The Doggie Competition continues...

Leeloo in a rare moment of calmness

The "What Breed is my Dog" competition is still ongoing. Please submit your guesses in the comment section for a chance to get some great Evolving Scientist swag. Or a Burger King coupon, we shall see.

Ken Ham: Please help people understand that Dinosaurs and Birds are similar

Dinosaur and Bird...

David Menton, is still a liar. A report came out today in Nature that may change the thinking of  how the early transition from Dinos to birds occurred, but leave it to creationists to lie about it and wet their pants. The Wackos over at World Net Daily, of the "Where's the Birth Certificate" fame interviewed our favorite people at AIG to see how they could manipulate the data and have it fit into their nice little belief system.

Bill Nye is still AWESOME.

This is too juicy to pass up... like PZ Myers said in a recent blog post, "Oh, this is beautiful."  True story PZ.  This is pretty funny...  Watch Nye respond to a question, from Fox News anchor Jon Scott, asking if the discovery of volcanoes on the moon casts any doubt about climate change on Earth.  A nonsensical question indeed.

BOOM! I love Nye's reaction like he's reorganizing his brain to talk to a child.  And he has a great answer.  He is "The Science Guy!" after all.  Hopefully Mr. Scott and the rest of the Faux News team finally get "it".  Thanks PZ and Nye for bringing us this tasty morsel.

If you grew up in the 90's, then your probably familiar with Bill Nye "The Science Guy!", if not... please make yourself aware.  His show was one of reasons why I love science today.


 Salute to Science and to Bill Nye,

Yes you are Sir.

Whoa, Earthworm. That’s Weird Stuff Right There.

So, earthworms are the squiggling segmented annelids that you’re familiar with, but it’s possible that you’re not familiar with how they reproduce.  Why?  Because it’s strange.  And by strange I mean “something out of the Star Wars Trilogy or some other Sci-Fi movie” kind of strange.  I could see Jabba the Hut engaging in some sort of similar slimy oddity, but before I continue to digress, let’s get back to earthworms.

  

Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female organs.  In this sense, mating can occur whenever one earthworm runs into another.  The worms will line up with their heads facing opposite directions, and they will align segments 9-11 with the other worm’s thick body ring called a clitellum (which is located further back, just past segment 30).  Segments 9-11 include [all or most of] the male seminal vesicles (segments which contain the sperm) and the female sperm receptacles (which receive and store sperm). The worms will then encase both their bodies in mucous they secrete and each worm will pass its sperm to the sperm receptacles of the other worm.  The worms then separate, and the worm uses its clitellum to secrete a new layer of mucous around itself.  The worm will wriggle backwards, and in doing so will release its own eggs and the partner’s sperm into the “slime tube” of mucous until it slides it completely over its head.  The sperm will then fertilize the eggs and the slime tube will later dry up into a cocoon about the size of a fat grain of rice and lay below the surface of the ground where it will stay until the eggs hatch.  The hatched earthworms will reach sexual maturity upon development of a clitellum. 

I Want to Know: calamities of belief

Tip of the hat to Calamities of Nature.  I'm a little behind as this comic is a week old (July 20th), but it deserves a post.

"Don't Want to Believe"



I laugh every time I hear "It's just a Theory" when talking about anything science related.  If your going to use technical jargon (AKA, talk as a specialist would), please get the meaning right!  A Theory, in Science, is not a flimsy guess or a hunch, as many use in everyday vernacular.  A Scientific Theory is an explanation of our observations that is continually substantiated, documented and supported by evidence or data.  In Science you cannot replace "Theory" with "hunch" or "guess"... it makes no sense.  So please... don't do it. 


"Please tell us more Justin." [dramatic pause]  No problem!

Darwin's Point: human vestigial structure and evidence for evolution

My girlfriend's ear displaying Darwin's Tubercle.  Strut that common ancestry girl!

So some colleagues and I were talking about vestigial structures and examples that show evidence for evolution. The classic ones arose such as whales with hip bones, snakes with hide limbs and flightless birds. We were trying to come up with ways to gauge students learning of key evolutionary concepts.  Anyway, the conversation kind of devolved into something else (much like our Podcasts :D ) once we started Google-ing other examples in animals and us Homo sapiens. 

Sadly, This one one of the first hits for "vestigial organs in humans"... an article written by some severely misinformed member by our (mine and Dustin's) nemesis, Answers in Genesis... Grrrr, but let's get the term right though. Vestigial means a character (could be physically expressed, genetic or even a behavior) that has lost all or most of its original function.  This can include a reduction in size or loss of usefulness, which can be seen in the progression of common ancestry, as can be seen in whales.

