Boing Boing » Science

Tiger's whiskers are pulse detectors

David Pescovitz — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:36:02 +0000

Sierra Club magazine discusses "4 Ordinary Animals with Superhero Abilities." (Flight is not included.) My favorite tidbit is about a tiger's whiskers:

They are filled with sensitive nerve endings, which help them detect distances and changes in their surroundings. When tigers hunt, they go for the kill shot: the carotid artery located in the neck. After the tiger’s canines have pierced the artery, the whiskers move forward, encircling the prey’s neck, and determine if the prey’s pulse is gone.

"4 Ordinary Animals with Superhero Abilities"

Anatomical glass sculptures from MRI/CT scans

David Pescovitz — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:36:31 +0000

Fine artist Angela Palmer takes CT/MRI scanner of people and animals, engraves the data onto thin glass sheets that are then combined into 3D sculptures. Recently, she's used the same technique to reproduce data from the Kepler telescope too.

"Angela Palmer: Life Lines"

"Kepler: Goldilocks" (NASA)

Watch this vampire bat run like hell

David Pescovitz — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:32:45 +0000

Over at National Geographic, Carl Zimmer reveals the wonder of vampire bats. "Of the 1200 or so species of bats, vampire bats are among the very few that can move quickly on the ground." Watch one run in the video above. Also, Zimmer delves into a new scientific paper with the fantastic title of "Dracula's children: Molecular evolution of vampire bat venom."

Iceland resumes whale hunting, endangered Fin Whale killed

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:11:37 +0000

"Kristjan Loftsson, CEO of the the company Hvalur hf." Photo: News of Iceland.

Icelandic news outlets are reporting that an Icelandic whaling company, Hvalur hf, "caught its first fin whale yesterday evening," after sailing out yesterday with two boats, both due back in port today.

Fin whales are the second-largest whale, and are classified as an Endangered species.

From News of Iceland:

The whale quota is for 154 fin whales but 20% of unused quota from last season can be added to that number, so possibly a total of 180 whales will be caught. Since 2009 there has been in effect a five year licence to catch the species so that licence expires this year. All of the products from the fin whales will be sent to Japan, except for the fish meal and the fish oil, they are for human consumption. Around 200 people will be employed because of the whale hunting, at land and sea. The products will be processed at three locations in Iceland: Hvalfjord, Hafnarfjord and Akranes.

The Animal Welfare Institute, one of many animal advocacy groups protesting the hunting of this endangered species in Iceland, issued a press release condemning the kill:

Susan Millward, executive director of AWI, said, “Contrary to statements from Icelandic government officials, these majestic animals, second in size only to blue whales, are not ‘Icelandic’; they belong to no one country. Fin whales are highly migratory, endangered, and are protected under a number of international treaties.Today’s killing of an endangered fin whale makes it absolutely clear that years of international diplomatic efforts have failed, and that Iceland is determined to act as a rogue whaling nation, no matter the cost to this species, and to the country’s own tourism and seafood industries.”

From Agence France Press:

Fin whales are the second largest whale species after the blue whale. Iceland also hunts minke whales, a smaller species. That hunt began in May, and so far seven minke whales have been harpooned, whaling officials said.
The International Whaling Commission imposed a global moratorium on whaling in 1986 amid alarm at the declining stock of the marine mammals. Iceland, which resumed commercial whaling in 2006, and Norway are the only two countries still openly practising commercial whaling in defiance of the moratorium.
Japan also hunts whales but insists this is only for scientific purposes even if most of the meat ends up on the market for consumption.

Meet the NASA Astronaut Class of 2013

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:51:49 +0000

More than 6000 people applied, eight were chosen. And, for the first time, NASA has an astronaut class with gender parity — four men, and four women.

Dolphins on acid (and other bad ideas)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:36:10 +0000

How dosing dolphins with LSD (and giving dolphins hand jobs) helped shape our modern pop culture beliefs about dolphins as sources of healing — beliefs that, according to neuroscientist Lori Marino, can endanger both dolphins and the humans who come to them for help.

Five great myths of cocktail chemistry

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:14:11 +0000

There is nothing wrong with adding ice to scotch, writes Kevin Liu at Serious Eats. In fact, a little water can change the flavor profile of the drink for the better. What's more, chilling your scotch won't dampen down the aroma. A chilled drink won't be flinging off scent molecules left and right, but it will warm up enough from your hot breath to get the chemistry of scent where it needs to go — and to give you the flavor experience you want.

The chemical composition of "old book smell"

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:59:32 +0000

It starts with lignin — a compound that makes up the cell walls of plants. Turns out, it's also closely related (chemical-structure-wise) to vanillin, the stuff that makes vanilla smell so vanilla-y. Given that books are full of the broken-down cell walls of trees, a big part of what we think of as "old book smell" is actually a scent similar to vanilla.

Safecast, crowdsourced radiation monitoring project, logs 10 million data points

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:02:35 +0000

The crowdsourced radiation monitoring project Safecast, which was launched in the weeks after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, has reached a big milestone: they have collected and published over 10,000,000 individual data points.

Bill Nye, "Firebrand for Science," profiled in NYT

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:01:04 +0000

John Schwartz has a colorful profile of Bill Nye the Science Guy in the New York Times, exploring his evolution from science-lesson-explainer for kids, to a defender of fact-based reality against pundits on TV who say climate change, evolution, and, you know, evidence-based reasoning and science in general is a bunch of hooey.

