Category Archives: Life Science

The Evolution of House Cats

Photo shows Fritz the Cat – see photos Fritz took.

Scientific American has a long and interesting article on: The Evolution of House Cats

It is by turns aloof and affectionate, serene and savage, endearing and exasperating. Despite its mercurial nature, however, the house cat is the most popular pet in the world. A third of American households have feline members, and more than 600 million cats live among humans worldwide.
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Together the transport of cats to the island and the burial of the human with a cat indicate that people had a special, intentional relationship with cats nearly 10,000 years ago in the Middle East. This locale is consistent with the geographic origin we arrived at through our genetic analyses. It appears, then, that cats were being tamed just as humankind was establishing the first settlements in the part of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent.
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Over time, wildcats more tolerant of living in human-dominated environments began to proliferate in villages throughout the Fertile Crescent. Selection in this new niche would have been principally for tameness, but competition among cats would also have continued to influence their evolution and limit how pliant they became. Because these proto–domestic cats were undoubtedly mostly left to fend for themselves, their hunting and scavenging skills remained sharp. Even today most domesticated cats are free agents that can easily survive independently of humans, as evinced by the plethora of feral cats in cities, towns and countrysides the world over.
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So are today’s cats truly domesticated? Well, yes—but perhaps only just. Although they satisfy the criterion of tolerating people, most domestic cats are feral and do not rely on people to feed them or to find them mates. And whereas other domesticates, like dogs, look quite distinct from their wild ancestors, the average domestic cat largely retains the wild body plan. It does exhibit a few morphological differences, however—namely, slightly shorter legs, a smaller brain and, as Charles Darwin noted, a longer intestine, which may have been an adaptation to scavenging kitchen scraps.

Cats are Cool 🙂

Sustainable Aquaculture

Located on an island in the Guadalquivir river, 10 miles (16km) inland from the Atlantic, Veta la Palma produces 1,200 tons of sea bass, bream, red mullet and shrimp each year. Yet unlike most of the world’s fish farms, it does so not by interfering with nature, but by improving upon it. “Veta la Palma raises fish sustainably and promotes the conservation of birdlife at the same time,” says Daniel Lee, best practices director for the U.S.-based Global Aquaculture Alliance. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

With wild fish stocks declining precipitously around the globe, thanks to overfishing and climate change, aquaculture has emerged as perhaps the only viable way to satisfy the world’s appetite for fish fingers and maki rolls. In the next few years, consumption of farm-raised fish will surpass that caught in the wild for the first time, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. But most fish farms — even ones heralded as “sustainable” — create as many problems as they solve, from fecal contamination to the threat that escaped cultivated fish pose to the gene pool of their wild cousins.

Veta la Palama is different. In 1982, the family that owns the Spanish food conglomerate Hisaparroz bought wetlands that had been drained for cattle-farming and reflooded them. “They used the same channels built originally to empty water into the Atlantic,” explains Medialdea. “Just reversed the flow.” Today, that neat little feat of engineering allows the tides to sweep in estuary water, which a pumping station distributes throughout the farm’s 45 ponds. Because it comes directly from the ocean, that water teems with microalgae and tiny translucent shrimp, which provide natural food for the fish that Veta la Palma raises.

By hewing as closely as possible to nature, the farm avoids many of the problems that that plague other aquaculture projects. Low density — roughly 9 lb. (4 kg) of fish to every 35 cu. ft. (1 cu m) of water — helps keep the fish free of parasites (the farm loses only 0.5% of its annual yield to them). And the abundant plant life circling each pond acts as a filter, cleansing the water of nitrogen and phosphates.

Saving the World with Science and Mushrooms

Entrepreneurial mycologist Paul Stamets studies mushrooms. The focus of Stamets’ research is the Northwest’s native fungal genome, mycelium, but along the way he has filed 22 patents for mushroom-related technologies, including pesticidal fungi that trick insects into eating them, and mushrooms that can break down the neurotoxins used in nerve gas.

The webcast really gets interesting at minute 9 or so (in my opinion) with 6 specific examples.

Related: Fun Fungi – Thinking Slime Moulds – Microbe Types

Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class

Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t figure out the cause of Jessica’s abdominal distress. Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own.

In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue — slides her pathologist had said were completely normal — and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn’s disease.

“It’s weird I had to solve my own medical problem,” Terry told CNN affiliate KOMO in Seattle, Washington. “There were just no answers anywhere. … I was always sick.”
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Crohn’s disease is often misdiagnosed or diagnosed very late, says Dr. Corey Siegel, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. “Granulomas are oftentimes very hard to find and not always even present at all,” Siegel said. “I commend Jessica for her meticulous work.”

Agricultural Irrigation with Salt Water

Irrigation system can grow crops with salt water

A British company has created an irrigation system that can grow crops using salt water. The dRHS (Dutyion Root Hydration System) irrigation system consists of a network of sub-surface pipes, which can be filled with almost any water, whether pure, brackish, salted or polluted. The system can even take most industrial waste-water and use it without the need for a purification process.

The pipes are made from a plastic that retains virtually all contaminants while letting clean water through to the plants’ roots.
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The dRHS system, which has been in development for ten years, was initially trialled in the UK using tomato plants, and has since been tried out in the US. The next trials will take place in Chile, Libya, Tanzania, Mauritius and Spain. Tonkin says 20,000 metres of pipe are on their way to the Middle East, where it will be tested with water that’s more saline than sea water.
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It has also won international recognition for its work, most recently at the international Water Technology Idol event in Switzerland, organised by Global Water Intelligence magazine and the International Desalination Association.

Christopher Gasson from Global Water Intelligence magazine says that the competition was a three-way tie last year but this year, the winner stood out. “The dRHS irrigation system addressed a bigger problem than the other technology that it was competing against,” he said. “Agriculture water is where 70 per cent of water goes. By 2025 two thirds of the world’s population will experience water shortages and so farming will be badly hit.

