effect is still the same, pure awe and respect. The National Museum of Natural History is still amazing. Fully assembled dinosaur bones, full-sized African elephants, whales suspended from the ceiling, and all. That particular museum, and my childhood memories, combined with my more recent trips as a researcher relegated to the collections stored in the catacombs in the basement of this fine institution, was my main motivation for the trip.<br /><br />But, this time, with my kids, the site I found most moving was standing beneath the space shuttle Endeavor in the Air and Space Museum. The Endeavor never actually went into space, it was set up as a training shuttle. But, the sheer intensity of this actual ship literally inches from my face was almost heart-stopping. The strides we have made in this particular area of science are truly awesome. The mistakes…devastating. I remember sitting in my classroom in elementary school as the first civilian went into space, a teacher no less. This was to be a momentous day! There was a television brought into every classroom. We were glued to the broadcast. And, then, the worst possible thing happened. The spacecraft exploded, as we all watched. I knew it was awful, but I was too young to comprehend that the unimaginable had just happened. My teachers openly wept. I thought of this as I looked at the Endeavor.<br /><br />And, what brought tears to my eyes, holding my son’s hand in the same museum, was standing under the Enola Gay and explaining to him the significance of that particular airplane, which, I am proud to say, I remembered without reading the elegantly framed placard in front of me. The payload of the Enola Gay represented the single most significant scientific accomplishment of the day. An accomplishment that was simultaneously the most devastating known to man, and subsequently brought an end to a World War.<br /><br />The Air and Space Museum was always my father’s favorite museum. He is an engineer. I thought it made sense given his career. Now, however, I understand it from the perspective of a parent. The Air and Space Museum, like no other, represents the amazing strides we have made as a human race, and all that we hope will come to be in our children’s lifetimes, and their children’s lifetimes. We hope the science will be used for good; to find a cure for cancer, to end world hunger, to create world peace. Science can be also devastating. I lived in fear of a nuclear holocaust as a child. Global warming now haunts my children. And global warming is, in fact, the product of science run amok.<br /><br />For better or for worse, science holds the key to the future. When I was a child I think we trusted that science would always make life better. Or at least I saw the world that way, through the eyes of a child. Now, I can only hope that science holds the promise of a great life for our children and grandchildren. We have seen the devastation that can be wrought. Yet, we hope that humanity will prevail and rational minds will guide science so that life for our children is better than we have now. That is all we ever want as parents.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0