Why delicate men die more frequently than robust ladies

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:40:20 +0000

In general, women outlive men. This is not a new idea. But what you might not know is that the effect can't be explained by some simple hand-waving about risk-taking men, or war, or the allure of the Marlboro Man. In fact, the tendency for men to die at a higher frequency than women happens at every age group — even in utero. Fetal males die more often than fetal females. So what makes the men-folk so delicate? NPR's Robert Krulwich investigates.

More on MERS

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:33:01 +0000

MERS is the SARS-related virus that's killing people in the Middle East — and the government of Saudi Arabia, where most of the outbreak is happening, has been reticent about releasing information on infections and deaths. Now, the government of Jordan has admitted that the earliest recorded outbreak, which happened back in April of 2012, actually infected at least 10 people, rather than the previously reported two. It sounds like this revelation was the result of an internal re-evaluation of previous records, rather than the suppression of something the government had long known. But it gives you a good idea of how bad the epidemiological information on MERS is right now, and how little we know about it.

Virtual dissection table is fascinating, useful, and just a little creepy

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:25:25 +0000

Everything a dissection table should be, I suppose. I'm absolutely mesmerized by the utility of this tool, developed by Anatomage and Stanford University's Division of Clinical Anatomy. Particularly for its ability to give anatomy students unprecedented access to special cases. Instead of waiting for a body with just the right kind of brain malformation or liver damage to come in, you can just call up the desired images from the computer and use them whenever you want.

As for the creepy: Well, for some reason it's just a little more disturbing to see a perfectly healthy naked lady sprawled out on the anatomy table, as opposed to old, wrinkly naked people or people who have clearly recently been in poor health. (Also, potentially NSFW, natch.)

Video Link

Dragonflies outfitted with brain sensor backpacks

David Pescovitz — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:10:22 +0000

Neuroscientist have attached an electronic "backpack" to dragonflies that jack into the insect's brain and wirelessly transmit the data back to a base station. Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher Anthony Leonardo and his collaborators hope the telemetry will deepen our understanding of how dragonflies target and catch their pray. (via Wired)

Why health insurance makes no sense

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:47:19 +0000

Two doctors have written a really fascinating analysis of the history and economics of health insurance that will make our current U.S. system seem even more ridonculous than it already did.

Making sense of the confusing Supreme Court DNA patent ruling

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:32:04 +0000

Nine people who have not recently made any sweeping judgements about biotechnology.

Last week, I told you about the US Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal to patent naturally occurring DNA. In that article, I talked briefly about the fact that the new ruling doesn't cover all DNA. It's still perfectly legal to patent synthetic DNA, and the court documents referred specifically to complementary DNA (aka cDNA).

This is where things get murky. Complementary DNA is a thing that can be both natural and synthetic. And, as a laboratory creation, it's an important step in a common method of replicating naturally occurring DNA. All of which leaves some holes in the idea that the Supreme Court ruling is a simple "win" for open-access science, patent activists, and patients. After all, if you can't patent a gene, but you can patent the laboratory copy of the gene, what's that mean? It's sort of like not being able to patent a novel, but being able to patent a copy of its contents that's had all the white space removed. It seems like everybody is a bit confused by this. So I wanted to take a moment to at least clarify what cDNA is and what some people, on different sides of the science/law/biotech divides, are thinking about it.

It starts with some stuff you learned back in junior high — how information from your DNA gets turned into actual working proteins.

DNA, you'll remember, is like a twisted ladder, a double helix. Split the ladder in half, add a few chemical changes, and you get RNA.* This molecule can do many things, but one of the big ones is moving genetic information from DNA to ribosomes, the cellular factories that build proteins. To do that, you need a special kind of RNA, messenger RNA (mRNA). This is basically just a condensed version of your genetic information — half a strand of DNA, but with all the bits that don't build proteins snipped out.

It's sort of like taking

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and cleaning it up so that what you're left with is the much-more-understandable

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(Which is something that happened.) Thus condensed, mRNA takes the genetic information to ribosomes and, together, they start turning it into functional proteins. This is how DNA gets translated into, say, insulin, or muscle tissue, or the keratin that makes up your hair.

But scientists have another use for mRNA. If they want to make lots of copies of a specific gene, they can essentially put the mRNA in reverse, using it to create a whole strand of DNA. This lab-created DNA is nearly identical to the stuff that occurs naturally. The only difference is that, like the mRNA, it's lacking all the stuff that doesn't build proteins. And that is what counts as cDNA. Just to clarify, according to the ruling last week, you can't patent the DNA for

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but you can still patent the DNA for

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That fact has left a lot of people with a lot of confusion about what this ruling will actually mean in the real world.

At The LA Times, Amina Kahn reported that Myriad Genetics — the company that had claimed a patent on two genes involved in breast cancer risk, and which ostensibly lost at the Supreme Court — actually saw their stock price go up in the wake of the ruling. That could be because a big, profit-affecting question (Can the company patent the genes?) got solved and, now, the company could turn around and patent cDNA versions of the genes. Sure, they lose some of their monopoly on the breast cancer industry, but they still have something special and aren't totally out of the game, financially. In fact, with a Supreme Court ruling in their pocket, Myriad's business model may now be more stable, since what they can and can't do is now more spelled out.

That seems to be a perspective shared by biotech consultant Susan Finston. The ruling, she writes, does open up the market to allow more companies to sell their own tests for breast cancer risk — but it's also not some kind of wide-scale smack down against the biotech industry.

All in all, the Myriad decision should not adversely affect the patentability of a broad swath of gene-based inventions. The ability of a patent applicant to avoid the law of nature exception, i.e, to “create or alter” DNA – whether via cDNA or through use of plasmids – limits the prospective impact of the case.

