A Schooner
of Science
Thought controlled computers? Recent research says yes.
Image by Amarand Agasi
Cerf, M., Thiruvengadam, N., Mormann, F., Kraskov, A., Quiroga, R., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2010). On-line, voluntary control of human temporal lobe neurons Nature, 467 (7319), 1104-1108 DOI: 10.1038/nature09510New monkey species discovered, sneezes when wet
Image reconstructed on photoshop based on similar species and a carcass of the new species. Image by Dr Thomas Geissmann.
Meet Rhinopithecus strykeri, the Burmese snub-nosed monkey that sneezes when it rains. It is covered with black hair from its head to its very long tail, except for its ears and chin beard which have little white tufts. Angelina Jolie lips complete the look.
On it’s flat little face it has an upturned nose and wide nostrils, perfect for rain catching. When it rains they are often found with their heads between their legs. Hating life.
The monkey was found in Northern Myanmar, formally known as Burma. The research was conducted by a team of primatologists including Flora & Fauna International.
It’s new to science, but old news to the local people who already knew it well in Lisu language as mey nwoah and in Law Waw language as myuk na tok te, both mean ‘monkey with an upturned nose.’
It’s like the Margay cat again… we don’t hear about it until it’s documented in a SCIENCE way, in a journal, written and peer reviewed. /rant.
Though they DID interview hunters as part of the fieldwork. One of the hunters even gave them a bag he had made with the skin of a juvenile snub-nosed monkey. I guess that counts.
Other species of snub-nosed monkeys have been found in China and Vietnam, but this one is different in that it is particularly black, especially sneezy, and the skin around its eyes is pale pink instead of blue (among other things.) All snub-nosed monkeys are considered endangered, and it is estimated that the population of this species is only 260 – 330 individuals. Local people and Flora & Fauna International are working to protect the newly found species, but as always conservation is a tough gig.
Below is the citation for the journal article BUT BE WARNED! I couldn’t find it. I tried to resolve the doi and got nada. I searched all through the American Primate Journal and found nothing. I’ll keep checking and see if it comes back. Post a comment if you can find it before me.
Geissmann, T., Lwin, N., Aung, S., Aung, T., Aung, Z., Hla, T., Grindley, M., & Momberg, F. (2010). A new species of snub-nosed monkey, genus Rhinopithecus Milne-Edwards, 1872 (Primates, Colobinae), from northern Kachin state, northeastern Myanmar American Journal of Primatology DOI: 10.1002/ajp.20894
UPDATE: Thanks to the comments below who found the journal article. Download it in pdf.
Big bang theory’s big bad blog
This is a link to a blog I heartily recommend. It’s written by the tech consultant of The Big Bang Theory sitcom, which ranks higher in Google than the ACTUAL theory of the big bang. It’s understandable. If you don’t watch The Big Bang Theory, how do you live? I’ve been addicted for a mere seven months now, and already I can’t imagine life before it. It’s a geeky comedy about four nerdy guys and one hot girl. There, now you’re up to date and can start watching mid season. Alternatively, watch this snippet about their take on astrology. Lolz.
I find it really interesting to read a tech consultant’s blog (not just because I’m a stalkerish fangirl either.) I think it would be a cool job to research random information to help people write witty reparte. You know what, if you need any witty reparte written for you, e-mail me. We’ll talk.
The latest post is about the stars in our neighborhood. And to top it all off, it even had some sesame street in it. Now if THAT ain’t a good blog I don’t know what is!
In fact I think I should emulate the awesomeness…
Nah. Just YouTube it.
How aqua regia saved Nobel Prize medals from the Nazis
It was a brisk April morning in 1940, and George was in a fix. In his hands were two Nobel Prizes illegally smuggled from Germany, while outside the lab Nazi’s swarmed the streets of Copenhagen. Denmark was now occupied by the Germans, and it was only a matter of time before they entered the Institute of Theoretical Physics and searched the building.
The medals belonged to Max von Laue and James Franck, Germans who had won Nobel Prizes in Physics some years ago. Their names where on the medals, and taking gold out of Germany was almost a capital offense, carrying a punishment not to be sneezed at. George was certainly not sneezing, but his palms were sweating as if he had a fever and his heart was pounding like a drum. There might be only hours until Nazis found the medals, and his neck would certainly be on the chopping block along with theirs.
What to do? Hide it in a hollowed out book as children hide sweets? No, there was no guarantee the books would stay put, they could be sent away or burned for all he knew. Bury it then? There simply wasn’t time, a freshly dug grave would only attract attention. No, it had to be changed, made unrecognisable, hidden in plain sight. Somehow. Think George, think. To every problem there must be a solution. Keep at it until a solution appears.
A solution! Of course! The gold should be hidden in solution! To wait out the war in a nondescript bottle sitting on a shelf. The worst that would happen is it would be thrown away, and if that was to be at least there would be no tell-tale engravings to point fingers.
