Come on, lets fly away

As a little kid, I used to look up at the night sky and the Milky Way, drifting into a Walter Mitty dream sequence.  Thinking as an Astronaut would, gazing down at our little Earth much in the same way as I gazed upward.  Sometimes during the day I head over to NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) to recall some of those Astronomy moments.  For those unfamiliar, APOD is an archive of some pretty awesome NASA and amateur Astronomy and cosmological photos.  If you enjoy star-gazing or Astronomy in general, I highly suggest you check it out.

A couple of days ago APOD posted a time-laspe video of the International Space Station (ISS) making its 3 hour trip around our humble plant.  In this trip the ISS speeds over the night half of the earth, i.e. average ground speed of ~28,000 Km/h, starting somewhere over the northern Pacific Ocean, down the along the coastline of North and South America then ending around Antarctica as the sun rises on the horizon.  Check out the 1080p version...



Pretty awesome.  Some key features were captured in the video, which I thought were beautiful.  Throughout the entire time-laspe you can see a rainbow-ish hue resting above the Earth.  That haze is the Earth's atmosphere refracting The Sun's Light into a multi-colored ribbon.  Other wonders, including my personal favorite, are the splurges of lights painted across the dark landscape from cites and towns.  Amorphous and wispy clouds following low pressure systems (storm clouds) bursting with activity from lighting spikes.

Besides the Sinatra reference (Cheesy? Meh, what can ya do...), which am listening to as we speak, I thought this would be a good way to end the work week.

Cheers,

Today's APOD

Teleporting rats...that's what they think

The latest issue of Nature has an article that shows, at least in rats, that spatial memory (and maybe other memory types) are compartmentalized in the brain, separate memories in separate groups of cells.

They did this by teleporting rats between two rooms...kinda.

"I said ENERGIZE, DAMNIT!"

Jump to see the story

There's Something In The Water.

Tardigrades have four pairs of limbs which each end in four to eight claws.  It does look like a tiny bear, just a little.

These are tardigrades, whose name means “slow walker,” and indeed, it is their slow and steady bear-like gait that has given them the nick-name “water bears.”  They are very small, only about 0.5mm long on average.  Something interesting is that they are reported to have a constant cell number.  This type of growth only occurs in limited types of organisms, all of which are microscopic.   

These creatures are very common, and "can be found all over the world from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from high mountains to deserts, in urban areas and backyard gardens," explains Professor Roberto Guidetti at University of Modena Reggio Emilia, who studies the tardigrade.  They can be found in terrestrial environments, but require a film of water surrounding them in order to survive and perform necessary gas exchange.   When conditions become dry and unfavorable, however, water bears abandon their active state and lose almost all of their water as they shrivel themselves into a “tun”(see below), in which they are able to withstand environmental extremes.  (Upon rehydration, they can return to their active state within a few minutes to a few hours). 

Before and After.  Not exactly what "Extreme Makeover" had in mind.

Damn Nature, you awesome!

For those that have listened to last week's zany Evolution podcast (The Actual Evolving Podcast), then you know... I'm a Frog-kind-of-guy, AKA a "Frogger" in the Herpetologic hobbyist community, more particularly Poison Dart Frogs, Dendrobatidae. 

 Tadpole being transported on his lower back

 One aspect of Frog husbandry I am fairly novice with is breeding, and while checking one pair, D. tinictorius "Patricia" (nearing the age of sexual maturity, but not 100% on gender), this weekend I spotted one frog transporting it's first tadpole! I had NO idea of any frog love-making!  In my flabbergasted state, I managed to snap a quick phone pic to share.  Apologies for the crappy quality...

 I know, it's pretty awesome!  I have breed my first pair of Dart Frogs!  So in honor of my first brood, why not share some interesting Dart frog love...

So hit the jump for the finer details of Dendrobates and their reproductive behaviors!

Great Moments in Wrong Quiz Answers

Here's an answer I got on a pre-lab quiz in the Animal Physiology class I TA:

I almost gave him some credit on this

What does "EPSP" stand for? Excitable Penile Sugar Potential "wing man"
What does "IPSP" stand for? Inhibitory Penile Sugar Potential "c*ck block"

If you don't remember your physiology, E/IPSPs are excitatory or inhibitory post-synaptic potentials that occur between neurons at chemical synapses-- when stimulated, an electrical signal travels down the first neuron, causing vesicles packed with neurotransmitters in the terminal to release their contents into the space (called a "synapse") between the stimulated neuron and one or more other neurons that follow in the nerve circuit, which cause either an excitation or an inhibition in the neighboring neuron(s) that receive(s) the neurotransmitters, depending on the type of neurotransmitter or receptors in use.

Why the hell did people used to think salamanders liked fire?

We all know humans like hanging out in front of vague fruit trees, and salamanders inside of open flames

There is this weird notion about salamanders: that they are impervious to open flames. Medieval texts and the modern fantasy genre (even Harry Potter) maintain the legend that salamanders are inherently cold-temperature organisms which can live, unharmed, inside of fire.

This notion of the legendary salamander always befuddled me. 17th century author Thomas Browne summarizes the then-popularization of the myth in an incredibly entertaining chapter from his book Pseudodoxia Epidemica:

The Egyptians have drawn it into their Hieroglyphicks, Aristotle seemeth to embrace it; more plainly Nicander, Sarenus Sammonicus, Ælian and Pliny, who assigns the cause of this effect: An Animal (saith he) so cold that it extinguisheth the fire like Ice.

