Your source for daily science things.

Today: Fossilized Squid Ink!

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:13:00 -0400

Check out this fossilized-ink-sac. Researchers confirmed that the pigment in it is chemically similar to the sort used by modern squids, chock full of eumelanin. The head researcher said:

The ‘aha moment’ for me was when we looked at the techniques for chemical bonding and we couldn’t find anything that distinguished the pigment in the fossil from the pigment in a modern-day cuttlefish, which suggests the pigment hasn’t changed in 160 million years. When I think about other evolutionary transitions that just amazes me.

Whoops!

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:52:43 -0400

Sorry for the unplanned hiatus, everyone! I’m back now, though, and I look forward to shoving plates of deliciously deep-fried science at you once more, though. I have a few questions in the askbox to tackle, so I will handle those tomorrow.

*waves to new followers* Hi.

"Myth #8: Scientists are not sexy beasts. Truth: Scientists are indeed sexy beasts. Not only do..."

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:13:40 -0400

“

Myth #8: Scientists are not sexy beasts.

Truth: Scientists are indeed sexy beasts. Not only do our lab coats make us look dapper and charming, those same coats look even better strewn unceremoniously over a standing lamp while we make passionate love to you.

”

- Adam Reuben, Experimental Error Dispels 8 Myths About Scientists (via snakewife)

Einstein, for the record, had numerous extramarital affairs,...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:04:03 -0400

Einstein, for the record, had numerous extramarital affairs, including at least six long-term girlfriends.

surviving-science: love zoidberg We interrupt the smooching...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:46:54 -0400

surviving-science:

love zoidberg

We interrupt the smooching for this graphic, which is pretty much every person in every journal club I’ve been in ever.

The Bad Kiss, or, "Nooo I wanted the opposite of this."

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:31:00 -0400

We’ve all been there. They’re smart, funny, and pretty cute to boot. Here it comes, the big moment, that first kiss, and— Oh.

No, no, I’ll call you.

The University of Albany published research saying that over half of men and 2/3s of women have cut off a relationship because someone was a bad kisser. DST is one of these individuals, because DST demands kisses from people who know what the hell they’re doing. But is it really all in technique?

Where do our preferences come from? Our molecules end up being at least partly responsible for whether or not we like a kiss. The scent of your partner actually plays a pretty big part in whether or not you like kissing someone, even if you aren’t aware of any difference or meaning behind the scent. Remember when I talked a bit about pheromones, scent glands, and body hair? Those pheromones are still in production, and though we may not be able to put into words what they tell us, our hindbrain is still able to read their messages. And what does our partner’s scent tell us?”

“Hi, potential kissee. This is what my immune system looks like.”

Yes. An experiment required women to rate the pleasantness of a man’s scent / their attraction to him, and researchers found that the women almost always preferred the scent of a man with differing major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs).

[I needed a graphic. Good enough.]

The MHC is a group of genes that determines what cell surface antigens you’ll have, which determines how your cells react with the rest of your immune system. Previous research has shown that fish and mice both prefer mates with different MHCs, and interestingly, it seems the same is true for humans.

In plain English, you are more interested in kissing a partner who smells like they can provide your offspring with more genetic diversity and a better immune system. Yeah, even if you don’t want to have kids. Your lizard brain doesn’t know that.

[Personally, I’d be very interested in seeing if experiments with non-heterosexual couples would yield the same preference for partners with differing MHCs. I tentatively predict that they would, honestly, but wouldn’t feel comfortable making a statement like that unless I had some real research on my side. Still, I have hypotheses. ]

Kissing triggers a biochemical cascade.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:07:00 -0400

Isn’t that amazing? We’ve evolved so that the simple act of pressing our lips to someone else’s lips causes this rush of chemicals through our system.

Kissing triggers a biochemical cascade in your body, resulting in neurotransmitters flooding your brain. Specifically, we have the big three:

Dopamine, which makes you want more kisses because they feel awesome.

Serotonin, which makes you want more kisses from this person and omg this person this person this person.

Oxytocin, the bonding hormone that makes you want to cuddle them afterwards and maybe keep them.

Tattooed on someone’s foot, which I felt was a more interesting way of showing you the structure.

When you are getting kissed but good, then these chemicals are just being poured into you and your brain is going crazy with it. I personally do not feel that knowing what’s going on takes the romance out – we just know why we’re feeling this way. You can still enjoy it, and please do! :)

But what if you’re not really into the kiss? We’ll talk about that in the next entry.

I declare today "science of kissing" day.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:26:37 -0400

Who wants to know why we get our smooch on?

Meet Évariste Galois.

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:04:30 -0400

Who is this dashing son of a bitch? He’s a budding mathematician, born in 1811 in France. Smart as hell, he greatly contributed to the branches of abstract algebra in what are now called Galois theory and group theory. All of this before age 20!

