July 21st, 2012
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World Gone Viral, California Happy Cows, New Plutonian Moon, Seducing Fireflies, Arsenic Life Update, Breast Size Determination, Brains, TWIWRD, And Much More…
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Like sands through the hourglass
This is the end of a chapter in TWIS’s life.
But, never fear, for we are here and will continue to be
This Week in Science… coming up next
It’s a virus world
The HPV Herd
The HPV vaccine may have provided partial herd immunity in human women! However, the amount of non cancer-causing HPV is increasing. Still, a winning scenario…
Immune to outbreak
A version of the herpes virus that has attacked chickens reduces egg laying capabilities, so naturally scientists looked to develop a vaccine. Unfortunately, combining the three vaccines brought to market led to a stronger, deadly version of the virus.
Happy Cows DO Come from California!
Climate change appears to be affecting milk production in dairy cows, but moreso in hot, humid climates, such as in Florida. If climate change effects agriculture heavily enough, perhaps we can get more people on board to turn things around!
New Moon on Pluto?
The Hubble telescope has potentially discovered a new moon on pluto, donned “P5.” However, it’s physical attributes have yet to be affirmed. This means though that Pluto has five moons, but is still not deemed a “planet,” whereas Venus and Mercury have none of their own. Poor Pluto…
Blair’s Animal Corner
Female Fireflies – They’re Material Girls!
Male fireflies produce a series of flashes to seduce females. It turns out though, that females are more interested in the gifts the males might bestow upon them. The bigger the “present,” the more willing the female. What’s odd is that these “presents” are actually spermatophores, and size is everything, even though the fireflies internally fertilize. It sure is odd what some animals are into!
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Arsenic Life Update!
Two new papers published in Science strike a serious blow against research thought to indicate a new arsenic-based life-form. Scientists previously reported a microbe found in Mono Lake, called GFAJ-1, that withstood high levels of arsenic and possibly incorporated the element into its DNA in place of phosphorous. The new studies confirm that the bacterium is able to withstand high environmental arsenic concentrations, but reject the conclusion that arsenic is the basis for its unique physiology. However, this is not the last word on the topic.
Genes for Breast Size Found
The seven genetic markers responsible for bra and cup size were found through research from users of 23andme. Two of the seven were also associated with breast cancer risk.
Brains!!!
Poker on the brain
The temporal-periatal junction was very active during poker playing. This area of the brain was previously never seen used during social interaction.
Pee-brained Research
Scientists monitored 12 female subjects in MRI machines who were asked to urinate. The brain was highly active during the activity, and they found a similar reaction in 5 of the 12.
World Robot Domination
Changing face
Scientists are developing robotic faces capable of expression. Children could even identify many of the expressions performed by the FACE robot.
Virgin Galactic Launch
A small “swarm” of satellites will be released from a Virgin Galactic launching vehicle sometime in the near future. Stay Tuned!
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July 19th, 2012
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The Higgs Found?, Outer Space Magic, Blair’s Animal Corner, Worm Tales, Diabetes Brain Drug, Antibodies Against, Collapsing Corals, Eternal Youth?, Dark Matters, And Much More…
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This Week in Science… coming up next
The Higgs
The Higgs Boson has been found! Or has it? Physicists at the LHC have discovered a particle that fits the energetic profile of a Higgs, and is definitely a Boson. Much more data is needed though before we can definitively say it is the Higgs.
Outer Space Magic Tricks?
A distant star’s dusty disk disappeared, with no explanation. Enough dust to fill a solar system disappeared in just 2 years, after remaining fairly constant for two and a half decades. The only hypotheses astronomers could come up with so far would not explain the rapid recession they have observed, which leaves the scientists somewhat stumped. Now you see it, now you don’t! But why? How?
Blair’s Animal Corner
Bees can be tricked into changing their brain chemistry and essentially reverse aging by doing the chores of younger bees. The question is, if I make grandpa do chores, will his dementia disappear?
