The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Snail spit kills pain.

I have a vague memory of writing a story back in the 1990s about researchers trying to figure out how to use lethal cone snail venom for medical purposes. Well, EurekAlert says they finally succeeded:

[Chemical & Engineering News] Senior Editor Bethany Halford notes that a sea snails’ saliva contains chemicals that help the slow-moving creatures catch prey.
…
Now scientists in Australia have developed a form of the painkiller that can be given by mouth. It relieves severe pain, such as that in people with peripheral neuropathy, at a much lower dose than existing medications and without the risk of causing addiction. The article quotes one expert as speculating that such a drug could revolutionize the treatment of the most severe forms of pain.

More at C&EN. (Best part: how chemists figured out the way to get the toxin to work by studying Congolese herbal remedies.)

Entered on 29 July 2010 at 6:56 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Super-scum. Again.

This is more covering-the-coverage than flogging a new discovery, but the New York Times is keeping tabs on the process of turning pond scum into an industrial fuel source:

Foreign genes are being spliced into algae and native genes are being tweaked.

Different strains of algae are pitted against one another in survival-of-the-fittest contests in an effort to accelerate the evolution of fast-growing, hardy strains.

The goal is nothing less than to create superalgae, highly efficient at converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into lipids and oils that can be sent to a refinery and made into diesel or jet fuel.

…

Dozens of companies, as well as many academic laboratories, are pursuing the same goal — to produce algae as a source of, literally, green energy. And many of them are using genetic engineering or other biological techniques, like chemically induced mutations, to improve how algae functions.

“There are probably well over 100 academic efforts to use genetic engineering to optimize biofuel production from algae,” said Matthew C. Posewitz, an assistant professor of chemistry at the Colorado School of Mines, who has written a review of the field. “There’s just intense interest globally.”

Entered on 28 July 2010 at 6:01 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Teen motherhood: Evolutionary strategy.

There’s a whole shovel-load of politics wrapped up in this New Scientist report on the evolutionary effects of poverty on human reproduction:

There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won’t just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society’s problems are – and it will suggest better solutions.

Evolutionary theory predicts that if you are a mammal growing up in a harsh, unpredictable environment where you are susceptible to disease and might die young, then you should follow a “fast” reproductive strategy – grow up quickly, and have offspring early and close together so you can ensure leaving some viable progeny before you become ill or die. For a range of animal species there is evidence that this does happen. Now research suggests that humans are no exception.

…

It is not simply a case of teenage girls from deprived backgrounds accidentally becoming pregnant. Evidence from many sources suggests that teen pregnancy rates are similar in poor and affluent communities. However, motherhood is a choice, as both Geronimus and Johns are keen to point out. Teenage girls from affluent backgrounds are more likely to have abortions than their less-privileged peers. In terms of reproduction, the more affluent girls are best off concentrating on their own career and development so that they can invest more in the children they have at a later stage. “It seems that girls are assessing their life chances on a number of fronts and making conscious decisions about reproduction,” says Johns.

…

Still, reducing poverty alone probably isn’t the answer. In their book The Spirit Level (Allen Lane, 2009), epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, of the universities of Nottingham and York, UK, respectively, emphasise the degree of income inequality in a society rather than poverty per se as being a major factor in issues such as death and disease rates, teenage motherhood and levels of violence. They show that nations such as the US and UK, which have the greatest inequality in income levels of all developed nations, also have the lowest life expectancy among those nations, the highest levels of teenage motherhood (see diagrams) and a range of social problems.

Observation 1: These studies are just dying to be misquoted.

Observation 2: We are never as smart or self-determined as we want to be. Our environments constrain us. In other words, these things matter.

