A Schooner
of Science
Radioactive decay of teaspoons in the workplace
Have you ever noticed a mysterious loss of teaspoons at your workplace? Maybe it’s not teaspoons, but some other cutlery item. At my old work it was forks, which dwindled even when I bought new replacement ones. At the Australian National University neither spoon nor fork were safe, causing some students to eat salad with two knives as chopsticks.
The same thing was happening at the Burnett Institute in Australia. Teaspoons were critically low, no matter how many new ones bought. Clearly it was time for science.
“Exasperated by our consequent inability to stir in our sugar and to accurately dispense instant coffee, we decided to respond in time honoured epidemiologists’ fashion and measure the phenomenon,” they said in the paper.
They numbered 70 teaspoons and placed them in tearooms around the institute. Lo and behold, they started to disappear. Every week they counted the remaining teaspoons, probably with a lot of suppressed giggling and delight.
After five months, 56 out of 70 teaspoons disappeared, that’s 80%. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days.
Teaspoons in communal tearooms disappeared faster than those in tearooms specifically for certain projects. Expensive teaspoons disappeared no faster than cheap ones.
According to the study, “at this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons.” The cost? About $100. Extrapolate that to the workforce of Melbourne, some 2.4 million people, and you’re looking at quite a wad of cash.
And it’s not just economic loss, it’s also workplace satisfaction. “Teaspoon displacement and loss leads to the use of forks, knives, and staplers to measure out coffee and sugar,” the study suggested. Staplers? You know it’s a bad day in the office when you’re measuring sugar with a stapler. Indeed, nobody in the office said they were “highly satisfied” with the number of teaspoons in a survey they conducted at the end of the study. Yes, they even did a survey.
But why are teaspoons such hot property?
The study gives a few possible theories. Perhaps there are so many teaspoons, people don’t think it will matter if they take one home. Over time the small acts of thievery add up until there are no teaspoons left.
Alternatively, and I can say this no better than the authors, “Somewhere in the cosmos, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, walking treeoids, and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, a planet is entirely given over to spoon life-forms. Unattended spoons make their way to this planet, slipping away through space to a world where they enjoy a uniquely spoonoid lifestyle, responding to highly spoon oriented stimuli, and generally leading the spoon equivalent of the good life.”
Their final theory is les choses sont contre nous “things are against us.” “Resistentialism is the belief that inanimate objects have a natural antipathy towards humans, and therefore it is not people who control things but things that increasingly control people,” says the study. Think of all the time you spend cleaning, buying, repairing, using and selling things. Do items really control our lives, sending us on some materialistic goose chase for reasons we cannot yet understand? I can only assume Yes.
I want to hear from anyone who has experienced this phenomenon, be it spoons, forks or knives. What goes missing in your workplace, and why do they constantly disappear. And what is the spoon equivalent of the good life?
Lim, M. (2005). The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute BMJ, 331 (7531), 1498-1500 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.331.7531.1498
Massive hat tip to James at Disease Prone, who said my posts had slowed down and suggested this paper.The case of the baffling block
ABC correspondent Karen Barlow snapped this picture while on board the Aurora Australis in what must be the best ever journalism assignment in the history of ever.
This block of wood is positioned prominently atop an iceberg like an actor in center stage spotlight. It’s 66 degrees south, and just north of the Commonwealth Bay.
Clearly this attention seeking and motivational-poster-inspiring little log is hinting at a scientific conspiracy of some sort. Was it placed just so by aliens? Do seals like to eat from wooden place mats? Is it all that remains of a wooden legged, largely gelatinous creature who has since been sea salted and dissolved?
Possible, but I would like to propose an explanation for the mysterious block of wood.
On her Breaking the Ice blog, Karen calls the block baffling. She writes that they are very near the South Pole, and that the compass she brought on the ship has stopped working.
To quote Karen, “The south magnetic pole was positioned on the Antarctic continent 100 years ago. It has since wandered out to sea due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.”
Wandered out to sea? Not unlike the block of wood!
Is it possible that this seemingly innocent flotsam is, in actual fact, the true source of South in all the world? Has Karen accidentally discovered the very source of down, half originator of the equator?
Well, if ’tis the case, leave’t well alone Karen. With the International standard Kilo currently suffering an embarrassing loss of weight, now’s not time to start geographical mayhem.
A Gingerbread Laboratory
Thought I’d share some pictures of this awesome gingerbread laboratory my dad made me for Christmas.
It’s a science and research lab. Unfortunately some of the roof caved in during transit.
The lab comes complete with helipad. You can see some of the decorations inside through the “sky light.”
Royal icing, smarties, jelly beans, mint leaves, marshmallows and licorice allsorts decorate the interior while icing sinks ensure proper hygiene. Here’s the view from the front door.
Sometimes scientists just have to douse experiments in alcohol
Superconductor supermarket. Image by andreasmarx
In which scientists get drunk and pour their beverages on compounds to create superconductors.
It’s no secret that I cook better with wine. I’m not just talking about a dash of red in pasta sauce or half a bottle of cheap white in risotto. I mean, when I’m tipsy I’m generous with the flavours and cook in a twirling, happy sashay of creation. But who knew it was the same with science?
