The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Science Sunday: Bears... in... spaaaaaace!

Behold the humble tardigrade, or "water bear."

 

These tiny eight-legged invertebrates, measuring a millimeter in length at most, are found in damp environments around the world. They especially favor clumps of moss and lichen, the ground around the bottoms of trees and similar cool shady places.

When a water bear's habitat is dried out--a common occurrence if one happens to live in a bit of moss--it undergoes an amazing transformation. It collapses its legs into its body in a process called invagination. (Shut up.) Its body shrivels into a barrel shape, and it exudes a waxy substance that quickly dries to a watertight crust over its entire surface. In this "tun" form, it can live for months or years, its metabolic functions dropping to almost nothing, until it is placed once again in a moist environment. Then, over the course of a few hours, it uncurls its body, stretches out its tiny legs, shakes its tiny head (actually, I just made that part up) and goes about its tardigradely business. It can also accomplish this amazing feat of shutting itself down and reviving itself later when exposed to extreme cold, overly salty water or even seemingly lethal doses of radiation.

And as a group of scientists associated with the European Space Agency has discovered and reported in the latest Current Biology, these characteristics make water bears the only animals known--so far--to be able to survive unprotected in outer space. The vacuum that would cause an astronaut sans space suit to explode like a grape under a boot heel; the UV and cosmic radiation that would frizzle-fry an unwary spacefarer like a pat of butter in a colossal microwave: The meek little tardigrade, all wrapped up in itself, shrugs off these dangers and keeps on keeping on.

Dr. K. Ingemar Jonsson of Sweden's Kristianstad University led a team of researchers who, in September 2007, packed a crew of pre-dessicated water bears into the unmanned (but fully beared) FOTON-M3 spacecraft and sent them into a low Earth orbit for 12 days of zero-oxygen, zero-pressure, high-radiation excitement. When the hapless critters returned to Earth, Jonsson and colleagues rehydrated them and watched in glee as they slowly unfurled and went about their beary business, unfazed by their ordeal and probably quite hungry.

Can bio-engineered human/tardigrade chimeras, to whom the irradiated vacuum of space is as comfy as a bubbling Jacuzzi, be far behind? When the Sun goes supernova and swallows the Earth, will water bears survive and drift blithely away through the interplanetary inferno? Only time--and the imaginations of science fiction writers far more talented than I--will tell.

One more thing. No, two. No, three.

•  Dr. Jonsson had a blog at one time called TARDIS, though he hasn't updated it since the water bears' safe return. 
• Here's the abstract of the Current Biology paper, plus a writeup of the discovery from EurekAlert!.
• And also, here's a tardigrade in action with dopey music:

Happy Valentine's Day: The Sex Edition

Isn't it lovely that there's a day each year devoted to that most bubbly and unreliable of emotions, Romantic Love? Where would florists, Hallmark shops and retailers of novelty panties be without Valentine's Day?

But really, at the heart of it all, beyond the nasty Russell Stover "chocolates" and the limp Honduras-grown roses, romance is all about the hubba-hubba, the bumpin' uglies, the bow-chicka-bow-bow. So it is with the greatest of glee that I offer for your perusal a collection of sexy sex tidbits re: sex.

First of all: Gorillas Gone Wild! Gorillas, like most other animals--including our other non-bonobo primate cousins--usually have sex in what is described scientifically as the "dorso-ventral position," or colloquially as "doggy-style." But two days ago, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology released photos of two gorillas mating "ventro-ventrally," or "face to face," or "people-style." Awww! Sweet!  Romantic! Those big fuzzy lugs are just like us. Except, rather disturbingly, the photos include the female partner's juvenile daughter sitting off to the side and observing, which, ew, that's why Mama and Papa have a door that closes. (Hat tip: Herm.)

Second of all: Texas Smackdown! The Texas Legislature, home of such popular laws as "no buttsecks for anybody" (struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003), has long kept the good people of Texas from being able to legally acquire and use a variety of sex toys. But yesterday, the Fifth Circuit Court struck down the law forbidding the "sale or promotion of obscene devices," finding that this law violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of privacy. For a very funny, uniquely Molly Ivins-style look at the absurdity of this law, check out this edited version of the Dildo Diaries (note that "edited" means "shorter," not "child-appropriate").