This, along with Dustin's recent post, prompted me to write about one of my favorite examples of human vestigial structures, Darwin's Tubercle (aka Darwin's point).  Partly because my girlfriend displays the atavistic trait, or an evolutionary throwback to an ancestral phenotype preserved in our DNA.

The week of all my dreams getting crushed continues...

Top ten movie of all time?

After writing a post a couple of days ago about researchers in the UK no longer creating animal and human hybrids, putting a slight speed bump between myself and Peter Parkerdom, news came down yesterday that going back in time with the aid of my hyper-intelligent dog may also be out of the question. A team of researchers from Hong Kong have shown in a new publication in Physical Review Letters that all matter (is a photon matter? Debate..), including a photon can only reach top speeds equal to that of the speed of light. Over the last decade or so, groups of scientists began to think that it may be possible for a photon to travel in speeds that excess that of the speed of light, making time travel a possibility. What the team, led by Dr. Shengwang Du, measured was the ultimate speed of a single photon, which was never able to reach speeds above the speed of light. You win again Einstein.

Get it? No, well then you're helpless.

So traveling at speeds greater than the speed of light in order to time travel might be an impossibility, but no one has proven worm holes to be incorrect? Right? Please?

Mice, Memory And Homer Simpson

Part of the brain that is primarily involved with learning and memory is the hippocampus (along with a few other various connections to this area of the brain), but a certain hippocampal region called CA2 subregion seemed surprisingly uninvolved in the development and consolidation of learning and memory. When scientists at Emory University decided to learn more about the specific distribution of RGS14 protein in the brain, they discovered it was almost entirely found in this CA2 subregion.

As described in their paper released in 2010, these scientists found a way to create mice with significantly better memory skills. As it turns out, the key lies in rendering the RGS14 gene nonfunctional in these mice. The mice with a disabled version of this gene can recognize familiar objects for longer and navigate mazes more quickly. Interestingly, the gene, when functioning normally, appears to hinder the mental capabilities of the mice, causing Dr. John Hepler and his colleagues involved in the project to coin the light-hearted nick-name “The Homer Simpson Gene” for RGS14.

What's in a name? Apparently, to parrots, a lot

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."
Wait...

A recent News Focus piece in Science details a study done by graduate student (shout out!) and ornithologist Karl Berg at Cornell University.  To sum up, the first bit outlines the history behind a not-so-well-known long-term study on parrots, one that's lasted 24 years.  That's as long as Jane Goodall's famous chimp studies!  The experiments take place on a cattle ranch in Calabozo, Venezuela; the entire site was started and is maintained by Steve Bessinger of UC Berkeley.  Over the years, the team in Venezuela has catalogued data from tens of thousands of birds, nests, and eggs including pairings, matings, and more.  From a research standpoint, this is as close as you can get to the wild, without having to jump into a rainforest and track birds across acres of jungle.  But what about the title of this post, you say?

Hit the Jump!

More Ken Ham Shenanigans

Craz... I mean Creation Museum

HEY LOOK! The Creation "Museum" has a new exhibit. Apparently it's a laser light show aimed to further confuse the youth of America. It features Dr. David Menton (Who is a liar, liar, pants on fire) seen on a TV screen sitting just above the exhibit using a laser pointer to show "examples" of how apes and humans are different. Menton claims there are only three ways that humans could be related to apes:

1. Combine ape fossil bones with human fossil bones and declare the two to be one individual – a real “ape-man.”
2. Emphasize certain humanlike qualities of fossilized ape bones, and with imagination upgrade apes to be more humanlike.
3. Emphasize certain apelike qualities of fossilized human bones, and with imagination downgrade humans to be more apelike.

For examples of how we're similar, with ya know, ACTUAL science backing it up, you can go here, here, here, and you can learn about hominid fossils here.

For creationists who want to continue to ignore the above, you can go here.

We're done praying to the iTunes gods

The issues we have been having with iTunes have now been resolved! You will have to re-subscribe to the podcast if you had done it before, which you can do here.

My dreams of Becoming Spider-man May Someday be a Reality

Tea Time already?

Leave it to the British to do something I thought the South Koreans were doing anyway. In a story reported this morning in The Daily Mail it appears that scientists in the UK have created over 150 human-animal embryos over the past three years. It was stated in the report that a variety of embryos were made, including animal eggs fertilized with human sperm, a cybrid, or taking a human nucleus and implanting it into an animal cell, and some chimeras in which human cells where transplanted into an animal embryo. The rational behind the research is to gain insights into early human development and finding cures for diseases that could not have been done before using human embryos alone.