George looked around the lab for the ingredients to a potent cocktail. Only one thing would dissolve gold. Aqua regia, a mix of three parts hydrochloric acid to one part nitric acid. Alone neither of these acids could change gold, very few things could. Gold was considered such a rare and beautiful metal for exactly that reason, because it was unchangeable and very stable. It would not rust like iron or turn green like copper. Strong, concentrated acids would not burn a hole in gold as they would other metals. Unless of course that acid was aqua regia, royal water.
In a large flask George combined the two acids quickly, his hands now dry and mind focused. The resulting mixture was colourless for an instant before turning faintly peach and then bright orange. With one held breath he dropped in the two gold medals.
Chemistry had always attracted George de Hevesy since he had first worked on radioactive isotopes thirty years ago. His work on them had uncovered many mysteries of biology, such as what part of a growing plant captures poisonous lead to protect the rest of the plant (the roots.) He was still a mover and shaker in the field, which was growing rapidly and had even entered the realm of human experimentation. If a man was injected with a radioactive isotope, where did it go, how long did it stay there and how was it excreted?
He was, in certain circles, quite famous. Perhaps in the near future he would be holding a Nobel Prize of his own.
But for now, these two Prizes were all he had, and they were getting smaller. The magic of aqua regia was in the way the two acids worked together.
Nitric acid had the power to take small amounts of solid gold and put it into solution. On its own it wouldn’t make any difference at all, because it would only allow a tiny amount of gold to be in solution at a time, with the gold being in equilibrium between solid and soluble form.
Hydrochloric acid, on the other hand, could supply its chloride atoms to convert gold to chloroaurate. But by itself it did nothing because it couldn’t get a grip on the gold to start with.
In aqua regia, the gold was put into solution by the nitric acid, and then converted to chloroaurate by hydrochloric acid. It pushed the equilibrium across, allowing the nitric acid to pull more and more gold into solution, where it was quickly changed into another form.
Once the reaction was complete, George sealed the flask and put it high up on the shelf. There it would stay until the war was over, and perhaps in brighter years he would return and extract the gold out of the solution, and return it to the Nobel Foundation where it could be recoined and returned. If brighter days ever arrived.
——
This be fiction based on a true story. George de Hevesy is credited with dissolving two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia and storing them during the second world war, where they remained unnoticed despite careful searching by the Nazis. The gold was later recovered and recoined, and presented back to the two owners. George de Hevesy won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on radioactive isotopes.
Have a nap and let your computer cure cancer
Image by John Watson
While waiting for inspiration to strike a solid introduction into my head, my computer screen went blank. Good ol’ MacBook conserving energy! But letting your computer go idle doesn’t mean you have to waste its processing power. Why not cure cancer with grid computing?
It’s a kind of parallel computing, which breaks up complex problems into smaller calculations and then solves them at the same time. Instead of one processor working on one calculation a time, a group of processors work on different calculations together. Dual-core computers is one way to do it. Grid computing is another.
Grid computing is like a massive virtual computer whose processors are computers linked by a central software.
World Community Grid is one group which utilises the personal computers of over half a million volunteers around the globe. Their software switches on when the computer is idle and runs virtual experiments, calculating and number crunching its way through chemical simulations. They provide this public grid to humanitarian research projects.
Childhood cancer
One of the projects they are running is helping to solve childhood cancer by finding potential new drugs for neuroblastoma, one of the most common solid tumors in children. In some people the tumors do not respond well to chemotherapy. This research is hoping to turn this around by targeting three proteins which are important to the cancer’s survival. Knock out those proteins and the cancer will in turn be knocked out by chemo.
Good plan, but how to knock out the proteins? That’s where the grid comes in.
There are three million potential drug candidates who MIGHT bind to one of the proteins and knock them out. Of course, that’s a lot of laboratory time right there. A computer would be better, but to run these nine million virtual experiments would take 8000 years. By working with the public grid they expect the project to be finished in just two years. Possibly less.
That’s a big saving on time and grant money. It’s rational based drug design (which I blogged about here) taken to a crowd sourcing extreme. They are trying a similar thing to discover dengue fever drugs.
Image by Mstroeck
Clean Water
Drug design isn’t the only industry using the World Community Grid. Last month universities in Australia and China announced they are running simulations through the grid to find out how to filter water using nanotubes.
Nanotubes are small tubes that only water molecules can fit through. Not bacteria, not even viruses. It’s a great way to get rid of water dwelling nasties and desalinate sea water. But with such small pores you would expect the pressure and energy needed to force water through the filter to be incredible. And incredibly expensive. But in 2005 experiments showed that actually the water flowed pretty fast through the filters.
Why? Possibly the water molecules touching the nanotubes act more like ice and reduce friction. But who knows? To find out exactly what’s happening they’re running realistic simulations using the grid. The outcome could lead to huge improvements in water availability, potentially saving millions of lives a year in the developing world.
