Spoiled by the Weather Channel

Boy am I glad I don’t live in a log cabin, relying on a Farmer’s Almanac.

Over the weekend, we had some pretty alarming weather here in the Midwest. In many areas, it didn’t get nearly as scary as it was predicted—but it certainly did in some towns across the area. Some people criticized the weather folks, saying they went too far with their warnings of complete catastrophe; indeed, it did feel as if we were about to experience The Day After Tomorrow. I must admit that I panicked—something that I normally do not do, but when you have a kid, like they say, everything changes.

I am glad that I have this warning system in place, though, and I feel terribly spoiled by The Weather Channel and the Channel 5 Doppler radar. Can you imagine how it must have been a couple hundred years ago with nothing but “feeling it in your bones” and a few common tools like weathervanes to help you ascertain the weather, sometimes mere moments before—or even as—it was happening? I can’t even imagine. Like I said, I used to love storms, but when you have little ones to protect, it means the world to you.

Of course, I am betting that many people made sure they had storm cellars for such things, too, which surely helped; my family has a pretty nasty old basement that we avoid at all costs due to its high spider, cat litter, and general muck content. That said, we do use it in a pinch—and if we receive such advanced warning as we did over the weekend, we make the forty minute trip to my mom’s house, where a clean basement (indeed, one that we once occupied as residents!) awaits us along with plenty of batteries, games, and comfortable furniture.

My husband says that I’m gullible for letting such warnings work me into a frenzy; we have always joked and made fun of the media and its catastrophic warnings, seeing many as they are—ploys for selling stuff. And I realize that. But I am in charge of another human being’s life and general wellbeing (at least for now), and I am determined to make sure I do a damned good job of that. And if that means waiting out a storm that doesn’t really happen at my mom’s house for a day and a night, well, so be it.

And I will keep thanking The Weather Channel for helping me do just that!

Scientists Develop Robotic Jellyfish

Bell-shaped bot runs on hydrogen and oxygen

Jellyfish are pretty cool dudes as they are. They move around despite looking like they're not made of anything more than cellophane, they're full of poison and some of them are even said to live forever. I don't even know if they need to eat to survive. They just kind of float around like little translucent sea flowers, unperturbed by the goings-on of the world. Now, thanks to the power of science, they even have some robot buddies to hang out with.

Researchers from several universities have joined forces to create the world's first robotic jellyfish. But they're not just copping the jelly's style cause it looks cool. They've adopted the jelly aesthetic because it better allows the robot to draw its power from the elements present in the water around it. The circular muscles inside the robot's bell-shaped body actually run on water components, using oxygen and hydrogen gases to contract. As far as the scientists know, they're the first to develop an underwater robot that uses external hydrogen as a fuel source.

Besides floating around looking awesome, the robot jelly could have a whole host of other purposes. The research teams figure they could eventually develop an autonomous underwater robot for rescue missions or possibly attach a few cameras to it and use it as a constant aquatic surveillance device. They've secured funding from the US Navy's Office of Naval Research, so they should have plenty of funds with which to experiment with different uses for the little dude.

New Science Exchange Site Allows Researchers To Outsource

A new startup is changing the way that science is conducted, and may lead to the future of scientific progress.

A new startup is changing the way that science and scientists operate around the world, and it may just become the future of scientific study and advancement. Science Exchange is an eBay-like service providing access and funding to scientists’ equipment and expertise all around the world. Funded by YCombinator and started by cofounders Elizabeth Iorns and Dan Knox in August of last year, the web company has already allowed scientists and research labs to greatly accelerate the speed at which they can pursue their projects, and the efficiency with which their funding is allocated. They do this by using a network of scientists and researchers, also using Science Exchange, to outsource various components of their work.

The service allows scientists to go onto the “Exchange” and find other scientists or researchers that specialize in the area of work that they need completed. They then pay this individual or individuals to complete that portion of the project while they continue on with other areas of the work that are more in line with their own specialties. Likewise, they can increase their own funding for projects by taking on a component of another lab’s work. As reported in Singularity Hub, it’s about opening up access to experts and specialized equipment in various fields. In this age of highly specialized technological and scientific information, many scientists lack the expertise to address certain aspects of a scientific experiment or innovation, and so must find some other professional in the field with those skills. Science Exchange makes this easy and mutually beneficial by carefully vetting members of the exchange, and then giving them access to their worldwide network.