On the other hand, Myriad shouldn't get too comfortable in its new position, writes Lyle Denniston at the SCOTUS blog.

The opinion said in a footnote, however, that the Court was not actually ruling that cDNA is specifically entitled to a composition patent, and noted that the federal government had raised other objections under patent law to that phenomenon.

In fact, Justice Scalia's wrote a side note saying that he, himself, couldn't make any statements on the science beyond the simple fact that naturally occurring DNA is not something that a company creates, and thus, is not patentable. That's been interpreted by some people (including some of the commenters on the story last week) as an expression of some anti-science "I don't believe in DNA" position. But I'm not sure it is. Denniston, for instance, interprets it as something closer to Scalia saying that has absolutely no idea whether he believes DNA and cDNA should count as different things — he simply doesn't know enough about the science to say. And that's actually a pretty reasonable position to take. Especially when you consider the fact that cDNA can happen in nature, without the help of scientists. HIV, for example, can turn its own RNA into cDNA. That's how it makes copies of itself.

Taken all together, it's safe to assume that this is not the last time the Supreme Court will be talking about the patentability of cDNA. This is not a given yet.

The basic lesson that you should take away seems to be this: The Myriad Genetics ruling is really, really narrow. Yes, it prevents companies from patenting a gene that they just happened to find in the human body (or anyplace else). But it leaves plenty of room to patent genetic information — and it leaves plenty of room for future court battles over what genetic information can and cannot be patented. This is a big court case that only reduced uncertainty a tiny bit.

*Please note that I am simplifying the creation of RNA here. I've edited it to make it more clear that RNA is not simply DNA split in half. There's more to it than that. I hope this will not give people a clear and quick mental picture without being misleading.

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

Jasmina Tesanovic — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:01:42 +0000

As we approached the giant radio telescope in rural Sardinia, I found myself implausibly dressed in a light summer frock: a Brazilian one, lavishly decorated with black army ants. I should have worn something tougher, since our outing was a treat specifically arranged for Paolo Nespoli, a rugged Italian ex-Special Forces soldier who has twice lived in outer space.

Nespoli's first trip to orbit was aboard the US Space Shuttle and the second aboard a Russian Soyuz, so this makes Paolo both an "astronaut" and a "cosmonaut." Most of his space career he spent working on the ground in Houston Texas, so we part-time Texans had plenty to talk about. Our little busload of telescope tourists was a motley crew: me, an astronaut, a science fiction writer, two astrophysicists, some doctoral students, a computer security expert, a nice Chinese girl terrified of heights.

Once at the site of the great towering astronomy colossus, we signed the guestbook and strapped on white construction hard-hats. Then the fun began: climbing endless zigzagging stairs of industrial steel, in and out of instrument chambers and control rooms.

We then emerged from a metal door into the very midst of the vast white satellite dish, a colossal bowl with thousands of rectangular metal panels.

The Sardinia Radio Telescope is a giant cosmic ear that can be titled and spun on huge railway tracks. As we struggled to climb up to the perilous rim of this instrument, the slope got steeper and steeper. I crawled on all fours, for all the world like a black kitchen ant struggling to escape a white china breakfast bowl.

The shining walls caught the Mediterrean sun and began to bake us like bugs in an oven. When we reached the sharp rim of the antenna dish -- nothing like a guardrail there of course, just a sharp, clean drop to the construction trucks on the ground far below, looking no bigger than big red beetles -- I felt a horror vacui which made me lose my grip and slide back uncontrollably.

In that brief disorienting tumble I felt all the fear and horror of a human being floating out in space. The brave astronaut had just briefed us about those issues : his experiences of life without gravity, all about, as he put it, "becoming an extraterrestrial."

When living in orbit, you learn to float, eat, and even sleep and dream differently: you use all four limbs equally, bounding off surfaces that have no floor or ceiling. The soles of your feet, callused by gravity and friction, grow tender and soft like a baby's feet. You learn to grope for footholds, to snatch small objects as they drift rapidly away, to double-over with your stomach muscles so you can type away on computers.

Nespoli was a guest at the Leggende Metropolitane festival of literature in Cagliari. There he explained to the warmly appreciative crowd how his dream of astronautics had been inspired by the writings of Oriana Fallaci, the late Italian world famous journalist. He'd even once met Oriana Fallaci, who had brusquely told the young soldier that, if he expected to make it in the world's elite corps of astronauts, he had better concentrate and not kid around.

The festival was held in spacious square above the old town overlooking the big port and Sardinia's strikingly beautiful emerald coast. When nature so inspiring, the eloquence soared to astronomical levels.

After three days of physical and mental exercises, the lively event was closed by Roberto Saviano, the 33 year old bestseller Italian journalist. Given he writes about organized crime and the drug trade, Saviano has been living under mafia fatwa since 2006, when he published his first tell-all book about the mobsters of the Camorra in southern Italy.

Since then Saviano has led a rather Salman Rushdie-like existence, warmly supported by world intellectuals and writers while the underworld's assassins stalk him. Saviano briefly fled the country, but has returned to Italy, amid a conspicuous presence of plainclothes bodyguards, uniformed police escorts, mysterious black cars awaiting him at hotel doorsteps, and so on.

Saviano was in Sardinia for the first time to promote his new book Zero Zero Zero, whose subject is the world traffic in cocaine. If you don't know the cocaine routes you don't know the world nowadays, he asserted to a huge, silent crowd of listeners who packed the square in ant-hill style. These are modern drug industries, modern ways of making modern money flow across borders, the drug trade victimizing citizens, as criminals and bank officials become accomplices in offshore money laundering.