Galois was hard into politics. This was a period of heavily turmoil in France, as history buffs will tell you, and Galois was a firebrand since his early days, getting suspended from school. When he was 18, his father committed suicide after a heated argument with a priest. Over the years, Galois was accused of threatening the King, protested and was arrested, and this whole time, he kept working on his maths.

At age 20, Galois offered to duel for a woman he had some affection for. At some point prior to the duel, he realized this was all a terrible idea, but unwilling to back out, he spent his last night on earth polishing up his theorems and sending them to friends. He was predictably shot (possibly as a result of too little sleep?) and died shortly after, refusing the priest’s last rites.

Now you know that he existed.

Science is not your enemy; let us be friends.

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:08:14 -0400

snakewife:

First off, I hope that my post comes across as respectfully as I would like. If at any time it does not, then the error is in my phrasing, and not in my intent.

(cwnerd12, thank you for your thoughtful post. I don’t know if you will personally read my response here, but several people on my dash have been discussing this matter, and your well-written post brings up a few things I should like to address. That is why I chose to use it.)

cwnerd12:

In regards to the original article, “The 13 Most Useless College Majors (According to Science),” having studies Sociology, my inner sociologist will tell you to consider the source. According to Science.

Actually, according to The Daily Beast / Newsweek article (which has, I feel, a bit of a cruel and inflammatory title, as is clear from the response it has provoked). If one goes to the original source, it is a slide show that presents a series of numbers regarding unemployment rates and amount of money made, that sort of thing. Do these stats make for a ‘useless’ major? Of course not! Certainly it’s not scientific to refer to something as useless; that would cast a value judgment, which would be very unscientific. And what defines ‘useless,’ at any rate? It is a subjective term, and like many people who read this article, I do not agree with the journalist’s use of the word ‘useless’ in conjunction with these majors.

What I am saying here is: the word ‘useless’ was a journalistic choice, not a scientific one.

The world of science is a black and white one where a+b=c and there are no possible variants on the truth.

I would argue that this is a bit of an oversimplification. In science, data is examined from many angles, reinterpreted constantly and prodded and questioned constantly. Science may be black and white, but it’s a shifting black and white, changing constantly as we learn more and more.

by pushing math and science as the only things that matter, we’re forgetting the creative spark, the ability to go outside of logic and create the next big thing, find the life-saving cure, or solve the mysteries of the universe.

With all due respect — this is what scientists do every day! Creativity and science are not separate things at all. This is what goes on in the lab. We do not just follow a given set of instructions (that would be a factory setup, and although they do exist, they are different from an investigative lab). We are pushed to be creative, to look at our problems from different angles and try to puzzle out how we can find that next big thing or that cure. How else would we be able to combat pathogens that adapt to antibiotics within a few generations, or viruses that have developed absolutely tricky ways of getting past our immune system? Thinking creatively is how you get grants!

Science is not the regurgitation of facts the way it is portrayed in high school courses or even in some undergrad level courses. As a scientist, you are pushing your creativity to different places. A favorite story of mine relates how Friedrich Kekulé discovered that benzene was ring-shaped rather than a straight line by daydreaming (yes, scientists definitely daydream, too) and imagining a serpent eating its own tail. There is a story about flow cytometry being pioneered after a researcher remembered crawling from car to car through the car windows in his youth and thought about molecules doing the same thing.

As much as I hate to admit it, no matter how many remedial math courses I may have failed, math and science aren’t the enemy here. It’s the automatic assumption that math and science are superior.

Thank you for including this portion, and I will add that I agree wholeheartedly. Likewise, if I am responding, it is because I am passionate about science. Though it is frowned upon in internet discussions to admit to such things, seeing so many people on my dash say such awful things about science - some from a lack of information, some from negative experiences - hits me very close to home. I am just desperate to clarify a few things.

I write, too, and I draw, and I think if I could not draw I would die. I cannot describe myself as someone who has art as a ‘hobby’ - but I find that I do, when I am in the presence of someone who wouldn’t understand that it is a passion, the sort of person who probably would use the term ‘useless.’ Society’s tendency to sneer at the arts as “useless” is cruel and short-sighted; I agree with you there. However…

Science makes you live, but the arts make life worth living.

I would like to think that they both can make life worth living. :)

Confession: my dream job would involve a lot less of being a science advvisor to companies and a lot more of being a science advvocate to the public, and it’s precisely because of incidents like these, when that very dangerous Us vs Them mentality starts to rear its ugly head and you realize that a lot of people are unaware of what scientists are actually doing.

Science definitely would not qualify these majors as ‘useless.’ Remember what I said about evolution before? It’s not about evolving to be “better.” It’s about evolving to best fit your niche. It’s all about what you want to do and where you want to live, whether as a species of fish adjusting to a higher salinity or as a young person trying to make it in this crazy world and fill your own definition of what you want your life to be.