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Much like eBay, they go well beyond simply managing the science market’s access and vetting their members. They provide a rating system for providers and clients, and help providers to market themselves to the broader scientific community. They also will manage the financial transactions between various research labs and providers and will even help those labs find the providers they need to complete their projects; all for a sliding commission of, at the most, 5% of the total cost (as the cost goes up the commission comes down). The average total savings, according to Iorn, amounts to 54% reduction in cost to clients. High-end providers would often charge up to twice the cost of the lowest end providers, simply because they were the most easily accessible. Science Exchange has managed to single-handedly increase access for everyone, equalizing the playing field for smaller research labs and science facilities and forcing the higher-end providers to lower their costs to remain competitive.

Domestication Syndrome: How Animals Become Domesticated Without People

Bonobos exhibit a higher degree of domestication than chimpanzees, and all on their own.

There’s a common assumption (and rightly so) that the story of domesticated animals runs parallel to that of the story of human civilization. Once we had learned to plant and harvest, to build shelter and cook our food, we began the process of enlisting animals to help. However, recent ideas from a dynamic anthropologist from Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences hypothesizes that domestication may not be an exclusively human endeavor. Bonobos, primates that are closely related to Chimpanzees, show an incredible range of domestic traits without ever having been actively domesticated by people.

Hare recalls a a lecture from Harvard anthropologist Richard Wranghem on the evolutionary puzzle of the Bonobo, which share a number of traits with Chimpanzees but no one can seem to explain why.” Hare made the connection to a breed of “silver foxes”, bred by Russian geneticist Demitri Belyaev. Belyaev took the least aggressive foxes and interbred them, looking for naturally occurring domestic traits; docility, trainability, temperament and response to stress and social cues. The result was a white splotchy fox that behaviorally was no different than today’s domestic dogs, with some added physical changes as well; shorter canines, white splotches on the fur, floppier ears, and a curlier tail. He managed this within 20 generations of his “silver foxes”, an evolutionary nanosecond.

Hare believes that if you selectively breed the nicest animals, these domesticated traits will come to the fore, a process he calls “domestication syndrome”. However, where this has been a process over millennia with other domesticated animals (dogs, guinea pigs, cows), or a targeted and strategic process in the case of Belyaev, the Bonobos seem to have accomplished the task on their own. They have “self-domesticated”. Even compared to their closest living relative, the Chimpanzee, Bonobos display more domesticated behaviors. They have shorter canines, softer fur, and tend to spend more time playing socially and having sex; all characteristics of domestication. On the other hand, chimpanzees regularly war, fight, and engage in things like rape and even cannibalism; aspects of a wilder, more competition geared psychology.

Hare even hypothesizes how Bonobo’s may have “self-domesticated” naturally. In Africa chimpanzees inhabit a northern biome where they would experience competition from gorillas for food and territory, breeding a larger more aggressive male. In doing so they also likely were able to overpower the smaller, less developed females, and since the security of their family unit was much less certain, they may have formed a social structure based on dominance and aggression. Bonobos, on the other hand, occupied a southern area free of competition from gorillas (and most other primates). They had the leisure to develop a more intricate social system, and females had the luxury of creating tight-knit groups that could easily fend off an aggressive male. As a result, those males that were more cooperative, that would ally themselves with a group of females, were able to mate more often. The result? As Hare says, “when nicer specimens breed, domestication results.” In this way, Bonobos became evolutionarily “self-domesticated.”

Hare is quick to point out that his hypothesies are just that, educated guesses based on previous research. However, if there is credence to idea about self-domestication and the domestication syndrome, they have powerful implications for human behavior and the development of our societies as well.

Brain Scans Show Morality And Physical Disgust Closely Linked

fMRI scans show that the moral center of our brains and the physical disgust center show significant overlap, which may explain a lot.

There’s a reason that we have a physical reaction to men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Weiner, and John Edwards. There’s a reason why we can dismiss the death of Osama bin Laden with a, “he got what he deserved”, but seethe with hatred for someone like Dominique Strauss-Khan. It’s the same reason that liberals look at photos of Rush Limbaugh or Mitt Romney and become inflamed in the same way that conservatives may physically react to pictures of President Barack Obama. Our perceptions guide our moral and physical “disgust centers” in our brains, and often, those two neural networks overlap.

