FieldNotes: Water, fire, origin of life, origin of cooking.

Witness borne by Shara Yurkiewicz at This May Hurt a Bit:

“I need you.” The resident looked at me. It was a rare permutation of words for a third year medical student to hear. After glancing behind me to make sure she wasn’t addressing someone else, I waited for the rest of her request. We had just left the room of one of our patients. She had stomach pain. A complete workup had been unrevealing. The endoscopy showed uninflamed gastric mucosa, the barium swallow and CT scan showed no masses or strictures, the gastric emptying study showed regular movement of stomach contents, and blood tests indicated no infection.........

Chimp 'cooks' help researchers trace the origins of the kitchen by Jason G. Goldman at Earth Touch:

Think of your favourite dish. Crispy Belgian waffle? Perhaps a gooey grilled cheese sandwich? Or a perfectly cooked steak? No matter what foods you prefer, chances are your dream meal features foods that have been cooked. No other species in the world can control fire, and fire is the engine of cuisine. It's even been argued that one of the defining characteristics of the human species is that we cook our food. All human cultures incorporate cooking into their meals in some way, and as a result, our species has a suite of adaptations in the mouth and digestive tract for consuming foods that have been transformed from their initial raw state. But one question that researchers have taken up recently is just how early cooking emerged in human evolution. How long were early hominins controlling fire before they realised they could use it for gastronomical gain?............

Food, Fighting, Fun, And 7 Other Reasons Our Ancestors Used Fire by Kristina Killgrove at Forbes:

The ability to harness and use fire is one of the keys to the evolution of humans. Fire let us move into cold areas of the world and let us exploit a huge range of foodstuffs that were previously difficult to digest. Cooked food also meant that the energy our bodies previously spent on digestion could be spent instead on running a larger brain. But the importance of fire goes beyond this, and the history of control of fire may go well beyond our species. Taken together, three articles published this month speak to a deepening anthropological interest in humans’ use of fire......

Gory Guts: Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy by Laura Geggel at LiveScience:

Tyrannosaurus rex may have gone extinct about 65 million years ago, but that didn’t stop four international experts from diving into a gory and gut-filled autopsy of the giant beast. National Geographic and its scientific collaborators made the fake specimen as realistic as possible, giving the “dead" T. rex 50 serrated teeth, bristlelike protofeathers and even shock-absorbing pads on its feet. ....

Laika and Her Comrades: The Soviet Space Dogs Who Took Giant Leaps for Mankind by Lisa Hix at Collectors Weekly:

The dog Laika, the first living being to orbit the Earth, lives on in our memories. Her lethal Sputnik 2 mission, when she was an unwitting pioneer in the USSR’s space program more than 57 years ago, has stuck in our collective consciousness. Her story is central to Lasse Hallström’s 1985 movie, “My Life as a Dog,” and the 2005 Arcade Fire song, “Neighborhood #2 (Laika).” She’s had bands named after her, monuments erected to her, and countless mementos made with her image.....

Will ET Drink Water? by Philip Ball at Nautilus:

Ateam of astronomers announced this year that they had found no fewer than eight planets orbiting the so-called Goldilocks zone around their parent stars, inside which the temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold to support life as we know it on Earth. Two of these, called Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, are the most Earth-like candidates yet seen among the 1,900 or so exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) now known to exist. “Earth-like” means, in part, that a planet has a good chance of carrying liquid water—something more likely to be true inside the Goldilocks zone. “Follow the water” has become a mantra for astrobiologists seeking signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos. With the new ability to detect the characteristic fingerprint of water in the light reflected from the atmospheres of exoplanets, some astronomers hope to spot a world that hosts life soon. But is liquid water really necessary to life? There’s a long history to the belief that it is. In 1913, the Harvard biochemist Lawrence Henderson proposed a curious inversion of Darwinian evolution, in which organisms become “fit” for their environment by adaptation. Henderson’s book The Fitness of the Environment argued that the cosmic environment is itself peculiarly “fit” to host life................

Green Juice Will Not Cure Your Cancer by Kavin Senapathy at Gawker:

Cancer misinformation runs rampant on the internet. Headlines on “natural living” websites expose the alleged truth about doctors and scientists in cahoots with Big Pharma. According to the self-styled experts behind these stories, so-called studies claim that everything from baking soda to coconut oil to green juice can cure cancer. Despite the lack of well-controlled studies in medical literature showing that “natural” or food-based therapies are effective in treating cancer, figureheads from politicians to popular bloggers buy into and promote cancer misinformation. Despite persistent and dangerous myths, cancer is not a fungus. Herbs and spices won’t prevent it; soursop, green juice and baking soda won’t cure it. Sugar doesn’t feed cancer, underwire bras don’t trap cancer-causing toxins in your tatas, and “acidic” diets don’t cause it. When it comes to cancer, thinking that food and natural measures are a good alternative to Big Pharma greed can be a deadly choice.......

