65 years ago, the famed behavioral endocrinologist Frank Beach wrote an article in The American Psychologist entitled ‘The Snark was a Boojum’. The title refers to Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, in which several characters embark on a voyage to hunt species of the genus Snark. There are many different types of Snarks, some that have feathers and bite, and others that have whiskers and scratch. But, as we learn in Carroll’s poem, some Snarks are Boojums! Beach paraphrases Carroll’s writing outlining the problem with Boojums:.......Studying Lizard Behavior with Lizard Robots by Jonathan Losos at Anole Annals:
Researchers have previously shown that anoles and other lizards will respond to moving robot lizards. In a recent elegant study in Herpetologica, Joe Macedonia and colleagues have used such robots to investigate what aspects of a lizard’s body or behavior are most important in eliciting responses. The work was conducted in Bermuda, where A. grahami and A. extremus were introduced from Jamaica and Barbados, respectively, in the first half of the last century......What Submarine Navigation Can Teach Us About Building Luxury Prison Tunnels by Chad Orzel at Forbes:
One of the most colorful stories getting press these at the moment is the escape of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a drug kingpin known as “El Chapo,” from a Mexican prison. El Chapo made his getaway through an elaborate tunnel stretching nearly a mile. This wasn’t a simple Tim-Robbins-with-a-rock-hammer hole, but a relatively luxurious route with its own lighting and an escape motorcycle on a track. It was presumably started at a construction site nearly a mile away from the prison, and dug to a point under the prison bathroom, with the connection to the inside being the last bit done.......Science of screaming: acoustics that trigger our fear centre identified by Hannah Devlin at The Guardian:
Human screams have a unique acoustic property that triggers the brain’s fear centre more effectively than almost any other sound, scientists have found. After testing a variety of noises, including human speech and musical instruments, the only other sounds that appeared to activate the brain in a similar way were car alarms and police sirens, the study found – perhaps explaining why they are so unpleasant to listen to and almost impossible to ignore.Can We Cure Genetic Diseases Without Slipping Into Eugenics? by Nathaniel Comfort at The Nation:
O n April 18, scientists at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, China, published an article in the obscure open-access journal Protein & Cell documenting their attempt at using an experimental new method of gene therapy on human embryos. Although the scientific significance of the results remains open to question, culturally the article is a landmark, for it has reanimated the age-old debate over human genetic improvement. The Chinese scientists attempted to correct a mutation in the beta-globin gene, which encodes a crucial blood protein. Mutations in this gene lead to a variety of serious blood diseases. But the experiments failed. Although theoretically the new method, known as CRISPR (short for “clustered regularly spaced short palindromic repeats”) is extremely precise, in practice it often produces “off-target” mutations. In plain English, it makes a lot of changes in unintended locations, like what often happens when you hit “search/replace all” in a word-processing document. The principal conclusion from the paper is that the technique is still a long way from being reliable enough for the clinic. Nevertheless, the science media and pundits pounced on the story, and for a while “#CRISPR” was trending on Twitter. ............
Why do we have blood types? by Carl Zimmer at BBC - Future:
When my parents informed me that my blood type was A+, I felt a strange sense of pride. If A+ was the top grade in school, then surely A+ was also the most excellent of blood types – a biological mark of distinction. It didn’t take long for me to recognise just how silly that feeling was and tamp it down. But I didn’t learn much more about what it really meant to have type A+ blood. By the time I was an adult, all I really knew was that if I should end up in a hospital in need of blood, the doctors there would need to make sure they transfused me with a suitable type........Biology we have learned from James Cameron's DeepSea Challenger Expedition! by ChrisM at The Echinoblog:
This week a new paper that I think everyone will be interested in! Remember back in 2012 when filmmaker James Cameron (famous for Terminator 2, Titanic, and Avatar) personally travelled down to the deepest known place on earth (> 10,000 meters!)? It was in all the papers! There was certainly some good criticism of what was accomplished but many argued that even though Cameron himself did not bring back very much, he did apparently make some collections which were studied by scientists at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and as explained by Deep Sea News' Holly Bik even mud from that depth holds the potential for interesting data (here). So, here we are now THREE years later and one of the first papers detailing results from Cameron's Expedition has been published!! !.....