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Worm tales
The tiny worms by the name Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, often used to control garden pests, are famous for vomiting bacteria that kill the insect and pre-digest it for them. These bacteria have two forms: one is peace-loving, the other is killer. It turns out the difference is a random switch, and both are required for them to live harmoniously with the worm.
Diabetes drug that grows brain cells:
Metformin, a popular drug used to treat type II Diabetes, appears to encourage stem cells to create new brain cells. This could lead to a treatment for Alzheimer’s, or any brain injury for that matter.
Antibody injection for type I diabetes
Scientists at the University of North Carolina have recently found that antibody injections could reverse the onset of type I diabetes.
Looming collapse of corals
Eastern Pacific coral reefs may be in trouble, according to how corals responded to climatic changes in the Holocene. However, it appears that they did eventually bounce back, though it did take two millennia…
The key to eternal youth, you say?
Researchers at UC San Diego have explored exactly how epidermal progenitor cells and stem cells control transcription in order to avoid premature aging of the skin. This could potentially lead to the secret behind smooth skin available to us, on shelves everywhere!
Dark Matters
The “stuff we can’t see,” or Dark Matter, might be less elusive than we had thought. A new researcher from Denmark has been watching neutron stars to see how they react with dark matter, and has found out a bit more about what characterizes it.
A group of different astronomers have also found out that dark matter makes up the filaments between galaxies. They could then extrapolate the mass of these filaments, teaching us quite a bit about it’s nature.
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July 7th, 2012
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TWIWRD!, Dirty Diesel, Warm Dinos, Lonesome George Memorial, Hurricanes And Standing, Germline Edits, You Carb Girl!, Nano-Drug Factories, Grass Eating Ancestors, Lab Photosynthesis, A Curious Mind, And Much More…
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Despite everything you may have heard…
There is much more to the story than anyone has reported…
It doesn’t matter what story, on which subject or how carefully illustrated…
What does matter is that you fully appreciate that no matter what we know or how well we know it, there is always more knowing left unknown…
The level of complexity within any single point of data is by its nature a massive over simplification of a broader symphony of data points, each with their own complex ecology of factoids and on and on it goes…
A universe so complicated in its construction, yet so symmetrically simple in it conclusions…
A world of information, vast and infinite, flowing in every direction of time and scale
and yet decipherable to finite degrees and in the right hands… the information becomes a tool
a tool for building, curing and innovating the world around us…
that tool is our greatest accomplishment as a species and the main subject of conversation each week here on…
This Week in Science… coming up next
World Robot Domination and Machine learning!
A research team out of Google linked 16,000 processors and presented 10 million thumbnails from youtube to the “computer,” without giving it any directions for what to do with them. Naturally, it found and identified cats. In fact, they never told the computer what a cat was, but the computer “cat”egorized the felines in a group on it’s own. I can haz robot brain?
Diesel – not so clean after all
After analyzing soot particles of different origins, scientists discovered that particles from diesel exhaust leave around half of their brethren behind when you exhale. By contrast, only 20% of soot particles from wood fires stay in your body, as opposed to diesel’s 50%. Perhaps it isn’t a cleaner fuel after-all…
Blair’s Animal Corner – Extinct Edition!
Dinosaurs – they may have been warm blooded
We don’t know a lot about dinosaurs’ flesh and blood (and it’s temperature) but we know quite a bit about their bones. Dino bones show lines of arrested growth, or “Lags,” which previously we could only ever find in other ectotherms. In a recent study of mammal bones to see how they coped with past climate change, scientists stumbled upon a discovery – every mammal species they looked at had Lags on their bones. This throws the main point of argument for the cold-blooded nature of dinosaurs into question, leaving us to ask, were they actually warm-blooded?
And on a sad note, we said goodbye to Lonesome George this week:
Lonesome George, the last remaining Pinta island giant tortoise, passed away this past Sunday at over 100 years old. Lonesome George was discovered in 1972 when his subspecies was thought to already be extinct, and has since served as a spokes-turtle for endangered species everywhere. Even in his absence, he has made an impact – his death inspired an international workshop set to take place in July to help restore tortoise populations around the world. He will be missed.