Hooray, Texans! Time to celebrate! Might I suggest a celebratory stop at a fine purveyor of adult products such as Blowfish or Good Vibrations?

Third of all: Does your boring relationship need some spicing up? Surprisingly, you can restore that brand-fresh excitement by... um, doing something less boring than what you're used to. From the Department of the Startlingly Obvious comes a study showing that couples who engaged in "novel" activities (such as riding a roller coaster together) experienced higher levels of brain activation and expressed more satisfaction with their relationships than did couples who engaged in "pleasant" but familiar activities such as eating at a favorite restaurant. My prescription for marital happiness? A skydiving trip, followed by purchase of an "educational model" and/or "personal massager" and some serious ventro-ventral action. (Or dorso-ventral action. Whatev. Gotta keep the novelty level high.)

Finally: vegans and carnivores, a match quite possibly not made in heaven. Man, I am looking forward to Sweetie's and my pan-seared filet mignon with mustard-Cognac sauce and twice-baked potatoes tonight. Who loves ya babe?

Happy Valentine's Day to all you starry-eyed lovers out there!

Science Friday: Babies having babies

Pity the hapless Tenontosaurus. A mild-mannered herbivorous dinosaur, it spent its days rummaging around for enough leafy food to sustain its two-ton bulk. But its life in the swampy lowlands of the early Cretaceous period was no walk in the park. Heavy and ungainly, it proved fairly easy pickings for fast and brainy predators such as Deinonychus (Deinonychus teeth have been found embedded in fossilized Tenontosaurus bone).

So what's a prey species to do? Life was nasty, brutish and short for critters like Tenontosaurus, and the pressure to reproduce before falling victim to a predator was heavy. Now, UC Berkeley researchers Sarah Warning and Andrew Lee (lowly grad students, yet!) have found evidence that Tenontosaurus, and probably many other dinosaur species as well, turned to teen pregnancy as a means of survival.

Like their modern descendants the birds, dinosaurs produced a special calcium-rich form of bone called medullary bone inside the hollow cavities of their leg bones when they were preparing to lay eggs. In modern birds, the medullary bone forms three to four weeks before the bird ovulates. Calcium from the medullary bone is used to form eggshells, and the bone disappears after the eggs are laid. Since 2005, three dinosaur skeletons have been examined that show evidence of medullary bone, indicating that the skeleton was that of a female nearly ready to reproduce. One of these skeletons was that of a Tenontosaurus that met with some mishap during this pre-ovulation period.

Dinosaurs produced distinct growth lines (similar to tree rings) in their bones as they grew. By counting the rings, scientists can estimate the age of a dinosaur at death: most species are believed to have had a lifespan of around 30 years. When Werning and Lee calculated the Tenontosaurus specimen's age, they discovered she had been only about eight years old: not yet full-grown, but apparently mature enough to bring little Tenonto-tots of her own into the world.

Interestingly, this pattern of rapid growth and early sexual maturity characterizes birds and mammals as well--think of a six-month-old cat having kittens, for example (or, for that matter, a thirteen-year-old girl pushing her baby's stroller through the mall).

Also (and this is purest speculation on my part), if Tenontosaurus lived in groups as its descendants the hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) did, maybe the young mothers benefited from the presence and help of their mothers, aunties and older sisters. Just like one big episode in the neverending series of Land Before Time movies, yo.

BBC: Dinosaurs grew fast, bred young
SF Chronicle: They had sex young and then died
Laelaps: Precocious Dinosaur Sex
Abstract from PNAS: Sexual maturity in growing dinosaurs does not fit reptilian growth models

Science Friday: Suicide Thigh Cream edition

Let's get scientific!And talk about how to do science!

Because there aren't enough Brazilian models in the world already: Brazilian researchers have discovered that a cream containing a 7% caffeine solution can apparently reduce the circumference of women's thighs. In this study, 99 women applied the cream twice daily for 30 days, and "more than 80%" experienced slimming of the upper and lower thighs, while "nearly 68%" also had some slimming of the hips.

