Category Archives: Education

Being Bad is Best for Bacteria

That conclusion is based on the first experiments investigating how natural selection influences the transmission of infectious disease. The outcome of those experiments defies old assumptions that pathogens evolve to become less infectious
…
The scientists analyzed the patterns of disease transmission and found that strains of bacteria with the greatest damage to their virulence genes were slowest at spreading from one host to another. The strain of pathogen with all of its virulence genes intact spread the fastest. Strains of pathogen lacking the ability to inject any proteins into the host were completely unable to spread between hosts, suggesting that these swapped virulence genes are essential for spread.

Grand Visions

The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth:

The secret is something he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns, and the basic idea is that the power of technology is expanding at an exponential rate. Mankind is on the cusp of a radically accelerating era of change unlike anything we have ever seen, he says, and almost more extreme than we can imagine.

What does that mean? By the time a child born today graduates from college, Kurzweil believes, poverty, disease, and reliance on fossil fuels should be a thing of the past.
…
By 2027, he predicts, computers will surpass humans in intelligence; by 2045 or so, we will reach the Singularity, a moment when technology is advancing so rapidly that “strictly biological” humans will be unable to comprehend it.

Why do We Sleep?

Study puts us one step closer to understanding the purpose of sleep:

Sleep remains one of the big mysteries in biology. All animals sleep, and people who are deprived of sleep suffer physically, emotionally and intellectually. But nobody knows how sleep restores the brain.
…
Although an electronic power-napper sounds like a product whose time has come, Tononi is chasing a larger quarry: learning why sleep is necessary in the first place. If all animals sleep, he says, it must play a critical role in survival, but that role remains elusive.

Based on the fact that sleep seems to “consolidate” memories, many neuroscientists believe that sleeping lets us rehearse the day’s events.

Tononi agrees that sleep improves memory, but he thinks this happens through a different process, one that involves a reduction in brain overload. During sleep, he suggests, the synapses (connections between nerve cells) that were formed by the day’s learning can relax a little.

Design for the Unwealthiest 90 Percent

Design for the unwealthiest 90 percent by Alice Rawsthorn:

Many humanitarian designers focus on helping the needy to enhance their earning potential by setting up new businesses, or running existing ones more efficiently. The Bamboo Treadle Pump enables poor farmers in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and India to pump up groundwater during the dry season. The Big Boda Load-Carrying Bicycle provides cheap transport in Kenya and Uganda to carry hundreds of pounds of cargo or two passengers using pedal-power. And thanks to the KickStart MoneyMaker Block Press, eight workers can produce up to 800 building blocks a day from soil and a small quantity of cement.

Home Experiments: Quantum Erasing

Do your own experiment on quantum erasing – Quantum Erasing in the Home (for instructions). From the accompanying article, A Do-It-Yourself Quantum Eraser:

The light patterns that you will see if you conduct the experiment successfully can be accounted for by considering the light to be a classical wave, with no quantum mechanics involved. So in that respect the experiment is a cheat and falls short of fully demonstrating the quantum nature of the effect.

Nevertheless, the individual photons that make up the light wave are indeed doing the full quantum dance with all its weirdness intact, although you could only truly prove that by sending the photons through the apparatus and detecting them one at a time. Such a procedure, unfortunately, remains beyond the average home experimenter.

Backyard Wildlife: Turtle

I took this photo in my back yard yesterday. It is the first time I have seen a turtle there. I saw a chipmunk today – I have see them occasionally but can’t get a photo of them – they move quite quickly 🙂 Other wildlife I have seen in my backyard: possum, raccoon, mole, fox, squirrels, rabbits, many birds including hawks and/or falcons, robins, starlings, doves, a humming bird once (front yard), butterflies, bats, lightning bugs, all sorts of bees, ants, praying mantis, and many more birds. And I see several cats prowl the yard frequently.

Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria

Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health by Brandon Keim

In sheer numbers, bacterial cells in the body outnumber our own by a factor of 10, with 50 trillion bacteria living in the digestive system alone, where they’ve remained largely unstudied until the last decade. As scientists learn more about them, they’re beginning to chart the complex symbiosis between the tiny bugs and our health.

“The microbes that live in the human body are quite ancient,” says NYU Medical Center microbiologist Dr. Martin Blaser, a pioneer in gut microbe research. “They’ve been selected (through evolution) because they help us.” And it now appears that our daily antibacterial regimens are disrupting a balance that once protected humans from health problems, especially allergies and malfunctioning immune responses.

Funding for Science and Engineering Researchers

To authorize programs for support of the early career development of science and engineering researchers, and for support of graduate fellowships, and for other purposes. passed the house on a vote of 397 – 20 and was forwarded to the senate. From the majority whips talking points:

supports outstanding researchers in the early stages of their careers through grants at the National Science Foundation (NSF)
and the Department of Energy of $80,000 per year for 5 years
…
enlarges an existing program at NSF supporting graduate students in multidisciplinary fields of national importance

This bill started with the same name as the Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act – though seems to be missing much on fellowships now.

When Fair Use Isn’t Fair

In her post, Antioxidants in Berries Increased by Ethanol (but Are Daiquiris Healthy?), Shelley Batts, commenting on a journal article which was written based on publicly funded research, used “ONE panel of ONE figure, and a chart, from over 10+ figures in the paper.” The for profit journal sent a threat of legal action. This is exactly the type of behavior that leads many (including me) to push for open access publication of publicly funded research.

When Fair Use Isn’t Fair:

Isn’t the point of publishing data to disseminate it, rather that lob threats at grad students who happen to be excited about it?

It should be but many of the for profit publishers seem to have mistaken their mission to promote science (which would then generate funds to sustain their organization) for a mission to make money with no concern for science.

One comment on that post includes a link to the Standford Fair Use Project which looks like a great resource. Also see: Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation

More on the Bee Deaths

Experts may have found what’s bugging the bees (link removed since content not freely available):

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.

Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause. But the results are “highly preliminary” and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. “We don’t want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved.”

Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.

N. ceranae is “one of many pathogens” in the bees, said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University. “By itself, it is probably not the culprit … but it may be one of the key players.”