This is good news. I am still skeptical that this is as good as the article makes it sound. Just as simple as “flushing out the pipes.” But I am hopeful we will find desalination-type solutions. Clean water is a huge problem facing the world now, basically I just figure with enough engineers focused on finding workable solutions we will find several that have a huge impact. If not, we are in real trouble.

Extremophile Hunter

NSF has begun publishing a new web magazine: Science Nation. The inaugural article is Extremophile Hunter

Astrobiologist Richard Hoover really goes to extremes to find living things that thrive where life would seem to be impossible–from the glaciers of the Alaskan Arctic to the ice sheets of Antarctica.
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“It may be that when we ultimately get a chance to bring back samples of ice from the polar caps of Mars, we might find biology that looks just like Earth life and it might be that it originated on Earth and was carried to Mars,” said Hoover. “Of course, if it can happen that way, it could have happened the other way. So we may never know the ultimate answer to how did life originate.”
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Some of the structures he has imaged from these meteorites are intriguing, bearing striking similarities to bacteria here on Earth. Could these be the fossilized remains of extraterrestial life?

“I am convinced that what I am finding in the carbonaceous meteorites are in many cases biological in nature, and I think they are indigenous and not terrestrial contaminants,” said Hoover.

It is a highly controversial interpretation. “We have for a long time thought that all life, as we know it, originated on Earth. And there isn’t any life anywhere else,” he said. “That’s an idea, it’s a hypothesis, it’s a totally unproven hypothesis.”

Backyard Scientists Aid Research

Backyard scientists use Web to catalog species, aid research

When a scientist caught onto her efforts, Jirachareonkul and a friend assembled about 20 volunteers — a group she calls the “Toad NUTS” — to collect data on the endangered Western Leopard Toad. The information they collect is being used in scientific research.
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At a time when climate change and urbanization are poised to set off a new wave of extinction, some members of the scientific community are turning toward backyard biologists for the data they need to monitor ecosystems and protect struggling species.
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Project BudBurst, out of Boulder, Colorado, aims to collect so much amateur data about plant species that scientists will be able to tell how climate change is altering the seasons in North America.
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Technology is amplifying this passion for citizen science, which has been around since scientists started cataloging species. Researchers at several universities are working on iPhone applications and computer programs that could analyze digital photos of plant leaves and automatically identify the plant’s species.
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The relationship between formal science and citizen science is similar to that between professional news reporters and bloggers; some scientists worry that the information coming in from nonprofessionals will be inaccurate, said John Musinsky, a senior director at Conservation International.

Great stuff. And you can get involved if you want. Just follow the links or search around the internet to find projects that interest you. These projects can be great ways to get kids involved in science.

Using Barn Owls for Bilogical Pest Control in Israel

Using Barn Owls (Tyto alba erlangeri) For Biological Pest Control In Israel

Agricultural pests come in all forms, but worldwide it is small mammals, mostly rodents, that are responsible for the destruction of about 35% of the total world agriculture. To combat rodents, farmers use rodenticides. However, these pesticides are relatively ineffective as they are short-lived
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During the late 1960’s, hundreds of birds of prey (some of them threatened and endangered species) were killed throughout Israel from secondary poisoning after eating rodents that had been poisoned with rodenticides.
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Once farmers grasp the concept that their ‘winged’ neighbours can help to solve rodent damage if they stop using poisons, Barn Owls and Kestrels will be able to rise to the occasion and control rodents. By living in harmony, both farmers and these birds will be able to benefit from living in co-existence. As we are just beginning to understand the power of nature we realise its many economic benefits, even in modern times. As Barn Owls and Kestrels truly know no boundaries, they not only solve economic problems, but are also bringing peoples together. This is very much needed in the Middle East.

Great stuff.

Intel Science and Engineering Fair 2009 Webcasts

Tara Adiseshan, 14, of Charlottesville, Virginia; Li Boynton, 17, of Houston; and Olivia Schwob, 16, of Boston were selected from 1,563 young scientists from 56 countries, regions and territories for their commitment to innovation and science. Each received a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation.

(video removed, so the embed code has been removed)

In the webcast, Tara Adiseshan, talks about her project studying the evolutionary ties between nematodes (parasites) and sweat bees. She identified and classified the evolutionary relationships between sweat bees and the nematodes (microscopic worms) that live inside them. Tara was able to prove that because the two have such ecologically intimate relationships, they also have an evolutionary relationship. That is to say, if one species evolves, the other will follow.

Li Boynton developed a biosensor from bioluminescent bacteria (a living organism that gives off light) to detect the presence of contaminants in public water. Li’s biosensor is cheaper and easier to use than current biosensors, and she hopes it can be used in developing countries to reduce water toxicity. Li Boynton on What’s Great About Science:

Olivia Schwob isolated a gene that can be used to improve the intelligence of a worm. The results could help us better understand how humans learn and even prevent, treat and cure mental disabilities in the future.

In addition to the three $50,000 top winners, more than 500 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair participants received scholarships and prizes for their groundbreaking work. Intel awards included 19 “Best of Category” winners who each received a $5,000 Intel scholarship and a new laptop. In total, nearly $4 million is scholarships and awards were provided.

Friday Fun: Bird Using Bait to Fish

In the webcast an Aukuu bird (Black-crowned Night Heron) fishes using bread as bait. They normally hunt by waiting at the side of a lake and fishing. This individual learned how to bait the fish with bread and improve the fishing results. It also passed on that method to other birds that learned how to use the bait method themselves.

Another bird using bait (with turtles trying to get the bait) and another bird using bait (with a stork trying to steal the fish). And another one. The videos seem to be different species of birds to me.