Superconductors are metals at very low temperatures (6 Kelvin) which gain certain properties: Namely that the normal resistance drops to zero and they start conducting electricity incredibly well.
The experiment conducted at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan involved soaking compounds (powders of iron, tellurium and tellurium sulfide) in different fluids, then cooling them and testing how well they conducted electricity.
First experiment: pure water. Results = boring. (10% superconducting volume fraction)
Second experiment: water plus ethanol. Results = yawn. (11%)
Third experiment: pure ethanol. Results = worse than water. (6%)
At this stage, I can only assume the scientists got drunk. They got a variety of different drinks (whiskey, sake, wine, etc) poured out 20 mL shots and soaked the compound in their boozy concoctions. When they tested conductivity, the results were surprising. Whiskey did well, beer did better, and red wine was streaks ahead with a whopping 63% of the material showing superconductive properties. For some reason commercial drinks created better superconductors than pure ethanol and water.
Here’s a graph of the results.
Graph by Keita Deguchi
As you can see, red wine is a clear winner, followed by white wine, beer, sake and other commercial drinks. At the bottom is boring old ethanol/water. Clearly what was lacking was a bit of FLAVOUR. That, or oxygen, particulates… actually they don’t know why it happened. More experiments need to be performed. Probably every Friday night from 3pm.
Still, it’s a fantastic case of serendipity. Plus, once the results were in, all the drinks were ALREADY THERE for celebrating! Sweet!
The paper is available free from arXiv – Deguchi K. et al “Superconductivity in FeTe1-xSx induced by alcohol”
A Vampire Flying Frog by any other name…
Vampire Flying Frog. Image by Australian Museum
Actually, it’s not QUITE as cool as it sounds.
This new frog species, the Vampire Flying Frog, was discovered in Vietnam by scientists from the Australian Museum. Rhacophorus vampyrus was a latecomer to the International Year of Biodiversity, which yielded a wealth of newly discovered creatures.
But the name. The name. To be honest, it reminds me of the ten shelves in every bookstore devoted to vampire teen fiction. I’m all for making science sexy, but seriously. In the paper it doesn’t even say “Vampire flying frog” as in the media release and all the news articles. It actually says “Vampire tree frog” which sounds less vampiric and more like it drinks tree sap or something.
The name makes a promise that the frog doesn’t deliver on. Now if the frog looked like THIS then I would applaud the name.
The Flying part is true enough. There are several species of tree frog that are called “flying frogs” because they can glide. It’s a good quality to have when you live up in trees. With larger hands and feet and extra webbing they can parachute through the air.
Tadpole with fangs. Image by Australian Museum
The Vampire part is… well… it’s neat. The tadpoles have fangs.
Normally tadpoles have beak-like mouth pieces, but this one has two black, hard fang-shaped appendages made of keratin (the same stuff as your hair.)
According to the scientists, it looks too big to be involved in feeding but might help the tadpole hold onto tree bark. The frog creates foam nests, laying its eggs in water-filled tree-holes.
More details on the tadpoles will be published in another report. The original report can be downloaded in pdf by clicking through the citation: Rowley, J. et al. (2010). A new tree frog of the genus Rhacophorus (Anura: Rhacophoridae) from southern Vietnam Zootaxa
Another cool thing about the frog is it changes colour. In daylight it’s a pale tan, but at night it’s stunning brick red. I don’t know if that’s a normal thing for tree frogs. Any herpetologists in the house?
Oh, Oh OMG I’m included in Open Lab 2010!
The finalists of Open Lab have been announced. I’m all a-quiver with excitement because I’m included in the list!
That means I’m going to be PUBLISHED in an ANTHOLOGY of science writers. Among the list of those included are some big names like Scicurious, Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, Kevin Zelnio and many more excellent bloggers.
Many thanks to Jason Goldman for his work as the editor, and to the reviewers and everyone else in the project who give up their time (and probably sleep) to put Open Lab 2010 together. The book will be published in early February and available online and in some stores.
Here’s my award winning post How aqua regia saved Nobel Prize medals from the Nazis.
Science of electronic cigarettes, as seen on the Tourist
Happy New Year! On the first of January, I went to see The Tourist. It promised to be an excessively attractive movie starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, the two best heartthrobs on screen. I won’t spoil the plot, but I will say that one cool gadget graces the scene. The electronic cigarette.
As described in the movie, the electronic cigarette does not emit smoke, just vapour. The one in the move was shaped like a cigarette, complete with a red LED light on the end for a burning ember. He tapped the end to put it out, but I don’t think that’s necessary. The automatic versions just turn on when you breathe in, a sensor recognizes the airflow, and I’d say it turns off afterward.
Electronic cigarettes, designed by Chinese company Ruyan “to resemble smoking”, come in a variety of designs. From classic cigarettes to cigars to pipes. Even a ballpoint pen, so you can look like you’re intelligently thinking witty thoughts while taking a sneaky huff.
All the designs have the same basic features. A cylindrical battery, a heating element, and a mouthpiece. When the sensor picks up air flow, it switches on the battery which heats up the element, vapourising the nicotine mixture absorbed on material in the mouthpiece. Manual versions lack a sensor, and you have to press a button to get them started. The nicotine can be replenished by dripping fluid refills onto the absorbant material, or buying a new prefilled mouthpiece.
