Category: Science

I almost passed right over this story in a list of today’s headlines, but I thought I would check it out.
After all, "Man Bites Dog" is one thing, but "Man Kills Deer in House with Bare Hands" is another.

So I followed the link to ABC News and was interested to read that it was an Arkansas man… dateline Bentonville! This was a hometown boy!

Apparently, the deer (a buck) crashed through a window into a bedroom of the man’s house, where it proceeded to freak out, kick alot and bleed all over.
Until the man, Wayne Goldsberry, broke it’s neck.
Ugghh.

Of course, he had the right to handle it however he thought best, but I do wish he could have just shooed the animal out the back door. I’m thinking I also might have just closed the bedroom door and called animal control.

In fact, I KNOW that’s what I would do.

I wasn’t there, however, and if the deer was going nuts and doing alot of damage… well, a man might hafta crack some vertebrae. I’m just glad it wasn’t me in there with the beast. They do have antlers, and those bucks can be murderous during mating season. One of the deputies at the scene observed of Mr. Goldsberry,

"He got kicked several times. He was walking bowlegged for awhile.".

According to the article, bucks will sometimes charge at their own reflection, which is probably what happened in this case.  It’s too bad the deer had to die, though.

To make us all feel better, I have posted a Far Side cartoon of deer who are just playing dead.

GET THE STEREOTYPE-REINFORCING STORY!

It may soon be possible to take insulin WITHOUT SHOTS.

There is an INHALABLE FORM OF INSULIN-DELIVERY that has now been developed. Instead of having to take injections, insulin-dependent diabetics would be able to use an inhaler, like asthmatics often do.

The FDA is currently considering whether to authorize use of the insulin inhaler.

From what I gather, it wouldn’t eliminate the need for the daily fingersticks to check bloodsugar, but at least it would eliminate the insulin injections themselves.

GET THE STORY.

(NOTE FOR THOSE WHO’VE NEVER KNOWN SOMEONE WITH INSULIN-DEPENDENT DIABETES: Such folks are required to check their bloodsugar regularly, typically by pricking a finger and putting a drop of blood on a testing strip which goes into a bloodsugar meter. Depending on what their bloodsugar is–and what they’re planning to eat–they then have to measure an amount of insulin and take it as an injection to keep their bloodsugar in control. The new system would seem to eliminate the need for the injection but not the fingersticks to check bloodsugar.)

A reader writes:

hello im currently at college studying beauty therapy. could you tell me what actually is a virus and a bacterial infection is please?

Sure thing. I’m not sure what those have to do with beauty therapy, but then I know nothing about beauty therapy, so here goes:

A virus is basically a kind of molecule that  reproduces itself but needs your cells in order to do that. It can’t reproduce on its own, so it invades your cells and forces them to manufacture more of its genetic material so that it can make copies of itself. Some viruses can do that without harming us, but other viruses cause nasty side effects (like death) when they force our cells to reproduce.

Viruses themselves are not cells. In fact, they’re kind of on the border between living and non-living matter, so often people will say that they’re not really alive. They’re more like complex chemicals that will reproduce themselves if they come into contact with your cells.

Medicine is NOT VERY GOOD at fighting viruses (at least, not YET). Most of the time the only thing to do for a person who has a virus is to treat their symptoms, make them as comfortable as possible, and let the virus run its course. That’s why there’s no good cure for the common cold–it’s caused by a virus.

The best defense against a virus is to avoid getting it in the first place (e.g., hygiene, not having intimate contact with people you aren’t married to, etc.). Watch the TV show Monk for additional hints.

A bacterial infection is an infection caused by bacteria. (A viral infection, by contrast, is an infection caused by a virus).

Unlike viruses, bacteria ARE alive. They are tiny little cells that live and move and reproduce on their own (they do the latter by splitting themselves in two as a form of self-cloning).

Bacteria are all over the place and (here’s the good news) SOME OF THEM ARE BENEFICIAL TO US. In fact, you couldn’t digest food properly if you didn’t have beneficial bacteria living in your stomach.

Other bacteria, though, are harmful, and if we get infected with these, we can get sick. Fortunately, medicine is MUCH BETTER at fighting bacteria than it is at fighting viruses. That’s what antibiotics do. They fight bacteria, though they are completely useless against viruses.