Browne mention Pliny as a perpetrator of the myth, careful to note that anyone who made these claims did so through hearsay. Pliny was a 1st century Roman naturalist writer. While making what we now know to be a ridiculous claim, Pliny got a few things right: he made one of the first earliest distinctions between a salamander and a lizard, therefore reptiles and amphibians. This perception wasn't formally accepted until the 18th century by the famed taxonomist Carolus Linneas. Pliny also may have noted that salamanders may secrete toxins through their skin. An additional observation was:

It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change color and break out in a rash.

Maybe that's what happened to Dustin and Jiffin?

The origins of this random-ass notion are now thought to be the following: European salamanders are often found in the moist, cool temperature, grubby-food-rich environments beneath rotting logs in wooded areas. It's possible the original observer of the fire-loving salamander saw a forest fire that caused salamanders to evacuate their homes beneath the fallen logs.Thus began the rumored, untested association of the amphibians with fire, which spread through the scholarly world through hearsay.

This strange link of salamanders and fire persists in the kitchen, as well. Originally, the cooking utensil known as a "salamander" resembled a shovel; it was heated over an open flame and then placed over a food item, selectively broiling the top. The modern kitchen salamander is a high heat, infrared broiler, that cooks the food from the top down. The advantage of a salamander top-broiler is, for fatty items such as steaks, the fat will not drip down into the heat source and flare up.

And just because I never explicitly stated it: salamanders are in fact, NOT actually impervious to fire. Now you know, good people.

Bodies Revealed: REVIEW

DO NOT play golf in lightning

This weekend the wife and I--along with twelve of my cohorts--visited the downtown Lexington Convention Center and toured the 'Bodies Revealed' exhibit.The exhibit features ~15 full body specimens and over 200 different organs, with the hopes of educating those younger in the crowd and to have them begin to think about entering the health care field. The exhibit was divided into the different body systems, allowing visitors to have a close up view of the nervous, digestive, cardiovascular systems among a few others. The bodies and tissues are somewhat frozen in their current state by a process known as 'polymer preservation' in which all the body tissue is preserved using a silicone rubber that prevents the decay process. The polymer is also odorless and allows for the specimens to be studied an infinite number of times in great detail.

Arm circulatory system

This exhibit has not been without controversy, and objections as to the grotesqueness of displaying the dead in such a manner for all to see, but I don't want to spend the post diving into those topics, I'd rather stick to what I saw. One controversial topic I do wish to talk about was the "Development" room. This room was placed off to the side, and was COMPLETELY possible to miss had you not looked for it. A sign warning informing you that were about to view met the visitors at the entrance, but those who did enter were greeted with what I believed (possibly because of my love for developmental biology) to be one of the better parts of the entire exhibit. The Development room at five stages of human embryos, all stained with a red dye that binds to calcium to show fetal bone development along with various other fetal demos. I understand people who may have objections to such a display, but if you are interested in viewing them it is worth it.

I only had two minor complaints about the exhibit--size and interactions . We were able to get together at least ten people, which entitled us to the group rate of ten bucks/ticket, however normal rates are $14/ticket. The price would have been OK, had the exhibit been larger and possibly more interactive. The entire exhibit fits into a large room and has very little in the way of videos and demos that people, especially children can interact with. Each tissue or body had an accompanying plaque that would be difficult to read for most children, who you are lead to believe is their major target audience. Also while the most of the exhibits are out in the open, they are very clear that you cannot touch the bodies (obviously) so I feel like some better ways to have interaction would greatly improve the overall experience. Don't let these complaints deter you from seeing the exhibit if you have a chance to though, I feel like this exhibit is worth the $10 I paid, and if you can get past the controversies I linked to above, worth your time and dollars as well. So be sure and check it out if the exhibit is in your town.

***Thanks to Bodies Revealed for the press kit, pictures on this post are their property***

A Trick or a Treat? Smell My DEET

They paid well -OFF!

A younger Dustin, during his summer days while an undergrad, worked for a promotional company that would send him around various parts of Cincinnati touting all the latest and greatest products. One of the first companies that acquired my talents was OFF! insect repellent, who hired me to walk around Cincinnati Zoo while handing out coupons and making sure kids didn't kill themselves in the 'Bug Jump'. One of the most common questions I would get from people I would talk to about the product was how OFF! works to repel those pesky summer insects? You may know the active ingredient in a majority of insect repellents is the chemical N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, more commonly known as DEET.

While known to be a repellent, the actual mechanism for DEET's actions is poorly understood. There have been two schools of thought as to how volatile DEET affects an insects behavior: the first, is that DEET interferes with an insects olfactory system to block host odor  recognition or secondly, that DEET will repel insects by activating olfactory neurons that control avoidance behavior. A recent paper published in Nature by Pellegrino et al. sought to gain some insights into DEET's mode of action.

The work performed on Drosophila melanogaster (DEET is known to deter Drosophila from their food source also) began looking at how DEET interacts with the olfactory system and how that subsequently affects their behavior. It's been known for a few years that the behavioral effects of DEET require the olfactory system to be functional, which also must contain the olfactory co-receptor ORCO. While this does implicate the olfactory system in the behavioral effects, it still doesn't rule out either of the competing ideas mentioned above, nor does it answer whether DEET acts on the odor-specific odorant receptors, ORCO or both. To answer these questions the authors performed electrophysiological recordings of the flies olfactory neurons(OSN). What they discovered was that upon testing four known olfactory neurons with ten diverse odors, the effects of DEET on each were complex and dependent on the receptor, the odor, and the concentration.  In some cases, the DEET suppressed odor-mediated inhibition, in others it decreased odor-induced activation of the neurons and lastly, in some it had no effect. Surprising to me was that DEET alone (without presentation of another odor) caused no response in two of the four neurons. This--along with some data that I won't mention--seems to support a hypothesis that DEET is a molecular confusant, it scrambles the odor code by the direct modulation of the receptor activity, depending on the type of odor and the concentration.