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Standing while pregnant – Dangerous!
Standing or working for long hours during pregnancy could stunt fetal growth, according to a new study. Working women had healthier babies, but need to take frequent breaks to take time to sit to prevent low birth weight. So, get back to work, pregnant moms, but don’t work too hard!
Also, hurricanes are bad for your baby
Mothers that were within 30 km of a hurricane within their third trimester of pregnancy had a spike in abnormal conditions in their newborns.
Editing the germline
The world’s first genetically modified babies have been born, over ten years ago, thanks to the Institute of Reproductive Medicine in New Jersey. Apparently, two babies so far have tested positive to contain genes from three parents.
Carbs bad? Maybe carbs good.
Low carb, high protein diets linked to heart disease in women. A study including more than 43,000 women indicated that though that fad diet might reduce your waistline, it might also reduce your life expectancy. So you decide.
Treating diseases with minute drug factories
Scientists have produced minute spheres that contain no drugs, but instead the building blocks and mechanisms to make the drug “in house.” This is a great step forward for drugs that are harmful to the human body on their way to their destination. They can go in inert, and then are triggered by a laser, at which point they kick into gear making the drug.
Australopithecus ate a lot of grass…
By looking at some teeth, Texas A & M researchers have discovered that Australopithecus may have lived in a more woody area than previously thought. They discovered this from their diet – these hominoids ate leaves, fruits, nuts, and bark, leading us to believe their environment was more of a forest than a grassland.
Photosynthesis recreated in the laboratory
Using nano wires, scientists have found a way to harness the energy of the sun, as in photosynthesis. Perhaps this new technology could be used for clean energy in our homes!
A curious mind
Jonathon Allen, a biochemistry major at UC Santa Cruz, heard about an interesting spike in carbon-14 in tree rings in 774 AD. Some goggling led him to a description of a “red crucifix” in the night sky around the same year. Further research led him to the conclusion that it was most likely a supernova – hooray for the curious undergrad!
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June 27th, 2012
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Space Madness, Clicking Plants, Sensitive Birds, Counting Bears, LHC Excitement, Drones Against Poaching, TWIWRD, Ancient Cowherds, And Much More…
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This Week in Science… coming up next
Space madness!!!
A big step for China
China has sent its first expedition to a space station, including their first woman astronaut in space. The station should be complete by 2020 and is set to weigh around 60 metric tons. This might be a reason for the US to get back in the space race!
Shackleton’s Ice Mystery
A crater’s surface on the moon’s south pole could be made up of as much as 22% ice! Lasers detected parts of the crater to be far brighter than the rest of the moon’s surface, at wavelengths consistent with what you would expect from ice. Maybe Newt’s moon colony is closer than we thought!
Sounds of the universe
Dark matter, baryonic matter, and light interacted at the origin of the universe to make the universe itself very lumpy and clumpy, according to new simulations. Uh oh. Nobody likes lumps in their universe…
Plants can talk to each other by clicking!
We know that plants respond to sound, but new research suggests that plants can also communicate with each other with clicking sounds that emanate form their roots. Corn saplings have been shown to produce clicking sounds from their roots at around 200 Hz, and grew towards the clicking when it was reproduced in a water suspension. What will we discover that plants can do next?!
Birds don’t like noise
A baby songbird tends to learn the songs that are the most clear, and therefore the easiest to pick up on. It’s no surprise then, that birds can be influenced in which songs they learn, and therefore which they sing, by noise pollution. Sparrows in noisy areas near human populations have a shorter songbook that those in nature, and we humans are therefore creating fragments in sparrow culture. This takes animal dialects to a whole new level!
Blair’s Animal Corner!
Counting Bears, you say?