Like the idea of grid computing? Sign up to the World Community Grid here, and let your down time make a difference.
Platypus. Poisonous, egg laying mammal with ten sex chromosomes
Image by Urville Djasim
Ah, the elusive platypus. The water dwelling animal with fur, webbed feet and a beak. It may just be the strangest animal on the planet. Not only does it look weird, it’s poisonous, can sense electricity, lays eggs and secrete milk through their skin, and have an excessive number of sex chromosomes.
It’s poisonous.
It is SERIOUSLY poisonous. The males have poison barbs under their front feet which they mainly use during the spring breeding season. One scratch from these babies and you will be in terrible agony.
My friend studied platypuses (yes, that’s the plural I checked) in honours and her colleague injected himself with platypus venom in the name of science. For months he had excruciating pain for months which did not respond to any painkillers, including morphine. Because of this quality, platypus venom could help scientists develop drugs which work differently to our current repertoire.
Research into platypus venom is lacking because it is hard to come across samples. But just last month researchers identified 83 possible venom genes using DNA extracted from an active venom gland. Some of the genes are similar to those in snakes, pufferfish and starfish. Now the platypus hardly evolved from a starfish. Instead, it’s an example of convergent evolution, traits that arise separately in different species and give a selective advantage. Illustrious journal Nature says platypus venom confirms the convergent evolution theory for venom. (Research paper Whittington CM, & et al (2010). Novel venom gene discovery in the platypus. Genome biology, 11 (9) PMID: 20920228)
Electroreceptor bill
Sharks use electroreception to find prey by sensing the electricity animals have in their body. Monotromes (mammals that lay eggs) including platypuses and echidnas, are the only mammals with the same ability, and the platypus is the strongest. Closing its eyes and nose when it dives, the platypus relies almost entirely on electrolocation and touch to find the tasty crustaceans it snacks on. Sharks and platypuses are hardly related, making this another yet another example of convergent evolution.
Electroreceptors are located in rows on the bill, which might help it find prey by noticing which receptors pick up the electricity first. We do the same thing with our ears, hearing noises at slightly different times tells us which direction the sound is coming from. When the platypus hunts, it moves its bill side to side, which might reveal how far away the prey is. It’s similar to how pigeons bob their head for depth perception.
Image by TwoWings
Laying eggs
A female platypus has two ovaries, but only the left one is functional. Why? We don’t know.
Eggs spend 28 days developing inside their mother’s body and 10 days outside. The babies (often called puggles) are born with teeth, which drop out as they mature.
The mother produces milk, but she doesn’t have teats or nipples. Instead puggles lick or nibble on her skin to drink, gaining nutrients and probably an immune system. Living in mud, platypuses are born with no immune system, making them worse off than human babies which have immature immune systems at birth and rely on colostrum to boost their protection.
Sex chromosomes
Since the platypus genome was sequenced in 2008, we know a bit about these strange sex chromosomes. We know that they are more similar to birds than mammals, suggesting that our own mammal-like reptile ancestors might have had sex chromosomes like the birds of today. But there’s one big difference that makes the platypus unique.
They have ten sex chromosomes. Males have five X and five Y. Females have ten X. Humans, in fact, almost all mammals have only two. During platypus sperm production, the sex chromosomes pair up as X1Y1, X2Y2, X3Y3, X4,Y4, X5,Y5, so they can split evenly to make sperm that have 5X or 5Y. Phew. After all that, I’m surprised the males have any energy left for mating.
New species discovered in Papua New Guinea
Image by Piotr Naskrecki/iLCP
This katydid is one of the new species discovered in Papua New Guinea during a recent expedition by Conservation International.
Another katydid had huge spiky back legs, which it stuck in the air and jabbed at attackers. The researchers discovered it was quite painful.
Their goal was to rapidly identify new species and give an indication of the wealth of biodiversity in PNG. It gives them ammo when approaching governments and seeking help in conserving the area. Here is a video from a herpetologist (someone who studies frogs, not herpes!) about his experiences. The first bit is a little boring, but then they start sneaking up and pouncing on insects and such which is lolz to watch.
Noble Prize in Chemistry – Palladium catalysed reactions
Image adapted from Jurii
The winners of this years Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, for their work in palladium catalysed reactions.
Ah, a subject close to my own heart! As a student of Molecular and Drug Design, we studied this shizz in lectures. Hell, I think I even did a Suzuki reaction! That pretty well makes me famous IMHO.
SO – palladium catalysed reactions. What are they, I hear you say? Oh, dear gentle reader, how long do you have for me to BLOW YOUR MIND WITH CHEMISTRY AWESOME? Three minutes? K.
Carbon to carbon bonds are super important in the human body, which is pretty much made of carbon. Nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen get a look in, but carbon is where it’s at.
There’s a big trend at the moment, has been for years, in designing small molecules as drugs. Some small molecules mimic the molecules naturally inside the body. Basically it’s telling the body what you to do in a language it can understand.
