Border closing efforts serve as a distractions. We need to focus on known methods of disease control — vaccination, masks and social distancing. Read the rest at USA Today.
Category Archives: Biology/Evolution
Nature’s Cruellest One-Night Stand: Sexual Cannibalism in Spiders
ANIMAL mating can be a cruel and unusual process. Male bedbugs inseminate females by piercing their bellies and depositing sperm inside their paramours’ body cavities. Male chimpanzees and lions kill the suckling infants of females before mating with them, as this brings those females more rapidly into oestrus. Male dolphins routinely engage in rape. Nor are aggressive mating practices perpetrated solely by males against females. In many species of insects and spiders, females eat their partners after sex. Read the rest at The Economist.
Hormesis: Is the ‘Low-Dose Effect’ Real?
This article was originally posted on ACSH.
When presented with quantum entanglement, Albert Einstein derided it as “spooky action at a distance.” When meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of continental drift, he was mocked. And when internist Barry Marshall’s suggestion that ulcers were caused by a bacterium was dismissed by the biomedical community, he swallowed a flask-full of the stuff to prove his point.
What these three completely unrelated topics – quantum entanglement, continental drift, and ulcers as an infectious disease – have in common are two striking features: (1) they sounded completely nuts at the time; and (2) they are demonstrably and undeniably true. Continue reading
Red-Colored Microbes Decorate Flamingo Feathers
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
There are two varieties of flamingo in the world: The first is a majestic bird that makes its home in warm coastal waters all over the world. The second is a plastic ornament — and official city bird of Madison, Wisconsin — that deeply troubled and misguided souls believe will add a touch of class to their lawns. Fortunately, this article is about the former, not the latter. Continue reading
Shroud of Turin DNA Comes from All over World
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
The Shroud of Turin, the supposed burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, has remained an object of fascination for the Christian faithful and scientists alike. Those who would suggest a supernatural origin nearly 2,000 years ago must contend with radiocarbon evidence, which dates the shroud to approximately the 13th or 14th Centuries. Those who would suggest a medieval European origin must contend with a rather large controversy over the accuracy of the sample used for dating, as well as historical evidence to the contrary. Additionally, despite extensive analysis, nobody knows how the image of a buried man was created on the shroud. In Facebook terms, the shroud’s status remains “complicated.” Continue reading
The Primordial Soup Was Edible
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
Back in 2005, when I was a first-year microbiology graduate student, I enrolled in a course on bacterial physiology. One of our guest lecturers, Dr. Franklin Harold, was an esteemed researcher in bioenergetics, a field that examines how cells derive and utilize energy. One evening, outside of class, I happened upon Dr. Harold at a seminar, and I asked him a question: “What is your opinion on origin of life research?”
He responded, “It has been an abject failure.” Continue reading
Sex Would Be Simpler if We Were Bonobos
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
Sex is complicated. A lack of communication, psychologists and couples therapists are fond of telling us, is largely to blame. If only we were more open about our desires and intentions, then women wouldn’t be wonder, “Will he ever call me?” and bemused men wouldn’t speculate, “Is she flirting with me?” The era of mixed signals would be over. Though likely too good to ever be true, this utopian vision of human sexual relations could become a reality if only we learned some communication skills from our bonobo cousins. Continue reading
Simple Robots Evolve to Become Cooperative
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
The evolution of cooperation remains something of a mystery in biology. The cutthroat individualism at the heart of natural selection seems, at first glance, to run counter to the very notion of sociality. However, groups of organisms that display cooperative tendencies tend to be more successful than those that do not, and hence, natural selection also appears to operate at a level higher than merely that of the individual. Continue reading
The Oyster’s Gem: As the Pearl Turns
This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
The first person who discovered pearls must have believed he stumbled across a bit of magic. Pull apart the valves of a living oyster, and a beautiful spherical gem of calcium carbonate may lay inside. Alas, it is not magic. A pearl forms in response to tissue damage, such as by the introduction of a foreign body, and the pearl is the oyster’s attempt to wall off the offending object. (A similar process occurs in the lungs of people with tuberculosis.) Today, humans take advantage of this quirk of oyster biology in order to culture pearls on our own terms. Continue reading
Protecting Coffee Crops: Beetles and Bugs
THE coffee-berry borer is a pesky beetle. It is thought to destroy $500m-worth of unpicked coffee beans a year, thus diminishing the incomes of some 20m farmers. The borer spends most of its life as a larva, buried inside a coffee berry, feeding on the beans within. To do so, it has to defy the toxic effects of caffeine. This is a substance which, though pleasing to people, is fatal to insects—except, for reasons hitherto unknown, to the coffee-berry borer. But those reasons are unknown no longer. Read the rest at The Economist.