Maybe it’s uncool to talk about heroes in science these days, because everyone is poised on others’ shoulders, but “Neill” (Robert McNeill) Alexander is undeniably a hero to many researchers in biomechanics and other strands of biology. Our lab probably wouldn’t exist without his pervasive influence- he has personally inspired many researchers to dive into biomechanics, and he has raised the profile of this field and championed its importance and principles like no other one individual. Often it feels like we’re just refining answers to questions he already answered. His influence extends not only to comparative biomechanics and not only around his UK home, but also –via his many, many books on biology, anatomy and related areas, in addition to his research, editorial work and public engagement with science– to much of the life sciences worldwide. What does a kneecap (patella) do? Alexander and Dimery 1985, they knew. My team is still trying to figure that out!......Tesla vs. Edison — and what the never-ending battle says about us by Phil Edwards at Vox:
.................That the rivalry has boomed is all new and a bit surreal. For most of the 20th century, Edison was America's greatest inventor and a hero of the industrial age, valorized for his hard work and ingenuity. But lately, it's Tesla who's seen his stature rise as a hero of the big idea and the true symbol of Silicon Valley–style innovation. The two are portrayed as representing completely different ideas of scientific progress, with a rivalry fit for a summer movie. But is that blockbuster battle really accurate? A closer look at the historical feud between Tesla and Edison suggests that how we think of them today says less about the two inventors than it does about ourselves.................The problem with molecular modeling is not just molecular modeling by Ashutosh Jogalekar at The Curious Wavefunction:
I am attending the Gordon Conference on Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) in the verdant mountains of Vermont this week, and while conference rules prohibit me from divulging the details of the talks, even the first day of the meeting reinforces a feeling that I have had for a while about the field of molecular modeling: the problems that plague the field cannot be solved by modelers alone. This realization is probably apparent to anyone who has been working the field for a while, but its ramifications have become really clear in the last decade or so. It should be obvious by now to many that while modeling has seen some real and solid progress in the last few years, the general gap between promise and deliverables is still quite big. The good news is that modeling has been integrated into the drug discovery process in many small and sundry ways, ranging from getting rid of duplicates and "rogue" molecules in chemical libraries to quick similarity searching of new proposed compounds against existing databases to refinement of x-ray crystal structures. These are all very useful and noteworthy advances, but they don't by themselves promise a game changing impact of modeling on the field of drug discovery and development..........
North Carolina’s steamy July days bring out some of our most spectacular solitary wasps. These sleek and streamlined hunters are quite docile toward humans, but are to be feared by other insects and spiders. The largest of these wasps in North Carolina is the cicada killer (Sphecius speciosus). Females can be up to an inch and a half long and weigh about a gram—as much as a shelled almond......My cardiac surgeon grandfather saved my baby long after he passed away by Torah Kachur at The Globe and Mail:
A month ago, I stared through a fish tank in Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton for 4 1/2 hours while my baby girl, Tate, had open-heart surgery. She was only four months old and her tiny, soft little chest was flayed open to repair her peach-pit-sized heart. I sat with my heart breaking into pieces while hers was put back together again. Tate Meredith Hunt was born on Nov. 24, 2014 and diagnosed with a heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot. It’s a congenital heart defect that affects about one in every 3,600 children and is the usual culprit for what’s known as “blue babies.” With Tate, it means the top half of her heart and the bottom half of her heart don’t quite fit together............Time of death by Shara Yurkiewicz at This May Hurt a Bit:
I really hoped she was dead. It wasn’t personal. It was as far from personal as possible. I had never met the patient while she was alive. Every four days, my team and I are on call at the hospital. For about 16 hours, we must make decisions about people we have never met. The people range from sick and stable (patients from other medical teams and new admissions), sick and unstable (rapid responses for acute changes in mental status or vital signs), dying (cardiopulmonary resuscitation and/or emergency intubation), and dead (pronouncements).......