Boom ba doom doom, Boom ba doom doom Super Bass BUG!

Gonorrhea:  F*cks your Sh*t up

So this story has been out on the wire for a while, but I figured better late than never.  Scientists in Japan have found a new "superbug":  a pathogen that has become resistant to conventional methods of treatment (read:  drugs).  It just so happens that this new superbug is gonorrhea.  The STD.  That, as stated in caption form, F*cks your Sh*t up.  

H401, the classy name given to this abomination, is the first drug-resistant STD known to scientists.  Magnus Unemo, co-discoverer, calls the discovery both "alarming" and "predictable."  That's...kindy douchey, bro.  

But it is true.  Ever since penicillium was found to have antibacterial properties, we have been bombarding the same bacteria with increasingly stronger drugs to fight them.  As any biologist will tell you, with time come mutations, and with mutation comes evolution.  While H401 is not the first strain to be labeled a superbug, it is the first STD.  The only saving grace here is that it was found in Japan, where the mode of transmission, coupled with a scarcity of suitable vectors (carriers), may buy us some time.  I mean, have you seen the japanese...

Has anyone here had unprotec...umm...a boyfri...girlfri...yeah, we should be ok for a while.

More Great Moments in Article Translation

Silly Pigs and their lazy genes

So my PI emailed this article to me to stress the importance of spelling. A couple of things come to mind when looking at this paper, 1.) Who, after seeing the title for what I am sure was over one-thousand times, did not catch that? 2.) Who was judging whether the meat was tasty or not??

Competition - What breed is my dog?

Leeloo with her favorite alligator

Happy Friday, everyone.  Here it is, the first Evolving Scientist reader competition!  I am getting my dog, Leeloo, genotyped as a birthday present.  The genotyping is with Wisdom Panel Insights and should take 2-3 weeks from yesterday.  They use 321 genetic markers and claim they can detect more than 185 different breeds.  The competition is for YOU to guess what she is.  Look over the description and the photos of her (see below) and comment with your answer.  The company sends an analysis with the top 4 breeds (if that many) that makeup the genetics of the dog being tested with a list of several other possibilities with probabilities.  When I get the results I will post them here and any winners will receive Evolving Scientist paraphernalia. I will also be happy to answer any question you have.  Good luck!

Follow your favorite bloggers on Twitter

Most of us use the Twitter Machine and you can give us a follow.

Tom: @TGav84
Jiffin: @jiffinkp
Clifford: @nevawda
Dustin: @dwperr2
Blog: @evolvescientist

Stay tuned for more and more sciencey goodness.

July 20th Podcast

"The No-Game"

Our July 20th recording of The Evolving Scientist Podcast is up. Our major theme is food followed secondarily by Clifford's inabilities to snag a girl. You can listen below, on iTunes, or as always download from our new archive site, evolvingpodcast.net.


*** We also would like to do a gimmicky "Listener Mailbag" episode next week. SO if we can get at least two topics sent to us in the comment section, we will try and pull that off. You guys are all loyal listeners, so I think you know what we look for in topics, science that has an odd twist to it, or something we can just laugh about. We look forward to the suggestions!

How's Your State at Science?

Even Albert got it.

A new study (relatively new anyhow) was published earlier this month in the 2011 summer issue of the American Physical Society Forum on Education utilizing a new ranking system on how well US states are preparing its students in science and math.  The method called The Science and Engineering Readiness Index (SERI) gauges K-12 students in Physics and Mathematics (calculus) using publicly accessible data.  And was also developed as a way for policymakers to "get the picture" more or less, about the below average science education in America.  Or as Jiffin would say,  "Daaamn, son!" (EDIT: Get it right, c'mon son.)

The scoring is pretty straight forward.  The authors (Susan White and Paul Cottle) used public data from science and math Advanced Placement tests, National Assessment of Education Progress reports, statewide teacher certification requirements and class enrollment data.  Even ACT Science section scores.  From the ranking criteria, they extrapolated a score between 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) for each state, and compared them.

Check out the data yourself... You might be surprised where your state ranked.  I know Dustin may be somewhat delighted.

I want my urinal fixed UPDATE

Joy Priest Kentucky Kernel

A couple of days ago I wrote a post asking for some of former UK President Todd's office renovation money to go toward fixing my favorite urinal. WELL funny story, apparently I'm not the only guy on campus with urinal issues. It was reported yesterday in the campus student newspaper that a urinal malfunction in the faculty office tower flooded THREE floors of the building. There has been no word yet on whether or not we'll get our urinal fixed before the office tower. The Saga continues..............