Saviano spoke with rare pauses for almost two hours, addressing his obsessions with such passion, detail and sobriety that even the stone-faced cops on stage with him were visibly moved. He said the Italian mafia is the oldest and best-organized mafia in the world. Being in the mafia has little to do with "laws" and everything to do with "rules": the internal family rules against the state's laws and the public interest. The mafia culture lives among Italians as part of Italian culture: our neighbors, family and even ourselves belong in someways to those extralegal circles of violence, favors and arrangements.

Saviano admitted that, being Italian, he too knows how to reason against the rule of law like a mafioso. Nobody is innocent . He urged his silent serious crowd to stand up against the injustice, by understanding the basic unfairness of the mafia, the way that the whole world is exploited by a few violent criminals. He interpreted some political problems as mafia doings.

Saviano has been a voice of the young Italian generation who wants to break with the past. This author said: I don't want to go into politics, I don't like to do that, I am not good at it, but I do want to be political. We all have to do politics for the sake of our corrupted country. Saviano’ s public appearances have become some kind of cathartic apotheosis: Italians do read the books, they see the movie "Gomorra," they go to see him, they know it matters.

I happened to be in a restaurant as Saviano ate with a few friends and supporters, his face hidden under a billed hat and his shoulders hunched. Cops peered through the windows every other minute, and Saviano seemed to have the weight of the world on his back. He listened much more than he talked.

He reminded me of many political Balkan activists, mostly anonymous, who had no personal joys and private lives or youth, because of the wars. His hat looked paramilitary, like the cap my teenage father wore as a Communist partisan fighting Nazis. Even the people dining with Saviano had the furtive, let's-be-cool look of draft-dodgers during the Milosevic regime, people going on with daily life so as not to be pounced on.

Against social evils that are vast and centuries old, it seems so little just to write a book, a movie, or state a personal No... Even when the books and voices achieve a huge success and reach a vast audience, does that diminish the cocaine business and its drug mafias? Everybody knows the state of the matters in Italy, just as they know in Sinaloa and Tijuana, where cocaine soap operas are on TV every day and the journalists are gunned down in dozens.

Writers are like black ants in the white bowl of literature, set on the rotating earth. Still, we can offer our words and our lives, since that's what we have to offer. Blaga Dimitrovna (a Bulgarian poet Saviano quotes) says : I am not afraid of being stepped upon, the trampled grass will become a path!

More photos from the observatory in Bruce and Jasmina's Flickr set.

Paper anatomical model

David Pescovitz — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:50:09 +0000

Papercraft artist Horst Kiechle created an incredible anatomical model, complete with removable organs, and posted all the templates and instructions online for free. "Paper Torso"

How Bugs Bunny saved Mel Blanc's life

David Pescovitz — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:34:42 +0000

In 1961, Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Barney Rubble, and literally a thousand other cartoon characters (see vide above), was in a terrible car crash that put him in a coma. Nothing could rouse him until his surgeon addressed him as Bugs Bunny. Of course, Blanc's response was: "What's up, Doc?" Here's a 2012 short episode of Radiolab where they interview the surgeon, a neuroscientist, and Mel Blanc's son, Noel.

"What's Up, Doc?" (Radiolab)

Mel Blanc's vocal cords

The death of Yuri Gagarin

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:46:27 +0000

At the BBC: "New details have emerged about the air crash on 27 March 1968 that killed Yuri Gagarin - the first man in space."

Eel's glow as a test for human disease

David Pescovitz — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:54:32 +0000

The biology behind the green glow of Japanese freshwater eels could lead to new tests for jaundice and liver problems. RIKEN research institute scientists determined that a substance found in bile, bilirubin, is what triggers a protein in the eel, called UnaG (after unagi), to glow. Turns out, the amount of bilirubin in humans is a good indicator of liver health. Using a synthetic version of UnaG, the scientists could measure the bilirubin in a blood sample based on its glow. A similar technique may also aid in the study of tumors. "An eel's glow could illuminate liver disease" (Science News)

Who are the greatest Armchair Taxonomists? The winners announced!

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:53:08 +0000

Last month, we announced a challenge from the Encyclopedia of Life -- a chance for happy mutants to simultaneously explore the wonders of nature and liberate some hard-to-access information into a more open format.

More than 100 of you sent in short descriptions of different plants, animals, fungi and protozoa. By and large, your contributions were really fantastic. Thanks to everyone who participated.

The team of EOL judges have narrowed the field down to the best entries in three categories: Corvi Zeman submitted the most entries; Jason Chen had the best references (and, not coincidentally, also wrote the most scholarly article); and Emma Cooper wrote the best overall entry.

Their subjects ended up being very plant-centric, but there's still a lot of diversity in these top entries. Read on to learn more about a delicious Middle Eastern herb, a carnivorous tropical plant, and a succulent that can survive and grow even underneath a layer of snow.