Sleep: When Brain Cells Shrink & Neuro Trash Is Flushed Away by Veronique Greenwood at Nautilus:

For humans, sleep is an absolute requirement for survival, almost on par with food and water. When we don’t get it, we not only feel terrible, but our cognitive abilities go downhill, and in extreme cases sleeplessness can lead to seizures and contribute to death. And while we share with many other animals this intense commitment to spending much of our lives unconscious, we don’t really know why we do it. A paper published in Science last month suggests that the answer may lie in part with a recently discovered plumbing system that drains waste from the brain. Scientists essentially found that the brain likes to wait till sleep comes before taking out the garbage.....

The new religion: How the emphasis on ‘clean eating’ has created a moral hierarchy for food by Sarah Boesveld at National Post:

...............McCann is one of several academics presenting papers at next week’s Congress of the Humanities & Social Sciences in Ottawa looking at how the explosion of “clean eating” — whether raw food and juicing, the paelo diet, gluten-free regimens or fervent veganism — has created a moral hierarchy for food. She argues that the rise in food movements has coincided with a decline of religion in society, with many people seeking familiar values such as purity, ethics, goodness. But these movements also tend to encourage behaviours that have steered a generation away from religion: Judgment, self-righteousness, an us-versus-them mentality. And, she adds, many seek a fulfilment that cannot be satisfied with food. The relationship between food and virtue has deep roots. A bite from that apple in Eden, after all, was Eve’s fatal moral choice. Muslims and Jews avoid pork. Many Hindus and Rastafarians are vegetarian............

Tapping Your Inner Wolf by CARL SAFINA at NYT Opinion:

MEN often face pressure to measure up as alpha males, to “wolf up” as it were. Alpha male connotes the man who at every moment demonstrates that he’s in total control in the home, and who away from home can become snarling and aggressive. This alpha male stereotype comes from a misunderstanding of the real thing. In fact, the male wolf is an exemplary male role model. By observing wolves in free-living packs in Yellowstone National Park, I’ve seen that the leadership of the ranking male is not forced, not domineering and not aggressive to those on his team........

Losing the thread by Virginia Postrel at Aeon:

In February 1939, Vogue ran a major feature on the fashions of the future. Inspired by the soon-to-open New York World’s Fair, the magazine asked nine industrial designers to imagine what the people of ‘a far Tomorrow’ might wear and why. (The editors deemed fashion designers too of-the-moment for such speculations.) A mock‑up of each outfit was manufactured and photographed for a lavish nine-page colour spread. You might have seen some of the results online: an evening dress with a see-through net top and strategically placed swirls of gold braid, for instance, or a baggy men’s jumpsuit with a utility belt and halo antenna. Bloggers periodically rediscover a British newsreel of models demonstrating the outfits while a campy narrator (‘Oh, swish!’) makes laboured jokes. The silly get‑ups are always good for self-satisfied smirks. What dopes those old-time prognosticators were! The ridicule is unfair. Anticipating climate-controlled interiors, greater nudity, more athleticism, more travel and simpler wardrobes, the designers actually got a lot of trends right. Besides, the mock‑ups don’t reveal what really made the predicted fashions futuristic. Looking only at the pictures, you can’t detect the most prominent technological theme. ‘The important improvements and innovations in clothes for the World of Tomorrow will be in the fabrics themselves,’ declared Raymond Loewy, one of the Vogue contributors. His fellow visionaries agreed. Every single one talked about textile advances. Many of their designs specified yet-to-be-invented materials that could adjust to temperature, change colour or be crushed into suitcases without wrinkling. Without exception, everyone foretelling the ‘World of Tomorrow’ believed that an exciting future meant innovative new fabrics............

Some Stallion Voices More Attractive to Mares Than Others by Stacey Oke, DVM, MSc at The Horse:

We all have our own tastes when it comes to music. And, as it turns out, so do mares. Recent research results show that some stallions’ whinnies are music to mares’ ears, while others are decidedly less appealing......