The authors believed that because the results varied in all of the neurons, an because ORCO is expressed in each, that DEET's effects are unlikely due to sole interactions with ORCO. What they found was that DEET was able to modulate and interfere with the odor specific odorant receptor subunit, OR59B. Further investigation revealed that a strain of Drosophila found in Brazil, Boa Esperança, was insensitive to DEET and was found to have polymorphisms within the OR59B that differed from other strains assayed. They were then able to show that one of those genetic polymorphisms, a valine to alanine substitution, when introduced into their control strains was able to phenocopy the Boa Esperança insensitivity, showing that a single polymorphism within the OR59B could render an insect insensitive to DEET's effects. Isn't evolution fun?

So there you have it, DEET modulates it's effects by activation and inhibition of an insects olfactory system through direct interaction with an odor receptor. DEET does not actually repeal, or scare away pest insects once you apply it, but once mixed with your "I'm food, come suck my blood" smell it acts to confuse the insects. One example that has been stated is that if DEET worked on us, it would be like being hungry and seeing a giant stack of hamburgers, but the hamburgers no longer smell like hamburgers to you.

mmmmmm hamburgers.......

As always, cheers to Pellegrino and the rest of the group.

The Avante Garde of Science?

Breaking news on the forefront of Biology:  Scientists have figured out the structure of a protein that may help understand HIV better.  This protein has been baffling scientists for a decade, so naturally they turned to the most powerful force on the planet.  Math-based modeling?  What is this the '60s?  Supercomputers?  SOO 2004!  No, they turned to these guys...

Guy in the cape - "Dude, did you just see how I flipped that alpha-helix around?!"
Busted-ass Napoleon Dynamite on the right - "Dude....sweeet."

The findings out of the latest issue of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology read more like a nerdy advertisement for FoldIt, a multiplayer video game where players get points for folding hypothetical proteins into stable conformations.  The more stable your protein is folded, the more points you get.  A lot of people I've talked to immediately recall Folding@Home, the brute-force application.  Folding@Home uses the combined computational power of every user that runs the program in the background of their computer to run through every conceivable combination of structures until something that theoretically makes sense turns up.  Foldit is more interactive because the user has to figure out the most stable configuration.  Some people might do this by trial and error, others draw it out, and some, like the ones outlined in the paper above, form teams and work it out together.

Using a computer model (red) the Void Crusher Foldit Group came up
their model (yellow).  The blue is what was later found out to be the actual structure
Point, Set, Match: Gamers.

The developers wanted to make sure the game results would be reliable, so they used a biennially released experiment that provides a set of proteins (whose structures were close to being figured out in the lab) to be modeled.  When the results came in, the Foldit users got pretty darn close.

It wasn't exactly as easy as throwing a bunch of almost-solved proteins at MSLive lifetime subscribers and saying "Come at me, noob!".  A lot of the puzzles were taken from servers that had already started the process.  This actually ended up being a roadblock for a lot of players, so the developers went back and took out a lot of the theoretical work to make the puzzles more open to creative modeling.  By giving the users less restrictions, the developers started getting more solutions that worked in real-world experimentation!

The protein solution that got this in the headlines was the Mason-Pfizer Monkey Virus (M-PMV) retroviral protease.  After trying a lot of different computer-based modelers, the research team handed the puzzle over to gamers for 3 weeks.  The result?  The closest hypothetical structure that ended up working in the bench!

I've played around with the game for a few minutes, and I have to admit it's kinda fun.  Check it out if you feel like burning some time.  Who knows; if we get enough people interested, we could start our own folding guild...i mean group.

A Research Paper Describing Disorders of A.A. Milne Characters? Oh Bother.

I don't know why the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) decided to write a few humorous "research" papers-- all I know is that I'm entertained.  Here's one of my favorite ideas for one of these papers below, which is a quick and amusing read:

 

Remind me to tell Jiffin to drop the basso in my voice on the podcast

A new study from Kevin Allen published in Memory and Cognition claims to show that females have a preference for men with deep voices, and that they remember things better when they hear it from that voice. The study had 46 female volunteers listen to both a high pitched and low pitched computer voice and had pictures associated with each voice. They also repeated this test using actual male and female voices, and in both experiments the females showed a significant preference to the deep male voice.

Smith said he believes this may be a form a mate selection from the female--that females associate a deep male voice with masculinity and could equate the voice with being healthy and fit. There is no evidence for this of course, so it's mostly hand waving to try and explain what these data mean. What I would have liked to have seen is the test also performed on a group of men, we already have evidence that the male and female voice activate different regions of the male brain--this study could have answered if there is also a preference for one over another.

But I will take what I have learned from this article and run. Expect everything you hear from me to be sung in this voice:

Meet your 2011 Geniuses

The twenty-two 2011 MacArthur Fellows (also known as recipients of "Genius Grants") were announced today! Our favorite time of year when we all start insisting people include our middle initial on everything, just like John D. and Catherine T.