Entered on 27 July 2010 at 6:21 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Venus and the Ark, by Anne Sexton

The missile to launch a missile
was almost a secret.
Two male Ph.D.’s were picked
and primed to fill it
and one hundred
carefully counted insects,
three almost new snakes,
coiled in a cube,
exactly fifty fish creatures
in tanks, the necessary files,
twenty bars of food, ten brief cures,
special locks, fourteen white rats,
fourteen black rats, a pouch of dirt,
were all stuffed aboard before
the thing blasted from the desert.

And the missile that launched
a missile launched out
into a marvelous scientific balloon
that rolled and bobbed about
in the mists of Venus; suddenly
sank like a sweet fat grape,
oozing past gravity to snuggle
down upon the triumphant shape
of space. The two men signaled
Earth, telling their Continent
VENUS IS GREEN. And parades assembled,
the loud earth tellers spent
all fifteen minutes on it, even
shortened their weather forecast.
But rival nations, angry and oily,
fired up their best atom blast
and the last Earth war was done.
The place became crater on each side,
sank down to its first skull,
shedding forests, oceans, dried
dones and neons, as it fell through
time like a forgotten pitted stone.

These two men walked hopefully out
onto their hot empty planet
with machines, rats, tanks,
boxes, insects and the one odd set
of three almost new snakes,
to make the tests they were meant to do.
But on the seventh month the cages
grew small, too small to interview,
too tight to bear. The rats were gray
and heavy things where they ran
against wire and the snakes built eggs
on eggs and even the fish began
to bump in water as they spawned
on every side of each other’s swim.
And the men grew listless; they opened
the pouch of dirt, undid each locked bin
and let every creature loose
to live on Venus, or anyhow hide
under rocks. Bees swarmed the air,
letting a warm pollen slide
from their wings and onto the grass.
The fish flapped to a small pool
and the rats untangled their hairs
and humped over the vestibule
of the cramped balloon. Trees sprang
from lichen, the rock became a park,
where, even at star-time, things brushed;
even in the planet’s new dark
crotch, that air snag where snakes
coupled and rats rubbed in disrepair,
it grew quick and noisy with
a kind of wonder in the lonely air.

Old and withered, two Ph.D.’s
from Earth hobbled slowly back
to their empty balloon, crying alone
for sense, for the troubling lack
of something they ought to do,
while countless fish slapped
and the waters grew, green came
taller and the happy rats sped
through integrated forests,
barking like dogs at the top
of the sky. But the two men,
that last morning of death, before
the first of light, watched the land
of Venus, its sweetless shore,
and thought, “This is the end.
This is the last of a man like me.”
Until they saw, over the mists
of Venus, two fish creatures stop
on spangled legs and crawl
from the belly of the sea.
And from the planet park
they heard the new fruit drop.

Found on PoetryFoundation.org; this is not the first time that Anne Sexton has been mentioned on these pages in the context of interplanetary exploration.

I knew it. Always.

Entered on 25 July 2010 at 6:27 in the Science Art file | 1 Observation |  Print

SONG: nobody else can hear

SONG: “nobody else can hear”. _{(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Super squid sex organ discovered”, BBC News, 7 July 2010, as used in the post Super squid penis.

ABSTRACT: This is sort of filling a request. It could be a song from one marine biologist to another, or a song from one squid to another. I tried to make it feel like it must feel for abyssal squid species to get intimate – a little bit cold and distant while still, you know, penetrating each other’s deepest mysteries. Ahem.

Recording was fairly simple: ukulele and vox, with lots of MIDI drums and SoundFont strings added after the fact. I was kind of aiming for something between Joanna Newsom and Portished, from a composition standpoint, only, you know, lo-fi. Since that’s how I roll. Plus, you know, I’m not a girl, so I can’t do that breathy vocal thing without sounding pretty creepy. Which is only right for a priapic squid, I suppose. I hope you enjoy it, Liesbeth. If I had more time, I’d probably simplify the cello and bass parts, then build them up again with lots of counterpoint. And maybe get a real drummer rather than programming this machine. But you get the idea.

