Octopuses Give Eight Thumbs up to HDTV

Octopuses give eight thumbs up for high-def TV

“Octopuses,” Miss Pronk said, “are very smart. I have seen my octopuses open Vegemite jars by unscrewing the lid. They can find their way through mazes to reach food rewards at the end. “And they can learn simple puzzles”, recognising that symbols, such as squares or circles, mean food is available.
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When the crab movie was screened “they jetted straight over to the monitor and tried to attack it”, she said, adding that was strong evidence they knew they were watching food.

When the octopus movie was screened some became aggressive while others changed their skin camouflage or “would go and hide in a corner, moving as far away as possible”.

On viewing the swinging bottle, some puffed themselves up, just in case the object was a threat, while others paid no attention.

But significantly, when the experiment was repeated over several days, she found no consistent response from any octopus. Such random responses implied octopuses have no individual personalities.

She suspected previous efforts to show movies to octopuses failed because their sophisticated eyes were too fast for the 24-frame per second format of standard-definition video.

Online Education in Science, Engineering and Medicine

The National Academies state that they want to develop websites, podcasts, and printed information featuring the topics in science, engineering, and medicine that concern you the most, and that you’d like to understand better. Great. I am very disappointed in how little great material is available now (from them, and others).

Fill out their survey and hope they hire some people that actually understand the web. I must say the survey seems very lame to me.

The internet provides a fantastic platform for those that have an interest in increasing scientific literacy. But there is still very little great material available. There are a few great resources but there should be a great deal more. The National Academies of Science have a particularly stilted web presence – it is as though the web were just a way to distribute pages for people to print out. Though they are very slowly getting a bit better, adding a small amount of podcasts, for example. While hardly innovative, for them, it is a step into the 21st century, at least.

Some of the good material online: Public Library of Science – Science Blogs – Encyclopedia of Life – The Naked Scientists – Berkeley Course Webcasts – BBC Science News – MIT OpenCourseWare (though it is very lacking in some ways at least they are trying) – TED – Mayo Clinic – Nobel Prize – SciVee

It seems to me universities with huge endowments (MIT, Harvard, Yale, Standford…), government agencies (NSF, National Academies), museums and professional societies should be doing much more to create great online content. I would increase funding in this area by 5 to 10 times what is currently being dedicated right now, and probably much more would be wise. I believe funding this would be most effective way to spend resources of those organizations on what they say they want to support.

Social Amoeba

Amoebic Morality by Carol Otte

At first their behavior might seem odd; to gather together in the face of starvation surely ought to end in cannibalism or death. Not so, for they are capable of an extraordinary and rare transformation. The amoebas set aside their lives as individuals and join ranks to form a new multicellular entity. Not all the amoebas will survive this cooperative venture, however. Some will sacrifice themselves to help the rest find a new life elsewhere.

These astonishing creatures are Dictyostelium discoideum, and they are a member of the slime mold family. They are also known as social amoebas. Aside from the novelty value of an organism that alternates between unicellular and multicellular existence, D. discoideum is highly useful in several areas of research. Among other things, this organism offers a stellar opportunity to study cell communication, cell differentiation, and the evolution of altruism.

In response to the cAMP distress call, up to one hundred thousand of the amoebas assemble. They first form a tower, which eventually topples over into an oblong blob about two millimeters long. The identical amoebas within this pseudoplasmodium– or slug– begin to differentiate and take on specialized roles.

Another cool example of how life has evolved novel solutions to perpetuate genes.

1,000 Species Discovered in Greater Mekong in Last Decade

Photograph of Gumprechts Green Pitviper courtesy Greater Mekong Programme/WWF International

While most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands, some were first found in the most surprising places. The Laotian rock rat, for example, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market, while the Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

“This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,” said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo. “It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,” he said.

The findings, highlighted in this report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad. The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme. “We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.”

The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to provide for livelihoods and alleviate poverty, and ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong’s astonishing array of species and natural habitats.

Full press release. I am a World Wildlife Fund member.

Educating Future Scientists and Engineers

Texas in danger of losing global race

American demand for scientists and engineers is expected to grow four times faster than all other professions over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet today, only 5 percent of U.S. college undergraduates earn degrees in science and engineering, whereas in China, 42 percent of students do.
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Not only are highly qualified Texas science and math teachers in short supply today, but we’re losing literally thousands each year. In 2007 alone, approximately 4,000 math and science teachers left Texas classrooms, costing our state an estimated $27 million to replace them.

Fortunately, there are programs already proven successful in preventing the loss of highly qualified math and science teachers, such as UTeach, a teacher training and support program launched at The University of Texas at Austin in 1997.
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The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas — made up of Texas’ Nobel Laureates and National Academies members — has proposed four practical, actionable recommendations for state leaders to adopt, putting Texas on the path to world-class math and science education for our children, and a prosperous future for our state.

Undersea Cables Cut Again – Reducing India’s Capacity by 65%

Once again a severed underwater cable has disrupted web access

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed. It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.

A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
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It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.

Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area – off the Egyptian coast – although only two lines were snapped then. “We’ve lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we’re looking at a total blackout in the Middle East,” said Mr Wright.

“These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we’re going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet,” he added.

“Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern.”

Friday Fun with Goats

Video removed.

The tree climbing goats of Morocco. Also see the fainting goats.

Fund Teacher’s Science Projects

With donorschoose.org teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.

Such as: Budding Scientists Need Basics!!! – “My students need 9 hands-on science equipment such as graduated cylinders, magnifying glasses, and vivid photographic books about weather and life cycles so they can experience science first-hand. The cost of this proposal is $386”

Hands On Science! – “My students need a human body model, a skeleton model, a skull model, 2 microscopes, beakers and graduated cylinders. The cost of this proposal is $1,060”

Eyes On Observation! – “My students need 4 Brock Magiscopes. The cost of this proposal is $688”

Let’s Rock the Rocks – “My students needs 2 complete sets of classroom Rock, Fossil & Mineral Collections and a Rock & Soil Activity Tub for science. The cost of this proposal is $351”

You can target high poverty schools, if you wish. If you want to help make a difference in the science literacy of the USA go ahead and find a project you want to help fund and make a donation. Or if you are a teacher, add a project for others to fund.

RoboCup: Robot Football (Soccer)

RoboCup aims to, by 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in football. As the video shows the teams have a ways to go. But this seems like a great process.

Bacteria Offer Line of Attack on Cystic Fibrosis

MIT researchers have found that the pigments responsible for the blue-green stain of the mucus that clogs the lungs of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients are primarily signaling molecules that allow large clusters of the opportunistic infection agent, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, to organize themselves into structured communities.
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P. aeruginosa appears as a classic opportunistic infection, easily shrugged off by healthy people but a grave threat to those with CF, which chokes the lungs of its victims with sticky mucus.

“We have a long way to go before being able to test this idea, but the hope is that if survival in the lung is influenced by phenazine — or some other electron-shuttling molecule or molecules — tampering with phenazine trafficking might be a potential way to make antibiotics more effective,” said Newman, whose lab investigates how ancestral bacteria on the early Earth evolved the ability to metabolize minerals.