Unfortunately, there's no information provided about whether or not this was a proper double-blind study, in which neither the subjects nor the researchers would know which women were using the actual caffeinated cream and which were using a placebo. There are also no details about what the average amount of "slimming" was, whether the women were simultaneously dieting or following an exercise program or anything else that would make this study, y'know, useful. Regardless, though, I think I'm going to up my coffee consumption to 47 cups a day and see what happens. (ScienceDaily)

There's a tear in my beer and a slug in my mug: Pity the poor country singer. He's so often left bereft: wifeless, truckless, jobless, dogless ("friendless, helpless, hopeless!"). The litany of his romantic and personal tribulations could be enough to drive anyone to suicide... and, apparently, sometimes it does. An analysis of 49 U.S. metropolitan areas revealed that suicide rates are correlated to the prevalence of country radio stations, and, one assumes, the prevalence of drivin' and cryin' while listenin' to country music.

An amusing sidenote: the researchers did all kinds of fancy statistical backbending to correct for the possible effects of poverty, divorce, gun availability and "Southernness." Heck, those sound like a country song right there! (Disclaimer: I am quite the fan of [old-school] country myself... suicide, not quite so much.) (Frontal Cortex; original paper at University of Texas, Arlington)

So glad to know I'm not the only person who despises Simcha Jacobovici: The great thing about science--and the one that separates it from all those other (lesser) "ways of knowing"--is that you can learn more by being proven completely wrong than you can by having your pre-existing notions confirmed. The most ineffective and damaging way to conduct research is by entering into a project with dogmatic ideas about what your results will be and clinging to those ideas in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. (See creationism, geocentrism, vaccines-cause-autism-ism, et cetera.)

The discipline of archaeology seems especially prone to proliferating crackpots, kooks and the simply misinformed among its ranks. Professional archaeologists operate just as other scientists do, with carefully designed research questions and painstaking collection and analysis of evidence. Yet a number of fringe "archaeologists" persist, twisting the facts and misinterpreting the finds to support their over-imaginative theories. Erich von Daniken, author of Chariots of the Gods?, was one of the earliest and best-known of this group. He hypothesized that everything from the Great Pyramid to Stonehenge was created by godlike space aliens who taught art, science and engineering to those poor hapless underevolved humans, then flew away again on their magical rocketships. (He did not mention whether Tom Cruise's buddy Xenu was among those aliens.)

Biblical archaeology, because of its close historical ties to religion and religious investigators, is an area of the field similarly filled with incompetence and outright charlatanry. The above-maligned Simcha Jacobovici, a "journalist" with no formal archaeological training, rode the faux-archaeology gravy train to international fame. He helped pimp the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" debacle, then got a job hosting the "Naked Archaeologist" show on the History Channel. (Which immediately supplanted all other real archaeology programming on that channel, thereby making the decision for us to dump cable far easier... so I guess I sorta owe him that much.) Other so-called archaeologists claim to have discovered everything from Noah's Ark (over and over again!) to Sodom and Gomorrah (buried under a heavy layer of brimstone, one presumes). Yet there's no scientific validity to any of these discoveries, and the continual stream of discredit is--or should be--an embarrassment to anyone looking to archaeology for validation of the Bible's historicity.

Anyway. Here's a great rant from Archaeology magazine on the two concurrent states of Biblical archaeology: Raiders of the Faux Ark.

Cats! Science! Experiments! This is one of Rhys' Christmas presents. Shhh!

Why science education is important: Because if done properly, it might keep you from falling for this kind of bizarre crap. A Louisiana man convinced his friends and family that his wife was a CIA agent with the ability to use spy satellites to "monitor" their bodies from space and see if they had any health problems. Not only that, this amazing satellite could supposedly remotely administer medicine to them, nipping any health problems in the bud. His take on this scam? Almost $900,000. Damn. I am so in the wrong business. (SFGate)

Science Friday: Can you dig it?

So this is something that I'm trying out and may or may not maintain for the long haul.

Welcome to the first-ever Science Friday at the Picayune-Democrat. My goal here is to highlight science news, blogs and commentary which might be of particular interest to homeschoolers--but which I hope will grab everyone else's attention, too. 'Cuz science is just cool.

Today's topic: archaeology, a subject near & dear to my heart.

My interest in grubby old things dug out of the ground started in second or third grade, when I checked out a book from the library (on what subject, I cannot recall) that discussed archaeologists' unearthing of some fantabulous object from the reign of Charlemagne. It mentioned that Charlemagne's reign lasted from 768 to 814.

