The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Viking DNA

LiveScience reports on the tantalizing possibility of creating a Jurassic Park for bearded boat-warriors:

Jorgen Dissing of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues say they retrieved the genetic material from the freshly sampled teeth of skeletons dating back to around A.D. 1000 and found at a non-Christian burial site called Galgedil on the Danish island of Funen.

Apparently, Dissing wanted to see how closely bands of Vikings were related (it turns out, about as related as a bunch of modern humans would be).

But the article also has the following evocative line:

Although “Viking” often refers to pirates and robbers at sea, recent research has indicated that the Vikings were also traders to the fishmongers of Europe.

“Cockles, men! Mussels and blood!”

Entered on 30 May 2008 at 6:39 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Hairy Frog Breaks Own Bones to Create Claws.

Well, I’d certainly be terrified. Not only does this amphibian have hair, but New Scientist reports, it also snaps its own bones to create claws – by pushing the fragments through its skin:

“Some other frogs have bony spines that project from their wrist, but in those species it appears that the bones grow through the skin rather than pierce it when needed for defence,” says [David] Blackburn [of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology].

At rest, the claws of T. robustus, found on the hind feet only, are nestled inside a mass of connective tissue. A chunk of collagen forms a bond between the claw’s sharp point and a small piece of bone at the tip of the frog’s toe.

The other end of the claw is connected to a muscle. Blackburn and his colleagues believe that when the animal is attacked, it contracts this muscle, which pulls the claw downwards. The sharp point then breaks away from the bony tip and cuts through the toe pad, emerging on the underside.

The end result may look like a cat’s claw, but the breaking and cutting mechanism is very different and unique among vertebrates. Also unique is the fact that the claw is just bone and does not have an outer coating of keratin like other claws do.

Didn’t Wolverine do that for a while? Until the comic book editors decided that was just too disturbingly weird for comics??? The full article is far stranger, including cooking hints for spicy frog and wonderment over how – or if – these bone-spur claws are retracted.

Entered on 29 May 2008 at 6:47 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

No dengue fever, please. We’re British mosquitoes.

Nature (subscribers only) has announced that the plan to release sterile mosquitoes into the wild (mentioned months ago in this free Wired report) is going forward:

Nature:
Malaysia is looking to battle dengue fever by releasing mosquitoes that have been genetically engineered to be sterile. Although these efforts have stirred public concern, the country’s Academy of Sciences is likely to recommend the strategy to the government within a month.

Wired:
The [Oxford-based] company, Oxitec, said it can decimate mosquito populations by breeding genetically modified male mosquitoes, then releasing them to mate with wild females. Their offspring contain lethal genes that kill them young, before they can reproduce. Company officials told Wired News that their latest test results show that the genetically modified bugs can breed just as well as wild ones.

More on this unusual plan at Dartmouth University.

Entered on 28 May 2008 at 6:01 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: “Rosetta Stone”

There it is – the key that unlocked ancient Egypt. One message in three alphabets.

From the Library of Christian Theological Seminary, found on Wikimedia Commons.

Entered on 25 May 2008 at 6:20 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltonii

SONG: “Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltonii” _{(To download: right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Colossal Squid Comes Out Of Ice”, BBC News, 28 April 2008, as used in the post Drip. Drip. Drip .

ABSTRACT: It is very hard to write a song in five, and harder to write it in 5/5. I think that’s what I’ve done here… five-beat measures in five-measure phrases. I did this because Mesonychoteuthis hamiltonii has 10 limbs, and it’s likely that we like writing songs in 4/4 because we have four limbs. It’s easier for us to dance that way – just move your right foot on every second and fourth beat, yeah? A colossal squid could dance to this song, I hope. Mesonychoteuthis hamiltonii also has 10 syllables, but I fought the urge to chant the creature’s name in the middle of this song. I’m not sure why.

There are much-altered drums on here sampled from John Bonham because I started out wanting this to be a Very Big Heavy Metal Song. I cannot shred on the guitar and cannot wail on the throat, so this is what came out. I hope it’s more math rock than prog, but I’ll settle for hypnotically alien.

Technically, this is a day late, so I think that means a penitential cover version will be forthcoming. Alas, you poor listeners.

Entered on 24 May 2008 at 5:59 in the Songs file | 1 Observation |  Print

Three Red Spots.