WANT!!

Get your Christmas lists ready, folks, I've found what we've all been looking for...

You're probably looking at this and saying "Why would i want a toy triceratops, J?"  Well, the image above happens to be a 20 foot ANIMATRONIC triceratops, and its on sale at Hammburcher Schliiibler (or something like that) for a steal: 

It's Worth WHAT?!  After the JUMP!

I Wanna Go Fast

"The view #FromSpace of Shuttle #Atlantis flyaround of #ISS today (7/19/11) from Sergei's bedroom window."

Are you one of the few Americans looking to the East this morning for the final landing of Atlantis, and the NASA shuttle program?  Why not?  Please take a minute to think about everything we have gained from the shuttle during the past 30 years, and the astronauts who gave their lives.  Here is a short list of my favorite five advances (in particular order):

1. L.E.D. Cancer Therapies - Miniature light emitting diodes (L.E.D.s) placed into the brains of children suffering from malignant tumors have been shown to cause tumor regression, cool.
2. Teflon-coated fiberglass (Nomex) - Keeps many stadiums across the country dry, and falls on the Vikings, hah.
3. DeBakey Heart Pump - transportable artificial heart that actually works
   
4. Ballistic Parachute Recovery Systems - giant parachutes for entire aircraft.
5. Outlast Cotton - The best underwear, ever.

In case you are ever interested in what NASA is sporting, checkout "Spinoff", an annual publication highlighting commercialized NASA technology.  Not forgetting to mention, all of the mind-blowing information we have learned about the Universe from Hubble, which would not be functioning without the shuttle. Including what a supernova is composed of, what our early Universe looked like, evidence for black holes and "dark energy" to name a few.

Whether or not you think the shuttle program was worth the $209,000,000,000 price tag should really be discussed elsewhere.  Although before you push that comment button, it is miniscule compared to what Congress just signed to spend on only nuclear weapons during the next ten years... $700,000,000,000.  Ah, and before you say "surely the U.S. needs the bigger stick" or "you are sounding like a Chinese son...", think about how much the United States will be paying toward interest on the national debt during FY2012, alone... $241,600,000,000.  Oye.

So what is next for our space program?  Well, while I was in Houston last weekend, I took an afternoon to visit the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center and got to talk to some NASA scientists about just that.

Happy Birthday Gregor!

Google is giving a shout-out to everyone's favorite friar today in their popular 'Google Doodles'. Today would have been Gregor Mendel's 189th birthday, had he used his knowledge of inheritance to discover immortality.

Generating electricity with wind FISH POWER!

I caught a quick blurb online about how researchers have figured out how to generate more power from the wind by observing schools of fish... Yeah, my head cocked to the side, too, when I read it.

It seems that pinwheel style turbines, like the ones above, have to be placed really far apart so that the turbulent vortexes (vortices, vortexii...english is hard!) created by them don't interfere with each other.  John Dabiri, the leader of this study out of CalTech, took a page from our aquatic friends and figured out a way to boost the output of each turbine by at least 10-fold.  

As the wind blows, make dat JUMP!

Forget a Nice Office, I Just Want a Better Restroom!

Former UK Prez Lee T. Todd

A few days back I wrote about funding for the NSF this year getting cut, and how that would lead to a decrease in grants getting funded. One side effect of a decrease in grants is a decrease in the amount of funds that a university would receive from any grants that their researchers would be awarded. Often, once a grant is awarded to the researcher, the university takes upwards of ~40% of the award for different uses, an example of which I will discuss in this post, building upkeep and maintenance.

We haven't really made it a secret on the blog or the podcast that the five of us are graduate students or work at the University of Kentucky. UK recently had it's eleventh President, Dr. Lee T. Todd (you can call him Lee), retire at the end of June. After taking a year away from the fast pace world of academics, Todd will return as a tenured Professor in the school of Engineering with an office located in the Advanced Science and Technology Commercialization Center Building (ASTeCC, or Aztec if you hang with the cool kids) and a yearly salary of $162,000.

Hit the jump to see funny pictures. 

SHARK WEEK: World's Largest Aquraium at your Fingertips!

Free live streaming by Ustream
The Discovery Channel has partnered with Georgia Aquarium for another year to celebrate the apex marine predators.  Yup, hands down one of the best times of the year... Shark Week is back!  As part of the festivities the duo has set up a live feed in the aquarium's Ocean Voyager Exhibit.  This is a massive enclosure, 6.3 million gallons!  In addition to many fishes, it holds Manta rays (some 9ft across) and 4 whale sharks... that's right WHALE SHARKS.