I first met Shelby Prindaville while she was completing her Master of Fine Arts degree from the LSU Painting and Drawing Program. I was, on a whim, looking for artists who documented wildlife in coastal Louisiana and the Louisiana wetlands, for an LSU homepage feature story I was writing. Shelby responded to an e-mail announcement that went out, and I knew immediately that she belonged in this story. At the time, Shelby created amazing clay sculptures of anoles (lizards) jumping and climbing and hanging upside down off of wall mounts she constructed herself. She even collaborated with a scientist at LSU to make a new clay material that cures on-demand, which is how she was able to create such delicate sculptures of anoles in action. She was also a regular contributor to the science blog Anole Annals. I was amazed by how Shelby combined scientific accuracy with the most beautiful abstract backgrounds to bring various species to life, and in a way that magnified the animals’ unique characteristics and natural behaviors......Healing Spas and Ugly Clubs: How Victorians Taught Us to Treat People With Disabilities by Lisa Hix at Collectors Weekly:
In Netflix’s “Daredevil” series, a 2015 adaptation of a 1960s Marvel comic, flashbacks reveal that an accident blinding a boy also enhances his other four senses and gives him one more—radar location. That means the adult Matt Murdock can be a lawyer by day and a masked crime fighter by night, using his extra-sharp hearing, smelling, touch, and reflexes to brawl with villains he can’t see. In reality, a person with one impairment will have other talents and rely on different senses to navigate the world, but it’s never beyond the scope of natural human capacity. Disability scholars refer to such myths of super-human skills as a “fantasies of compensation,” which, like most of our popular beliefs about disability, come from the Victorian Era. In fact, society didn’t have a concept of “lacking ability” until industrialization, which, by the 19th century, had created an obsessive demand for “able-bodied workers” who could rapidly churn out mountains of goods. Unfortunately, in the 1800s the sciences of biology and medicine hadn’t kept pace with advances in mechanical technology, so one infection or unfortunate encounter with a factory machine could lead to invalidism, loss of a limb, or early death. As people with disabilities became more visible and regarded as problematic, able-bodied citizens started to feel compassion for what they perceived as tragic lives. What to do with all these “unproductive” bodies?..............Climate Change Mitigation Could Be the Greatest Global Health Opportunity of the 21st Century by Melissa C. Lott at Plugged In:
Moving to clean energy technologies could benefit public health today and save us billions of dollars, according to a new report from The Lancet medical journal. In “Health and Climate Change: policy responses to protect public health” a group of European and Chinese academics built upon a 2009 report in The Lancet that outlined the expected public health impacts of climate change (full disclosure – the group of academics includes the author of this post). These impacts include increasing instances of respiratory, cardiovascular, and vector-borne diseases as well as undernutrition and mental health challenges. ....
More stuff about Pluto, continuing from last week:
First Pluto Flyby Pictures Are 'Complicated and Fascinating' by Nadia Drake at National Geographic
Charon Comes Into Focus in New Horizons’ Latest Photos by Nick Stockton at Wired
Is Pluto a planet? The debate that won't end, explained. by Joseph Stromberg at Vox
Places on Pluto are Being Named for Your Darkest Imaginings by Mika McKinnon at io9
New Close-Ups of Pluto and Charon Present Puzzle for Scientists by David Rothery at ScientificAmerican
New Horizons' Pluto mission has already taught us 6 amazing things by Joseph Stromberg at Vox
Charon: The Mega-Moon With a Mountain in a Moat by Nadia Drake at No Place Like Home
All These Worlds are ours to Explore by Skyhound at The Skyhound
Lovecraft and the discovery of Pluto by Gianluigi Filippelli at Doc Madhattan
New Horizons Delivers First Close-Up Glimpse of Pluto and Charon by George Musser at ScientificAmerican
Pluto Is a Geologically Active World, But We Don't Know Why by George Dvorsky at io9
Is It Snowing on Pluto? by Maria Temming at Observations
Why Do We Have To Wait So Long To Learn About Pluto? by Ethan Siegel at Forbes
What we can learn from New Horizons by Hanneke Weitering at Scienceline
How an 11-year-old girl gave Pluto its name by Sarah Kaplan at Toronto Star
Pluto pictures: new high-resolution image delights and intrigues scientists by Alan Yuhas at Guardian US
First Pluto data reveals lots of terrain that is “not easy to explain” by Amy Thompson at Ars Technica