The notion completely boggled me. 768? How could a date have only three numbers in it? Of course, if I thought carefully about it, I knew that Jesus must have been born in the year 1, and that cities and empires and suchlike had obviously existed long before that; but still, for some reason, that three-digit date blew me away with its utter ancientness. I imagined how it would be to sift through layers of dirt, to feel something solid under my fingers, to lift it into the light and see the telltale glimmer of gold, undimmed by time, through  its shroud of dust.

I had been bitten by the archaeology bug. And, more specifically, by the medieval archaeology bug. Egyptian and classical archaeology never grabbed me the same way, for whatever reason (and Egyptology still hasn't, though I did eventually develop an unhealthy fascination with Greece and Rome... though, really, the Hellenistic period is my favorite). It was all about crumbling skeletons in musty crypts, hoards of Celtic gold and Viking silver, sooty smudges in the earth marking out where humble village houses had once stood.

Archaeology holds the same fascination for many kids--and why wouldn't it? It's got those initially seductive elements of adventure, surprise, discovery, hidden treasure. And once you've gotten past those, there's the sheer Sensawunda that comes from seeing and touching something that was actually made and used by people now long dead, hundreds or thousands of years ago. You realize that even the humblest shard of pottery or gnawed end of bone can be a clue that helps you reconstruct a real story about real lives.

The last few weeks have seen some astonishing archaeological finds revealed around the globe:

Hatshepsut's mummy? Despite my professed uninterest in all things Egyptological, the story of Hatshepsut is still pretty darn interesting. Elevated to the throne as regent for her underage stepson after her husband's death, Hatshepsut seized power with both hands and made a host of powerful enemies in the process. At least in her surviving statuary portraits, she wore the false beard and male dress that signified her powers as pharoah. She even began grooming her daughter to succeed her, dressing the girl as a young man. She constructed an elaborate temple complex in southern Egypt, probably to establish her religious power independent of the existing priesthood structures. After her death, this complex was vandalized and most of her portraits were defaced as her stepson attempted to obliterate her memory. Now, testing on a mummy discovered in a humble tomb reveals it may be the body of the long-lost queen. A tooth discovered in a wooden box with Hatshepsut's name on it matches exactly to a broken root in the mummy's jaw, and DNA analysis of the mummy's astonishingly well-preserved liver shows a relationship to Ahmose Nefertari, founding matriarch of Egypt's 18th dynasty.

Inca gunshot victim. The skeleton of the first known gunshot victim in the New World has been discovered. Several hundred bodies were found in a cemetery outside Lima, Peru, apparently slain by the conquistador Pizarro's army. One skull  was pierced by two holes, exactly opposite each other; nearby, archaeologists found a bone plug with the markings of a musket ball still in it. Further analysis revealed traces of lead around the edges of the wound, confirming that the skeleton--that of a man in his late teens or early twenties--had been shot in the head. This man was probably killed during the Inca uprising of 1536, soon after the conquistadors' arrival in Peru; within 70 years, nearly 80 percent of the Inca were dead. (This link goes to a short but very cool and informative video from National Geographic.)

Here, kitty, kitty. You already knew cats were not like dogs--here's some scientific explanation of why. Genetic research shows that cats are descended from a subspecies of Felis sylvestris native to the Near East, known as lybica. Unlike dogs, cattle, sheep and camelids, they appear to have domesticated themselves, evolving into a (relatively) friendly species that could (relatively) peacefully coexist with humans; their emergence as a species parallels the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent area and the resulting boom in rodent populations as granaries provided new dining and dwelling options for these pesky creatures. Cats, ever the opportunists, stepped up to exploit this valuable new highly-concentrated food source, and those individual cats which could prove (relatively) endearing to their human cohabitants enjoyed higher breeding success. They moved into people's homes and basked in the warmth of their fires; they bore their litters in safer, more protected places; they may even (this is 100% Molly-conjecture here) have had lower rates of skin parasite infestation as humans petted and groomed them. And now, all these thousands of years later, everyone who shares a home with a cat has official scientific confirmation: You don't own your cat. Your cat owns you.

Tune in next Friday, one hopes, for more sciencey stuff, one hopes. Possible topics: the search for planets in other solar systems? the physics of LEGO? the current administration's monkeying about with the Endangered Species Act? Who knows? But I am surely open to suggestions.