Neanderthals and us: we’re not so different by Jan Freedman at TwilightBeasts:

I cried the first time I saw a Neanderthal. I was 8 years old, sat cross-legged on the wooden floorboards, watching The Land That Time Forgot. Everything around me ceased to exist as I was transported to a world of extinct beasts. This was the film that began my fascination with prehistoric creatures. It also gave me an intense fondness for Neanderthals. Based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the film follows a submarine that has travelled drastically off course, ending up in the lost land of Caprona. After exploring this unknown land some of the crew are attacked by a group of Neanderthals. They manage to capture one called Ahm (Ah-mm). We get to know Ahm, and grow very attached to this enigmatic character: he was simple, intelligent, curious, kind and gentle. He was a wonderful addition to the cast, but there was a simplicity in his portrayal. He couldn’t talk, he slouched uncomfortably when he walked and there was a rather dumb look about him. Sadly Ahm met a rather unfortunate fate whilst helping to save his new friends – he is grabbed by a Pterodactyl and we watch helplessly as he is flown away. The scene still brings tears to my eyes when I watch it today........

And if that is not enough, more readings for later this weekend:
Messages Conveyed by Assorted Facets of the Dewlap in the ‘Festive Anole’ by Tess Driessens at Anole Annals
What Makes Algorithms Go Awry? by NPR Staff at All Tech Considered
Mandatory breast density reporting legislation: The law outpaces science, and not in a good way by David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine
New Books on Dinosaurs 3: Bakker and Rey's The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology
The Myth of "Female Viagra" by Dina Fine Maron at Scientific American
How Early Academic Training Retards Intellectual Development by Peter Gray, Ph.D. at Freedom to Learn
Glyphosate toxicity: Looking past the hyperbole, and sorting through the facts. by Credible Hulk at The Credible Hulk
Breaking Up is Hard to Do; Or Not by Lucy E. Hornstein MD at Musings of a Dinosaur
Contemporary Selective Breeding. Cow Edition. by Marc Brazeau at Food and Farm Discussion Lab
What Inspires Kids to Love Science May Surprise You by Kirk Englehardt at The Leap
The Trajectory of the Sting by Stephen Ornes at The Last Word On Nothing
Mother Nature Knows Best by cYw13 at curiousYOUNGwriters
Vanishing Languages by Lynn Johnson at Maptia
If the World Began Again, Would Life as We Know It Exist? by Zach Zorich at Nautilus
Global Warming Has Neither Paused nor Slowed, Improved Data Shows by Pierce Nahigyan at Planet Experts
Monkeys' cosy alliance with wolves looks like domestication by Bob Holmes at New Scientist
The Secret Language of Chemists: Why does butter make us think of four? by Michelle Francl-Donnay at The Culture of Chemistry
What's the Difference Between Antibiotic-Free and GMO-Free? by Francie Diep at Pacific Standard
Is opposition to genetically modified food irrational? by Pamela Ronald, David Ropeik, Haidee Swanby and Calestous Juma at BBC
An Evolutionary Whodunit: How Did Humans Develop Lactose Tolerance? by Helen Thompson at The Salt
Origin-of-Life Story May Have Found Its Missing Link by Jesse Emspak at Live Science
The Value of Art to Science—A story of rotting bodies, belly buttons and the music of symbiosis by Rob Dunn at Your Wild Life
Data scientists find connections between birth month and health by Columbia University Medical Center at Medical Xpress
Eat chocolate and lose weight! Plus more on the fraudulent gay marriage paper by Tabitha M. Powledge at On Science Blogs
Seven new frogs discovered in Brazil are already at risk by Jason G. Goldman at Conservation
Feral donkeys help to stem wild dog attacks on sheep by Laurissa Smith at ABC Rural
Coop’s Scoop: Do-It-Yourself, Together by Caren Cooper at Citizen Sci
To Save California, Read “Dune” by Andrew Leonard at Nautilus
A soldier in the fight at MAFES Discovers
A Story of Wood by Krystal D'Costa at Anthropology in Practice




Previously in this series:
FieldNotes: a view to spotted horses in the morning
FieldNotes: The Word For World is Blue (or is it Gold?)
FieldNotes: Golden Mean, polite middle-ground, and optimal numbers of legs.
FieldNotes: speeding up and slowing down time
FieldNotes: from Captain Ahab to Jeff Goldblum, chasing the giants
FieldNotes: this is not your grandparents' neuroscience!
FieldNotes: Brontosaurus in, Food Babe out.
FieldNotes: Rogue Microwave Ovens Call Home
FieldNotes: Let the sleeping apes lie
FieldNotes: one thing leads to another leads to another
FieldNotes: Seductive Allure of Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations
FieldNotes: do African horses do flehmen at the sight of Derby hats?
FieldNotes: How The Bird Got Its Beak
FieldNotes: When Snakes Had Legs...
FieldNotes: Only before the bicameral mind evolved could people fall for Bohannon's cheap stunts



Image: One of many matchbox label designs celebrating the first living being in space. The text reads, “The First Sputnik Passenger—the dog ‘Laika.'” From FUEL Design and Publishing.