To make a carbon-based small molecule, you need to make some carbon to carbon bonds. The sad part is that carbon is a chiller, and isn’t keen on making friends with other carbons. Put a carbon and another carbon in a test-tube and they just won’t get it on. They don’t care to so much as hold hands.
HOWEVER, chuck some palladium catalyst into the mix and ba-zing! You’ve got yourself a sweet, sweet reaction that’s controllable and would otherwise have taken a zillion years to happen. Now we can create new molecules and drugs to benefit peeps everywhere!
Words cannot describe how nerdy and happy I am right now to write about palladium catalysed reactions. Maybe I’ve missed my calling as a chemist after all.
Day Two Nobel Prize Week – Physics goes to graphene
Image by AlexanderAIUS
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 has just been awarded jointly to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”
Graphene, aka “atomic level chicken wire” are carbon atoms packed into a 2D lattice. It’s not used to keep molecular chickens in their rightful place, but if it was it would be hardcore. The stuff is one of the strongest materials ever tested, 200 times the strength of steel.
It also has great potential in creating new kinds of chips and transistors, possibly faster than silicon. It’s also a great sensor, either for single molecule gas detection or for disease markers.
Sheets of graphene could help sequence DNA ridiculously fast, and they prevent the growth of bacteria. They could be used as hygienic covers for food. Plenty more potential applications can be found on Wikipedia. It’s exciting stuff.
Andre Geim is also known for his work on gecko tape – a super strong adhesive that mimics gecko’s feet and could one day let humans climb walls like a gecko.
Day One Nobel Prize Week – Father of IVF wins Nobel for Medicine
This week is vegetarian week, and it’s also the week Nobel Prize winners are announced. Coincidence? I think not.
The 2010 prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded to Robert G. Edwards for the development of in vitro fertilisation.
His initial success in creating a blastocyst outside the womb happened in Cambridge in 1968. The world’s first IVF baby was born ten years later in 1978. Since then the number of children conceived by IVF are around four million.
I find IVF incredibly interesting. It has not only given children to millions of parents, it’s also responsible for SCIENCE STUFF. Like countless discoveries into how embryo’s grow, and how to improve health during pregnancy.
I’ll keep you updated on the winners for Physics and Chemistry.
Dolphin safe tuna… A dolphin is worth how many fish?
Flickr Image by david.nikonvscanon
I was one such person, until I read this post last year.
The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna by Southern Fried Science is one of my top five ever blog posts (the top prize going to the Nacho Average Cheesecake by the sadly ended Chem Blog. Read it read it read it!)
For those of us too lazy to click through, I’ll summarize the dolphin safe tuna post. Consider this cliffnotes. Hells, I’m just that kinda pirate.
To fish for tuna, ships like to locate a big school of ’em so they can nab them all at once. Finding a school of tuna is tricky.
The non-dolphin safe method is to follow some dolphins, because dolphins have their fins on the pulse and know the happy-haps of where the tuna are at. Dolphins are easy to follow because they come up to the surface for air. The downside is that the dolphins are accidentally caught with the tuna (bycatch), Southern Fried Science estimates it as 500,000 a year.
The dolphin safe method does it differently. Instead, an object is floated on the ocean. For some weird reason, floating objects attract sea life, including big ol’ schools of tuna. So you just scoop up the tuna when it comes in. Of course, this leads to bycatch of its own, including all the other sea life that came to investigate the mysterious floating object. There’s more bycatch through this method, but less of it is dolphins.
When you compare the bycatch of the dolphin safe method and the non-dolphin safe method you come up with the following.
1 dolphin saved through dolphin safe fishing costs 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks, and almost 1,200 small fish.
Food for thought. Read the original post here.
Avatar sequel to film deep sea in 3D
Say wha-?
There’s gonna be a sequel to Avatar?
Why?
I mean, I think the movie was awesome and all, but when it finished it finished. Finito. No more. No dramatic suspense music to imply the indignity of a sequel. No sudden return of a villain. Nada.
The story was just Pocahontas, after all. And Pocahontas didn’t have a dumb sequel (did it?)
This whole “every successful movie must have a sequel” really pisses me off. It just DETRACTS from the awesomeness of the original. The one exception is Ace Venture.
The good part about this (silver lining Captain, focus on the sliver of silver) is that part of the movie is set in the deep sea. And to make that part of the movie, James Cameron is going to film the deep sea in the Mariana Trench (south of Japan.) 11,000 metres down. Humans have only been down there once, in a hardcore sub that can withstand the excessive water pressure which is 1000 times stronger than atmospheric pressure.
If he can do it, the footage could be supercool scientific data for the abyss that is the deep sea. We know more about the moon than we know about the deep sea, and there’s probably stacks more sweet stuff down there. And James Cameron can do ANYTHING. Where science has so far faltered, James Cameron and his trusty checkbook will succeed. Aw yeah.