Slap this feed on a second monitor while at work or at home.  If not, keep a browser window open.  It's a great way to relax, pass the time or to look out in wonder.

Shark Week premiers on July 31 (DVR set).  Catch all the action on Discovery.

Sharks... RAWR!

Kitties beware. Taken from Google

I Just Wet Myself

(Hydrothermal worm)

This is one of the images FEI is using to sell you their electron microscopes. It is also featured on their Christmas cards to competitors.

Google a Good Post Title for Me

Hello there Loyal Reader, I'm back from my week vacation! Did you miss me? You look good, did you lose some weight? The flu? Huh, sorry to hear that. Well enough with the formalities, lets dive into some sciencey goodness.

In the latest issue of Science, Sparrow et al. look at how the internet, and specifically Google is killing our ability to remember anything. The thinking behind this article is that with information being so ubiquitous online, that we don't have to commit anything to memory because we know that if we need to know something, we can simply just look it up on Google in a matter of seconds.

Second Place is the First Loser

The Christian Post yesterday reported that the city of Hong Kong crossed the finish line to win the title of, "First Place to complete the building of a actual scale model of Noah's Ark, while simultaneously wasting people's money". Sorry Ken.On a related note, this thing was supposedly built in 2009, why is the Christian Post just now picking up on this? To busy teaching straw-man arguments I suppose.

On another related note, since when did the People's Republic of China drop Communism and start promoting a State Religion?

Lizards Get The Brainy Credit They Deserve

I are smart!  A. evermanni solving problems and taking worms, bitches.

That's right Science-mongers, the stereotype that lizards and other ectothermic vertebrates possess limited cognitive abilities has been challenged.  A pair of scientists at Duke University useing a series of food reward tests show that Anolis evermanni, an arboreal lizard species from Puerto Rico, not only display the problem solving faculties and behavioral flexibility, but preformed tasks as good as or better than birds.  The authors state,

"Our findings indicate that the cognitive abilities of A. evermanni are comparable with those of some endothermic species that are recognized to be highly flexible, and strongly suggest a re-thinking of our understanding of the cognitive abilities of ectothermic tetrapods and of the factors favoring the evolution of behavioral flexibility."

  The lizards were presented a box with two holes covered with colored caps, one with a tasty worm treat.  The lizards then used what nature gave them to bite or bump the cap covering the wormy basin in as little as 3 attempts using novel behaviors.

Podcast: Part Quatre

Right off, that's "4" in French.

"Do you find this organism.... attractive?"

With Dustin out of town, I did my best to substitute as the rest of us took the reins of the podcast and decided to talk about science and movies; films where the science pissed us off and others where we enjoyed the biological topics raised.

Download the file here or subscribe via iTunes. You can snag the other three on this site if you haven't heard those yet. They're fantastic.

Or spin it right here:

Please comment! If you don't, we don't know what sorts of stuff to which you like to listen!

Steps to defeat the Red Queen: 1) Have SEX!! 2)???? 3) Profit!

Say girl, how bout you and me continue the survival of the species by imparting a wider diversity

of alleles that may result in resistance to parasites that are evolving just as fast as we are?  

No?  

Off with my WHAT?!

I read about this paper last week and it was suggested as a post topic by an undergraduate researcher in our lab (thanks, Andrew).  As strange as it may sound, we're still a bit in the dark when it comes to answering the question "Why do we have sex?".  Plenty of organisms on this planet reproduce asexually, and they seem to get along just fine.  Some organisms like the C. elegans worm used in this study, have a choice.  These millimeter-long nematodes (roundworms) come in two flavors:  the male who's just a male, and a hermaphrodite that can fertilize itself or mate with a male.  From my experience with C. elegans researchers, it turns out the the hermaphrodites DO NOT LIKE THE SEX.  In fact, some researchers have to anesthetize the hermaphrodites so that the males can actually get in there, so to speak.  Regardless, they make a great model organism, and are the stars of the stage today.
Gotta get that...JUMP

Great Moments in Article Translation: "In Vitro Ejaculation"

Please don't ask why I was searching the National Center for Biotechnology Information for "premature ejaculation." It was, uh, for a friend

Also in the search history: "post-coital weeping," "how to enter vardenifil clinical trial"

This paper (free full text, fellas) from a Turkish research group fell victim to what I hope is a bad translation. "In vitro" is Latin for "within glass" and typically, it is most often safe to assume, refers to an experiment performed with cells that are removed from their normal biological environment, in a dish.