Corvi Zeman - Most Entries
Sample entry: Chinese Dunce Cap

Chinese Dunce Cap (Orostachys spinosa) is a slow-growing succulent (fleshy-leafed) plant in the family Crassulaceae. It is found in arid areas in Mongolia, Russia, China, and Kazakhstan, and is remarkably hardy, thriving in temperatures as low as -40 degrees C (-40 F) and able to photosynthesize under a thin layer of snow. A fully-grown Chinese Dunce Cap resembles a sunflower head 10 cm (4 inches) across, with a flattened dome of spiral, tightly closed leaves surrounded by a ring of upright leaves. When the plant is mature, which takes about five years, it produces the conical flower stalk responsible for its common name and dies afterwards. Like other members of the Crassulaceae, O. spinosa copes with arid conditions by fixing carbon using the CAM (Crassulacean acid metabolism) pathway: it keeps stomata on the leaves closed during the day to minimize evaporative water loss, but opens them at night to absorb carbon dioxide and store it for photosynthesis during the day. It is the most cold-tolerant CAM plant known. O. spinosa is used in Mongolian herbal medicine, as forage for livestock in winter, and in decorative rock gardens.

Jason Chen - Best References and Most Scholarly
Nepenthes - Tropical pitcher plants

Nepenthes is a genus of tropical pitcher plants, ranging from Southeast Asia, its center of diversity, westward into the Seychelles and eastern Madagascar and south to Australia. Nepenthes is the most diverse group of carnivorous plants to have evolved sophisticated pitcher traps and the only genus in the family Nepenthaceae. As in other carnivorous plants, the adaptive value of carnivory is thought to lie in the acquisition of nitrogen in nitrogen-poor environments.

Pitchers grow on tendrils extending from the midribs of leaves and trap prey passively, collecting pools of water into which prey are lured (with bright colors and nectar secreted on the pitcher rim), drowned, and digested with no energetic active movement on the part of the plant. In some species a single plant may grow some pitchers that lie recumbent on the substrate and others that hang suspended in mid-air; this results in leaf dimorphism, in which ground pitchers are different in shape, size, and appearance from aerial pitchers. Though most prey are small nectarivorous insects, the largest Nepenthes species may produce pitchers capable of trapping small vertebrates such as lizards, rodents, and birds. A few species have evolved modifications of the prototypical pitcher morphology and behavior to collect leaf litter (N. ampullaria) or vertebrate droppings (N. lorii, N. rajah, N. macrophylla, and N. rafflesiana).

Phytotelmata, the pools collected in Nepenthes pitchers, provide unique habitats that can support not only opportunistic species but entire faunal communities. These unusual and specialized communities are analogous to the phytotelmata collected by tree holes and New World bromeliads. Not surprisingly, Nepenthes species potentially form many mutualistic and commensalistic interactions with animals in their native ranges. The small organisms associated with Nepenthes traps are known as nepenthephiles, and may consist of both opportunistic and specialized inhabitants; the nature of their relationships with other nepenthephiles and with the plant, and the costs and benefits for all participants is often unclear. The water itself contains a community of protozoa, invertebrates, and even tadpoles that feed on excess prey, undigested prey remains, or each other, and may aid the plant in digestion.

The small mutualistic ant Camponotus (Colobopsis) schmitzi lives in the hollowed-out leaf tendrils of N. calcarata, enhancing the plant's capture ability by protecting developing traps from herbivores, maintaining the slippery interior of the pitchers, and even swimming into the pools to subdue large prey. In exchange, the ants are provided with living space, prey, and nectar. Coprophagous (dung-eating) species lure small arboreal mammals with copious nectar or shelter; while feeding or roosting, the animals defecate or urinate into the pitcher. Small frogs, land crabs, and spiders may also take advantage of the insects and shelter afforded by the pitcher. Some Nepenthes species are known as 'monkey cups' because monkeys are known to drink the water in the pitchers.

Human interest in Nepenthes ranges from the utilitarian to the aesthetic. Its unique carnivorous habit and unusual and varied forms made the genus an object of fascination by early naturalists and a fashionable but difficult plant to rear in captivity, and the culture and study of Nepenthes by an active community of enthusiasts continues. The highly slippery wax surfaces of the pitcher interior have also inspired modern attempts at engineering similar materials. Today many species, some of which are already scarce and occur only in a few localities, are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss and deterioration.

— And lets see those award-winning sources —

Slack, A. 1979. Carnivorous Plants. Cambridge: The MIT Press,. 74-87. Print.

Hewitt-Cooper, Nigel, Nigel. "A case of bird capture by a cultivated specimen of the hybrid Nepenthes X mixta." Carnivorous Plant Newsletter. 41.1 (2012): 31. Web. 20 May. 2013.

"Killer plant" BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation, 5 Aug 2011. Web. 20 May 2013.

Phillipps, A. "A Second Record of Rats as Prey in Nepenthes rajah." Carnivorous Plant Newsletter. 17.2 (1988): 55. Web.

Greenwood, M., Charles Clarke, Ch'ien C. Lee, et al. "A Unique Resource Mutualism between the Giant Bornean Pitcher Plant, Nepenthes rajah, and Members of a Small Mammal Community." PLOS ONE. 6.6 (2011): n. page. Web.

Pavlovic, Andrej, Ľudmila Slovakova, and Jiri Santrucek. "Nutritional benefit from leaf litter utilization in the pitcher plant Nepenthes ampullaria." Plant, Cell & Environment. 34.11 (2011): 1865-1873. Web. 20 May. 2013.

Clarke, Charles, Jonathan A. Moran, and Lijin Chin. "Mutualism between tree shrews and pitcher plants." Plant Signaling & Behavior. 5.10 (2010): 1187-1189. Web. 20 May. 2013. Moran, Jonathan A., Charles Clarke, Melinda Greenwood, et al. "Tuning of color contrast signals to visual sensitivity maxima of tree shrews by three Bornean highland Nepenthes species." Plant Signaling & Behavior. 7.10 (2012): 1267-1270. Web.