Entered on 23 July 2010 at 6:21 in the Songs file | 1 Observation |  Print

How NASA finds oil.

Unfortunately, as NPR reveals, we’re not talking about the kind that’s still safely underground:

The NASA Earth Observatory explains that since ocean waters are never perfectly smooth, the sun’s reflection gets scattered off the surface in many directions. This yields a broad stripe of sunlight across the ocean in most satellite photographs.

But things change when you add oil to the water.

Diagrams and space photos (oo! a two-fer!) at the link.

Entered on 22 July 2010 at 6:15 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

X in uniform.

MAPS has published a study confirming that MDMA really does work in treating post-traumatic stress disorder:

Participants treated with a combination of MDMA and psychotherapy saw clinically and statistically significant improvements in their PTSD – over 80% of the trial group no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, stipulated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV-TR) following the trial, compared to only 25% of the placebo group. In addition, all three subjects who reported being unable to work due to PTSD were able to return to work following treatment with MDMA.

The trial centred on two eight-hour psychotherapy sessions scheduled about 3-5 weeks apart, where 12 subjects received MDMA, and eight took a placebo. Subjects were also given psychotherapy on a weekly basis before and after each experimental session. A blinded, independent rater tested each subject using a PTSD scale at baseline, and at intervals four days after each session and two months after the second session. The clinical response was significant – 10 of the 12 in the treatment group responded to the treatment compared with just two of the eight in the placebo group. During the trial, the subjects did not experience any drug-related Serious Adverse Events (SAEs), nor any adverse neurocognitive effects or clinically significant blood pressure or temperature increases.

…

The investigators have now received the go ahead from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a protocol for a three-arm, dose-response design that they expect will result in successful blinding. This new study is for US veterans with war-related PTSD, most from Iraq and Afghanistan and a few from Vietnam.

Entered on 21 July 2010 at 18:28 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

If you love a sewage-eating robot, set it free.

So New Scientist recommends in a new report on an artificial gut that allows robots to become self-sustaining:

[F]ood-munching robots have been demonstrated in the past, often generating power with the help of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) – bio-electrochemical devices that enlist cultures of bacteria to break down food to generate power. Until now, though, no one had tackled the messy but inevitable issue of finding a way to evacuate the waste these bugs produce.

What was needed was an artificial gut, says Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Lab in the UK. He has spent three years with Ioannis Ieropoulos and colleagues working up the concept. The result: Ecobot III.

“Diarrhoea-bot would be more appropriate,” Melhuish admits. “It’s not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets.” Even so, he says, it marks the first demonstration of a biomass-powered robot that can operate unaided for some time.

…

The work will be presented at the Artificial Life conference in Odense, Denmark, next month. The next step is to explore how the robot will cope with a heartier meal, namely flies.

Entered on 20 July 2010 at 6:10 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Read in color!

New Scientist teaches you how to make yourself synaesthetic:

Olympia Colizoli at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and colleagues… gave seven volunteers a novel to read in which certain letters were always written in red, green, blue or orange…. Before and after reading the book, the volunteers took a “synaesthetic crowding” test, in which they identified the middle letter of a grid of black letters which were quickly flashed onto a screen.

Those with synaesthetic training aced the test. Those stuck with a black-and-white worldview didn’t.

Entered on 19 July 2010 at 6:10 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: The Microwave Sky, Planck Telescope, 2010

^{Click to embiggen}

This image – a composite view of, well, everything – was made by the European Space Agency’s Planck Telescope, an orbiting observatory assigned to look into the origins of the universe.

This is a photograph of cosmic microwave background radiation. The bright stuff in the middle, that’s the center of the Milky Way. What we see here as purple-and-red afterglow is actually what remains of the Big Bang – the dying microwave embers that first blazed when the newborn universe began cooling a little less than 14 billion years ago.

There are animated versions and a lot more information about Planck and the early universe at the ESA’s official press release.

Entered on 18 July 2010 at 6:55 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print