The widespread use of fMRI (functional magnetic imaging) has allowed researchers to watch as sensory stimuli literally “light up” various areas of the brain, which has lead to some very illuminating understandings of how our brains actually work. One of those areas, our “moral” center, is actually closely connected to the area of our brain in which physical revulsion is located. In other words, according to our brain circuitry, morality and disgust are closely related.

To illustrate this, researchers have conducted a commonplace study in which pairs of individuals are given $100 to share. However, only one of the individuals has the ability to decide how the cash is divided among them, with the other person having the ability to accept or reject the offer. If the offer is accepted, they both get the money. If the offer is rejected, they both get nothing. If the deal is rejected, fMRI scans show that the person rejecting the offer shows pronounced activity in the disgust center of the brain. Generally, any deal that offered the second person less than 43% of the pot was rejected, meaning the “rejecter” turned down a free $43 simply because the other person was going to get $57; a moral judgement that triggers feelings of physical disgust.

Jonathan Haidt, of the University of Virginia, told TIME, “There is literal disgust and moral disgust, and the two overlap. Betrayal, hypocrisy, certain kinds of baseness trigger the brain's moral response." In fact, so powerful is this mechanism in our brains that we even physically respond to witnessing someone else get cheated. The more honorably the victim responds to being taken advantage of, the more visceral our reactions are. In the case of John Edwards, who had an illegitimate child with his mistress while Elizabeth Edwards was dying of cancer, makes the bile rise in the back of the throat because we are powerfully morally reactive, and subsequently disgusted, by the behavior. In a sense, our physical reaction to those things which we deem immoral, serve to gird our moral code and make us even more morally reactive.

Perhaps this explains the vehemence and apparent inflexibility with which some, those who believe they are in the moral right, pursue their own personal, political, and social agendas. If we understand that the physical reaction is just a trick of brain chemistry, we may be able to approach moral questions more objectively, and more reasonably.

Genetically Modified Silkworms Spin Super-Strong Spider Silks

This stuff is some of the strongest and most elastic material on the planet, and it might just become commercially available.

Perhaps one of the most unusual and provocative ideas coming out of the bio-technology field today is the idea of industrial spider-silk fibers. The strands, or silks, of a spider is nature’s toughest, most durable, and most elastic material. In fact, the silks of some spiders are 10-times more resilient than Kevlar, while still being elastic enough to stretch to twice their original length. Oh, and they’re biodegradable. Being able to mass-produce spider silks would create an epic windfall for both biotechnological advances, as well as investment for the company that was able to do it. Fortunately, we’re making progress in that department.

There have been a few Herculean hurdles in the quest to be able to create spider-silk fibers on a massive scale. Although geneticists have been able to isolate the proteins within a spider’s silks (in fact, they’re so good that they can even genetically customize the silks for different properties), they have not been able to figure out how to turn them into fibers.

One option was to simply farm spiders, but they are notoriously territorial and given to eating one another. Creating the fibers synthetically in a lab has also been difficult because, although the proteins can be created, there’s never been a consistant, cost-effective way to string them together.

Recently, some enterprising scientists have taken the liberty of genetically altering other animals that also spin silk: silkworms. For centuries people from China to the Mediterranean have been farming silkworms for their silk fibers. Those fibers are woven together to make everything from silk kimonos to handkerchiefs. Silkworms are silk-spinning machines, with enormous glands that constantly excrete the sought-after fibers. By genetically modifying silkworms, scientists have been able to modify the insects to spin a hybridized silk, though it only contains 2 to 5 percent of the genetic material of a spider’s silk. However, even with such a small tweak to the genetic code, and although it lacked the strength or elasticity, the silks were found to have almost the same toughness as a spider’s silk The next step will be to phase out the spiderworm’s silk proteins altogether, until the silkworms are only spinning spider silk.

Imagine a fabric that is stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar, but with the elasticity of the waistband in your sweatpants? Mass-produced and cheaply available, this material could drastically change industries as varied as shipping and transportation to housing and textiles. Some have even looked at how synthetic spider silk might change our concept of space travel, with an “elevator” strong enough to payload out of our planet’s orbit like the world’s longest bucket on a rope.

Researchers Closer To Locating The Origin Of Schizophrenia

Researchers have found that it's not a defect in the genes, but in the cell housing the DNA.

