New Gene Discovered to be Linked to Speech

A new gene was found, dubbed tospeak. It lies within chromosome 8 and is though to be a critical gene of speech. See the full story under For Further Information, See:

-bexchada

Hey Jellyfishie, Part VI

 The Mnemiopsis jellyfish has been found in the Mediterranean.
This is not a problem for swimmers: it isn't poisonous.  It is, however, a problem for fish-lovers.  You see, Mnemiopsis eats fish.  And it's very good at it.  In the Black Sea, for example, they caused the collapse of fisheries due to their habit of eating fish.
Some scientists say that the bloom of Mnemiopsis is a symptom of a larger effect- jellyfish defeating non-jelly fish for control of the oceans due to overfishing and pollution.  This would be an absolutely hugemongous ecosystem shift, although jellyfish-eating animals might like it.  And while jellyfish don't have brains, normal fish are pretty stupid as well- the Great White Shark's brain weighs under 50 grams.
I wonder how jellyfish taste?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/
0,9171,1931659,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

-Brown Rhino

Hey Jellyfishie, Part V

The box jellyfish crisis at Waikiki Beach has passed- only 10 of the jellyfish with powerful and painful stings were found today.  A warning remains, but it seems safe to return to the beach now, after 15 days of jellyfish stings.  169 people have been stung by jellyfish during this time, most on the first day.

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2

0091015/NEWS25/910150341/Only+a+

few+box+jellyfish+found+but+warning+remains

-Brown Rhino 

Hey Jellyfishie, Part IV

Video footage has been taken of dolphins using jellyfish as volleyballs.  The dolphins were using their tails to throw the jellyfish up to two meters into the air.

Another argument or dolphin intelligence.  Unfortunately, some of the jellyfish died in the process :(.  Well, even dolphins aren't perfect.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/who-lost-a

-leech-avoid-promotions-dolphin-football/article1337895/

-Brown Rhino 

Hey jellyfishie, Part III

Jellyfish aren't all bad.  The newest finding: one of their proteins has potential for helping against strokes.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Brain/Health/prweb3090774.htm

-Brown Rhino

Poll Results 1

The elephant was more popular than the platypus, kangaroo, sloth, anteater, aadvark, rat, guinea pig, rabbit or chimpanzee.  Congradulations!

Hey jellyfishie: Part II

 Jellyfish Lake in the Phillipines is famous for its (surprise!) jellifish.  It has about one million of them- one of the largest smacks (a group of jellyfish- I'm not kidding!) in the world.  The strangest thing?  They're not poisonous.  The lake has no predators, so they did not need to spend the energy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6395668/

Army-of-one-million-jellyfish-photographs.html

-Brown Rhino 

Hey jellyfishie: Part I

 A swarm of hungry jellyfish that have earlier eaten farmed salmon off Northern Ireland are now gathering off Scotland.  Admittedly, farmed salmon are supposed to be a great food source.  But originally, they were supposed to be food for us!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/
highlands_and_islands/8314436.stm

-Brown Rhino

Humans still evolving

It's a well-known fact that humans no longer have as much pressure on them by natural selection.  After all, we can even let blind people survive , have children, and pass their blindness on- right?

Actually, a new study has recently shown that natural selection is still with us.  The difference, of course, is that sapient life requires selection for different things.  A recent study showed that humans (or at least women) are getting shorter, heavier, less likely to have a heart attack and lower blood pressure.  They also will enter puberty earlier and menopause later. This is pretty much what our lifestyle is selecting for, so nothing unexpected.  It does, however, oppose the idea that sexual selection may play a bigger role now.

-Brown Rhino 

Ant-eating Wars

Ants are a nice food source- plentiful, and easy to eat if you have a long tongue.  So which animal eats the most (per night)?
Here's a comparison:
Silky (smallest) anteater      to 8 000
Tamandua (medium anteater)  9 000
Giant Anteater                      30 000
Aardvark                              50 000
Aardwolf (ant-eating hyena) 200 000
Giant Pangolin                      200 000
Armadillos, echidnas, and hedgehogs: no info found.