If a research group were able to make cultured cells ejaculate, this paper would have been in a journal far more important than "International Urology and Nephrology." However, I'm sure most of our readers wait with bated breath by their mailboxes for their newest issue of IU&N to arrive.

I Got Betta'... newts with a more robust lens rengeneration

She turned me into a Cynops pyrrhogaster! From ReptileBuzz

Newts and salamanders continue to be the shiznit!  Both have extraordinary regenerative capabilities to completely regrow functional limbs, tails and even eyes.  And they are not alone.  Regeneration research dates back to the late 18th and early 19th century as a part of early embryology work, later becoming part of modern developmental biology.  These were pretty much observational studies mostly in invertebrate models (sea urchins and worms).  Early limb amputation studies in crayfish and newts also gave the impression that regenerative capacity decreased with age and repeated injury.  However, a Nature paper I stumbled across via The Scientist this morning, combats this hypothesis.  I had to pass it on to my Loyal readers!

Here's the basic experimental design.  Wild Fire Belly newts (estimated at 14 years at capture) were given a series of Lentectomies (surgical removal of the lens) to a treatment group over the course of the entire 16 year study.  After the lenses regenerated in about 5 months, treatment lenses were then compared to the lenses of individuals who had never received a lentectomy (controls).  They then compared the morphological features and gene expression patterns to see what the heck was going on.   Yum... science.

Do it, press the button... you can't help yourself...

It's What's for Dinner

Here's the bazillion dollar question: How do you control invasive species? No no no, DO NOT introduce another predator species, that always ends badly. Some conservation experts and scientists have a plan to control the spread of one invasive species in the Caribbean. Lionfish Sandwiches.

(Kentucky Fried)

A recent story in the New York Times, presents an idea that would hopefully keep the species from devastating the Caribbean waters and put them on your dinner plate. Never mind the small fact that these Kings of Ocean are venomous, they are also apparently TASTY.

Hit that bump

Marrying Monkeys in India is Illegal

This scientist has been on vacation near Houston, TX during the past week.  And while I learned some very cool things about where NASA is headed you'll have to look back for that update.

In the meantime, I am posting something I find very amusing... monkey marriage.

Ramesh and Raju (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters)

This story showed up in my RSS feed for "monkey reproduction research" on Friday, "Star-crossed simian lovers buck taboos, secretly marry in Indian ceremony".  I was wondering, as I am sure you are, what this could possibly to do with reproduction or research.  So I clicked on it.  Let me say that is has nothing to do with either.  However, here's my brief synopsis.

This love story takes place near the village Banentha in Rajasthan, India.  The above picture is Ramesh Saini, a rickshaw driver, embracing his pet monkey named Raju, who Ramesh calls his "son".  Apparently Raju and Chinki, a female monkey, "fell in love" and Ramesh wanted to "enjoy the feelings of a son's wedding".  As a result, a wedding was planned in the village of Talwas, deep in the forests of Rajasthan.  This was apparently something rejoiced by the villagers and Ramesh was expecting more than 2,000 people

Since Raju, the male monkey, was very famous, the word about the wedding traveled quickly and also into the State Forest Ranger's office.  Bhavar Singh Kaviya, a forest ranger, is quoted "It's illegal to marry a monkey. Anyone found doing that or attending the marriage ceremony will be arrested."

Pre-wedding festivities in Talwas (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters)

In response, 200 armed guards showed up in Talwas on the day of the wedding only to find the large group of people waiting for the wedding, but no monkeys.  Where'd the monkeys go you ask?  Ramesh is said to have taken the monkeys deep into the forest away from Talwas to complete the wedding ceremony away from the officials.  Officials later found Chinki, the female monkey and Raju's wife, tied to a tree with the vermilion mark on her forehead.  The vermilion or bindi, is used to signify a married Hindu woman (similar to the wedding ring of western cultures).  In the end, both monkeys were captured and transferred to a nearby forest.

Indian Forest Ranger with Chinki found tied to a tree (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters)

Ramesh however was quoted saying while running through a crowd to avoid being caught by officials, "I know my son Raju, with his wife Chinki, will come back home, and I will have a big reception for them."

Give it a read, it gives some insights into Indian culture beyond what we might know about Bollywood. Scientific?  Not really.  Entertaining?  You tell me.

A Dance with Dragons. (And, well, Romping with Ravens. And Performing with Pigeons.)

Among the only thing nerdier than contributing to a science blog is making a post celebrating the release of the next in a series of fantasy novels, and some of its biology.