Three captive black bears recently performed amazingly well on touch screen number-based tests at Oakland University. This is the first touch screen based study with large carnivores, and scientists were impressed by the bears’ ability to recognize the relative size of clusters of dots. The bears were able to pick the larger or smaller group of dots, depending on which they were trained to identify, even when the size of the area the dots were in varied, indicating that they bears were doing something analogous to counting.
Get a free audiobook at Audible.com!
LHC UPDATE!!!
Scientists have discovered something that “looks like a Higgs is supposed to look.” What’s more, the Large Hadron Collider has already collected a huge amount of data that could further indicate a Higgs boson, it just needs examining. Fingers crossed, people!
Nepal launches drones to reduce poaching:
Conservationists in Nepal have recently developed drone aircrafts to monitor populations of endangered species for poaching activity. They successfully piloted two “unmanned” conservation drones in Chitwan National Park earlier this mont. The drones are equipped with GPS and a camera, and the WWF hopes to use them to guard Indian Rhinos and Tigers, for starters. Now if only we could fit them with lasers…
World robot Domination!!! –
Robots get touchy feely
A new specially designed robot can detect different natural materials according to their textures. This appendage has a soft malleable texture over a liquid filled center, much like a real finger, and in fact performed better than humans at identifying things by touch. This could pave the way for prosthesis or even commercial enhancement, or lead to sensitive robots that could take over the world!!!
Humanoids milked cows 7,000 years ago in Saharan Africa!
Fatty acid analysis of some pottery excavated in Libya indicates that dairy fat was present. This is astonishing due to the fact that it is the first instance of milk use found in Africa, and perhaps helps us to connect the dots as to when our ancestors gained the enzyme that allows us to process lactose.
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June 26th, 2012
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Dating Caves, Good Old Dad, The Human Bacteriome, Love A Bat Today, Poison For Toads, Bonobo You, B For Better, A Courage Pill, And Much More…
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This Week in Science… coming up next
World’s Oldest Cave Art now even Older!
Cave art found in Northern Spain has been dated to 10,000 years previous to what was previously thought to be the lest cave art, found in France. As there was no organic pigment with which to use radiocarbon dating, they instead tested the radioactive decay on Uranium in the stalactites formed over the painting. It also looks like the cave was visited and contributed to multiple times, and by different species lines. It’s an interspecies art show!
Dads – they are best old
Children with older fathers and grandfather can live longer. Telomeres, the repeating segments at the end of chromosomes that essentially protect from genetic decay in old age are significantly longer in those with older fathers and grandfathers. It appears that these segments grow in sperm at the same rate as they decay in the man, but further research is needed to identify if these longer telomeres are actually just compensating for other genetic problems that come with old age.
Mapping the Human Microbiome
Microbes outnumber human cells in your body 10 to 1, but that’s actually a good thing. After five years, the Human Microbiome Project can tell us the answer to two fundamental questions: Who’s in here, and what are they doing? We each have our own individual “microbiomes” inside us, with varying inhabitants with similarities along culture or geographical lines.
Blair’s Animal Corner
Killing Vampire Bats does not reduce rabies cases
Until now, it was understood that culling bats was the best way to control the spread of rabies in South America. In fact, there appeared to be no link between the colony size and the proportion of bats who carried rabies. What’s even worse, researchers saw an increase in the proportion of bats with rabies in many of the areas that were subjected to regular culls, and the colonies that had never been culled showed the lowest rates of all. Maybe it’s time for us to butt out of this one…
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Using cane toad’s poison against them
Cane Toads, or Marine Toads, have been running amuck in Australia since 1935, but it our own fault. New research shows that by placing some of the paralytic poison they secrete in traps in ponds we can catch and eliminate tadpoles before they turn into giant ravenous toads. Another plus: native fishes and insects aren’t attracted to the poison. Perhaps this research hold the key to removing this injurious invasive species once and for all!
Bonobo Genome Decoded
The Bonobo genome has some interesting information hidden inside: Chimpanzees and Bonobos, though closely related, appear to show a clean split of family lines- almost no interbreeding occurred once there was divergence, which would explain their vastly different lifestyles. Additionally, Chimps and Bonobos share about 3% of their DNA with humans, but the interesting thing is that almost none of that 3% is the same between the two, that is, they share a different 3% with us from one another.