Mink farm controversy

In Denmark, people farm minks for fur.  Of course, the minks have to be killed for this.  Naturally, some activists are very unhappy with this (farms like these not only breed disease, but also kill animals for purposes other than food).  Correspondingly, they've released the minks- 3000 of them.  And obviously, minks can't survive in Denmark in these quantities (and they destroy the ecosystem with them).  Similarly, the farms want the minks back.  Clearly, the most straightforward method is to capture and/or kill these minks.

But then again, World War I also began in a very rational manner.

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/
2009/10/16/thousands-of-mink-in-
dash-for-freedom-in-jutland/

-Brown Rhino 

Telomerase

Whenever DNA replicates, a little is removed from the end, like a photocopy that was not aligned correctly. Telomerase adds a little to the end of the DNA, in a line of useless letters reading TTAGGG that the DNA can lose without a loss of functions within the cell. A good animation of how this occurs is posted bellow under the For Further Information, Try: tab that I highly recommend seeing.

-bexchada

Biocomputers: What are they?

 A biocomputer is a computer that uses DNA.  DNA has an uncanny ability to work with electrodes and metal, and is already used in, for example, microscopes.  It is predicted that using DNA rather than silicon may shrink the size of computers 1000 times.

Of course, no biocomputers currently exist.

http://www.nanotech-now.com/columns/?article=360

- Brown Rhino

Tree House Preview

Many of us have built treehouses when we were little.  But can this formula translate itself to full-scale projects to live in?  Find out November.

-Brown Rhino

Chemistry Nobel Prize

 The Chemistry Nobel Prize has been awarded to Israeli Ada Yonath and Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz.  The award was given for producing an atom-by-atom map of the ribosome, the organelle that translates DNA into protein.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre5961ng-us-nobel-chemistry/

-Brown Rhino

Warming and Fish

Global warming may affect many things negatively, but in total, fish catches won't go down by far.  A complex simulation has shown that fish catches will move towards the poles, but overall will not significantly change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/science/earth/09brfs-REPORTONFUTU_BRF.html?hpw

-Brown Rhino

Worm Madness, Part 14

C. elegans is a nematode that is known for having its body absolutely transparent.  It also breeds and develops very quickly.  This makes it a perfect specimen for research.  Now scientists have discovered a single gene that controls the development of the throat.  In mutant worms where the gene had an error, the throat never developed.  “It was so beautiful, such a simple, clear phenotype and it suggested that this gene, pha-4, has a critical role for making the pharynx, and not just one of its cells but all the pharyngeal cells”, noticed one researcher, Susan Mango.

http://www.physorg.com/news174067013.html

By the way, this is probably the last Worm Madness installation.  I don't know for sure, however. 

-Brown Rhino

Could a microchip help to diagnose cancer in minutes?

Current cancer screening often requires painful procedures and weeks of waiting to obtain results. But what if doctors could read a biological sample with a small hand-held device and come back with an answer in less than an hour?

to read the entire article, see :
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=could-a-microchip-help-to-diagnose-2009-09-28

-posted by bexchada

Worm Madness, Part 13

 The Mongolian Death Worm is a rumoured worm about 50 centimeters to 1.5 meters in length that lives in Mongolia and spews sulfuric acid.  Its existence is doubtful.  Now, they're making a movie about it on the SyFy channel.
Any questions?
http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/33911/finally-a-syfy-flick-about-mongolian-death-worms

Worm Madness, Part 12

Worms are adaptable creatures.  They have filled almost all habitats, including saltwater, freshwater, underground, forests, apples- and now Hershey bars.

An Oklahoma City man found a worm in a Hershey bar today.  The company said that this sometimes happens.