(NOTE TO MEDICAL FOLKS: Sorry if I’ve oversimplified anything in this. I’m trying to keep it non-technical.)

Here are some links to learn more about viruses and bacteria, though the articles at the first two links are kind of technical.

LEARN MORE ABOUT VIRUSES.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BACTERIA.

BUY STUFFED DOLLS OF VIRUSES AND BACTERIA!

If a study currently being reported on holds up, a major crack in the global warming rhetoric has just developed.

Standard global warming rhetoric holds (a) that the earth is getting warmer on average and (b) that this is due to a buildup of "greenhouse gasses" in the atmosphere.

There are problems with both of these assertions, and a new study reluctantly points out a problem with the second.

The authors of the study are still advocates of global warming theory, but they concede that it appears that a significant chunk of global warming appears to be due not to greenhouse gasses but to something that most definitely warms the earth: the sun!

According to the study 10 to 30% of the warming "documented" in the last twenty or so years is due to changes in the sun’s activity.

That’s a striking first admission.

Future admissions might include that more than just 10 to 30% is due to solar activity–or even that the earth hasn’t warmed as much as we think. (There is reason to think that the data we have may not be reliable.)

LiveScience carries a brief story on all this, and as usual LiveScience is firmly in the standard global warming camp (as reflected in the article), but it’s still worth your while to

GET THE STORY.

There’s a new report out that the HIV virus may be getting weaker.

EXCERPTS:

A team at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, compared HIV-1 samples from 1986-89 and 2002-03.

They found the newer samples appeared not to multiply as well, and were more sensitive to drugs

Researcher Dr Eric Artz said: "This was a very preliminary study, but we did find a pretty striking observation in that the viruses from the 2000s are much weaker than the viruses from the eighties.

"Obviously this virus is still causing death, although it may be causing death at a slower rate of progression now. Maybe in another 50 to 60 years we might see this virus not causing death."

Keith Alcorn, senior editor at the HIV information charity NAM, said it had been thought that HIV would increase in virulence as it passed through more and more human hosts.

But the latest study suggested the opposite is actually true.

Now why would that be? The article goes on to speculate about possible reasons (and they’re only possible; the study might be wrong and the virus might actually be increasing in strength), but it’s important to remember something:

Viruses don’t want to kill you.

In fact, viruses don’t want anything. They have no minds. To the extent they can be said to analogically "want" anything, they "want" only to reproduce themselves. You dying is just a side-effect of their reproductive process. If they can find a way to reproduce without killing you, it’s all the same to them.

In fact, it may even be better, as they can reproduce more if the host stays alive. That’s why the most successful viruses either don’t kill, don’t kill often, or kill really slowly. For viruses, like for people at parties, it’s bad form to kill the host. Tends to bring the party to a halt.

That’s one reason why really destructive pathogens like Ebola only occur in small outbreaks: They kill off the hosts before they can spread far and wide.

Allowing extra life to the host allows extra reproductive potential to the virus, and HIV may be in the process of figuring this out (in a mindless sort of way).

Unfortunately, it’s too slow a process to do anybody today any good.

I just hope HIV weakens enough that we can finally figure out how to give it a knockout punch and eliminate its threat entirely!

In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

In a story that reads like the kinds of colonization pitches for the New World in the Americas that our European ancestors must have heard and responded to hundreds of years ago, CNN reports on the quest to colonize Mars:

"All companies set goals, but newly formed 4Frontiers Corp. is eyeing some expansive horizons. The company’s mission: to open a small human settlement on Mars within 20 years or so.

"Sure, it may sound far-fetched. And the company’s initial plans are a lot more terrestrial than ethereal, like developing a 25,000-square-foot replica of a Mars settlement here on Earth, then charging tourists admission.

"But the people behind the venture are quite serious — as serious as the $25 million they want to raise from investors.

[…]

"That still leaves a lot of questions: Why should people live on Mars? And if it’s going to be done, should a private enterprise engage in what would be one of humanity’s defining moments?

"Besides, what’s in it for investors?

"[4Frontiers Corp. CEO Mark] Homnick and his co-founders — a longtime Mars aficionado named Bruce Mackenzie and a 25-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology master’s student, Joseph Palaia — are ready with several answers."