An electonic cigarette
But it’s the mixture itself that’s really cool. It comes in a variety of nicotine levels and a variety of FLAVOURS. Some are designed to taste like certain brands (such as Malboro), some taste like regular ciggies, some are menthol, and others come in tastes of caramel, coffee or vanilla. One recipe listed on Wikipedia contains hardly any nicotine, but 8% alcohol. That’s a 16 proof cigarette delivered straight to your lungs! Wow. Seems dangerous.
What I wanted to know was how do electronic ciggies compare to the real thing when it comes to health. It seems like we’re still unsure. Electronic cigarettes only hit the market in 2004, so they’re pretty new still. Most countries are taking a conservative stance. In England they can be bought in pubs and smoked indoors. In New Zealand they are only available in pharmacies. In Australia it is illegal to sell them, but they can be purchased over the internet for personal use, and I believe there are no laws against it. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The debate seems to center around the fact that these electronic cigarettes are KIND OF tobacco products and KIND OF smoking cessation aids… but kind of not. No studies have been done to show that they could help people quit smoking and become nicotine free. To me it seems more like you would quit smoking cigarettes, and start smoking the electronic version instead.
And what’s the harm in that? Most of the damage caused by smoking is not due to nicotine itself. It’s all the other crazy chemicals that come with it which cause the cancer and lung damage and so forth. Nicotine is just the stuff that keeps people coming back. It’s highly addictive, working on the reward system of the brain and our favourite neurotransmitter, dopamine. Smokeless cigarettes are a way to enjoy nicotine without getting a hefty dose of dangerous chemical cocktails. Plus the secondhand smoke is safer. So it’s an example of harm reduction. Plus your teeth would get whiter.
Of course, nicotine is not exactly a friendly chemical. It might not cause cancer, but it IS highly toxic. 60 mg can be toxic to an adult. Nicotine is made by the tobacco plant as an insecticide, need I say more? In fact, it’s also made by other members of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, such as tomatoes. That explains why my basil plant is getting torn to pieces by insects while the tomato plant right next to it is still intact. So maybe we don’t want to encourage people to smoke anything.
But gun to my head, I think the electronic cigarette is a good thing. I don’t think young kids are going to be swayed by sexy marketing into becoming the next generation of smokers. I don’t think we’d allow such sexy marketing in the first place. I don’t even know why the government allows cigarettes to be sold at all; the health problems must cost the economy millions every year. But what do you think? Do you think electronic cigarettes would be the lesser of two evils, or a new evil all on its own, ready to pounce on hapless youths and struggling smokers and catch them forever with nicotine claws.
Merry Christmas from Captain Skellett
Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas.
My motto is “If it ain’t merry, drink more rum!”
Thank ye for reading me blog this year, this blog wouldn’t be the same without you. It’s been a very busy and interesting year. I’ve lived interstate, become a published writer, and pillaged not a few cruise ships. I’m looking forward to pointing the Schooner to new ports in 2011.
Happy holidays, and have a jolly Roger Christmas.
My Christmas baking adventures
It’s that time of the year and I’m feeling decidedly unchristmassy. Perhaps it’s the terror of presents left unpurchased, perhaps it’s the missing tree and decorations, perhaps… well screw it. Christmas just skipped me this year.
Times like these you need to bake. Something sciencey would be nice, but I’ll settle for anything. A gingerbread house would be amazing… A gingerbread LAB would be even better! What exactly would that entail, I wonder? Stay tuned, maybe I’ll make one and find out.
At the supermarket today I bought a litre of long life milk and another of long life custard, Sexy Man’s contribution to a Christmas hamper for the homeless or some such.
After a jubilent sms from the checkout to tell him the good news, I learned he had already bought it himself. Now we have a litre of custard that we’ll never use.
But I’m not the kinda girl to waste food, so my solution is to bake with it. Custard recipes ranged from “custard on banana” to tiramisu… and then I found this.
It’s custard baked inside a whole pumpkin. YUM! Well, actually I’ve never had baked pumpkin with custard before, but I like each item individually. Perhaps together there will be a synergy of flavours!!!
The recipe descibes how to MAKE the custard, but seeing as I have a whopping 1 L already I’m just gonna cram it in and put it in the oven, possibly with a stick of cinnamon. Can I somehow make this concoction sciencey? Time will tell. I may blog the results.
I’m really excited about the recipe because it said you could keep the pumpkin seeds you dig out from the centre and roast them with some spices. Holy shizz, how have I never thought of this? I’ve been throwing ’em out THIS WHOLE TIME, when they were a source of that holy grail of minerals, iron.
As a vegetarian, iron is kinda a big deal. I had an iron test recently and it came out borderline low. Like, it’s supposed to be between 15 and 200, and I was 15. But like a told the nurse who tried to put me on supplements, “it’s borderline.” We make borders for a reason, you know, If I was 14 I’d accept that I have low iron, but I was 15. I made the grade. I passed goddammit.
Still any source of iron is a cause for celebration. I will be celebrating with pumpkin seeds and orange juice.
Seriously though, that baked pumpkin looks badass, I can’t tear my eyes from it. Are you baking for Christmas? If not, how do you get into the Santa spirit, or has it eluded you too?