Disco-bots of the future

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:33:07 -0400

The year was 1983. In Pasadena, CA, a pair of 4.5 foot tall robot waiters found employment in a local restaurant. They weren’t very good at it, though.

The pair […] tend to blur their words drunkenly when their 12-volt power cells run down, and they’ve been known to drop food and spin in circles when police radios operate nearby.

They’re programmed to be nice to customers — “Will there be anything else?” and “See you tomorrow” — in Japanese, English and Spanish.

Patrons whose commands confuse the pair get the response: “That’s not my problem,” accompanied by a short blast of disco music to which the bubbleheads dance back and forth.

[source]

Carpal Skin

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:44:43 -0400

Neri Oxman’s prototype protective glove for the treatment of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, customized to each patient’s particular pain-profile.

nice try, kid

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:23:14 -0400

nice try, kid

nowviddythis: AAAAAHHHHHH SO MUCH PUNS So much punnett square,...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:25:12 -0400

nowviddythis:

AAAAAHHHHHH SO MUCH PUNS

So much punnett square, you mean?

Giant anteaters!

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:47:18 -0400

Giant anteaters used to scare the heck out of me and actually still kind of freak me out a little bit oh fuck why’d I tell you that. But we can’t deny that they’re pretty interesting. They are a walking mullet: business in the front, party in the back. Look at this sassy motherfucker:

They can be 6 to 8 feet long. ~~That’s taller than I am.~~ Take a look at those forearms, too; anteaters walk on their knuckles! Look at their skeleton:

[Those are some thick rib bones they’ve got, there, and a very strong tail that they can use to balance when they get up on their hind legs.]

See? Knuckle walkers! Also some massively nasty claws ~~that can be used to eviscerate you~~ that help them dig open ant hills, termite mounds, and defend themselves from enemies. Another thing we can see is their toothless jaws.

Anteaters don’t chew, not really: pebbles they swallow help break food down, as does a hard palate.

Anteaters actually eat all sorts of insects - but skip the kind that have chemical defenses, which anteaters actually cannot digest. With a schnoz like that, they have a scary accurate sense of smell ~~and will find you no matter where you’ve hidden yourself~~ which they use to locate ~~you~~ prey. Their superlong tongue flicks in and out over 150 times a minute, meaning they can ~~drain your blood in record time~~ eat quite a lot of ants!

oh my god

the big man... HASS the gun

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:28:54 -0400

JUST HOW HIGH ARE YOU THOUGHT TO BE WHEN YOU’RE HOLDING A WEAPON!!!!!

I’m sick, cut me some slack. I’m sitting in my cubicle with a fever and an intense desire to go home. Anyway, so today from PLoS ONE: a study demonstrated that individuals holding weapons were perceived as taller and ‘manlier’ by study participants.

Knowing that an individual possesses a potentially lethal object, be it a handgun or a kitchen knife, led our U.S. participants to generally conceptualize the target individual as taller and larger in overall body size and muscularity. […] These findings constitute preliminary evidence in support of the hypothesis that conceptualized size and strength act as key dimensions in a cognitive representation that summarizes the formidability of a potential foe, where possession of a weapon is one factor contributing to said formidability.

An actual random number generator.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:52:35 -0400

An actual random number generator.:

No,realrandom numbers, not just “an algorithm the user doesn’t know.” Researchers at the Australian National University have developed a random number generator that uses the noise made by sub-atomic particles disappearing and reappearing in a vacuum to choose truly random numbers.

A robotic tentacle holds a human hand.

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:37:03 -0400

A robotic tentacle holds a human hand.

Visitors to the Natural History Museum in London can now see...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:04:03 -0400

Visitors to the Natural History Museum in London can now see under the skin of animals.

MicroRNAs and Depression.

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:04:00 -0400

From PLoS ONE: MicroRNA Expression Is Down-Regulated and Reorganized in Prefrontal Cortex of Depressed Suicide Subjects

No, no, don’t run away. Let me tell you about this paper.

MicroRNAs are tiny bits of genetic code that regulate how much of a certain gene is transcribed (think of this like running a program); we know they definitely can stop or slow down transcription, and research is ongoing as to whether they can also enhance or turn on some transcription.

Now, the prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that is involved with, to put it bluntly, being you: your personality your ability to interact with others and interpret their actions, and importantly, your ability to stop yourself from doing things that might end badly for you.

Depression is very serious, and researchers are doing their best to study it on a molecular level to improve the treatments for it. The trick is that this is just it: depression is a result of faulty brain function.

It’s not that someone needs to “pick themselves up.”

It’s not that someone needs to “get over it.”

It’s not that someone likes being sad.

If you are depressed, it’s important that you know this, too. Your brain isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. It might help you to know this? It’s not your fault, and you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re dealing with a brain that’s interpreting information wrong, like when you misread the word “shark” as “snack.”

[Possibly there are better papers, but this one is recent and illustrates my point nicely, I think.]