Hidden Vitamin in Milk makes Mighty Mice!
A vitamin B3 relative found exclusively in milk makes stronger, faster, and leaner mice. Essentially this vitamin gives the benefit of good diet and exercise without good diet or exercise! Nicotinamide riocide essentially improves mitochondrial function, the cell’s energy center. Not nearly enough of this newly discovered vitamin occurs naturally in milk for dairy to be beneficial, but perhaps there will soon be a new diet pill on the market, that actually works!
A Courage Pill?
Duke University and the National Institute of Health have developed a drug that calms anxious mice. Fatty Acid Hydrolase, or FAAH, is a gene-encoding enzyme that has a similar anxiety reducing effect on the brain to marijuana, and this new drug helps it to function more effectively. Besides fabricating a “courage pill,” this drug could be used to treat anxiety disorders, including PTSD. You can’t help but wonder – what would the world be like without fear?
Childhood Seizures linked to Viral Infection
A third of children who suffered from seizures also suffer from new or reactivated roseola virus. This virus can cause limbic encephalitis, but can also just cause a rash. What’s more, it is possible that this viral infection could cause full-blown epilepsy in adults. Anti-Virals to treat seizures, you say?
Japanese Physicists Predict Blockbusters
Equations that measure advertising and word-of-mouth exposure for an upcoming movie could effectively predict which films would be successful. It does’t matter how good the script was, who is in it, or how much money you spent, it really just boils down to exposure.
Pitcher Plant uses Rain to get Food
Pitcher plants have a special wax on the underside of their upper rim that allow tiny invertebrates to gain safe passage during a downpour, or so they would lead you to believe. Instead, the vibrations from rain droplets make the tiny prey lose their footing and fall into the digestive enzymes below! Tricky pitcher plants…
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June 22nd, 2012
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Coffee, Cigarettes, Vampire Spiders, Birds Of A Different Color, Ants Working For Mark Zuckerberg, And Much More…
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This Week in Science… coming up next
Mantis Shrimp Body Armor?
The club of the mantis shrimp is made out a very unique structure that could be very beneficial to us humans. These club structures withstand over 50,000 high velocity strikes during the shrimp’s lifetime, equivalent to withstanding 50,000 bullet impacts. What’s more, it’s light weight, which could solve the problem of current body armor in use that weighs upwards of 30 lbs. It’s time for the military to take a lesson from this invertebrate!
Coffee and Cigarettes – one is bad for you, the other one might save your brain. Can you guess which is which?
Vegetables and Fruits can help you stop smoking!
Whether it is because of the bad taste smoking gives you after eating the stuff, or if there is some chemical reaction in your brain that keeps you from craving the nicotine post-roughage, we don’t know yet, but veggies and fruits appear to improve your chances of kicking the habit!
What makes Cool so Cool?
A new study indicates that what was “cool” when the word originated is no longer the rubric for “coolness.” After speaking to around 1,000 people in Vancouver, British Colombia, the researchers found that coolness tended to rely on positive, socially desirable traits, as opposed to the rebellious, bad guy personality we are so used to associating with “cool.”
Blair’s Animal Corner
BIrd’s colors indicate personalities
Red-headed finches are more aggressive, whereas black-headed birds showed more bold and risk-taking characteristics. The question is, which came first? Did the colors develop after the personality traits to indicate to other birds how they might act and therefore who to team up with?
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Coffee could keep you from developing Alzheimer’s
Those with high blood caffeine levels are much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, or at least delay its onset. Along with preventing many other life-threatening diseases, coffee appears to have turned into an important medicinal substance, as apposed to a harmful addiction.
An Alzheimer’s Vaccine?
In a clinical trial, 80% of patients developed antibodies against beta-amyloid, the plaque that builds up in the outer membrane of your brain and kills brain cells. While the vaccine can not prevent or reverse Alzheimer’s, it could potentially have a “leveling effect,” where it stops further degradation.