OpenLab10 – best of the blogs for 2010
Last years edition of OpenLab
From this epic list they will narrow down to a mere 53, which will be published in an anthology on actual REAL paper, like the kind you see on TV.
Me own blog is listed for two posts. Firstly, How aqua regia saved Nobel Prize medals from the Nazis, a fiction based on a true science story and lively tale of chemistry trickery (chemitrickery) and bravery. Secondly may favourite monotreme, the weird, the wonderful, the Platypus. A poisonous, egg laying mammal with ten sex chromosomes.
I would invite you (nay, beg you) to vote for me, but it’s not that kind of thing so you’re off the hook.
But if you want to read some truly amazing examples of scientific writing, check out the submissions for OpenLab10! (Bookmark me first so you can come back later. You have me on RSS, right? Just checking.)
Happy reading!
For love of the pancreas
Pancreas toy from Organbank on Etsy (click through)
Ahoy! Today’s Request a Post comes from Devil’s Snare, a Potter fan I’d wager.
Devil’s Snare asks “what features will a person show if his pancreas is removed?”
Ahh… woke up in a bathtub full of ice, did you? That’s embarrassing.
But hey, we’ve all been there. I’ll answer your question.
The pancreas is a noble organ with two functions. It makes hormones which regulate blood sugar (insulin, glucagon etc.), and makes lovely pancreatic juices with enzymes for breaking down food.
Damage to the pancreas is cause for distress, as enzymes which chow down food also nom the body. Type 1 diabetes starts with an autoimmune disorder that destroys the insulin producing cells found in the mystical islets of Langerhans.
Black market organ trade aside, the pancreas IS sometimes removed. Mostly it’s because of cancer or chronic pancreatitis.
A total pancreatectomy often involves taking out the spleen, the duodenum, the gall bladder and part of the stomach, then attaching the remaining stomach directly to the bowel.
Symptoms from removal are pretty clear given what the pancreas does: Without insulin producing cells you get severe diabetes. Without the enzymes, your food is poorly digested and you might get diarrhea or worse. If the spleen is also removed, you are more at risk of infections.
However it can be the only option, and the symptoms can be treated. Plenty of people out there live with diabetes. Enzyme supplements can help with the digestion department. Vaccinations or antibiotics can help control infections.
Interestingly, in 2005 a surgery taking 12 hours successfully removed a patients pancreas, collected and purified some insulin producing cells, and infused them into the patient’s liver where they started producing insulin. Full report here.
So essentially, my dear Devil’s Snare, if you think you MAY have misplaced your pancreas I suggest you would be feeling rather sick. I think you should go see a doctor.
If you love your pancreas, here’s a song by Weird Al Yankovic which just might blow your mind.
I’m always thinkin’ ’bout it
I don’t know what I’d do without it
I love, I really love
My pancreas
My spleen just doesn’t matter
Don’t really care about my bladder
But I don’t leave home without
My pancreas
Connecting via common ancestors and Genographics – Interview with Wolfgang Haak
At the Genographic Event at the RiAus I also interviewed Dr Wolfgang Haak, who spoke about Y-chromosome markers to determine paternal ancestry. He’s been involved in the Genographic Project for three and a half years.
What are the benefits of understanding ancestry?
It’s pretty much a personal thing, at the end of the day, because I suppose everyone’s interested in his or her own genetic history. This is my personal driving force, finding out more about myself. Where’s my place in this planet, in this world, where do I tie into the global picture? That’s a big motivation for me, and as I find out more as I work with people that it’s the same motor or driving force with them as well.
We share a common ancestry after all, there’s a common interest in our genetic history as well.
What first attracted you to the Genographic Project?
I have always been interested in genetics, but I actually come from an anthropologic background and genetics is certainly a part of that. I also come from an Ancient DNA lab. This was a step further into more modern population genetics. This is about getting both things together. Having a modern day perspective, plus adding a timely depth to that picture that we get from modern day diversity.
Tell us about your own ancestry, have you genotyped yourself?
Yes, I’ve done both. Mitochondrial, I’m haplogroup H, and I can further pin that down to group H1, so that is a Palaeolithic, Mesolithic one that might have come into Europe prior to the last glacial maximum, around modern day Spain or Italy or even a South Eastern refuge. It’s not entirely clear but we’ll find out over the next couple of years.
On the paternal side its even more enigmatic. I’m part of a North African lineage that probably originated around the Horn of Africa, so there’s that connection on the Eastern side of Africa where it connects to Saudi Arabia, and that has a high frequency there into the Nile Valley, and from it spreads into South Eastern Europe. Not entirely sure when it spread across the Mediterranean region, but probably historic times rather than prehistoric times.
Genographics, Neanderthals and Cannibalism, an Interview with Carles Lalueza-Fox
After the event last night about the worldwide Genographic Project, I caught up with Prof Dr Carles Lalueza‑Fox, the first speaker on the night, for a quick interview. He’s an expert on Neanderthals, or Neandertals I think we call them now. Named after the Neander Valley where the first specimen was discovered.
What first sparked your interest in studying Neandertals?
When the first Neandertal sequence was retrieved in 1997 I had been working on ancient DNA for a while, but then Neandertals seemed to be something in a different league.