Hat tip to Dr M at Deep Sea News, who amazingly did not like the first movie. *blink*
Science Lab Cookie Cutters
Nothing says nerdy and delicious like a set of science cookie cutters. You can buy a set here, the site is in America but they ship internationally.
I think they’re pretty cool nerdy cool. On the other hand I like my cookies chock full of chocolate and they might look weird in beaker shapes. Like poorly cleaned glassware. And there is nothing cool about that.
Still they look awesome, I’m filing it under Science Art.
Now I’m hungry for cookies.
Depth perception – or why pigeons bob their heads
I’ve been doing some science tricks lately that show the difference between both eyes. Simple one, close your left eye and line your two pointer fingers up with one 10cm behind the other. Get them so they are exactly in line and you can only see one finger. Now open your left eye and close your right eye. Not so in line anymore.
So we have two eyes on the front of our face, and they both see slightly different images of our world. Our smarty pants brain puts the images together, but it also notices the difference between the pictures and uses it for depth perception.
The same thing is used in 3D cinema, which you can see when you take off the glasses. There’s two pictures, and when an object is supposed to look closer the two pictures are further apart from each other (winces and waits for SexyMan to correct me.)
That’s why most predators have eyes on the front of their heads, so they can gauge the depth from prey. Prey animals usually have eyes on the sides, so they have a bigger range of vision and can see danger coming.
But when I was doing the hole-in-the-hand trick, it just didn’t work for me. I get a hole on the side, like a someone has taken a nibble out of my hand, but not through the middle like everyone else. Is their something wrong with my depth perception? Am I missing out on a 3D world that everyone else in enjoying in full spectroscopic vision?
My saving grace is those stereogram books, where a 3D picture is hidden inside a pattern and you have to go semi-crosseyed to see it. I rock at those books. Oh yeah. I can see the rabbit, or at least a 3D blob that could be a rabbit.
So I’m hoping I have 3D vision. But I wiki’d depth perception anyway, and it turns out there are lots of ways you can check depth besides having two forward facing eyes. Pigeons bob their heads to do it. By moving their heads a little they can see how objects around them move. Objects which are close to them move a lot, and objects that are far away stay stationary. Try it at home!
Talk like a pirate day TODAY
Arr, it be talk like a pirate day, that most noble of holidays!
Would ye like to know how to talk like a true buccaneer? Click through for a dictionary of piratitude! Here be me favourites:
Barkeep! Grog!
Barkeep! More grog!
That’s all ye need know. Enough grog and ye’ll be talkin’ pirate like ye were born to it!
If ye are still in dire need of help, ye might be needin’ this instructional video. Remember, man is cap’n, salty dog or jim lad. Woman is wench, and can be described as buxom, saucy or foul depending on temperament.
‘Course the exception is meself who, though a wench, must be addressed as Captain or ye’ll walk the plank!
Events around the globe are listed here, though more can be found through ye olde Google. Last year I was in bonny Adelaide and raised hell at the Gov. They be havin’ another event this year and I recommend it heartily!
Post a comment ye salty sea dogs and beauteous wenches, and tell what ye have in store for the day!
Talk like a pirate day tomorrow!
Heads up and look sharp, for tomorrow be the best day of the year – talk like a pirate day! Don’t miss out, make sure yer talkin’ pirate from dawn ’till dusk and well into the night. No matter where ye are, at home, at a conference, shopping, drinking at the pub, the time is always right for talking like a pirate. Come back tomorrow morning for some tips on how to talk like a pirate. Sunday 19 September, tattoo it in mirror writing on yer forehead!
Would we survive a zombie apocalypse?
I have blogged about zombies before on this blog (real zombies and infection modeling), and generally I am pretty concerned about the impending zombie apocalypse. But today I stumbled upon the reasons why we WOULD SURVIVE such an event, and of course I had to share the good news with you. ‘Specially if you’re one of those people who secretly wish for a zombie apocalypse?
This information is from Cracked.com – 7 Scientific Reasons why we would Survive a Zombie Outbreak (Quickly.) I’m not going to rewrite their points. I’m not going to copy their jokes. I wish I had come up with this stuff myself, but I didn’t. So read the article and enjoy.
I disagree with Cracked on a number of points. If we accept that zombies are real, we can hardly impose on them the same limitations of the normal human body. For example, they said zombies would melt in the sun and get frostbite in the cold. It’s much like saying that zombies would have rigor mortise or would continue to decay… they’re not like normal humans because they are reanimated corpses. Hell, if the corspe can keep walking, who’s to say it will degenerate into putrefaction on a hot day?
Ditto the comments on zombies being unable to heal themselves and falling prey to insects or bears. Well, maybe bears, but they must be able to prevent maggot infestations. For us, we have kick ass immune systems that keep our bodies mostly clear of nasties. Maybe zombies have the same. Because they are cold and have less replicating cells they are probably unlikely to catch the flu. Maybe because their cells are dead, they have no B or T cells functioning. But I’m sure that complement, a non-living protein based section of the immune system would still work and is more than capable of emptying a can of whip-ass. Immunologists, correct me if I’m wrong.