GET THE STORY.

I’ve occasionally speculated on whether I would have been willing to strike out for the New World had I been an Old World European during the Age of Exploration several hundred years ago. If my reaction to this story is any indication, I now know that my answer would have been a resounding "No!"

EXCERPTS:

An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker," Clewer told Australian radio Friday.

"Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt."

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

"I’ve been firefighting for over 35 years and I’ve never come across anything like this," he said.

GET THE STORY.

Suppose you were out camping and woke up one morning, opened a tent flap, and saw this! (The bear on the left, that is.)

What would you do?

Odds are, the first thing you’d do would be make a face very much like the bear’s.

You’d open your mouth, show your teeth, and scream.

Just like the bear is doing.

Only the difference is that while the bear is giving a scream of rage (or agression–whatever), you’d be screaming in fright.

Now: Why is the bear screaming in rage (or whatever)? By bellowing, he’s making a loud, startling noise that may paralyze you with fear. By showing you his teeth, he’s also threatening you, which will again tend to produce a fear reaction.

So why do you scream in fear? I mean, sure, it’s a reflex. But why do you do it? Well, by making a making a loud, startling noise at the bear, you may cause him to startle and freeze up. By showing him your teeth, you may intimidate him.

Your instictive scream of fear may produce in him the same reaction that his instinctive scream of rage is designed to produce in you.

In other words, screams of fear may be an instinctive reflex designed to save our lives by making a potential attacker think that we’re about to attack them. They’re attempts to fake out our attackers by returning their attempt to intimidate us with a mirror effort to intimidate them.

At least there’s a chance, and a chance is better than just getting eaten by a bear.

Or that’s what occurred to me when reflecting on the scream reflex.

A wily whale at MarineLand in Ontario, Canada has developed a taste for seagull and has been teaching the other orcas in his tank how to nab the airborne snacks.

According to animal behaviorist Michael Noonan,

“The orca lures gulls into his tank by spitting
regurgitated fish into the water. He waits for a bird to grab the fish
and then lunges."

The other killer whales in the tank have begun to follow suit, offering
scientists an opportunity to see how animals learn from one another.

" They catch three or four gulls this way some days.", says Noonan.

Hey, I love seafood, but anyone would get tired of the same old thing every day. This also gives the whales a little leverage in negotiating with their trainers ("Now that we’ve got some freelance work, there are going to be a few changes around here. No more double back flips for a lousy herring…").

GET THE STORY.

That’s what this here critter is called.

No kidding! It’s Latin name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis.

And it really exists! Here on Earth and all!

It lives (as you might guess) deep in the ocean. In fact, it lives really deep, down at a level where the oxygen content in the water is so low that most creatures can’t survive there.

We’ve only known about them for about a century. There’s still a lot about them that we don’t know, but here are some interesting facts about the vampire squid from hell:

• Unlike other squids, it can’t expel ink in order to create a distraction while it jets away.
• Instead (this is sooooo cool) it expels glowing snot filled with blue balls of light in order to distract its opponent!
• It only grows to a foot long, but it has the biggest eyes of any creature proportionate to the size of its body (it needs big eyes, living at the depths it does).
• Unlike other squids, it normally doesn’t move by jet action but by flapping the two fins on its head.
• During a certain stage of its growth from infant to adult, it has four fins on its head, which led people to think that the different body forms represented more than one species.
• It’s covered with little dots that it can cause to glow and flash in order to confuse opponents.
• It uses its light-generating ability to obscure its outline so predators can’t spot it.
• It can’t change color as well as similar critters, but its skin and eyes look different colors depending on the circumstances.
• It has blue blood!
• (We think that) the females guard their eggs for like 400 days before they hatch.
• They have a defensive move they do called "pumpkin posture" in which they turn themselves inside out (sort of) so that their head is down inside the bell-shaped part of their body. When they assume this position they stick their legs way up away from their heads and make the ends glow to distract the opponent from where their vital organs (their head) are. If a predator bites one of the ends of their legs off, they regenerate it!

Cool!

If only we could tell H. P. Lovecraft about these things!

LEARN MORE.

PICTURE OF A VAMPIRE SQUID IN "PUMPKIN POSTURE."