In the first ten years it was only possible to get mitochondrial DNA from Neandertals.
For me, I really liked Neandertals and human evolution as a child. Ancient DNA was something particularly difficult at the time, and the thing that brought me to the subject.
How human do you think Neandertals were?
How human?
Yes, tricky question.
Haha, yes. It’s a very long question, a very difficult question. One must always take into mind our tendencies are always fluctuating. We saw them as a very primitive human lineage in the early 20th Century, but I’d say that now we’re turning to the point where we see them as very similar to us.
Maybe the best thing to think about Neandertals is they are more different from us than any modern human to any other modern human. That’s the way we should think about them.
If we want to think of them as a different species that’s fine for me, but there is a range of difference between us and the Neandertals.
The cuts found along Neandertal bones you suggest are evidence for cannibalism. Could they just be an example of de-fleshing prior to burial?
Well, yeah, it might be right in some circumstances. But this is not only cutting, you know de-fleshing the bones. It’s also fragmenting the bones with small stone tools, very small fragments, and even the skull, and the faces. For me it’s very difficult to think that this kind of post mortem activity is something more because this is a complete destruction of the bones.
It’s very similar to what we see in other sites with fauna, the bones are broken to extract the marrow in the same way.
And it’s a pretty common thing, well, not common these days, but certainly we humans have our own history of cannibalism.
Yes, well there are several sites with the signs in Neandertals. But you almost think that life was very tough and they were structured in very small groups, so the fact that you find another one… I mean you’d say “hey, we are Neandertals all of us,” but I’d say that’s a modern conception.
Whereas for them it might be “hey, you’re not one of my family I may as well eat you.”
Yeah, the idea of humankind, in fact, is very recent. After the second World War, and the UNESCO thing. So even the idea of humankind is more recent than we might think now.
And what do you think of the possibility of Neandertals and humans mating?
I think it’s plausible with the data we have. It was probably something that was a minority, restricted in time and space, it was nothing important in my view. The thing is we can detect it now in non-African modern humans is because this was an expanding population, so even a small event of just a few, say it was, this was amplified later on.
The Genographic Project in Adelaide
The Genographic Project in Adelaide
Last night I was lucky enough to attend the Genographic Project event at the RiAus, where they discussed results of samples collected from the Adelaide public.
The event was a huge success. Every seat was full, and I was fortunate to find a spot tucked in a corner. And that despite the torrential rain that hit earlier in the afternoon, blocking traffic around the city.
One thing that really struck me about the night was the feeling of connection. The billions of humans around today arose from small populations 50,000 years ago. If you start looking back far enough, you share the same ancestral group as the stranger sitting three rows down. In a sense we’re all brothers and sisters.
As more people become involved in the project, we find out more about where and when different groups migrated around the globe. Being involved makes you a piece of the puzzle that will uncover our stories, which have been lost to the past.
New MolBio Carnival is up!
Ahoy there,
A quick note to send you over to me good mate Lab Rat, who blogs regularly about the amazing world of microorganisms and provides insights into life as a lab rat. She’s the host for the latest MolBio Carnival, a collection of the best blogs on molecular biology about.
I’m honoured to have been included on the list, although I blogged about something a little bit bigger (the marsupial joeys of the last post.)
Check it out here, and enjoy the picture at the bottom!
How marsupial embryos develop (a short story)
An opossum joey. Image credit Anne Keyte
Marsupials are just plain weird when it comes to procreating.
I’m not talking about bifurcated penises (where the penis has two heads) although that’s pretty freaking weird. I’m talking about the embryos.
When a baby marsupial is born after a 4-5 week gestation, it’s a tiny pink speck of nothing much. About the same size as a jelly bean, it’s hairless, blind, and most of its brain has not developed.
In this state, the joey has to crawl across its mother’s fur and find its way into her pouch. Inside the pouch it continues to develop, growing on the nutrients it sucks from a teat.
It stays there for several months before it emerges, looking more like an animal and less like a little pink alien.
This bizarre method of procreation is the subject of a recent study into developmental biology. The writers, Anne Keyte and Kathleen Smith, found that although a joey is extremely underdeveloped when it is born, some of it features are accelerated. For example it’s forearms grow much faster than the rest of it. The joey has guns! It uses those strong arms to meander through mountains of fur and into the pouch. By comparison, its hindlegs are undeveloped and almost like jelly.
The study used opossum embryos and compared them to mouse embryos of the same age. They used two markers, Tbx4 and Tbx5, to track the development of the fore and hind limbs respectively. Both these genes were switched on earlier than in the mouse, but the forearms were especially beefy. Strangely the hindlimbs do not develop early like the forelimbs, even though the genes are switched on in both.
Not only is gene expression different in marsupials, the forearms were also allocated more red blood cells during development. This gives growing cells the energy they need to become big and strong. The spinal nerves grew into the forelimb buds differently as well.
This research rules out the assumption that limbs arise because of signaling from partially developed organs. The organs in a marsupial are simply not developed enough.
Marsupial faces also develop at an accelerated rate to allow the joey to suckle when it gets to the pouch.
But why such the strange method of procreation. Did marsupials not even THINK to evolve themselves a placenta??? “There are probably 50 explanations for why marsupials develop outside the womb, and none of them are very good,” says Anne.