However I do think they’re right, that we would pretty easily hole up in city high rises and just pick off zombies by throwing stuff on their heads. I guess it would depend on how long you could live in an upstairs office. Is there a kitchen? Is there still running water and enough food to last a month or so? How long do zombies live? Can you fashion weapons of mass decapitation out of desk chairs? All important questions to be answered.
As for biting being a crappy way to spread infection – Fair call. Sneezing is a much better way to transmit a disease. Carriers are also a great method, I think of them as Trojan Horses. They look innocent enough but they’re germilicious on the inside. People with the flu are most contagious in the first few days of having it, including just before they have serious symptoms. Zombies tend to be obvious, so infecting people on the sly is tricky business.
Although the article made me feel a bit better about the inevitable zombie apocalypse, I’m still continuing to check the radio for any sign of infection before I take my ship into port. One can never be too careful where zombies are concerned.
Medical dictionary translates English to Yolngu Matha
Yolŋu Matha is a language spoken by the Indigenous Australians of Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. To the majority of the people in the communities, English is a second language. There’s a twelve year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, which is pretty drastic. It’s made worse because there’s a massive communication gap between the doctors and patients.
Just last week, ARDS released a new dictionary that translates medical phrases into Yolŋu Matha. Here’s some examples:
DNA – djinaga’puy wäyuk or djinawa’wuy wäyuk
English: DNA is found inside every cell of our body. It acts like a law that is not easily changed. It controls what kind of cell each cell grows into e.g. a skin cell, or liver cell or brain cell. It also controls what work each cell does.
Yolŋu Matha: Dhuwaliyi ŋunhi djinawa’wuy wäyuk, ŋunhiny ŋayi ŋuli ga ŋorra ŋunhan bili yan ṉapuŋgan ŋunhiliyin ŋunhi nhänhamiriw waka’ rumbalwu yäku cell-ŋura dhuwal rumbalŋura limurruŋgal. Ga rommirr ŋayi dhuwaliyi djinawa’wuynydja wäyuk, ŋunhi ŋanya dhu bäyŋun nhakun yuwalktja rrorru’. Ga buŋgawayirrnydja ŋayi ŋuli ga ŋunhi bukmakkun dhiyak cell-wuny mala nhaltjan ŋayi dhu walalany dhanuŋdhun rommirriyam balanya nhakun: ŋanakpuy dhuwal rumbalpuy cell-nha ga bamburuŋburuŋbuynha cell-nha ga biḏila’puynha cell-nha. Ga ŋunhi ŋayi ŋuli goŋ-dhawar’yundja bala ŋayi ŋuli djämamirriyaman ŋunhi cell-nhany mala
hormone – dhäwu-gänhamirr wiyika’
English: Hormones are substances that are produced in our body and carried by our blood. Each hormone has its own message to give to our body.
Yolŋu Matha: “Hormone”-dja dhuwal wiyika’ mala ŋunhi ŋuli ga ŋamaŋamayunmirr dhiyal rumbalŋur limurruŋgal, ga gämany walalany ŋuli ga ŋunhi maŋguy’nha. Ga bukmakthu “hormone”-dhu ga gäna-gana ŋayatham dhäwu mala ŋunhi walal ŋuli ga gurrupan dhipal bukmaklil rumballil limurruŋgal.
How awesome is that?
Biodiversity weekend at Questacon
This here is Charles Darwin studying some stick insects. This vision greeted me in the entrance hall of Questacon, Australia’s national science and technology center. The insects were crawling all over this guy’s face. He’s one of the very talented Excited Particles who are, as their name suggests, particularly excited about science. Sometimes fire. But then, who isn’t excited by fire? They also do highly entertaining science shows.
This weekend, Questacon are holding an event for the International Year of Biodiversity. There’s critters from the zoo, aquarium and reptile sanctuary, and specialists on native Australian plants. If you’re in Canberra (or Sydney, it’s not that far) check out the program. If not, don’t die of FOMO.
It’s getting close to the end of the year, so make the most of the biodiversity while it’s still hot. Next year’s offerings are the International Year of Forests (snore) and the International Year of Chemistry (yippee!!!) In fact, they have also have a weird year that started in August and is running till August 2011 called the Year of Youth, which gets young people involved in making important decisions about the world. Sounds good, I think.
Man I’m excited about the Year of Chemistry. More excited than a particle, I’d wager. We should make us some old school explosions! I’ll start hoarding the gunpowder now.
Antibiotic beer, as drunk by the ancient Nubians
Image by Peter Trimming
Today’s schooner of science is literally science in a schooner. Plus it comes with a new career path – bioarcheologist, expert in ancient diets.
George Armelagos is the bioarcheologist in question, and he’d been studying the ancient Nubians who lived just south of ancient Egypt in present-day Sudan.