So. Hey ladies, get out your halberds, it's about to get weird:

*Not actually an account of my senior prom (shudder)

Nearly 6 years in the making, George R.R. Martin's latest novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series A Dance with Dragons hits the shelves of something called a "bookstore" today. This is the latest 1040 pages, the 5th volume in Martin's epic series that most famously began with Game of Thrones, now an HBO series everyone on your Twitter keeps talking about.

Come for the genre-bending fantasy, stay for the violence and sexual depravity, and return for the awesome raven-based mail system. 

Yeah, that's right, amidst all the prostitution, incest and beheadings (not a euphemism), this fella gets hyped to see ravens deliver mail.
 

Beauty and the Brain: in some ways we ALL think alike

The way I see it, everyone could be a winner in this scenario

I caught this story a couple of days ago, and it reminded me of a previous topic in our podcast.  We talked about a reporter who allowed her brain activity to be imaged while...stimulating herself.  We also discussed a study that showed a difference in one specific area of the brain, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).  Apparently, the OFC was more active during solo naughty time vs. when a partner provided the pleasure (try saying that 5 times fast).  The OFC is associated with imagination and creative thinking, so the idea here is that you're probably fantasizing about something when engaging in "happy time", but not so much when you've got a helping hand...or two...or more...

Sorry, my OFC took over for a second there.

Go on, you know you wanna hit that Jump!

In (some) Theatres: Project Nim

Since this is my first post on the site, I figured I should try and fit in.

The folks behind the 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which won the Oscar that year and still sits unwatched in the wasteland that is my Netflix instant queue, are back with another documentary focusing on an abnormally talented primate.

No, I didn't hear about this next to an image of monkey genitalia

Project Nim details the life of a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky who was passed around through various research programs in the 1970s, initiated by Herbert Terrace. Nim was taken from his mother and fostered into a human family at the age of two weeks, where he was treated quite like a human and taught American Sign Language. His name was a rather unfortunate pun towards Noam Chomsky, who asserted that language should not be considered an animal "behavior," but one that solely exists in higher functioning brains. Chomsky also claimed that the grammar that is present in language is something which is "hard-wired" into the human brain; it is heritable and inherent.

Nim the chimp was adopted into these circumstances, and was taught to sign with varying success. However, their hypothesis that this chimp could form a sentence in a syntax similar to humans was far from supported.

More after the jump:

Start saving your pennies, things just may get harder.

On July 7th, the House Appropriations Committee passed the 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill for the for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and Science. There is no good news. The total funding for all will be 50.2 billion, or a six percent reduction from last fiscal year. That is also 13% below what President Obama had requested. Important to us, here at The Evolving Scientist and to you, the loyal reader, is that both NSF and NASA are both under the funding arm of the Department of Science. A reduction in funding means a reduction in grants. A reduction in grants means a reduction in graduate students getting funded during non-TA times. Should you feel sorry for us here at The Evolving Scientist, we happily take donations. We don't want to end up like the guy on the right. Donations can be sent to:

The Evolving Scientist
c/o Dustin's Pockets
Lexington, Ky 40506

Thanks to all who donate.

Tote your Manhood with Digit Ratios

(image from Google) Mister Anderson...  :).
So readers, what do an adult man’s fingers and his external genitalia have in common? I’m sure most, if not all of you, are familiar with the old wife’s tale about foot size and Johnson dimension, but as always science has given us an answer. Hey! No giggles, this is serious science we’re talkin’ bout! This past week in the Asian Journal of Andrology researchers Choi et al provide support for a relationship between 2D:4D digit ratio and stretched penile length. I other words, the relationship between our index (2D) and ring finger (4D) are predictive of a man’s endowment. Joking aside, the article is fairly comprehensive in the previously observed data and the current findings. Interesting, must read more...

Brief Background:

In Humans digit ratio is sexually dimorphic, or phenotypically different between males and females. Compare your hands to the opposite sex, and you see what I mean. The index fingers of males are shorter in comparison to the ringer fingers (lower 2D:4D ratio) than in females, which are roughly the same length (higher 2D:4D ratio). Furthermore, there is slightly more pronounced difference on the right hand of males, from increased sensitivity to the influence of testosterone. This difference digit length is determined in early development in response to peaks in prenatal androgen levels, and remains stable afterward.

Croc Hunter of Creationism in my Home State TONIGHT

(Image from the creation "research" website)

CRIKEY! Looks like the Ol' Mate John Mackey is going to be down unda in the city of Bowling Green according to their local newspapa. Mackey is probably most famous for debating me bloke Richard Dawkins and then crying and blaming Dawkins when the debate isn't on Youtube any longa.