The type of the worm was not reported. 

http://www.koco.com/news/21234392/detail.html

-Brown Rhino

Worm Madness, Part 11

The sea worm Lineus acutifrons, thought to be extinct, has been found in a national park off the shore of Spain.  Lineus acutifrons does not actually belong to the genus Lineus: it has too short a tail to be classified there.  While this news has been known since July, it's not every day that a species thought extinct turns out to be alive.  This is especially heartening to me since the worm is a nemertine, my favorite phylum of worms.  It, like most other nemertines, is carnivorous and catches prey with its proboscis.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hr9j4XvPYEznbG58e4mZ1wBOWFow

http://nemerteanconference2009.org/?q=node/76

-Brown Rhino 

Scientists create ‘’supermice” that can resist cancer and age

By injecting mice with the protein, telomerase, scientists have been able to slow the aging process of the mice by 40% and have made them resistant to cancer, two things caused by telemerase. Previous experiments on the subject have proved the mice to become more susceptible to cancer.
Telomerase are proteins located on the end of your DNA, which prevent DNA from merging with itself and assists in the production of new DNA. As we age, it begins to deteriorate, leading to merging of DNA, which causes cancer, and inprecise replication, which causes the effects of aging.
Because bacterial genomes are circular, all experiments must be conducted on plants and animals.
To read the full article on these 'supermice', see the link under For Further Information, Try: labled Scientists Create "Supermice" that can Resist Cancer and Age.

-bexchada

Worm Madness, Part 10

I was planning to quietly end this series after the 9th installment, but the wormy news just keeps coming.

It seems that a new hotel has opened in South Africa- for earthworms!

Earthworms are often kept as pets in compost piles.  But what happens when the owners leave for vacation?  Michelle Hattingh has answered this problem by opening a place to drop off these worms while their owners are away.  The only charge is the urine of the worms, which contains hormones beneficial to plants.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

travel/article-1218439/Worlds-

worm-hotel-opens-eco-

minded-pet-owners.html

-Brown Rhino 

Worm Madness, Part 9

Weather forecasters are notorious for being consistently imprecise.  For example, for this winter, they predict "equal chance of the temperature and precipitation being above or below average for the next three months".  This has caused some people to turn to- who else- worms to forecast the weather.

The woolly worm (in reality not a worm at all- a caterpillar- but close enough) sometimes has a thicker coat and sometimes a thinner one than average.  According to folklore, the thicker the coat and the darker the worm, the colder the winter will be.  I don't know how reliable worms are on this subject, but it's nice to have a second opinion.

The worms predict winter will be cold. 

http://www.crescent-news.com/news/article/4681507

-Brown Rhino 

Worm Madness, Part 8

Worms, especially marine worms, are varied and many of them are unknown (see "New Species found on Whale Skeleton").  Now yet another pair of new species has been discovered.  These ones live in caves.

An expedition by Tom Iliffe found several worms in total darkness, in a lava tube formed 20 000 years ago.  They were found in sand on the cave floor.  It's very nice there are more species out there, and the worms may be useful in comparative studies of how species evolve in marine caves.

The worms are in the polychaete class of annelid worms.

http://www.webnewswire.com/node/467756

-Brown Rhino

This Generation May Live Past 100

A recent study published in The Lancet journal showed that since the 1950s, the number of people living over the age of 80 has doubled in developed countries. There are predictions that as much as half of the new generation of the UK and United States will live past the age of 100, with less disabilities than previous generations in their later years.
For the full story, see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8284574.stm

-bexchada

Worm Madness, Part 7

The filarial nematode is a "bad worm".  It causes problems in the lymphatic system and can lead to severe problems.  It's spread by mosquitoes.

The bacterial parasite wMelPop infects mosquitoes.  It's an extremely severe chronic disease- on average, it halves a mosquito's lifespan.  Naturally, this makes it useful for fighting the nematode indirectly.

The best part, however, is that wMelPop, unlike a certain human disease, does not weaken a mosquito's immune system.  Instead it strengthens it, killing other diseases.  This clearly does not do much good to the mosquitoes, but it kills the nematodes before they can spread to humans.