Rembold, Katja, Eberhard Fischer, Boris F. Striffler, et al. "Crab spider association with the Malagasy pitcher plant Nepenthes madagascariensis." African Journal of Ecology. 51.1 (2012): 188-191. Web.

Grafe, T. Ulmar, Caroline R. Schöner, Gerald Kerth, et al. "A novel resource–service mutualism between bats and pitcher plants." Biology Letters. 7.3 (2011): 436-439. Web. 20 May. 2013.

Thornham, Daniel G., Joanna M. Smith, T. Ulmar Grafe, et al. "Setting the trap: cleaning behaviour of Camponotus schmitzi ants increases long-term capture efficiency of their pitcher plant host, Nepenthes bicalcarata." Functional Ecology. 26.1 (2012): 11-19. Web.

Moran, Jonathan A., Gilles Le Moguedec, David J. Marshall, et al. "A Carnivorous Plant Fed by Its Ant Symbiont: A Unique Multi-Faceted Nutritional Mutualism." PLOS ONE. 7.5 (2012): n. page. Web. 20 May. 2013.

And finally, the best of the bunch:

Emma Cooper - Best Overall Entry
Zatar

Zatar (Origanum syriacum), also known as Syrian Oregano or Bible Hyssop, is an herbaceous perennial in the Lamiaceae (mint) family. A bushy herb, it grows 30-40 cm (12-16 inches) high, with oblong-ovate and slightly hairy leaves that are 10-15 cm (4-6 inches) long. It produces white flowers in spring and is very aromatic. A native of the Mediterranean, Zatar is indispensable in Lebanese cuisine and is used medicinally. Some Bible scholars believe zatar to be the 'hyssop' mentioned in the Bible. As Zatar is an Arabic word, it is translated into English with varying spellings (including za'tar, za'atar and zahtar). This common name is also used to refer to other plant species in the Laminaceae such as Satureja thymbra, Thymbra spicata and Coridothymus (Thymus) capitatus. all of which share a similar flavour profile and are used in the same ways. Zatar is the most economically important wild plant in Lebanon, where it grows wild in the mountains. As tons are harvested and consumed every year, it has recently been brought into cultivation. Used fresh or dried and crushed, zatar is a popular culinary herb and is used in the production of mankouche flatbread. A popular seasoning throughout the Middle East, zatar is transformed into the eponymous spice mix via the addition of sumac, sesame seeds and salt and pepper. Recipes vary, and a distinctly Palestinian variant replaces the sesame with caraway seeds.

Emma will be getting a behind the scenes tour of the Smithsonian's Natural Museum of Natural History, Jason will be receiving a mini-library of great science books, and Corvi will take home a new bluetooth keyboard.

Thanks again, to everyone who participated.

Blunders of Genius: interesting errors by Darwin, Pauling, and Einstein

Mario Livio — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:11:26 +0000

Charles Darwin, Linus Pauling, and Albert Einstein made great contributions to science. They also made large blunders. In this original essay Mario Livio, astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and author of the new book Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe, describes three blunders, and why these great minds made them. -- Mark

When James Joyce wrote in Ulysses: “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery,” he meant the first part of the statement to be provocative. History has shown us that even some of the greatest scientific luminaries, towering figures such as the naturalist Charles Darwin, the twice-Nobel-Laureate chemist Linus Pauling, and the embodiment of genius — Albert Einstein — have made some serious blunders.

In Darwin’s case, he did not realize that with the theory of heredity prevailing at his time, natural selection simply could not work. Basically, the then-held belief stated that the characteristics of the two parents become physically blended in their offspring, just as in the mixing of paints, or of gin and tonic. If that were true, however, then any variation would have been inevitably lost, as all the extreme types would have vanished rapidly into some intermediate mean. Imagine, for instance, a population of one thousand white cats and one black cat. Additionally, suppose that being black confers some evolutionary advantage. In the “paint-pot theory,” the first offspring of the black cat with a white partner would be gray, and continuous mating with white cats would result in increasingly paler shades of gray. There was no way for the black cat to turn the entire population black after many generations, no matter how advantageous the black color might have been, contrary to Darwin’s vision of evolution by means of natural selection.

The solution to this problem came in the form of Gregor Mendel’s particulate genetics. In categorical contrast to blending, Mendel’s theory stated that the genes are discrete entities that are passed on unchanged to the next generation. In this sense, genetics resembles the shuffling together of two decks of cards rather than the mixing of paints — a Jack remains a Jack, no matter how many times you shuffle.

Continuing on the topic of life on Earth, Linus Pauling’s blunder concerned an ill-fated model for DNA. Having previously had enormous success in deciphering the structure of proteins, Pauling turned his attention to DNA in earnest only in November of 1952. Yet, just about one month later, he already came up with what he considered a viable model for the molecule. His model contained three helical strands (as opposed to the later, correct model by Watson and Crick, which was a double helix), was built inside-out, and was patently unstable because all the negative charges were concentrated at its center and would have driven the structure apart. How was it possible that the world’s greatest chemist would come up with such an incorrect model? There were many, fairly complex reasons for Pauling’s blunder, but largely it was hubris. Pauling fell victim to his own earlier success — a victory against a rival group of researchers — which made him feel infallible. In the words of Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins: “Pauling just didn’t try. He can’t really have spent five minutes on the problem himself.”