Sharp-Eyed Vampire Spiders are picky eaters
Vampire Spiders can identify their prey – female mosquitos engorged with vertebrate blood in two ways. They look for swollen abdomens, obviously, but they also can identify the mosquitos by their antennae.
Out of Asia, not Africa?!
Teeth found in Asia lead scientists to believe that perhaps anthropoids arose in Asia about 37-45 million years ago before colonizing to Africa. All this information, from just four popcorn-kernel-sized molars. You be the judge on this one, but perhaps we need a little more than four teeth to present such an earth-shaking hypothesis…
Ants may be able to make Facebook better.
University of Madrid suggests that ants could help create new algorithms to improve social networks. Food foraging techniques of ants, involving a pheromone trail for other ants to find the food they’ve located, could help website developers build referential chains between people, events, pictures, and more.
Financial Mania?
It turns out that the financial world was suffering from collective mania in 2008 prior to the economic collapse. Bankers, economists, and politicians shared manic behavior such as denial, omnipotence, triumphalism, and over-activity. Perhaps that could explain it, but that doesn’t make it ok. Should we have sent our economists and bankers to an asylum?
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June 19th, 2012
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The Great Dying, Falling Civilizations, Superfast Supervolcanoes, Tuatara Teeth, Old Smells Good, Alphabet For Life, Soviet Moon Water, Canadian Jupiter Moon, Neutrino Whirlpools, Curing Paralysis, And Much More…
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The following hour of programming delves into the brightest prospects of our already promising future…
Through forensic analysis of the past and present world,
SCIENCE!
will guide us as it always has…
from question to answer
from problem to solution
from ignorance to understanding
and from wondering to wonderful discovery
And while not every path we wander down in life will lead to our desired destination,
the journey we take for an hour here each week will never leave you where you started on
This Week in Science… coming up next
The Great Dying and the slow recovery
Around 250 million years ago, approximately 90% of all life on earth died. New estimates indicate that it may have taken up to 10 million year for life to recover, but why did it take so long? It turns out that climate change may have been involved… Isn’t it always?
The fall of civilization
Approximately 4,000 years ago a civilization called the Harappans lived in what we now call India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Climate change, once again, may have been responsible for their demise. A culture dependent on flooding and rampant monsoons for their agriculture, most likely fell when the 2,000 year wet period dried up.
Super fast Supervolcanoes
“Supervolcanoes” were previously thought to take up to 200,000 years to form, but new research suggests they can form within just a few hundred years. That’s bad news, since one is currently forming under Yellowstone National Park that could cover over half of North America in molten magma.
Blair’s Animal Corner
Holy Tuatara Teeth, Batman!
The Tuatara may look like a lizard, but it’s not. It is a reptile, however, and so scientists were very surprised to discover that they exhibit mastication previously exclusively seen in mammals. It was previously understood that complex chewing abilities were limited to those animals with higher metabolisms, which makes sense, since chewing food would require less time for digestion. It turns out though that the New Zealand natives have debunked this long supported correlation.
The scent of age
In a study where scientists collected body odor from subjects placed into young, middle-aged, and old test groups, evaluators were able to distinguish the three groups. In fact, the “old” age group scent was found to be less intense and less unpleasant, but there is a distinct smell to old age.
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Alphabet for Life
New research from Yale indicates than changes in just three genetic letters among millions led to the development of the mammalian motor sensory circuits. These neural circuits connects to the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for fine motor skills including those that led to tool use and speech.
Soviets found water on moon
The last solviet mission to the moon found water, but the thing is, it was in 1976. Luna-24 took sample from the moon’s surface, and found that 0.1 % of the sample was water. Unfortunately, western scientists have glossed over this discovery for decades.
Canada, just like Europa
A frozen sulfurous fjord in Canada resembles the surface of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and has microbial inhabitants. This indicates that Europa could support life. Scientists now know where and how to look for life on the icy moon, and that life is possible in such a harsh environment.
