Science Made Cool

Nanotubes For President

I propose that we nominate a carbon nanotube as the Presidential candidate for one or both American political parties. They're abundantly qualified. They're slim (1 nanometer in diameter), they have integrity (300 times stronger than steel). They can heal the sick, walk on water, and have no problem with authenticity.

Best of all, they can apply scientific precision to a perennial issue of political campaigning: the indigestion tour of eateries in key districts. Who's got the hottest hot sauce? Nanotubes can tell us.

NANOTUBES IN '08!

Friday Parasite: Tongue Worm Redux

Back in September I wrote about the life history of pentastomids – a group of animals also known as tongue worms – and touched briefly on some of the problems that can crop up when members of the genus Linguatula accidentally infect humans. Humans are not usually a host for these animals (they're typically found in the lungs and nasal cavities of carnivorous vertebrates), but accidents happen. And where Lingulata tends to stay inside the nasal passageways, there's another group of tongue worms that gets around more.  Larval worms of the genus Armillifer, like the one pictured here, migrate much further afield, encysting themselves into the liver, abdominal wall, and (as pictured here) the diaphragm.


Image by Dr. Daniel Connor
from D.H. Connor and F.W. Chandler (eds) 1997.  Pathology of Infectious Diseases. Appleton & Lange: Stanford, Conn.

Eye on Chicago

The 2008 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt list was released earlier today. By now the road trippers are well on their way to Kansas, and Chicago-based members of the teams are knocking themselves out learning to play the Flight of the Bumblebee on plastic recorders (#29) and building really big baking-soda volcanoes (#21), among other things. I hope someone films all the BMX stunt crashes through the stained-glass sugar windows (#130) and puts them on YouTube. Can't wait for Judgment Day...

Wear A Monster Suit To Lunch

May 7 is the birthday of legendary Japanese movie director Ishiro Honda. Mr. Honda is best known as the creator of the Godzilla films, and therefore of the entire big-rubbery-monster genre (or "Daikaiju" for purists). He died in 1993, but I'm sure he'll be remembered as long as there are giant monsters and 8-year-old boys.

Fluorescent Fish

Pretty much as the title says: a group of biologists at Berkeley have modified the genes of zebrafish so they deposit fluorescent carbohydrates in their cell membranes.

Why, you ask? It's not just to look cool (although it does). The fluorescent cells coupled with the normal transparency of zebrafish embryos means that the researchers can literally see which cells are deposited when during development.

This is useful because over the past couple of decades biologists have come to appreciate how incredibly complex and important the process of development and cell differentiation is in multicellular animals. Way back in the 1980s we were confidently assured that once the "genetic code" was "cracked" all the secrets of life would be easily available.

Nope, sorry. Turns out the genome is only half the story.  It's the blueprint for the organism -- but a set of blueprints and a pile of lumber don't make a house, either. Development explains how the blueprint turns into an actual living system, and it's at least as complicated as the blueprint itself.

While the biologists work on that, we can enjoy the pretty glowing fish. (When is some clever person going to start selling these as pets?)

Friday Parasite: Parasitic Jellies

As adults, lined sea anemones (Edwardsiella lineata) look very much like any other sea anemone – tentacled, flowerlike polyps that hold onto the ocean floor and grab meals from whatever happens to blunder in reach. But as youngsters, they’re far less benign, at least if you happen to be a ctenophore. In most anemones, spawned eggs and sperm fuse to form free-living planula larvae that eventually settle and metamorphose into adult anemones. Lined sea anemones do things a little differently -- their planula larvae find ctenophores of the species Mnemiopsis leidy and parasitze them.

How does it work? First, E. lineata larvae dig into a ctenophore and take up residence in its body wall. Once there, they develop wormlike bodies and stick their mouths  into the ctenophore’s digestive cavity. They then proceed to suck up nearly all the food the ctenophore collects for itself. Obviously, this is not terribly good for the ctenophore – infected individuals stop growing and may even shrink in size. Eventually, the larval anemones leave the ctenophores and settle to the ocean floor to become adults.


References:
Bumann D. and G. Puls 1996. Infestation with larvae of the sea anemone Edwardsia lineata affects nutrition and growth of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. Parasitology 113: 123-128.

Reitzel, A. M., J. C. Sullivan and J. R. Finnerty 2006.  Qualitative shift to indirect development in the parasitic sea anemone Edwardsiella lineata. Integ. Comp. Biol. 46(6): 827-837.

Photo from the Finnerty Lab, Boston University

And a tip of the hat to Stan Rachootin, for letting me know about this parasite!

Flying Jellyfish!

Back in 2007 we reported on the swimming blimp. Now a German outfit called Festo (I don't speak German, so I'm unclear if it's a company, an artists' collective, an educational organization, or a one-name supervillain planning to conquer the world) has created a flying robotic jellyfish. Video of it is here.

A tip of the jellyfish-shaped hat to David Szondy's Ephemeral Isle.

Cool Tentacles

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is even now dissecting a 10 meter long colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) that was caught (and frozen) back in February 2007. They're working in a cold room and defrosting the squid in cold salt water to preserve it (and they're also dissecting a smaller specimen and a couple of merely giant squid (Architeuthis). You can follow along on their blog, and watch live on their SquidCam. They'll be working until April 30th, so have a peek.


Hat tip to Tam for the pointer!

Japanese Vesalius

The good folks over at Pink Tentacle have posted a wonderful set of early 19th Century Japanese anatomical drawings by the Kyoto physician Yasukazu Minagaki. They're great art, and great anatomy, rivalling the earlier Western work published by Andreas Vesalius. Go have a look.

Wired For It

Utopia is impossible. Humans will never live in a society of complete equality, tolerance, and cooperation. We're not wired for it.

Here's a study by NIMH which examined people's brains in a situation which put them into an arbitrary hierarchy. Certain parts of the forebrain were highly affected by where the players seemed to be in the game's imaginary hierarchy.

We are social animals. This is known. Our ancestors apparently lived in small troops, more or less the way our close relatives the chimps live today. Troops are intensely social, with constant jockeying for position. It may well be that our intelligent brains evolved in part to handle the demands of primate troop politics.

What does this mean for human society? It means we'll never reach some ideal stasis of equality and cooperation. Our brains are literally wired to make us compete socially and sexually. Life will always be fraught with tension, rivalries, and disagreements. Utopia is off the table.

And you know what? That's a good thing.