Keyte, A., & Smith, K. (2010). Developmental origins of precocial forelimbs in marsupial neonates Development, 137 (24), 4283-4294 DOI: 10.1242/dev.049445
Science that’s only skin deep
I’m a guest blogger for the RiAus, and this post also appeared on their fancy website. To tell the truth, I really wanted to call this post “Hormonally Yours” in homage to the Shakespeare Sisters (anyone?) but I’ll save it for another post.
Recently I was in Arnhem Land, visiting some Indigenous communities with a couple of friends. While I was there, I got pretty jealous of everybody’s darker skin. “It’s so well suited for Australia,” one of my friends lamented. “I should be in Norway or something.”
Pale skin like mine is not great for Australia. I tan pretty easily, but only after being burned bright red. While I was in the NT I slathered sunscreen religiously, but still managed to get a highly embarrassing burn on my lower back when I was building a sandcastle (an epic sand turtle, actually. Totally worth it.)
Anyway, enough about me and my weirdly tanned lower back (it’s been months! Why won’t it go away?) Let’s talk about Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist. In 2000 she suggested a new reason why skin colour varies so much. It’s not an adaptation to protect against skin cancer and sunburn, like I always thought it was.
It’s real job is to keep us highly fertile by maintaining a delicate balance between two key vitamins: Vitamin D and Folic acid.
Pica's skin tone matched her UVB exposure like her scarf matched her dress. Image by Monja Con Patines
Vitamin D is obtained through some foods, but mostly from drinking in sunshine. UV light turns cholesterol into Vitamin D, which then goes to either your liver or kidneys to be converted to an active form.
Once active it helps white blood cells like macrophages kill bacteria, and helps control levels of calcium and phosphate – important for building healthy bones.
Deficiency in Vitamin D causes rickets, a disease resulting in soft, easily broken bones and deformity which can lead to early death.
So getting enough UV (specifically UVB light) is important to not dying, and therefore having reproductive success later in life. It’s been backed up by Yuen, A. (Vitamin D: In the evolution of human skin colour DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2009.08.007)
Natural selection favours soaking up UV.
Penny stayed under foliage at noon to protect her folic acid. Image by Monja Con Patines
Folic acid is obtained in leafy vegetables and fortified cereals. Rather than being made by UV, the light can destroy folic acid by literally breaking it apart. (Jablonski, N. The evolution of human skin coloration DOI: 10.1006/jhev.2000.0403)
Critical for DNA synthesis, folic acid is essential during pregnancy when a lot of new cells are being made.
Folic acid prevents against 70% of neural tube defects in embryos. Its destruction by UV is bad news.
Natural selection favours avoiding UV.
So there’s an ideal amount of UV light that needs to get through the skin – enough to produce Vitamin D, but not too much to destroy all the folic acid. Getting the balance right for the environment you’re in means higher fertility, which drives natural selection
This is what Nina Jablonski thinks caused the evolution of skin colour through the sepia spectrum we see today. Dark skin, with high melanin, stops more UV light. That’s exactly what you want if you live in a place with a lot of sun, like places near the equator. Light skin lets more UV in, which is great if you live somewhere overcast and not very high on UV.
Understanding how your skin colour (NOT your race) influences these two vitamins is important in being healthy. It’s more important now than ever, because we humans travel a LOT.
Sadly, Australia is pretty high in UV and I am pretty white. Thank god for sunscreen.
Things are rarely that simple though, and I imagine there’s a few different things going on that connect UV light to skin colour.
On Tuesday the RiAus is holding an event called Skin Deep: Exploring human ancestry. They’ll be showing a preview of a new SBS documentary about skin colour scientific research, as well as results from the Genographic Project. Basically they took DNA samples from a lot of volunteers and some national identities, and now they’re giving us the goss on who’s related to who’s secret love child.
I’ll be there, I’d love to see you (though seats are limited.) I’ll be the one tweeting in the corner. Follow me @CaptainSkellett
Would love to hear from anyone who took part in the Genographic Project, and anyone who didn’t. Who would you most like to be related to? For me it’s David Attenborough, then I can dream of inheriting his voice.
Gift ideas for a biochemist, medical scientist or neuroscientist
Get a pair of double helix earrings or a neuron necklace. Each piece began as a sketch, then was modeled digitally, and finally cut with a laser beam.
These gorgeous creations are courtesy of Morphologica, a Sydney-based scientist completing a PhD in neuroscience.
More brain style jewelry from etsy: Funky anatomy style jewelry here – mostly pictures printed on plastic. Proper plastic models, brightly coloured and very cool brain earrings. Simple, stylized, silver neurons.
These happy anatomy magnets are incredibly cute, and would probably make you feel happier every time you walked past your fridge. $10 is a good deal, and they ship to the US & Canada (but worth a shot getting international shipping if you live elsewhere like me.) I also like this hotdog wielding anglerfish. Not exactly sciencey, but undeniably awesome.
There is no better way to say “you’re the best dang neuroscientist I know” than to give someone a brain in a jar. This one is green because it’s A ZOMBIE BRAIN IN A JAR!!! Awesome. They also come in pink.
And as decorations for a truly terrific tree. I’ll stop with the excessive linking, you should just check out the Your Organ Grinder etsy shop.