The new year is starting with some good news for individuals stricken with schizophrenia and a host of other neurological disorders. Schizophrenia, which has been a bit of a catch-all disorder in which victims suffer from extreme paranoia, delusions, dissociative thinking and even hallucinations, has long been thought to be a genetic disorder. After more than a decade of looking for evidence of schizeophrenia in gene, new evidence shows that the disease actually originates in the cell around the gene.

Scientists at Scripps Research Institute have recently found that schizophrenia is not a genetic disorder at all. In fact, it’s an epigenetic disorder, one cause by the structures of the cell that house our DNA. Particular to disorders like schizophrenia, there is a protein that functions a bit like a storage rack in the cell called a histone. The DNA, which would not otherwise fit within a single cell, is wrapped around the histone. However, in order for the DNA to express itself the histone has a tail which undergoes a perpetual chemical reaction called acetylation, which relaxes the DNA and allows it to express. Then acetylation takes place and the DNA once again contracts around the histone. The histones and DNA create chromatin, which manages the constant cycle of relaxation and contraction that allows all the genes of a cell to functions properly.

If the histone does not acetylate, or create the chromatin that allows the DNA to relax and express itself normally, then parts of the DNA that are too tightly wound around the histone will simply shut off. If this happens the cell could undergo considerable damage. If it happens widely enough, the rest of the body could suffer. This is essentially what happens in schizeophrenia patients. Acetylation stops or is hindered in large parts of the brain, and the DNA expression is turned off, throwing everything else into disarray. Other epigenetic disorders of this kind in the brain have given rise to Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and drug addiction.

The researcher’s at Scrips are looking at evidence from schizophrenic and healthy individuals to locate where the chemical breakdown is occurring, and to look at ways of repairing it. What they have found so far is that these types of epigenetic disorders have much more pronounced effects in younger brains than they did in older ones, which allows researchers to target their studies. Focusing on this particular chemical malfunction in the brain may allow scientists to create much more effective drugs to treat schizophrenia, even reversing its effects. This would be a boon to many schizophrenia patients, many of whom are taking medications that have serious side effects and only treat a handful of the disease’s symptoms.

Top Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2011

From a game-changing AIDS medication to the little Neanderthal we all carry in us, it's been a big year for science.

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ccording to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, there are ten great scientific breakthroughs this year that deserve acknowledgement. The top honor was reserved for a potentially game-changing study for HIV/AIDS patients. The study, called HPTN 052, showed the antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) not only slow the progression of the disease in patients already infected, but virtually eliminate transmission to uninfected individuals. In fact, the study was so incredibly effective that four years before it was slated to end, a third party monitoring board declared that all subjects, even the control group, were to be immediately vaccinated with the ARVs. Here, in no particular order, are a few of the highlights. John Cohen, who wrote the covers story in Science, had this to say about the findings.

“This [HPTN 052 trial] does not mean that treating people alone will end an epidemic…but combined with three other major biomedical preventions that have proven their worth in large clinical studies since 2005, many researchers now believe it is possible to break the back of the epidemic in specific locales with the right package of interventions.”

Sub-Saharan Africa and areas of Asia have seen an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has no abated since the early 90’s. This is partly due to lack of proper medical access, as well as a number of cultural beliefs that continue to propagate the spread of the disease. However, with proper intervention and a battery of these new pharmaceutical interventions, AIDS in African may become a controllable, and even reversible problem.

Several other scientific breakthroughs of note are included here, in no particular order.

Stoneaged Inbreeding – Scientists believe they’ve located a genetic marker in modern humans that proves that Cro-magnon and Neanderthal populations interbred. Not only that, but they found these genetic markers in nearly every human demographic of every human ethnicity across the planet. Some scientific proof for racists the world over.

Bizarre Solar Systems – Planets orbiting two suns, planets orbiting in ways we’ve never observed (and have no way of explaining) and 10 planets that seem to be just floating in dead space with no sun to call their solar system. Space related: they also found two pristine hydrogen gas clouds that seem to have been completely unaffected by all this celestial madness since roughly the Big Bang.

Dead-heading Our Cells Leads to Longer Life – Researchers may have found a way to dramatically increase our healthspan (not lifespan) through the removal of senescent cells. Cells have only so many replications, and when they get to the end of that number, they continue to harvest our body’s resources for some time without actually producing anything. Researchers found that by clearing these cells in mice, the mice were dramatically healthier later into their life spans. On average they didn’t live longer, but they were healthier for the time that they did live. This may hold great implications for human longevity and health.