Serendipitous discovery by neutrino observatory
Nemo, a neutrino initiative in the Mediterranean under construction off the coast of Italy, made an accidental discovery this week. Scientists found marine vortices, or small whirlpools nearly 6 miles across, which are not supposed to occur in closed basins like the Mediterranean, and scientists are still trying to figure out how they occurred. They could have migrated from another body of water, or currents may be doing things we had not expected.
Curing Paralysis
Rats with spinal chord injuries have learned to walk! By bathing their spinal chords in chemicals and using electrical currents, rats were able to move their limbs again, eventually climbing stairs and even running. Imagine giving a paralyzed human the ability to walk again… SCIENCE!
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May 30th, 2012
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Carbon On Mars, Video Game Skillz, Autism Gets Hot, Rangy Orangutans, Dropping Pills On Cancer, Bacteria In Living Color, Bees Needs, Stop Snoring Now, And, Much More…
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This Week in Science… coming up next
Carbon on Mars
Molecules containing large chains of hydrogen and carbon have been discovered on meteorites hailing from Mars, indicating the possibility of life. New research indicates that these carbon chains did come from Mars, but that they are not biological. Bummer…
Shooting To Win
A new study shows that playing violent video games with gun-like controllers and humanoid targets can improve shooting accuracy by up to 33%. Shockingly though, the video game-exposed subjects targeted the head 99% more often. Sounds like video game nerds will be our new secret weapon in warfare!
Autism and Fever
Women who reported having a fever during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to autistic children. Inflammatory factors or just simply body temperature could be to blame. Either way, knowing this correlation could warm mothers to treat their fever early and perhaps save their children’s brains!
Blair’s Animal Corner
Sumatran Orangutans delay puberty by up to ten years to increase their chances with females. Male orangutans can monopolize a group of females for weeks at a time, so there can be intense fighting in order to assert dominance and gain control. It makes sense then for males to want to get as large and strong as possible before duking it out with other males for the prize, however these orangutans are so far the only primate known to exhibit this phenomenon.
Resilience = Happiness?
Some people never recover from intense loss, but those who do will tend to enjoy life more. In short, people who are more resilient tend to be more satisfied with their life. That means those bumps in the road could be good news to the you a few miles down!
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Psychiatric Drug kills Cancer Stem Cells?!
A team of Canadian scientists recently tested a wide range of drugs combinations to target cancer. Surprisingly, they found a drug currently on the market for schizophrenia targeting cancer stem cells. Surprise! A potential cancer cure form an anti-psychotic drug!
Seeing in Color
We may see more colors than dogs, but far fewer than birds, reptiles and insects – but why? Our bacterial ancestors could sense the different between shorter (blue) wavelengths and longer (red) wavelengths. All color vision is an outgrowth of that system, and simple copy errors of those genes developed “cones” that respond to specific wavelengths. It makes you think a lot about human perception, and what it really means for something to be “blue” or “green”… My brain hurts now…
Picky Bees
A small dose of pesticide make honey bees “picky eaters.” Unfortunately this effects their ability to recruit mates and also causes them to pass up what would otherwise be perfectly good sources of food. These picky bees prefer sweeter nectar, and refrain from alerting the colony to the presence of any nectar at all. The colony therefore gets less sustenance in the long run. No wonder our bee colonies are collapsing!
Snoring could increase cancer risk five-fold!
Low blood oxygen levels can increase the growth of vessels that feed cancerous tumors. Patients with mild Sleep Disordered Breathing were 10% more likely to develop cancer, those with moderate SDB were twice as likely, and severe cases were around 4.8 times as likely to develop cancer. So, one could extrapolate that if a person is a light snorer, it probably isn’t a problem, but if they have severe sleep apnea, it might behoove them to wear a breathing apparatus… Oxygen is good for you, who’d have thought?
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Tags: Justin Jackson, news, podcast, radio, science, talk, technology, This Week in Science, TWIS
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