Wu-tang Clan's GZA/Genius snubbed again this year

Folks get half a mill, over five years. After the jump, let's see what scientists you may want to pretend to be related to this year, with my insensitive commentary:

I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole! Well, a crow might

My second favorite animal (first is cuttlefish) is the crow. Crows, ravens and rooks are all species in the Corvidus genus and are typically associated with death due to their carrion munching habits and black feathers.So they're pretty metal.

Also? They're geniuses.

I love evidence of cognition in non-humans. Some older ethologists discounted the intelligence of dogs, fish, molluscs, birds, cetaceans such as dolphins and whales--anything that's not a primate.

A species of the Corvids lives on a French-owned island sort of near Austrailia called the New Caledonian crow for its namesake island. They are easily the most well-documented non-primate tool user, far beyond the simple crude tool use

• Tool modification- the birds have been observed bending a metal rod into a corkscrew shape to remove a piece of meat from a vertically placed pipe
• Meta-tool use- the birds have also used a short tool to physically reach a better, longer tool to ultimately reach their beloved meat chunk, suggesting they are capable of planning ahead

A couple of weeks ago, a new paper in the British journal Biology Letters by a group of Kiwis showed that New Caledonian crows use tools in a way that was demonstrated in chimps first in 2010. The birds use tools differently depending on the context of the environment. When presented with a fake snake, a statistically significant number of the birds used a long stick as an extension of their beak to check-out the situation, something they did not do with a teddy bear toy or an empty cage. A video and more after the jump

PODCAST EPISODE 13: The Actual Evolving Podcast

If we have any more people on the podcast, our set-up will start to resemble this

We've been wallowing around with our grandiose titles for a few months now, and never actually talked formally about "evolution" on the podcast. So here you go suckas! Topics are:

• Cichlids
• Pandas
• Human evolution

Subscribe on iTunes, download, external site, or embedded below:

Stop being NERVOUS about blood pressure

Give your kidneys some lovin'!

Before you decide to put your kidney up for sale on craigslist for booze bucks (I hear they are going for 75k), maybe you should start appreciating your kidney(s). Because, well, they (if you are lucky enough to have two :(........) can function just fine without YOU.

A study published in the Lancet almost a year ago shed some light on the role that the nervous system plays in the regulation of blood pressure in humans. Hypertension and the chronic elevation of blood pressure constitute a primary and significant factor in the development of cardiovascular disease. Worldwide prevalence estimates for hypertension may be as high as 1 billion people, and approximately 7.1 million deaths per year may be attributable to hypertension. Essential hypertension  exhibits a large array of symptoms, many of which are therapeutic targets for treating the disease. Probably everyone knows someone on AT LEAST one of these medications, including diuretics, alpha- and beta-adrenergic receptor blockers, and ACE inhibitors. However, the treatment of blood pressure has proven to be rather unsuccessful. So, Murray Elser and colleagues tried something out that has worked on experimental models of hypertension for years…on humans.

Hit the jump if you wanna hear about it.

Tatooine Is Not Necessarily In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Star Wars is awesome.  Here is some cool news straight from NASA's YouTube Channel (I better not find out they punked everyone, otherwise I will be grumpy): a newly-discovered planet 200 light years away called Kepler-16b, has two suns, just like Tatooine, the home planet of Luke Skywalker! 

Luke Skywalker.  Look at him staring longingly into the sunsets.    

The video is after the jump.

Shake ya tail feather...it works for males, too!

Nicki Minaj's booty is bangin, but it can't drop bars like my man Anna's Hummingbird over there

Birds are interesting creatures:  they're one of the closest relations to dinosaurs, their adaptations make them perfectly comfortable in the air, and they do some crazy stuff to get attention from potential mates. They dance, they vocalize with species and individual songs, and - according to a recent paper in Science - some even use their feathers to sing.  A trio from Yale and UC Berkeley studied the tail feathers of birds belonging to the "bee" hummingbird group; a group that produces sounds with their tail feathers, or rectrices (I'll take obscure, scientific jargon terms that "R" used unnecessarily for $500, Alex), during dive displays used to attract females.  By putting individual and paired feathers into a wind tunnel and recording audio and high speed video, the group was able to show that the shape, orientation, and grouping of feathers all combine to give unique sounds to present to females.  

Video of the feathers making music after the jump.

Great Moments in Citation

One of these things is not like the others

The title of the paper may have been, "The Evolutionary effects of Reverse Transcriptase on the Ty3 gene in Arabidopsis thaliana plants found on Mount Doom"

[H/T @biologyupdate]

A Mother's Love: Beetles Lay fake eggs to protect their young

Credit: Tuan Cao; (inset) Joseph Deas

This article came out yesterday, so sorry for the delay.  The beetle above, a seed beetle, has a unique way of protecting her young from a long-standing adversary, the parasitic wasp Uscana semifumipennis (apparantly the wasp doesn't doesn't have a common name; probably because it's a cold-hearted S. O. B.).  In this relationship the wasp is actually a parasitoid - meaning that it kills its host rather than feed off of it over time.  These wasps will lay their eggs inside the seed beetle's eggs.  The wasp larvae hatch first, and eat the beetle yolk, leaving nothing for the beetle larvae.  Even for a wasp, that's pretty shitty.  But, according to Joseph Deas and Martha Hunter, the authors out of the U. of AZ, the beetles have figured out a way to get around this problem, without having to engage in the arthropod equivalent of fisticuffs with one of these:

Uncomfortably close pic of a wasp after the jump, fyi.

Perfect Vision, “Aura” Lack Thereof.

