Category Archives: Life Science

The Future of Science

Speculation on the Future of Science, summary of a Kevin Kelly speech by Stewart Brand (co-founder and co-chairman of The Long Now Foundation. He is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog).

The articles notes steps along the path to the current state of science, including:

1590 — Controlled experiment (Roger Bacon)
1609 — Telescopes and microscopes
1665 — Repeatability (Robert Boyle)
1665 — Scholarly journals
1687 — Hypothesis/prediction (Isaac Newton)
1926 — Randomized design (Ronald Fisher)
1950 — Double blind experiment

Then he discusses 5 ideas for the next 100 years.

1) “There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.”
2) “This will be a century of biology.”
3) “Computers will keep leading to new ways of science.”
4) “New ways of knowing will emerge.”
5) “Science will create new levels of meaning.”

It is wonderful to see such interesting ideas online and easily accessible to over one billion people. Yes there is a great deal of worthless stuff avoid (and some worthless stuff to enjoy) to find all the wonderful stuff. But the amount of wonderful science and engineering material available online provides great hope for what the future will bring.

update: see Kevin Kelly present at Google – more Google Engineering talks.

Ants on Stilts for Science

Ant on stilts

When Ants Go Marching, They Count Their Steps by Bjorn Carey

One is that they do it like honeybees and remember visual cues, but experiments revealed ants can navigate in the dark and even blindfolded. Another disproved hypothesis was that because ants scurry at a steady pace, they could time how long it took them to get to and fro. Other studies have shown that once ants find a good source of food, they teach other ants how to find it.

The ant “pedometer” technique was first proposed in 1904, but it remained untested until now.

Scientists trained desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, to walk along a straight path from their nest entrance to a feeder 30 feet away. If the nest or feeder was moved, the ants would break from their straight path after reaching the anticipated spot and search for their goal.

A simple example of the scientific process (another one posted yesterday about birds and global warming).
Continue reading →

Birds Fly Early

Spring Is Early, and So Are the Birds, NPR webcast

This is short real life example of the scientific method. Spring is coming earlier to Europe, thanks to global warming. Scientists figured migrating birds in southern Europe would be able to adjust to the change and leave early (because the early warming would also be obvious where they wintered). But the scientists expected that birds from Africa would not be able to tell that they should leave early.

However, they studied what actual took place and found that the migrating birds from Africa were actually arriving early while those in southern Europe were not. So now they are revising their theories and will do more study to try and determine what is happening and why (for example, how are the birds in Africa deciding to leave early?).

Swimming Robot Aids Researchers

Swimming Robot

Swimming Robot Tests Theories About Locomotion in Existing and Extinct Animals

An underwater robot is helping scientists understand why four-flippered animals such as penguins, sea turtles and seals use only two of their limbs for propulsion, whereas their long-extinct ancestors seemed to have used all four.

Don’t miss the video of the robot swimming and an informative interview with professor, John H. Long, Jr., Ph.D., who is researching with the robot.

Open-Source Biotech

Open-Source Biotech:

Mr. Jefferson, the man credited with inventing one of the main tools used in plant genetic engineering, started his campaign in 1987 by doing what the big companies that dominate agricultural biotech rarely do: He shared his discovery of beta-glucuronidase gene (GUS), an indicator that tells where a gene is, how much it expresses, and when it acts.

GUS is widely credited for enabling many breakthroughs in plant biotech, including the development of one of Monsanto’s first and most profitable agricultural products, Roundup Ready soybeans. Mr. Jefferson first provided GUS and all the know-how to use it for free to hundreds of labs around the world.

When he secured his patents, he charged only what people could afford: Monsanto, he says, paid a substantial amount; academics and companies in the developing world, including those who wanted to use his work for commercial purposes, received it free of charge.

Continue reading →

Bacterial Evolution in Yogurt

Adapting to Life in Yogurt by Carl Zimmer:

The analysis, based on the microbe’s newly sequenced genome, suggests that the bacteria descend from microbes that originally fed on plants. Some of them fell accidentally into some herder’s milk, it seems, and happened to clot it and kept it from spoiling. Since then, people have been transferring yogurt to fresh milk time and again, and the effect has been like running a long-term experiment on the evolution of bacteria.

Carl Zimmer provide much more detail in this podcast: evolution of bacteria in yogurt. Continue reading →

The Art and Science of Imaging

Cancer Cell

The Art of Imaging from Invitrogen (via Molecular Probes’ protocols for pretty pictures). See interesting images and details on exactly how to scientists create such images.

image: -catenin in HeLa human cervical cancer cells was labeled using mouse anti–catenin and visualized with Alexa Fluor 488 goat anti-mouse IgG (green). Filamentous actin was visualized using red-fluorescent Alexa Fluor 635 phalloidin. Nuclear DNA was stained with blue-fluorescent DAPI. Larger photo and more details

The image gallery includes many more images.

Arctic Seed Vault

Work begins on Arctic seed vault:

More than 100 countries have backed the vault, which will store seeds, packaged in foil, at sub-zero temperatures.
…
The vault’s purpose is to ensure survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change; and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

At temperatures of minus 18C (minus 0.4F), the seeds could last hundreds, even thousands, of years. Even if all cooling systems failed, explained Mr Riis-Johansen, the temperature in the frozen mountain would never rise above freezing due to the permafrost on the mountainside.

Gecko Tape

Sticking Around with Gecko Tape:

The tape is a simple version of the adhesive on a gecko’s feet. The soles of the lizard’s feet are covered with millions of tiny little hairs, too small to see with the naked eye. The molecules in these hairs snuggle up to the molecules of any surface the gecko walks on. The molecules are attracted to each other, forming a temporary bond that keeps the gecko firmly in place.

Also see, Caught on tape: Gecko-inspired adhesive is superstrong, for more details.

Photo: An array of tiny plastic pegs mimics the microscopic structure of a gecko’s sticky sole.

Two Butterfly Species Evolved Into Third

Butterfly photo

Two Butterfly Species Evolved Into Third, Study Finds by James Owen, National Geographic News:

Researchers say their creation reveals a process called hybrid speciation, in which the genes of two existing species combine to produce a third.

The study suggests hybridization may be more important to the evolution of new animals than had previously been thought.

Hybrids such as the mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse, are sterile. But the team says the butterfly hybrid brought together a combination of genes that allowed it to breed and there be considered a new species.