I see this as one of the more effective ways of fighting mosquito-spread disease.  Still, I can't help but feel sorry for the mosquitoes in case this becomes a primary method of fighting disease.  Yes, they're annoying bloodsuckers, but do they really deserve this?
(Yes.)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091001163601.htm

-Brown Rhino

Worm Madness, Part 6: The Dark Side of Light

We all know earthworms are good for gardens.  But now, it seems that they may not be so good for forests: invasive earthworm species are threatening Ohio forests.

If this and the study mentioned in Worm Madness, Part 5 teach us anything, it's that everything has a light side and a dark side.  Yes, even light and darkness.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/

plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news

/125352186445500.xml&coll=2

-Brown Rhino

Who knows what's lurking below?

Our understanding of prehistoric sea creatures has changed. In the Caribbean Sea a 6-inch long shark tooth was found. The carbon dating revealed that the tooth was made around 1.5 million years ago. Scientist have come to a conclusion that this ancestor of the great white shark, called a Megalodon, was about 50 feet long, making it one of the longest vertebrate deep-sea predators known to man. This is an amazing find. Who knows what else lurks below?
For more information: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/09/29/megalodon-nursery.html

posted by: Mit

Worm Madness, Part 5: The Light side of Dark

Okay.  We've known worms are weird since, well, forever.  And we know that earthworms living in the soil can be good for it.  But since when are you soil?

Apparently, however, you are more closely related to it than you thought.  Apparently, parasitic gut worms- the type that eat you- may have some benefits.  They prevent allergies extremely well, and may have a role in stopping asthma.   The worms in the study were primarily nematodes such as hookworm.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News

/2009/09/29/Gut-worms-may-protect

-against-allergies/UPI-93761254251965/

-Brown Rhino

Let It Burn

Humans have lived with fire since their beginning, and eventually began to control it as well. Yet recently their control extended from small cook-fires to a much larger scale. Humans are trying to stop fire in the forest.

Since the start of the 20th century, the U.S. government decided on a nation-wide policy that was completely anti-fire. But fire can only be suppressed for so long before it finds a way to burn.

-Černa Kočka

Worm Madness, Part 4

Continued from Part 3...

*Annelids. Ranging from earthworms to ragworms to leeches, this is the most well-known phylum of worms. Some (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites, and almost all reproduce sexually. The majority of an annelid is made up of absolutely identical segments, with the exception of 2 segments of the head and 1 of the tail. They move by a contraction of their bodies. They are divided into the Clitellata, which include earthworms, are all hermaphrodites and often live on land. Polychaetes are primarily marine worms that have "flippers", called parapodia, on each segment.

* Nemertines. Known as ribbon worms or proboscis worms. Most nemerteans live on the sea floor, but some live in estuaries or even in fresh water or on land. They include herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores. Nome are parasitic, although some live on mollusks and catch food the mollusk failed to filter; this does not affect the mollusk. The bootlace worm, a nemertean, may well be the longest animal in the world at at least 30 meters, although the width is usually not over 1 centimeter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms

-Brown Rhino

Worm Madness, Part 3

There are 5 basic types of worms:

* Flatworms. Those are flat because they have no circulatory or respiratory system. As such,they use diffusion to allow oxygen to pass to all of their cells. They include tapeworms, flukes, and planaria. Interestingly enough, while their reproduction is very different from that of humans (they're hermaphrodites, for example), most of the genes related to reproduction are the same.

* Acoelomorphs. See Worm Madness, Part 2. They are most interesting for having no gut.

* Nematodes. It is said that if you removed every living thing but nematodes from the Earth, one could still see the location of all animals and plants by the concentration of nematodes. Nematodes are hugely successful and most of them are parasitic. The free-living nematode C. elegans has not only had its entire genome sequenced, but also had every one of its neurons mapped.

To be continued...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms

-Brown Rhino