George was looking at some bones and found evidence that they had been exposed to tetracycline, an antibiotic. Tetracycline is absorbed into bone, and fluoresces green. It’s sometimes used to measure bone growth – take tetracycline at day 0, again at day 12, and at day 21 take a biopsy. The distance between the two green lines will show how far the bone grew in 12 days.
Anyhoo, tetracycline in bones from 350-550 AD is weird, seeing as we first invented antibiotics with the discovery of penicillin in 1928. Now we find out the ancient Nubians beat us to it, and as with all great ideas they came up with it over a beer.
The grain they used to ferment the beer contained streptomyces bacteria, which produces tetracycline as a kind of germ warfare. Like penicillin comes from a fungus, tetracycline is made by a bacteria. It’s a bad-ass antibacterial that can treat disease like chlamydia, gonorrhea, and pneumonia which are caused by bacteria. It can even kill Yersinia pestis cause of the black plague.
Were the ancient Nubians drinking it by accidental contamination, intentional medication, or did streptomyces bacteria just grew on the corpses?
To find out they needed (da dada dum!) a CHEMIST! This particular hero was Mark Nelson, who dissolved the bones in some hardcore hydrogen fluoride – “the most dangerous acid on the planet,” according to Mark. Woah. After showing the bones who was boss, Mark mass spec’d the shizz out of them and discovered a metric buttload of tetracycline, confirming that it was ingested and in high quantities.
The scientist duo concluded that this was a brew with a purpose – an antibiotic alcoholic. Even the bones from a four year old child contained a lot of tetracycline, perhaps he was given the antibacterial to cure a disease.
My question is, why are WE not taking our antibiotics in beer? That would be SO much better!
Nelson ML, Dinardo A, Hochberg J, & Armelagos GJ (2010). Brief communication: Mass spectroscopic characterization of tetracycline in the skeletal remains of an ancient population from Sudanese Nubia 350-550 CE. American journal of physical anthropology, 143 (1), 151-4 PMID: 20564518
How moustaches grow
Happy World Beard Day. Yes we have one, and yes it’s today (4th September, add it to your diaries and tattoo it to yer chest.) In honour of this most wonderful of holidays, I present to you the following viewing pleasure.
Okay, I admit it’s not the noble beard, it’s his little brother moose-tarsh. Do beards grow on the same principal? I’m not sure, if anyone is willing to experiment I’d love to see some results.
This picture comes from a fantabulous site called Fake Science which put out many such wonderful scientific pictures. Got time to kill right now? Trying to avoid doing something important? Go check out their tumblr page. I won’t tell.
Margay cat of Brasil mimics primates to lure prey
Altered image, original by Malene Thyssen
At some point in this post I’m going to be tempted to say “copy cat,” so I’m just going to say it now. Copy Cat. There, it’s out of my system, now let’s move on.
On fieldwork in Brasil (so jealous right now) a group of researchers saw a large cat called a margay making some weird noises. It sounded like a pied tamarin pup, a small, supercute primate species, and I recommend you click through that link so you can bask in the cuteness.
In pied tamarin society only the alpha female gives birth, usually to twins, and the pups are looked after mostly by the father. So when the margay made some pup-like mewls, an adult male pied tamarin came down to see what the deal was.
The pied tamarin stayed in the area for a good half hour while the male was keeping an eye out. But as he was watching, the margay made his move. Across some branches… almost… almost… but at the last moment the pied tamarin saw the cat and raised the alarm. All the pied tamarins in the group high tailed outta there quicker than a pirate on shore leave.
In this instance, the margay went without its meal, but a cat using noises to attract prey is unusual. In fact, this was the first time (report came out June 2009) a feline from the neotropical region was found to mimic animal cries. What’s really interesting about the report is that it says local Amazon jungle inhabitants had already told them that the margay and other cats in the area mimicked animals to catch prey. But we don’t accept it scientifically until some scientists witness it and write a report. Just strikes me as unnecessary. Maybe I’m being unscientific, I don’t know.
The margay is an interesting feline. It spends most of its time in trees. It is one of only two cats with the ankles needed to climb down trees head first, the other one being the clouded leopard. It’s been seen dangling from trees hanging by only one foot. I wonder if that observation was made by a scientist?
Talk like a pirate day coming soon! Prepare yerself.
Ahoy there!
Just a quick reminder that the most important day in the year is coming up – Talk like a Pirate Day! It’s on September 19, which this year is a Sunday. ‘Tis an excellent day for some serious pirate frivolity, particularly in a drinking-in-the-backyard setting. Start planning yer party now!
Did the CIA spike a bakery in France with hallucinogens?
On August 15, 1951 a small town in southern France called Pont-Saint-Esprit briefly entered the twilight zone. Hundreds of people reported acute psychotic episodes and physical symptoms such as nausea. They experienced traumatic hallucinations, and 50 of those affected were put in asylums. Five died. The event was later traced back to pain maudit – cursed bread.