Finally, from the evolution of life we come to the evolution of the universe as a whole. Einstein’s blunder reminds us all that human logic is not mistake proof, even when exercised by a monumental genius. What was Einstein’s blunder? In 1917 Einstein first attempted to understand the entire cosmos in light of his theory of General Relativity. At the time, Einstein was convinced that the universe was unchanging and static on its largest scales. However, since he knew that every mass in the universe gravitationally attracts every other mass, he concluded that he needed to add something to prevent the universe from collapsing under its own weight. To achieve a static configuration, Einstein introduced a “fudge factor” into his equations, creating a repulsive force that precisely balanced gravity. This term became known as the “cosmological constant.” In the late 1920s, however, cosmologist Georges Lemaître and astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that our universe is in fact expanding. Einstein realized that in an expanding universe gravity would simply slow the expansion down, just as the Earth’s gravity slows down the motion of a ball thrown upward, and no precise balance was needed. He therefore removed the cosmological constant from his equations, even though the theory definitely allowed for its inclusion, and for the rest of his life regretted having introduced it in the first place. Things took an unexpected turn in 1998, when two groups of astronomers discovered that not only is the cosmic expansion not slowing down, it is in fact speeding up. Moreover, the acceleration appears to be driven precisely by Einstein’s cosmological constant! So Einstein’s blunder was not the introduction of this term, rather it was its removal. For some geniuses, what initially appears to be a mistake can turn out to be great insight.

Despite their blunders, and perhaps even because of them, the individuals I have sketched here (and others, all of whom I describe more fully in Brilliant Blunders), have catalyzed great innovations. The impact of their ideas has been felt across all aspects of the evolution of life on Earth, of the Earth itself, of stars, and of the universe as a whole. But the blunders and the reactions of these geniuses to them have also demonstrated something that modern neuroscientists have concluded: that humans are not purely rational beings capable of completely turning off their emotions. Rather, our brains integrate emotions into the stream of rational thought.

Buy Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

How many people have died in the Syrian civil war?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:45:01 +0000

In the fog of war, it's not easy to figure out how many people die. Even in the cleanest combat, accurate records are not really a common military priority. Worse, there are often incentives for one side or the other to play up the death counts (or play them down), alter the picture of who is doing the killing and who is dying, and provide evidence that a conflict is getting better (or worse).

All of that creates a mess for outside observers who want to see accurate patterns in the chaos — patterns that can help us understand whether an evenly matched war has turned into a bloodbath, or a genocide. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group is an organization that takes the messy, often conflicting, information about deaths in a warzone and tries to make sense of it. Today, they released an updated version of a January report on documented killings in the Syrian civil war.

They say that there were 92,901 documented deaths between March 2011 and April 2013. That number is extremely high, and tragic. But the number alone is maybe not the most important thing the data is telling us.

For one thing, 92,901 is not the number of people who have died in Syria during this war. It includes documented deaths only — deaths that come with a full name, a date, and a location. The actual death toll is likely to be significantly higher. The best way to think of that 92,901 is as the minimum number of people who have died.

Another key point: Syria is in an extremely violent phase of this war. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group has been looking at different databases of deaths and updating information over time. Back in January, for instance, the documented death toll was counted at 59,648, and only included deaths through November of 2012. Now that we have the data all the way through to April, we can see that the last year — July 2012 through April 2013 — has been consistently and substantially deadlier than the period that came before, with more than 5000 killings every month.

Finally, this death count still doesn't tell us much about who is killing who. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group says that the vast majority of reported deaths have been male, but there isn't good data about whether these were men of fighting age, old men, teenagers, or what. We still don't have enough information to say, with any kind of certainty, what the patterns are. And it's the patterns that matter the most. Those are the things that tell you — more than a simple body count — how a conflict is playing out and whether one side, or another, is engaging in behavior that can be documented as criminal.

As The Human Rights Data Analysis Group's Patrick Ball told me a couple months ago, "People get really excited about the numbers. Those are the things that make headlines. But it's not actually the story, in my opinion. What's it mean? That's what's important."

And for that, we'll have to wait.

For more, check out this radio interview on NPR with Megan Price, The Human Rights Data Analysis Group's director of research.

Quick Note: I'll be coming back to Ball next week in a story that looks more in-depth at how statistics and data analysis can help document human rights abuses and prosecute war criminals.

Image: Bombed-out vehicles in Aleppo. Photo taken in October 2012 by Scott Bob of Voice of America News.

What makes science beautiful?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:06:38 +0000

In his book, The Science Delusion, Curtis White criticizes scientists for throwing around the term "beautiful" without really asking what, exactly, makes science beautiful ... or what beauty even means in the context of science. I got to interview White last night, and will be posting the audio from that interview soon. But this is one of the points in the book that I thought was rather unfair. How did White know that this isn't something scientists have thought about? He never really said.

So, I turned to Twitter, asking scientists, science writers, and science fans about what made science beautiful to them. I got a really nice variety of answers and wanted to share some of my favorites — you can read them in this Storify.

Image: VISTA's infrared view of the Orion Nebula, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from esoastronomy's photostream

Huge, 3D printed airplane parts in China

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:25:59 +0000

GE isn't the only one getting into the 3D-printed airplane part game. But, instead of little fuel injectors for turbines, the Chinese company AVIC Heavy Machinery and China's Northwestern Polytechnical University are printing off 5-meter-long titanium wing spars and equally long wing beams. (Thanks, Tim Heffernan!)

Beautiful video of a supercell thunderstorm

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:22:23 +0000

It took photographer Mike Oblinski four years of traveling to Plains States to capture this fantastic time lapse footage of a supercell thunderstorm near Booker, Texas.