You’re probably familiar with migraines, and chances are you’ve experienced one firsthand.  Lesser known are the visual images that may accompany certain types of migraines, giving them the name “migraine with aura.”  This form of migraine is fairly rare compared to the occurrence of “migraine without aura” and the most common estimate is that only about 20% of migraine suffers experience migraine with aura.

.  

Not that kind of aura, although, it usually does involve many pretty colors.

I have had migraines frequently accompanied by auras, and when I described them to my optometrists, they kept telling me they had no idea what I was talking about.  Many years later, one of my doctors was finally able to identify these odd occurrences as migraines with auras.  I decided this topic would make a fun post for a few reasons: 1) The science behind how it happens is pretty fascinating, and 2) Videos exist that simulate the interesting experience of visualizing an aura for those that may be unfamiliar with them. The auras can actually be surprisingly beautiful, but they are quite trippy, and it’s been debated whether these inspired the surreal world of “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, who was thought to have these migraine auras.

More information and videos after the jump!

Coke tastes like, well......Coke.

I saw this story on Yahoo! Shine and had to write about it, someone has finally performed a blind taste test on American vs. Mexican Coke. Count me solidly in the "Mexican Coke is better" camp (Coke in Europe is even better), but would a group of folks agree during a blind taste test? Or even be able to distinguish between the two?

Most epic brethren battle since 1865 (photo: Justin Wright)

The cult of people who follow Mexicoke would gladly tell you that the only real difference between the two are the high-fructose corn syrup used to sweeten Americoke and the natural cane sugar used in Mexicoke. The use of HFCS should already give a handicap to American Coke—in recent years, HFCS has been found to increase the likelihood of weight gain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and it may or may not be Voldemort's favorite sweetener. But what would the outcome of the taste test be?

Unsurprisingly to me there was a perceivable difference of taste between American and Mexican Cokes when served from an identical container for ~half of the people tested. In 7 of the 8 who said there was a taste difference, American Coke was selected as having a better taste than Mexican Coke. Ludicrous. There was obviously only one person in this study with a palate mature enough to even be considered a good taste tester. Stand strong Mr./Ms. 1 of 8.

What was interesting—although not all that shocking—was the people who could not detect a difference in taste when served out of the same type of container, did notice a difference in taste when one was served out of a glass bottle and the other from an aluminum can. These 'feelers' as the author calls them, preferred the taste of an identical sample of Coke when it was being served to them in a glass bottle. I could probably hypothesize that there is some psychology behind why that is, but I'd rather go with Coke in a glass bottle is the S__T and that is all there is to it. 


I know, no real heavy science here, but I hope this is a good way to start your nasty Thursday (it's raining here in Lexington). Let's all go and enjoy a nice ice cold glass bottled Coca-Cola... OR a throw-back Pepsi—it has real sugar.

OOOOOHHHHHH Who Lives in a Pineapple something something something

Nickelodeon

People just really hate this Mr. Squarepants fella. Talk to any parent of a preteen and you will discover he is the sole reason that their child doesn't do well in school and sets fires in the backyard. Have no fear parents who can't hide TV remotes, Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson are here to save the day. The researchers at the University of Virgina published in the September 12th issue of Pediatrics, that a mere nine minutes of Spongey enjoyment will result in significant decrease in executive function. Executive function is a collection of prefrontal skills underlying goal-directed behavior, including attention, problem solving, working memory and some others I believe—I don't know for sure, I stopped reading and began a game of minesweeper about halfway through the paper. 

Negative numbers aren't good.

60 four year old children—oddly, that were almost all white, and came from wealthy families—were assayed using four tests that are common for measuring EF, after either watching Spongebob, Caillou or drawing for nine minutes. Spongebob and Caillou (what is a Caillou?) were selected as a 'fast-paced' and 'slow-paced' shows, respectively and drawing is used as a control. The 'pace' of the show seemed to me to be an arbitrary measurement selected by the authors based upon a scene change (ex. Chillin' at the Krusty Krab then at the Pineapple). The average scene length for Spongebob was ~11secs and Caillou is ~34secs. 

As you can see in the attached graph, the fast-paced group performed worse on each of the EF tests than either the boring TV show group or the drawing group. The authors show that the differences between the scores of the drawing and educational show are not significant from one another, but each are significantly better than the scores of the group that watched Spongebob. 

I—and Nickelodeon—have issues with the paper that I feel should be addressed. One issue that was not discussed in the paper, nor mentioned in any reports that I have seen—including the link above—have addressed whether the time difference between what the researchers group into a fast paced show and a slow paced show is significant enough to have such dramatic effects on the outcomes of these tests. The genre of show is also dramatically different, and each have their own purpose and target audience. I would be curious to see a cartoon comedy with similar pacing compared to their 'educational show'. The authors also did not test the groups before watching the shows, but instead relied on a questionnaire answered by their parents. I cannot say I know if this is common practice in this type of research, but to me it would be more scientifically sound to perform each of the tests both before and after viewing to have a better baseline number. 

Nickelodeon has questioned the article also, claiming that children of that age group  are not their target audience when they air that show. Nickelodeon is very clear they target older children and twenty something men whom enjoy nothing more than Doritos and lazy afternoons. Wait..... maybe these researchers are onto something....

RIP Tupac. And Phineas Gage's Frontal Lobe.

As the internet mourns the day in 1996 that Tupac Shakur was shot and killed, us neuroscientists should also consider another unfortunate injury that also occurred on September 13th, this time in 1848: The Phineas Gage Accident.