There’s heaps of handmade anatomy including lungs, hearts, ovaries, livers, kidneys, testicles. Ships worldwide.
You might also be interested in
Gift Ideas for a Pathologist or Microbiologist
Gift Ideas for a Chemist or Chemistry Grad
What is a light cone?
Simultaneous is not simultaneous. Space and time do not exist. These, and other strange and wonderful things, are the hallmarks of Einsteins Theory of Relativity and what we’re talking about today.
A few days ago I got Request a Post which read:
ahoy there, cap’tun! a prawn from beneath your deck speakin’. could you do a post on Light Cones? yeh know, the stuff Stephen Hawking talks about in the second chapter of his ‘Brief History of Time’? i’d love to read a simplified version. i simply can’t wrap the wiki article around my head! danke!
Ahoy there Prawn! Danke for requesting and here be yer post.
Something can’t move through space without moving through time as well. The Theory of Relativity dispenses with time and space, and instead describes a new thing called Spacetime.
Imagine a train moving in a straight line to the Eastward. We can map its movement through Space, Time or best of all, Spacetime! Notice how much more epically cool Spacetime looks. This will be important later.
With our Spacetime graph, we map space horizontally and time vertically.
In the realz world, there are three dimensions of space – length, width and height. Thankfully there is only one dimension of time, and this runs from past to future (unless you’re looking backwards.) To graph something using all four dimensions is hard, so instead we just take two dimensions of space and make a horizontal plane, then map time vertically. This will make sense in a second.
Now imagine a flash of light. Say you were standing on a hill on a moonless night and turned on a torch for a second. The light would spread out in every direction, lighting first the bushes near by, then later the trees in the distance. If we think about it in just 2 dimensions we can draw it like this, kind of like ripples in a pond.
If we map time vertically, and stack these pictures up above each other, we get a cone. So a Spacetime graph looks like this. Notice again that it is epically cool.
So a light cone is a flash of light moving through Spacetime. Usually people draw it as two cones. The bottom one is light collapsing into a single event, and the top one is it exploding out again.
Image by Deibid
You might be thinking – why bother?
Because this is a more accurate way to imagine the world. It shows how the past can influence the present and the future. When light cones overlap, it means two objects or events interact with each other. Every event in the Universe has an associated light cone. It’s a mathematical way to represent the Universe, and the basis for lots of complex physics (such as curved Spacetime, and why simultaneous events are relative to the observer.)
The theory of relativity replaced the absoluteness of space and time with the absoluteness speed of light.
I hope this answers ye question Prawn. Find out more about awesome light cones here.
Physics of lapping lets cats drink without mess
First up, apologies on the lateness of my post. A whole week has gone past! Oh me! I humbly do beseech you to forgive this old salt and do throw myself upon the deck in penance. Me only defense is that I have just moved from Canberra to Adelaide, and me Schooner does need an awful lot of bubble wrap. To distract you from me own slackness, I have scoured the nets for the cutest science story evah. I ply you with kittens thusly:
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Cats are a more delicate and refined animal than messy, smelly and drooly dogs. I’ve always been a cat person. I think they have higher standards. Turns out they also drink better than dogs.
Both dogs and cats lack the complete cheeks that humans have, which means they can’t drink water by suction like we can. Dogs get around this by using their tongues as a ladle, cupping the water from bowl to throat.
Cat’s do it differently. They lap water briskly, but not like a ladle. Instead, they DEFY GRAVITY and make the water lift up into the air like a glorious floating blob of refreshment.
Sounds crazy, but it’s true. When they dip into the dish, water adheres to the dorsal (top) side of their tongue. The surface tension (sweet, sweet hydrogen bondage) of the water drags a column of water into the air. The cat can thus pull water into its mouth using inertia.
The competition between inertia moving water up and gravity pulling it down sets the lapping frequency of the cat. Smaller cats with smaller tongues lap faster to drink, large cats lap slower. Observation of lapping frequency in big cats like lions shows the same kind of trend, suggesting they use the same physics as the household feline.
Cats might do this because it’s a neater, cleaner way to drink and it keeps their whiskers nice and dry. Whiskers have an important sensory function, so it’s worth the effort to keep them tidy.
The research was published in Science, and began when a researcher was watching his own cat drink. A video of the researcher and cat is below, and shows in super slow mo exactly how water defies gravity when a cat enters the equation.
Did you hear that? Did you? Not only is it physics, hydrogen bonding and gravity defying, plus, PLUS, the tongue could have implications for robotics of the future. Yeah. Robot cat tongues. It’s going to happen.
Actually tongues are very interesting. They obviously have no bones for support, so instead they have a muscular hydrostat system where support comes from muscles. The same thing happens in octopus tentacles, where muscles stretch in one of three directions: Along the tentacle (longitudinal), across the tentacle (transverse) or wrapping around the tentacle (helical.) When an octopus moves, one muscle contracts to become shorter which forces the muscles around to stretch, supporting the movement like a skeleton.
Cats and octopus. You know this post was worth the wait.
Reis, P., Jung, S., Aristoff, J., & Stocker, R. (2010). How Cats Lap: Water Uptake by Felis catus Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1195421
CERN trap 38 atoms of antimatter
Facility at CERN
For the first time ever, antimatter has been trapped by a magnetic field allowing it to be studied in detail.
