The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Frog skin super-drugs…

…will beat those super-bugs. Science Daily reveals a brand new source for potent antibiotics:

The scientists are currently screening skin secretions from more than 6,000 species of frogs for antibiotic activity. So far, they have purified and determined the chemical structure of barely 200, leaving a potential bonanza of antibiotic substances awaiting discovery.

“Many people are working with me, giving me samples of frog skin secretions,” said [Michael] Conlon [a biochemist at the United Arab Emirates University], who has a dozen research collaborators in Japan, France, the United States, and other countries. “We only actually use the frogs to get the chemical structure of the antibiotic, and then we make it in the lab. We take great care not to harm these delicate creatures, and scientists return them to the wild after swabbing their skin for the precious secretions.”

One substance isolated from the skin secretions of the Foothill Yellow-legged Frog — a species once common in California and Oregon but now facing extinction — shows promise for killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria. MRSA is a “superbug,” infamous for causing deadly outbreaks of infection among hospitalized patients. Now it is occurring in settings outside hospitals, including schools, nursing homes, and day care centers.

The skin of the mink frog, likewise, contains secretions that show promise for fighting “Iraqibacter,” caused by multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumanni.

Entered on 3 September 2010 at 21:26 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

What do you have to say?

That’s the question posed by a fun linguistic think-piece in the New York Times. The article looks over the latest developments in linguistic determination – the idea that the words we use have some measure of control over the thoughts we think. What started out as a kind of creepy theory (“Your worldview is limited by the limits of your language – what you can’t say, you can’t think”) has softened into the idea that it isn’t what you can’t say as much as what you must say that shapes your reality:

In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. They don’t look at the sun and pause for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.” They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals. There is a wealth of stories about what to us may seem like incredible feats of orientation but for speakers of geographic languages are just a matter of course. One report relates how a speaker of Tzeltal from southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed without hesitation at the geographic directions.

How does this work? The convention of communicating with geographic coordinates compels speakers from the youngest age to pay attention to the clues from the physical environment (the position of the sun, wind and so on) every second of their lives, and to develop an accurate memory of their own changing orientations at any given moment. So everyday communication in a geographic language provides the most intense imaginable drilling in geographic orientation (it has been estimated that as much as 1 word in 10 in a normal Guugu Yimithirr conversation is “north,” “south,” “west” or “east,” often accompanied by precise hand gestures). This habit of constant awareness to the geographic direction is inculcated almost from infancy: studies have shown that children in such societies start using geographic directions as early as age 2 and fully master the system by 7 or 8. With such an early and intense drilling, the habit soon becomes second nature, effortless and unconscious. When Guugu Yimithirr speakers were asked how they knew where north is, they couldn’t explain it any more than you can explain how you know where “behind” is.

This comes *after* the musing about how assigning genders to words like “friend” or “neighbor” invades your privacy. Why do I have to reveal that my friend is a girl?

Entered on 2 September 2010 at 21:08 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Lungless, projectile-tongued salamander discovered.

And it’s up to the Guardian to tell me about the latest critter found in Appalachia:

Its jaw and tooth structure suggest that it uses a projectile tongue to capture small prey such as species of the related genus Eurycea.

OK, so it’s not as cute as it looks.

Entered on 1 September 2010 at 6:05 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Look who’s running the asylum.

And, in fact, the whole discipline of psychology. National Post exposes the sad truth that industrialized, post-Enlightenment Westerners are weird:

The article, titled “The weirdest people in the world?”, appears in the current issue of the journal Brain and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Henrich and co-authors Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan argue that life-long members of societies that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic — people who are WEIRD — see the world in ways that are alien from the rest of the human family. The UBC trio have come to the controversial conclusion that, say, the Machiguenga are not psychological outliers among humanity. We are.

“If you’re a Westerner, your intuitions about human psychology are probably wrong or at least there’s good reason to believe they’re wrong,” Dr. Henrich says.

Problem is, we’re the ones we’ve been basing most of our psychological studies on. And we’ve totally messed up the baseline.

Entered on 31 August 2010 at 6:13 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Homegrown eyes.

Medical Daily is dishing up a bright new recipe for making biological corneas from scratch:

More than a decade ago, Dr. Griffith and her colleagues began developing biosynthetic corneas in Ottawa, Canada, using collagen produced in the laboratory…. After extensive laboratory testing, Dr. Griffith began collaborating with Dr. Per Fagerholm, an eye surgeon at Linköping University in Sweden, to provide the first-in-human experience with biosynthetic cornea implantation.

Together, they initiated a clinical trial in 10 Swedish patients with advanced keratoconus or central corneal scarring….. Over two years of follow-up, the researchers observed that cells and nerves from the patients’ own corneas had grown into the implant, resulting in a “regenerated” cornea that resembled normal, healthy tissue.

Eyes seem to be some kind of easy test case for this stuff – the first organ banks were for corneas, too.

Entered on 30 August 2010 at 6:52 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Repeating circle with two telescopes, Caroline Hassler, 1820

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Image of Victorian-era coastal survey equipment found in the NOAA Photo Library.

The equipment belonged to the artist’s grandfather, a Swiss immigrant and West Point math professor. He’s the man who made all America’s gallons the same gallon – before that, it was up to states to decide just how much a gallon was.

Entered on 29 August 2010 at 6:53 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Dry water.

No, not ice, but, as the Telegraph explains it, a form of water that just isn’t wet:

Each particle of dry water contains a water droplet surrounded by a sandy silica coating. In fact, 95 per cent of dry water is ”wet” water.

Scientists believe dry water could be used to combat global warming by soaking up and trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Tests show that it is more than three times better at absorbing carbon dioxide than ordinary water.
Dry water may also prove useful for storing methane and expanding the energy source potential of the natural gas.

Also useful as a catalyst. Also useful for packaging other, volatile chemicals. Also useful for… well, we’ll see.

Entered on 27 August 2010 at 6:28 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Unselfish? Don’t expect us to *like* it.

Science Daily explores an ugly side of human nature. Research shows that groups don’t like good guys among them:

Four separate studies led by a Washington State University social psychologist have found that unselfish workers who are the first to throw their hat in the ring are also among those that coworkers most want to, in effect, vote off the island.

“It’s not hard to find examples but we were the first to show this happens and have explanations for why,” said Craig Parks, lead author of “The Desire to Expel Unselfish Members from the Group” in the current Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

…

Parks and [former PhD student Asako Stone found that unselfish colleagues come to be resented because they “raise the bar” for what is expected of everyone. As a result, workers feel the new standard will make everyone else look bad.

…

The do-gooders are also seen as deviant rule breakers. It’s as if they’re giving away Monopoly money so someone can stay in the game, irking other players to no end.

Entered on 26 August 2010 at 6:28 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Pee-pee power.

I went there. No, really, I went there. The BBC reports on the way chemists will use urine as fuel:

Dr Tao said: “Growing up in rural eastern China I was aware of the use of urea as an agricultural fertiliser. When I became a chemist and was looking at fuel cell development, I thought of using it in the process.

“We are only at prototype stage at present, but if this renewable material can be used as a commercially viable and environmentally-friendly energy source, then we will be absolutely delighted, and many people around the world will benefit.”

Entered on 24 August 2010 at 6:10 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Triceratops-Eotriceratops size 02, by Conty.

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Image from Wikimedia Commons, where it soon might be deleted for making the Eotriceratops too large.

They always seem to put the people at the wrong end.

Entered on 22 August 2010 at 6:16 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print