Supercells are a type of thunderstorm, specifically the type that contains a rotating mass of rising air called a mesocyclone. These are the storms that form tornadoes (although Oblinski says this one did not). Watching the video, I just kept thinking about the title of that Flannery O'Connor story: Everything that rises must converge.

The timelapse was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a Rokinon 14mm 2.8 lens. It's broken up into four parts. One thing to note early on in the first part is the way the rain is coming down on the right and actually being sucked back into the rotation. Amazing.

A few miles south is where part two picks up. And I didn't realize how fast it was moving south, so part three is just me panning the camera to the left. During that third part you can see dust along the cornfield being pulled into the storm as well...part of the strong inflow. The final part is when the storm had started dying out and we shot lightning as it passed over us.

Video Link

Supreme Court: You can't patent (naturally occurring) genes

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:12:43 +0000

In an unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled today that companies can't patent genes, or parts of genes — at least, so long as that genetic material is identical to what occurs in nature. The lawsuit dealt specifically with Myriad Genetics, the company that isolated and has claimed a patent on BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 — genes associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers. From a practical perspective, Myriad's hold on the genes has meant that tests for genetic cancer risk are strikingly expensive — Xeni paid more than $3000 for hers. It's also meant that, if you get a positive result, there's been nowhere you could go for a second opinion.

That's a big deal. Mutations in the BRCA 1 and 2 genes mean an increased risk of cancer, but there's more than one kind of mutation that can happen. In fact, BRCA 1, alone, has hundreds of known mutations. Some increase your risk of cancer. But, even if you narrow it down to just those, they don't all increase the risk by the same amount. The health choices you make could be very different depending on whether you have an 80% risk of developing breast cancer by age 90 (the worst-case scenario for BRCA 1 mutations), or something much lower. That's the kind of situation where you might really like to have more than one lab run more than one kind of test.

This ruling opens the door for that, and the competition should (theoretically) also lower the cost.

It's worth noting that the ruling does not apply to synthetically created DNA, which, based on the Myriad context, seems to apply to lab-created genes that are different from what happens in nature, as opposed to lab-created versions of natural genes (Myriad had previously cloned BRCA 1 and BRCA 2). For a little more clarity on what does not fall under the scope of this ruling, here's a quote from Justice Clarence Thomas' description of the Court's decision. It's the cDNA Thomas describes here that would still be patentable.

DNA’s informational sequences and the processes that create mRNA, amino acids, and proteins occur naturally within cells. Scientists can, however, extract DNA from cells using well known laboratory methods. These methods allow scientists to isolate specific segments of DNA—for instance, a particular gene or part of a gene—which can then be further studied, manipulated, or used. It is also possible to create DNA synthetically through processes similarly well known in the field of genetics. One such method begins with an mRNA molecule and uses the natural bonding properties of nucleotides to create a new, synthetic DNA molecule. The result is the inverse of the mRNA’s inverse image of the original DNA, with one important distinction: Because the natural creation of mRNA involves splicing that removes introns, the synthetic DNA created from mRNA also contains only the exon sequences. This synthetic DNA created in the laboratory from mRNA is known as complementary DNA (cDNA).

Read More:
• The Washington Post on the Court decision
• The full Supreme Court decision itself
• Rebecca Skloot, who literally wrote the book on the ethics of genes and genes patents, is answering questions at Facebook.

Image: Breast cancer cells, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from thejcb's photostream

How the Russians pee in space

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:27:33 +0000

I don't know if I can fully define human nature, but I'm pretty sure it includes a prurient and/or practical interest in how one uses the bathroom under strange circumstances. Thus, the various videos you've seen over the years explaining how astronauts use the toilet on board the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Until a recent visit to Seattle's Museum of Flight, however, I'd never seen how cosmonauts do their business — an issue with increasingly broad reach, now that Americans and other international space voyagers are being ferried into the heavens aboard Soyuz.

The Soyuz toilet does not look much like the ones on board the Shuttle or the ISS. Those are recognizably toilets, for one thing. The Soyuz sanitary unit is more akin to peeing into a soda bottle in the back seat of the family station wagon — if that soda bottle were hooked up to a vacuum cleaner.

This video — kindly shared with us by The Museum of Flight — was filmed in 2009 by NASA astronaut Michael Barratt. It features the urination demonstration talents of spaceflight adventurer Charles Simonyi and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. Please note that this video only demonstrates how the "part Number 1" works — and even that really only seems to apply to gentlemen cosmonauts. As best I can tell, women apparently just pee into something akin to a compact diaper or sanitary pad. (Fun!) As for "part Number 2", here is how it was described in a 2007 NASA publication written by James Lee Broyan, Jr.:

For fecal collection, a porous bag is placed in the receptacle. Once defecation is complete, the bag is removed, placed sequentially in three bags, and then placed in a wet trash compartment. Based on personal conversations with АСУ trainers, urine collection is acceptable but fecal use is avoided if at all possible with the crew using diet restrictions and preventive measures prior to flight.

• Read the 2007 NASA publication comparing different space toilet systems. Apparently, part Number 2 has also been used by female cosmonauts to dispose of menstrual waste.
• Read a description on the RuSpace site, which gives a little more detail on part Number 2.
• Watch the video at YouTube

Thanks to Ted Huetter at The Museum of Flight!

Everybody poops — even the FDA

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:12:03 +0000

At Scientific American, Beth Mole has a longer story about the FDA's recent decision to exert more control over the use of fecal transplants — procedures that attempt to cure disorders related to gut bacteria by, essentially, giving you somebody else's gut bacteria. We already talked briefly about this decision, which has some benefits and some detriments. This new piece gets more in-depth.