What you might not know about Pluto and the New Horizons mission by Tabitha M. Powledge at On Science Blogs
New Horizons' Latest: Fly Over Pluto's Ice Mountains and Alien Plains by Alan Boyle at NBC News
And if that is not enough, more readings for later this weekend:
The Perfect Scientific Crime? by Neuroskeptic at Neuroskeptic
The Top 5 Mistakes That Biology Undergraduate Students Make When Preparing For Field Positions in Biology by Eric L. Walters at Eric L. Walters
Is sleep deprivation causing teenage depression? by Tracy Brighten at The News Hub
Hey—guess what? There really is a hot hand! by Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Science explainer: We may not resurrect dinosaurs but other extinct animals likely to be revived by Jamie Boyle at Genetic Literacy Project
'Mad genius' no more: the genetic link between creativity and psychosis is pretty weak by Arielle Duhaime-Ross at The Verge
Digital Seashells and David Raup by Craig McClain at Deep-Sea News
If You Don’t Use Your Bones, You Lose Them—Unless You’re a Hibernating Bear by Perrin Ireland at onEarth
This Is the Perfect Tomato. But supermarkets refuse to sell it. by Mark Schatzker at Slate
What’s so bad about ‘processed food’? by Jay Rayner at Happy eater
Plate tectonics may have driven the evolution of life on Earth by Ross Large and John Long at The Conversation
Zhenyuanlong suni: biggest ever winged dinosaur is found in China by Ian Sample at Guardian - Dinosaurs
The Sculpins of Baikal by Christopher Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms
On the impact of social media and Twitter on scientific peer review by Ashutosh Jogalekar at The Curious Wavefunction
The evolutionary story of circadian rhythms is under scrutiny by Tina Hesman Saey at Science News
Why we are teaching science wrong, and how to make it right by M. Mitchell Waldrop at Nature
From Apes to Elephants, Wolves to Whales, a Tour of Animals’ Minds and Emotions by Andrew C. Revkin at Dot Earth
Yes, Animals Think And Feel. Here's How We Know by Simon Worrall at National Geographic
We Dissected Minions with an Evolutionary Biologist by Mike Pearl at Vice
The New York Times’ “Summer of Science” aims to make science journalism mobile-friendly and fun by Justin Ellis at Nieman Lab
Crow Figures Out Challenging 8-Part Puzzle With Little Struggle by Colleen Annek at SF Globe
Anti-science advocates are freaking out about Google truth rankings by Joanna Rothkopf at Salon
Let’s stop treating our soil like dirt by Paul West at Ensia
Surprises from Placental Mammal Phylogeny 1: Pangolins Are Close Kin of Carnivorans by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology
Having green in your flag is bad for your IQ by Bjørn Østman at Pleiotropy
Why do Modern People have so few Children? by Lesley Newson at This View of Life
What’s the difference between eating pork belly and puppy belly? Not much by Katie Herzog at Grist
The creationism continuum by Larry Moran at Sandwalk
Gut Worms Protect Babies’ Brains From Inflammation by Robin A. Smith at Duke Today
Evidence-resistant science leaders? by Björn Brembs at Björn Brembs blog
Shimmering, Squishy Comb Jellies Once Had Skeletons by Jennifer Frazer at The Artful Amoeba
What Color Is This Song? by Stephen E. Palmer at Nautilus
Human Sex Chromosomes Are Sloppy DNA Swappers by Viviane Callier at Smithsonian
What’s in a kiss? Nothing less than the very essence of what it is to be human by Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Observer
Why Atticus Finch's Racist Shift in 'Watchman' Could Be an Anomaly by Laura Geggel at Live Science
Brrrr-ying the Results by Bob Grant at The Scientist
Academia: Survival of the Bitterest? by Jan Klimas at Academia Obscura
The case against the journal article: The age of publisher authority is going, going, gone — and we’ll be just fine. by Heidi Laine at LSE Impact Blog
Saving The Planet Could Save Your Life by Mary Beth Griggs at Popular Science
This Is Your Brain on Silence by Daniel A. Gross at Nautilus
The Prozac in America’s wastewater is making birds fat and shrimp reckless by Jake Flanagin at Quartz
Miscommunication of science: music cognition research in the popular press by Samuel A. Mehr at Frontiers Psyshology
Why the Dark Side of the Force Had to Be Dark by Jim Davies at Nautilus
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
FieldNotes: Water, fire, origin of life, origin of cooking.
FieldNotes: Jurassic World, and other strange animals...
FieldNotes: Honey Badger Don’t Care!
FieldNotes: Hallucigenia is back on its head again.
FieldNotes: Poisonous and grieving quail, reclusive rail, and giants!
Images:
Illustration by J. J. Grandville
McNeill Alexander with a sauropod leg in1970s, via John R Hutchinson.
A male cicada killer perches atop a retaining wall, keeping watch over his territory. Photo: Elsa Youngsteadt.
Balancing Act, by Shelby Prindaville. Acrylic on pastelbord, 14x11", 2015.