New Scientist on the third-largest hurricane in the solar system:

Now, a third red spot, about half the size of Red Spot Junior, has broken out on the giant gaseous planet. The spot, previously a white storm, now appears red in Hubble Space Telescope images taken on 9 and 10 May. The observations were led by Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley, US.

No one knows for sure what gives the three spots their red colour. But one theory is that especially violent storms dredge up material from deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere, such as phosphorus-containing molecules, which undergo chemical reactions that turn them red when exposed to sunlight.

In other words, it’s on FIRE.

Entered on 23 May 2008 at 15:30 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Nanotube Trouble.

Rice University researchers – some of the pioneers of nanotechnology – have declared that carbon nanotubes may be… may be… as dangerous as asbestos:

…[T]he authors tested the hypothesis that long straight nanotubes act like long straight asbestos fibers and cause mesothelial injury. Samples consisting of suspensions of long, straight MWCNT, short tangled MWCNT, long-fiber amosite (asbestos), short-fiber amosite (asbestos) and a nonfibrous nanoparticulate carbon black material were each injected into the abdominal (peritoneal) cavity of normal mice.

…

Tissue samples measured at 7 days were examined for the formation of scar-like lesions called granulomas that typify the body’s response to long fibers. Only the mice exposed to the long straight fiber asbestos and the long straight MWCNT showed the presence of inflammatory proteins, cells and granulomas….

Since carbon nanotubes are the building blocks of nanotechnology – found in everything from racing bikes and tennis rackets to drug delivery systems and nanoscale electric motors – this could be a significant health risk. Factory workers are already inhaling this stuff, and some cancer patients are having it injected into their bodies (a pdf).

Read more at the Guardian and Scientific American.

Entered on 21 May 2008 at 15:15 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.

Scientific American ruins my naive illusions about love with their expose of the orgasmic mind:

Neuroscientist Gert Holstege of the University of Gro­ningen in the Netherlands and his colleagues attempted to solve the male side of the equation by asking the female partners of 11 men to stimulate their partner’s penis until he ejaculated while they scanned his brain using positron-emission tomography (PET). During ejaculation, the researchers saw extraordinary activation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a major hub of the brain’s reward circuitry; the intensity of this response is comparable to that induced by heroin….

The anterior part of the cerebellum also switched into high gear. The cerebellum has long been labeled the coordinator of motor behaviors but has more recently revealed its role in emotional processing. Thus, the cerebellum could be the seat of the emotional components of orgasm in men, perhaps helping to coordinate those emotions with planned behaviors. The amygdala, the brain’s center of vigilance and sometimes fear, showed a decline in activity at ejaculation, a probable sign of decreasing vigilance during sexual performance.

So, that’s the boys’ side.

For the girls, something interesting happened:

To find out whether orgasm looks similar in the female brain, Holstege’s team asked the male partners of 12 women to stimulate their partner’s clitoris—the site whose excitation most easily leads to orgasm—until she climaxed, again inside a PET scanner. Not surprisingly, the team reported in 2006, clitoral stimulation by itself led to activation in areas of the brain involved in receiving and perceiving sensory signals from that part of the body and in describing a body sensation—for instance, labeling it “sexual.”

But when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent. Some of the most muted neurons sat in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which may govern self-control over basic desires such as sex. Decreased activity there, the researchers suggest, might correspond to a release of tension and inhibition. …

Brain activity fell in the amygdala, too, suggesting a depression of vigilance similar to that seen in men, who generally showed far less deactivation in their brain during orgasm than their female counterparts did. “Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” Holstege says. He went so far as to declare at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”

Researchers are also surprisingly close to creating what looks like an orgasm (loveless or otherwise) in pill form. Or close enough for jazz….

Entered on 20 May 2008 at 6:34 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

My Sister, My Stomach.

Well. LiveScience shares the news of a 9-year-old girl in Greece discovering that she actually had a twin sister… growing inside her stomach:

“They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn’t suspect that this tumor would hide an embryo,” hospital director Iakovos Brouskelis said.

Sometimes, these things happen.

Entered on 19 May 2008 at 6:22 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: “Acherontia atropos,” Nordisk familjebok

The Death’s Head Hawkmoth.

There’s a more recent photograph of one here; the first time I remember learning this beauty’s name was in a brilliantly illustrated version of The Butterfly’s Ball and Grasshopper’s Feast by Aldridge & Plomer.

Entered on 18 May 2008 at 6:05 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print