In 2009 American journalist Hank Albarelli cited evidence that it was actually caused by CIA experiments into LSD. His book A Terrible Mistake
There would be potential for LSD to be used as chemical warfare – sprayed onto an army it would turn soldiers into… well… I don’t know but with guns involved I think it would be bad. I’m not sure if his conclusion is correct, but his article makes a compelling argument.
I have to say, conspiracy theories really do it for me. I think they’re great. Nothing like a little paranoia to keep you on your toes. There are, however, other opinions on what caused the Pont-Saint-Esprit madness.
One explanation is ergotism. Ergot is a group of fungi (most prominently Claviceps purpurea) which grow on rye, wheat and related grain-producing when-I-grow-up-I-want-to-be-bread plants. The fungus produces a neat little cocktail of alkaloid drugs which cause spasms, diarrhea, nausea and hallucinations – similar to those experienced at Pont-Saint-Esprit that fateful day.
In fact, the psychosis could have been caused by ergot or LSD, both have similar symptoms. LSD was first derived from the ergot alkaloid ergotamine. Controlled doses of ergot poisons have been used to treat migraine headaches and control bleeding after childbirth. Accidental, and dangerous, ingestion of ergot was known as Saint Anthony’s Fire (not to be confused with Saint Elmo’s Fire) for the monks of Saint Anthony who were really good at treating it. Ergotism was also blamed for Agent Scully’s hallucinations in the episode Never Again, where she gets a badass tattoo with some red ink that could have been coloured with ergot.
Greek myth time! In Ancient Greece annual initiation ceremonies were held for the cult of Persephone and Demeter. Demeter was the goddess of grain, farming and plenty, a bit of an Earth mother goddess with rich wheat coloured hair and a flowing dress. She guaranteed a good harvest. She had a daughter called Persephone, who loved the flowers. One day when Persephone was looking at some flowers in a field, Hades the god of the underworld noticed her, opened up the ground and abducted her. When Demeter noticed her daughter was gone, she was stricken with grief and refused to bring the harvest.
Persephone was trapped in the underworld for months on end. Desperate for her hand in marriage, Hades would offer her food, but Persephone know not to eat the food of the dead or she would never be able to leave. However one day Hades offered her a pomegranate, her favourite dish, and she ate six seeds.
Up in the mortal world, the land was dying. People were starving, having never experienced such famine. No matter how they prayed to the goddess she would not bring the harvest. Seeing the despair of the people, Zeus the king of the gods went down to his brother Hades and asked if he could bring Persephone back to her mother. Awkward conversation ensued.
Hades finally agreed, but oh noes! Persephone had eaten the food of the dead! The six pomegranate seeds meant that she had to spend six months of the year in the underworld as Hades wife. The other six months she would live with Demeter her mother. That’s why we have the seasons – autumn and winter when Demeter mourns, spring and summer when Demeter is reunited with her daughter.
Anyhoo, to be initiated into the Demeter and Persephone cult was called the Eleusinian Mysteries, some mysteries including this myth with added details. I think some of the mysteries included the use of pomegranate as a contraceptive (the link between fertility and death, perhaps.) You also had to fast during the initiation, and afterwards you would drink a barley drink called Kykeon and great revelations would be revealed.
Kykeon, made of barley, quite possibly tainted with ergot. Revelation or hallucination, you tell me.
Apothecary bottles found in a collectibles shop
About a week ago I was in Gulgong, a small town in New South Wales near the wine region of Mudgee. The main road was spelled Mayne Road, and was brown stone rather than tarmac. Along the footpaths were old stone troughs for watering horses. Key landmarks included the Ten Dollar Motel and the Gulgong Butchers Cafe. It was an old gold mining town which had lost its gold but kept its rural charm.
Wandering the streets I came across a collectibles shop filled with coloured glass jugs and gold rimmed plates. Amongst the copper kettles I found these old bottles from an apothecary, dated around the 1800’s I believe.
The craftsmanship is stunning, and they teased my imagination. What were these drugs used for? What did they look like, when those bottles were filled, and who was the chemist who filled them?
I have since looked into some of the medicines written on the bottles.
Iodoformum is now called tri-iodomethane (CHI3). The crystals are lemon yellow and have a disagreeable odour and taste. I think it was used to treat tuberculosis, and is still used in homeopathy for a range of ailments. Hexamine may have been mixed with hippuric acid to make methenamine hippurate, which was used to treat lower urinary tract infections. Salol was a white powder derived from salicylic acid, the active ingredient in willow bark, which we take as acetylsalicylic acid in asprin. It was used to reduce pain and fever. Menthol you probably recognise from chest rubs. It comes from mint oil, though it can be made synthetically. As well as clearing sinuses it can ease sore throats and muscle pains, and is one of the ingredients in tiger balm.
While researching I found an issue of the British Medical Journal from September 5, 1885 which is an interesting read.
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