Pour one out for the tragic, premature losses of a brilliant hip-hop AND railway career, but never forget what we as a culture gained from them. Hit the jump for a dirge.

A spoonful of science to help Mondays go down...

Let's go beat the crap out of the copy machine, or play Tetris instead...

This is for those who overindulged during the weekend, spent TOO much time with family or just don't care for Mondays and once-in-a-while just feel like settling for your B or C game...

Today's goodies start the week off with a spoonful of science to help digest your Monday woes courtesy of my friend, Short Round (alias Kevin Wu), who always finds some of the most random shit on YouTube.  Some of it's stupid, some of it's pretty good.

"Justin's Monday Nonsense Sequence", courtesy of Short Round, includes Dubstep Guns, and Epic Rap Battles in science.

Warning NSFW: language
[H/T: Kevin] 

Click that bump for your Monday non-coding science. 

PODCAST EPISODE 12: The Sports etc. Podcast

People, embracing, looking off into the distance. Could they accidentally be siblings!?

No, I don't know the identity of those random people looking off into the distance. No way do I watch Gossip Girl, therefore it is completely unlikely I know them as Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass played by Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick. It.. accidentally records on my DVR. Every week for the last few years.Ugh.. Quick! Say something manly!

Football is back in the United States! We show up Any Given Friday with three random topics that I, as resident Scattergories Champion, decided we can very loosely associate with athletics :

• Anabolic steroids and the discovery thereof!
• 2 genes when removed from mice render them athletically lazy!
• Sperm bank infrastructure!

LIKE ALWAYS, subscribe to us on iTunes, click the blue word to download, snag it from our dedicated site or stream it here:

Plasma: The New Fountain of Youth

It appears the Juan Ponce de Leo'n was WAY off. In a study published in Nature on Sept. 1, researchers at Stanford University showed that blood-borne factors present in systemic blood plasma can impact adult neurogenesis in an age-dependent fashion in mice. The “substances”, whose levels rise with increasing age, appear to inhibit the brain’s ability to regenerate nerve cells crucial to memory and learning. It has been previously shown that new cells in the hippocampus (area of the brain involved with memory formation) can only arise due to the presence of stem cells, which can replicate themselves and spin off daughter cells that differentiate to become dedicated nerve cells. The number of stem cells decreases with age, as do cognitive capacities, such as memory. The study reports that when blood from a young mouse is injected into an older mouse, the older mouse experienced a “rejuvenation effect. In fact, they saw a threefold increase in the number of new nerve cells being generated in old mice exposed to this “younger” environment. Additionally, performing the reverse, in which a young mouse was injected with plasma from an older mouse, resulted in young mice with neural characteristics indicative of an elderly mouse, with increased inflammation, decreased neuron production, etc.

The circulating factors causing this phenomenon remain to be fully elucidated. However, this is a pretty cool study by the Stanford research group. The biology of aging has several potential therapeutic implications, and though much research has been done investigating causes of such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s disease, much is still unknown. These current findings raise the question of whether it is possible to protect the brain from the damaging effects of aging by eliminating or altering the detrimental blood borne substances.

Taste on the Brain: Mapping out flavors

Yes, it's corny.  Yes, I suck at photoshop.

Hot off the presses of Science is an article from a group led by Charles Zuker (which is pretty darn close to zucker, German for sugar) in which they've figured out where different tastes are processed in the brain.  Let's back up though, and talk about we know already.


For the most part, we know that there are specific areas in the brain that are responsible for handling different sensory information.  The largest body of literature on this subject is arguably vision processing.  What we know is that our brain is wired topographically for vision; specific layers of the visual cortex correspond to different fields of our vision.  The same thing is true for touch reception.  Way back when it was en vogue to work directly on humans, scientists would take conscious patients that had the tops of their skulls removed, stimulate random parts of the brain, and ASK THEM where they felt it!

Hit the jump and you'll see what I'm talking about.

The Periodic Table of Elements Makes A Rather Fetching Tune

I'm not going to lie to you.  This is a busy week, so my post is not so detailed or heavy on science content.  But, I have managed to come up with some fun songs about the elements of periodic table for you to listen to, should you feel so inclined.  (They are really fun and catchy, actually).  And, for all the Harry Potter fans, Daniel Radcliffe confesses his hero is a scientist before he starts singing.  Nice.
    

Roy Spencer MAY or MAY NOT be taking money from big oil

THE Roy Spencer

How did I not write about this? I have failed you, The Loyal Reader, by not living up to my duty as resident "Guy Who Makes Fun of Science Deniers" on the blog. I promise I'll do my best to make it up to you with this post.

Back in July, a publication in the Journal of Remote Sensing from Roy Spencer and William D. Braswell from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, suggested that the computer models that show the atmosphere is trapping heat at very high rates are wrong and that it is actually allowing heat to escape at higher levels than believed. Climate Deniers lost their ever-living minds. James Taylor—on a return trip from Carolina—wrote in his 'environment' blog at Forbes.com that:

...the study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Faux News joined in the happiness parade asking "Has a central tenant of global warming just collapsed?"

Since the publication date, other climatologists did what scientists do and jumped into the data to see if the research was sound. Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo write in a co-authored blog post that the Journal of Remote Sensing does not deal with climate science, so the paper could not have received adequate peer-review. They state that the paper should have never been published and that the paper has no merit. They also are quick to point out that the paper has no statistical significance of results, error bars or uncertainties in the figures nor are they discussed in the text. I wish all science were that easy.