Come early, as seats will be going fast! Also, there is a free meal after featur'n the finest meats to throw onto the barbie.

**I apologize to any Australian whom I may have offended**

Leaving on a really fast jetplane

So long space shuttle program. After 30 years and well over one hundred missions, NASA will shut down the program after Atlantis returns in 12 days. It has been said that NASA's focus will now turn to sending astronauts deeper into space, possibly to asteroids or Mars. I will freely admit that I do not understand what NASA has accomplished with the space program in the last 15 years. The novelty of sending people into space has wore off, so I feel that something like sending people to Mars will build some excitement around NASA again. I'm interested in what our readers think about NASA and the space program, feel free to drop your opinions in the comments.

Here is our biggest concern that NASA I believe should focus on, Ben Affleck's acting.

Podcast the Third

We have had a very interesting day here at The Evolving Scientist. After a very kind shout out from PZ Myers on his blog the traffic to the site has been CRAZY!! Apparently everyone liked the site well enough to download the podcasts as well, which left our poor server needing a good back rub and pep talk. All is hopefully well now, and I'm happy share with you the July 7th edition of The Evolving Podcast. This week we talk all things KEN HAM. From the Ark Park, to the Creation Museum and little girls riding dinosaurs. We are happy to have Joe Sonka on there with us. Joe runs the political blog Barefoot and Progressive and has been featured in the New York Times, Pharyngula, The Rachel Maddow Show and various other news avenues. Give it a listen, and tell us what you think.

UPDATE*** We FINALLY got iTunes approval. So follow this LINK and subscribe through your iTunes if that's how you role. Once you subscribe the newest podcast should automatically download.

DIY Biology: OpenPCR

The OpenPCR is now available for order. It costs $512, compared to several thousand for the average thermocycler. I should note that this is just a thermocycler, and you still have to buy the reagents separately, including designing your own primers. However, it's an interesting little device.

The people behind the project appear to have a computer science or engineering background, since they talk a lot about the hardware inside, especially a micro-controller called the Arduino, which makes the system easy to hack (in the good sense of the word). They also note that you get to assemble the device yourself, which would be fun for the kinds of people who like to build their own computers.

Still, if the OpenPCR gets results comparable to commercially available thermocyclers at a fraction of the cost, that's quite an achievement (anybody want to throw in on one and test it out?).

So what can you do with it? The most useful thing is genotyping. You can design primers for simple sequence length polymorphisms, such as microsatellites. Some of these markers are associated with disease risk and can be used to infer ancestry. Putting that kind of power into the hands of home users could be revolutionary.

The total cost per PCR reaction can be under $1, as some have noted, but that's after you optimize your reactions. Speaking as someone who has done whole-genome microsatellite genotyping on hundreds of mice, I can tell you that a nontrivial percentage of primers will fail and need to be redesigned. Also, reactions don't always produce easily readable bands at standard conditions, which is why they need to be optimized empirically, thus increasing the cost.

So why bother doing all that when you can already get a million SNPs genotyped for $99 (which I have done and should definitely write about)? I guess it's the hacker / do-it-yourself ethos. Why build your own computer, when Dell will build one for you? Why fix your own car, when a mechanic will do it for you? This will appeal to people who love learning about stuff and doing things for themselves.

Oh what a tangled web they weave..because they're old?

I caught this story on my Pulse feed; and it reminded me of how cool spiders are and how much we've learned from them...

Image from the Google.com

Who's the cutest harbinger of terror?  Yes you are...Yes you are!

A recent study out of the Society for Experimental Biology compared the web-weaving abilities of a 17-day old European house spider to that of a relatively ancient 188-day old spider.  The results...well, you figure it out:

Credit: Mylène Anotaux

If it's not apparent, the younger spider's web is on the left, and the elder spider's on the right.  The investigators think that this is behavioural change is due to a breakdown of the central nervous system, something that's also seen in Alzheimer's and age-related dementia.  

You're probably thinking the same thing I was thinking when I first read about this:  those ageist bastards are trying to pigeon-hole all of the older, revered, respected spiders people in our society as a bunch of wacked-out, incapable, diaper-wearing, needy, leeches!  The nerve...

Which brings me to my first point; remembering why spiders are cool.  I scrounged up a video that I remember seeing when i was younger in - of all places - an anti-drug assembly.  This is how we know that the central nervous system of a spider is VERY important to its web-making skills.  Now, this is your spider...

And this is your spider on drugs...(watch the whole thing, it's worth it.  I'll wait.)

So you see kids, not only can we learn about aging from spiders, but we can also learn about the social pitfalls of alcohol abuse and the economic potential of crack.