New Evidence In 5,300 Year Old Ice Man's Stomach Reveals More About His Murder

Otzi, the Ice Man's, story continues to fascinate people today, and new evidence (found in his stomach) reveals more about this ancient man.

A great narrative has been woven around the mysterious death of Otzi, a man found in the upper reaches of the Swiss Alps, frozen solid in the ice. It tells of a man that had been chased for miles, perhaps tens of miles, only to fall prey to an arrow in the snow and left for dead. The story is made more interesting by the fact that Otzi is 5,300 years old, and has been incredibly well-preserved within the mummifying ice of the Alps. However, Otzi’s story may be unraveling as scientists uncover new information about the contents of his stomach, and the moments before his death.

Previously the position of Otzi’s body, and the lethal arrow wounds he seemed to have suffer from behind, lead researchers to believe that there had been a significant chase before Otzi was finally overtaken in the highest reaches of the Alps. However, scientists have recently discovered that what they previously thought was his stomach was actually his colon. This may sound like a silly mistake, but because of the mummification Otzi’s internal organs are badly damaged and his stomach has actually receded up into his chest cavity. There they found that Otzi actually had a full stomach when he died.

Otzi had been dining on Ibex meat (pretty good fare for an ancient human) only 30 to 60 minutes before he died. This indicates that Otzi, if he had been chased by his murderers, was not chased for very long. In addition, and this may be a clue to whether Otzi was a fairly high-ranking member of his tribe or not, he seems to have dined this way fairly often. He was discovered with three gall stones, a symptom of regularly eating high levels of animal fat, which indicates that he had some status.

Forensic biology and genetics has allowed scientists to come to some pretty astounding conclusions about our early human ancestors based on what little remains have been recovered around the world. Ancient Mexican burial grounds, Neanderthal and early Cro-Magnon campsites and villages from France to China, and other mummified remains from Siberia to Canada all point to the greater pictures of human migration and society. However, too often the human side of the early individual has been lost to time.

However, the new evidence around Otzi’s murder has just served to increase his mystique. Could Otzi’s murder have been a coup by his tribe, or perhaps an assassination by a rival clan? Perhaps Otzi was a successful hunter and, in a hard winter, was murdered by others for his kill. If nothing else, it has the makings of a fantastic historical fiction novel.

Neuroscientists Say Human Brains Have Reached Peak Evolution

Human brains have reached an evolutionary "sweet spot", where further change would have serious trade-offs.

Despite what sci-fi writers have done with the idea that we “only use 10% of our brains”, researchers seem to point to the fact that, for now at least, we’ve maxed out our cognitive capacity. In movies like Limitless, people with enhanced brainpower are able to see into the future, remember everything they’ve ever experienced, or read other people’s minds. However, the reality is that our evolution seems to have hit a “sweet spot”, as psychologists Thomas Hill and Ralph Hertwig say, and can’t get much smarter without some significant evolutionary trade-offs.

After conducting a meta-analysis of a number of other studies on the potential for humanity increasing their brainpower, they’ve come to one significant conclusion. In order for people’s brains to evolve much beyond where they’re at now they would need to make some fairly serious genetic sacrifices. Many individuals with advanced cognitive abilities, “savants, people with photographic memories, and even genetically segregated populations of individuals with above average IQ”, they are also unusually susceptible to neural disorders like autism and synesthesia.

The authors explain our having achieved our peak mental fitness like a person focusing on the road while driving at night. Although it’s necessary to pay attention to the road, ever changing turns and conditions, it’s possible to over-focus and not notice the deer on the shoulder or the driver in your blind spot. By enhancing our mental abilities much beyond where they’re at now there will be significant trade offs for the higher function. Evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense that our mental capacities will have reached a kind of pinnacle for the moment. We’ve evolved the complexity of our cognitive processes to the point where, on average, our species is capable of some pretty impossible seeming mental tasks and innovations. However, our species is no longer threatened by a rival species, and natural selection has effectively stalled for us. This is largely due to our present mental capacity, and the luxuries and security that our minds have created for our species. As a result we’ve reached a point at which, were our brains to improve incrementally again, the genetic payoff would not be a “natural selection”.

That doesn’t mean that in the distant future there may not be some further genetic adaptation that prompts further mental evolution. However, for our species, for right now, we’re about as smart as we’re going to get. Even so, in my opinion there are still some people that are too smart for their own good.

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