The paper is riddled with methodological errors and false claims (as detailed by the above link), something Wolfgang Wagner—the now former Editor-In-Cheif of Remote Sensing— was forced to admit in his resignation editorial. Wagner was beyond apologetic that the paper was published and personally protested against what he called the "much exaggerated conclusions" that were drawn from the paper by climate deniers.

To say that Spencer is a controversial scientist is being polite. Not only is Spencer a climate denying climatologist, but he also believes in Intelligent Design. This puts him in a small group of scientists whom have their annual meetings at a Denny's in Great Falls, Montana. I have always said that scientists that deny known scientific facts, do so for a monetary gain. It appears that Spencer is no different. Sue Sturgis details wonderfully over at Facing South the ties to Big Oil that Spencer has, including serving on the Board of Directors of various groups and institutes that are funded by or have the backing of oil companies. Associations such as these do call into question the motivations Spencer may have in proving climate change to be false, and any journal that reviews his manuscripts would be smart to make sure his data are thoroughly vetted.

Also, never trust a scientist that continually reminds you that they are a "Doctor". Right drroyspencer.com? Heading Roy Spencer, Ph.D.  (He also responses to blog posts with that sign-in name)
[H/T Facing South]

Fox News Called Some People

A poll conducted recently by Fox News asked:

Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth: the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists, the Biblical account of creation as told in the Bible, or are both true?" 

Of those responding, 21% said they think evolution is likely, to 45% for creation. 27% took a both could be true approach and 7% don't know what humans are. Compared with a survey asking the same question twelve years ago, acceptance of evolution has risen from 15% and creation has fallen from 50%. This--hopefully--shows that things are moving in the right direction, and that the population as a whole is moving towards acceptance of evolution that would be on par with our westernized peers.

[H/T NCSE]

Nice videos for High School Biology Teachers

Steve Newton, from the National Center for Science Education, tackles potential issues that may arise from teaching evolution at the high school level in a short talk to a group of teachers. The talk is good, although nothing we haven't seen or heard before, but still a great place to start if we have any high school biology teachers in our audience. It is a terrible thing that we have give these types of talks in the first place, our chemistry friends do not have to give talks to chemistry teachers about Avogadro's number, as Newton mentions. I completely believe evolution should be taught as early as possible, maybe with the easiest concepts--similarities between different species, a very basic timeline of species emergence, etc--being taught as early as the fifth or sixth grade. Plant the seed early, it makes it easier to understand fully at a later date. It also would hopefully take away any nervousness high school educators feel as they begin to teach the major concepts of evolution, because the ground work has already been laid.

Probably all highly doubtful, but hey, I can dream. Check out the videos after the jump.

Book Review: The Postmortal by Drew Magary

At one of our more recent, tax write-off business lunches, the Evolving Scientist Squadron decided we should start including some more book-review type posts, because we are some rather well-read sons-of-bitches. Additionally, I personally feel like we need to be a little nicer towards deserving science-oriented entertainment options So hey! I read a book this weekend that I really liked!

It’s the book that a John Updike, Cormac McCarthy and Ray Bradbury weird-three-way-fathered baby that watches a lot of Jason Statham and Edgar Wright movies would write.

As a sports fan who likes to read and as a victim of a most often sophomoric sense of humor, I am an unabated fan of the online poop-joke auteur Drew Magary. Magary used to work in the advertising industry, maintained a blog on the travails of fatherhood, Father Knows Shit, and was a frequent comment-writer on the naughty, now-infamous sports-culture website Deadspin. So prolific were his japes, he has now elevated himself to senior writer on the site, where his biweekly Funbag, NFL and Dick-joke Jamboroo articles are highlights to this graduate student’s Tuesdays and Thursdays. He also writes on the hilarious and satirical NFL website Kissing Suzy Kolber. To me, he is the Louis CK of blogging. He is as much an influence to my humor as any stand-up comedian, which I imagine is a very 21st-century thing for someone to say. If you’ve ever been vaguely entertained by my jackassery here or on the podcast, Drew is 100 times better than me.

He fields mail from the readers in on “would-you-rather” type scenarios and questions on the etiquette of something such as farting in public, or writes in character as caricatures of sports figures. The subjects are rarely on-color and always hilarious. As one reads more frequently, you see beneath the mildly perverse, to a loving husband and father, and thoughtful human being. He’s probably the quintessential male of the internet age; witty, intelligent, and mildly depraved, but also reasonably compassionate.

Last week on August 30th, he released his first novel: The Postmortal. It’s a sincere, though-provoking, fast paced science fiction novel set in the near future where a scientist has discovered a “cure for aging.”

A such a rabid consumer of his material and an obvious fanboy, I jumped at the chance to financially support an artist I admire, and I was not disappointed. Even if you’re not into dick-jokes, I would still recommend this book.