The 38 atoms were antihydrogen, theoretically the same as hydrogen but having the opposite charge. Where hydrogen is made of one proton, one electron, antihydrogen is made with an antiproton and a positron.
Antihydrogen was first made at CERN in 1995, and in 2002 they could make large enough quantities for study. The problem is that matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they meet, so the antihydrogen is short lived. The ALPHA project has changed that. Using strong and complex magnetic fields stops the antimatter from coming in contact with any matter.
This technique allowed the antihydrogen to last for a tenth of a second, plenty of time to study the properties of antimatter.
Antimatter has always been a bit of a mystery. During the Big Bang, equal amounts of antimatter and matter should have been made. But for some reason, everything around us is made of matter and the antimatter seems to have disappeared.
The research was published yesterday in Nature online.
Andresen, G., & et al (2010). Trapped antihydrogen Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature09610
Here’s the press release from CERN, and here’s a neat video all about it.
Bacteria solve sudoku
Image by UT-Tokyo for iGEM
Nobody loves sudoku like my granddad, unless it’s these Tokyo scientists. They genetically engineered e-coli to let them solve sudoku puzzles.
The puzzle was a 4×4, not quite the 9×9 that we’re used to. An example is shown in the picture. Each number was assigned a colour, so a red colony was the number one, and blue was two. The bacteria had to become the right colour to fit into the sudoku solution.
To solve the puzzle, the bacteria have to know what numbers are around it. For example, the position in the top left has the following data: There is a one in the column, a three in the row and a two in the box. Therefore it needs to be a four.
To become a number four, it needs to receive signals for one, two and three which makes it flip on a switch to say “four.” The switch works only when it receives three different signals.
Signals were transferred between bacteria using phage – viruses that infect bacteria. For example, a number one bacteria would produce a phage which says “Yo, I’m number one.” When that phage infects bacteria around it, they know they are in the presence of a number one. That helps flip the right switch for the bacteria to solve the puzzle.
More details on the project, which was part of the iGEM competition, can be found here.
Hat tip to The Loom.
Rare footage of the giant jellyfish
A giant jellyfish, Stygiomedusa gigantea, has been filmed in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s tentacles are 10 meters long and the bell is over half a meter wide. Check out the video below of this denizen of the deep.
Hat tip to Deep Sea News.
Gold nanoparticles make plants glow in the dark
Image by Yellowcloud
Imagine if instead of having sensor lights to illuminate a garden path, you could line it with light-emitting plants. You could stroll along bio-luminescent flower beds, dancing in dappled moonlight and delighting in eerily lit peace, free from the shackles of electricity.
It could be possible with sea urchin shaped gold nanoparticles. Seriously, every time I turn on my computer the world gets more random. Sea urchins, I ask you. In any event, they’re called nano-sea-urchins.
Taiwanese researchers made a solution of gold nano-sea-urchins and dipped into it an aquatic plant, Bacopa caroliniana or blue waterhyssop. The nanoparticles moved into the plant over a day or so, and stayed there for about a month.
When exposed to UV light, the nanoparticles produced blue-violet light which encouraged the chlorophyll inside the plant to make red light. The result? An awesome glowing plant, just add UV.
It’s exciting stuff, there are a lot of excellent uses for light emitting things that work inside plants or animals. If the particles could be attached to a drug we could track exactly where the drug goes over the course of a treatment. You could attach it to proteins and find out where they are located inside a plant. Or you could just have a sweet glow in the dark plant in your house or garden.
Of course, you still need to have that UV source. But what’s wrong with having black light in your house or garden? Just think of the possibilities… You could drink tonic water every day, that stuff glows blue in black light because of the quinine.
Also, if you’ve ever wondered if black light can cause sunburn (as I recently have) here’s the low down. Black light is made of UV light which is close in wavelength to visible light, so it’s quite low energy. This counts as UVA, not UVB which causes most sunburns. Large amounts of UVA (such as those found in tanning beds) can cause skin cancer or premature aging, but the small amount contained in black lights is unlikely to do much damage.
Su, Y., Tu, S., Tseng, S., Chang, Y., Chang, S., & Zhang, W. (2010). Influence of surface plasmon resonance on the emission intermittency of photoluminescence from gold nano-sea-urchins Nanoscale DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00330A
Hat tip to New Scientist
Microbes, photographic film and a self portrait
Image by Erno-Eric Raitanen
This art is made of film degraded by bacteria.
It’s a self-portrait of the artist Erno-Eric Raitanen. The bacteria was harvested from his own body and cultivated on the gelatin surface of photographic film.
It’s a similar process to growing bacteria on a plate of agar. As the bacteria gnaw away at the gelatin, the film starts to degrade and creates some interesting patterns. He calls them bacteriograms.
I recommend you flick through his online gallery. I like to think I could make some myself one day, except with added science. Maybe add some antibacterials to part of the film and influence the pattern. OR add a mild antibacterial to the whole surface and make a picture of antibiotic-resistant bacteria!
I know I’ve got some scientist readers out there who are into bacteria. What would you make a bacteriogram of? What about virologists, how could you get some viral action happening on film?
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