After the jump I slightly stymie my glowing praise, share lots more thoughts and I break down the science:

Stop the Presses, we've found a potential mate for Cliff

We are witnessing one of the most epic races since Mario, Toad and Peach strapped themselves to 50cc's of pure kart power. Ladies and Gentlemen, please take a front row seat for the race to become the world's biggest woman. Since 1,200 pound Rosalie Bradford passed away in '06, the title of 'Heaviest Woman Alive' has gone unclaimed. Enter Susanne Eman, 32, and Donna Simpson. The women are were battling it out to become nothing less than what Cliff desires, and more woman than he could ever handle. Simpson claims that Eman isn't true to the art form of becoming overweight, because she is cheating by having her teenage kids feed her. This differs from the way Simpson gained weight, by having a man with a 'feeder fetish' feed your needs, and his. Now with Simpson dropping the habit and giving up on gaining weight, it would seem that it is Eman's title to win. To make sure she reaches her hefty goal of 2000 pounds in the next nine years, or before her 41st birthday, Eman eats ~22,000 calories a day. Here is what a typical day of eating is like for Eman-

Breakfast: 6 scrambled eggs in butter, half pound of bacon, 4 hash browns, 6 slices of toast and more butter, and wash it down with a 32oz milk shake

Lunch: 3 Beef, bean and green chili burritos topped with sour cream, a salad with 1 cup of cherry tomatos, cup of carrots, a cucumber, 1/2 cup of ranch dressing, bacon bits, a piece of chicken and a cup of cheese.

Snacks between meals include a bag of cookies, a two liter of soda, an entire bag of chips and multiple ham and cheese sandwiches.

Dinner: 12 tacos topped with sour cream and another two liter of soda. For desert eight scoops of ice cream and an entire pan of brownies.

This is what Eman eats. Every. Single. DAY.

By my crude calculations—with the help of caloriecontrol.org—Eman needs to consume ~5000 calories per day just to maintain a weight of 750lbs(assuming she is 5'5). If 3,500 calories over the number of calories needed to maintain weight is equal to gaining a pound, that would mean that per day Eman will gain nearly five pounds!!!

Here's to everyone with a dream, I guess?!?

[H/T HuffPo]

Podcast Episode 11: The Green/Sustainable Energy Podcast

Look who's getting better at PhotoShop!

In honor of our latest complete genome sequenced friends the anole and the doobie, we turn our podcast green as well and discuss:

• Sustainable golf course practices at Pinehurst and Chambers Bay
• A newer low pollution green burial technique
• Dog parks powered on dog poop

It's way more fun than "An Inconvenient Truth," a fact which is only helped by the complete lack of Melissa Etheridge songs.

Subscribe on iTunes, external site, download, or it's embedded here below:

Ambitious Projects

The folks over at MSN have listed humankind's 10 most ambitious science projects. The ones you may think would be there most likely are, fancy ones like The International Space Station and the Hadron Collider do make the top ten. Nowhere found on the list is the science project seeking to discover why most belly buttons smell the way they do. Still waiting....

The Lizard and Werner Forßmann

In celebration of the complete anole genome sequence, I was reminded of another famous reptile: the Spider-man villain, the Lizard.

Self-experimentation gone awry

You'll get to know the Lizard rather well if you catch next year's Amazing Spider-man reboot film, but here's a primer: (Obviously fictional character) Curtis Connors was a herpatologist who was drafted into the US Army as a surgeon. In the war, Connors helped many wounded soldiers, but sustained a serious injury; his arm had to be amputated after being hit by an explosion. Returning to his former life of reptile research, Connors becomes obsessed with restoring his dexterity by concocting a reptile regeneration drug. After successfully regrowing a rabbit limb on a bunny patient, Connors, to the protests of his wife, tries the serum on himself. The arm is regrown, but with costly side effects.

The Lizard first appeared in 1963. If it were more of a recent invention, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko may have wanted to create the Salamander, the modern vertebrate regeneration master. But then the bad guy would have to live in a moist environment, and come on, that's just unreasonable. Reptile tail regeneration is a well-known and studied phenomenon, but the Salamander would own the Lizard in an amputate and recover contest.

The science fiction genre is wont to regale to us the misfortunes of self-experimentation gone wrong, however what about when things DO go according to plan?

One botched surgery away from super villainy

 Enter Werner Forßmann, Nobel Prize winner in 1956 for the first successful catheterization of the heart, owner of the largest set of brass cojones, and my favorite example of successful self-experimentation. Join me after the jump for an unbelievable story, and I promise I'll quit using the German "ß" thing for your efforts.

There was anole woman who.. had its genome sequenced

More with green-colored organisms's genomes: A great post at Why Evolution Is True alerted me to the first complete sequencing of a reptile's genome: the Anolis carolinensis! The post details some of the reasons why species in the anole genus are the premiere reptiles for research: their broad morphological diversity. The lizards, throughout evolutionary history, began to occupy different portions of a tree (canopy top, canopy bottom, trunk, twigs) or the lower surrounding vegetation, and evolved rapidly to fit their ecological station.

The green anole is the first reptile and last year's zebra finch was the first perching bird to be sequenced. There still is no complete amphibian or mollusk genome, and only two insect genomes! Here's a table of what the NCBI says the genome project's status is; there are some obvious holes. We here at the Evolving Scientist quite like comparative biology and non-mammalian vertebrates, so fire up your sequencers!

Anole fashioned, please.

Everyone raise your glasses!

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, But Making Out Is Fun To Do

It’s thought that 90% of people throughout various cultures engage in kissing.  In case such studies have managed to go under your radar, this post discusses common theories about why kissing came about, why we enjoy kissing, and how kissing influences our mates.    

"The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt.  Is this painting supposed to be pre- or post-kiss, because I can't help but notice they're not actually kissing?  Oh well.

That's more like it.  This one's "The Kiss" by Francesco Hayez.  Of course, I'm Italian and Francesco was Italian, so the fact that I prefer this painting to the previous one makes total sense to this guy.  Even though he makes no sense to anyone else.  

So why would humans (and some non-human primates such as bonobos) be so interested in lips that the process of kissing would develop?  Interesting info awaits you after the jump...