Its a Wrap


This morning, returning from a quick run for my daily caffeine transfusion, I slink past the large glass tanks that are the car showrooms along both sides of the road. Clearly, it is early. The schools of ravenous salesmen are assembling and peering out, looking to snap up the unwary. Stepping into a lot to look at a vehicle would certainly mean instant capture with no escape possible. Further along, I pass two humongous trucks, nose to nose with their hoods agape; clearly kissing cousins, getting revved up by sharing bodily currents.

Further along, the trees on both sides of the road are filled with birds jeering at me. They are not going to let me forget my error. I was reminded in the coffee shop, and am now feeling crushed and deflated by the fact that I missed National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day (1). Last Monday, whilst the rest of the Nation was bursting with excitement, I was staring at my screen, ear buds in place, with ‘Lady Gaga’ drowning out the pop culture surrounding me. I was aware that it was Thyroid Awareness Month, and was doing my bit for National Hot Tea Month, but clearly did not have my daily structure properly in place, mia culpa, indeed. Even the geese sound like they are laughing at my chagrin


My neglect of the important things in life brings the term ‘bird brain’ to mind. Though it cannot be put at the feet of exposure to radiation as has been found with the birds living in the woodland surrounding the Chernobyl site. Dr. Møller and his colleagues have found that the bird’s brains are 5% smaller than their brothers and sisters living elsewhere (2), and the speculation is that their cognitive ability is similarly reduced. Perhaps their nest sites were described as hot properties by their avian realtors.


References
1.    http://www.brownielocks.com/january.htm
2.   http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016862

Random Walk


When one starts a web-walk there are always surprising discoveries at every turn, sometimes inspiring, sometimes funny or strange and often sad. Today, I was sort of inspired by the news of Clyde Space and their plan for production of their mini-satellite, UKube1 (1). My first unworthy thought was that the ube1 was an indication of a Star Wars connection but I quickly pushed that aside. The inspiring part of the story is that Clyde Space in Scotland has a large part of the market for manufacturing bits and pieces for satellites such as solar panels. Strange for a country where I heard in Lochalsh that ‘If you can see Skye, it’s going to rain shortly, if you canna see it, it’s raining already’.

Tripping happily along the web to Africa I came on the news about a new anti-pollution law in Malawi, which has sparked a high profile argument between the Justice Minister and the Solicitor General. The Justice Minister insists that any occurrence of flatulence in public is illegal; it is a form of noxious air pollution that is no longer allowed. From now on the population will have a clenched up look rather than a buttoned up expression. It is just as well that the two largest cities, Lilongwe (the capital) and Blantyre (the economic center), do not have very many high rise blocks or else the numbers of new recruits as Elevator Police would put a huge load on the exchequer.

Moving swiftly on to other more fragrant environmental matters, there is a new public access spectra database that enables one to look at a flower and see as a bee sees (2). In clarification, it is a website where you have to submit raw reflectance spectra data that you have recorded to get the full picture. Interesting because bee’s vision works into the ultraviolet and they see things that we can’t. The nectaries on plants are clearly marked for bees with landing strips laid out on the petals and targets for them to stick proboscis in.

Unfortunately when hitting the PLoS ONE journal site, the anesthesiology and pain management section comes up first and a decapitation study (3) tripped me up. The question asked: is decapitation humane? The subjects were ‘obsolete’ rats in the Netherlands. The methodology was using EEG with anesthetized and wide-awake animals. The results indicated that consciousness decreases with time at the rate: C(t)=exp(-t/6), which means that the half-life of being awake after the blade falls is 4 secs. Even more spine chilling was that the EEGs of the anesthetized subjects indicated that the process woke them up. Where are we going with these experiments? Bearing in mind that animal experiments are used as a human model, the Netherlands has a euthanasia provision and is right close to France with “Madame, La Guillotine”. Mmm.. I’ll have to stop watching horror movies and reading historical spine-chillers!


1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-12334344
2. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014287
3. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016514

Tail Tale



There was a beautiful sunrise this morning, which lasted just for a few minutes as the clouds broke and the earth turned. The old adage of a red sky in the morning being a warning – for sailors or shepherds, depending where you’re from, has proved false today with beautiful blue skies, with the occasional streaky cloud, and sullied only by slowly expanding vapor trails. However, the surrounding hills are hazy and its these airborne droplets that spread the bright reds and oranges of the sunrise across the horizon, after the greens and the blues had been scattered by the air molecules and the nano-sized dust particles

The main pond reflects the blue and the water is now clear and sediment-free as the incoming water has been reduced to the flow of a small creek. The sub-ponds are looking uninspiring with black mud and the dead reeds blackening. A group of ten guys are busy planting a dense forest on the banks and islands of the most westerly ponds. It will be interesting to see if these survive.

I’m not sure what the plant species are. They will be native to the Northwest I assume and interesting in their own way. However, probably not as curious as Cytinus visseri, a South African parasitic plant that hides away in its host but produces dark red flowers that need pollinating. Not trusting the insect world to do the job, they recruit our little mammalian friends with mouthwatering scents. The chemicals that they emit are ketones and esters; heptanone and ethyl butyrate are examples. (Think pear drops and your mind will have your nose in the general direction.) The picture of the little mice running around to their candy stores is not the end of the story though as there is a twist in the tale. Honey bee alarm pheromones are also made up of ketones and esters. Typical ones are hexanone, pentyl acetate and butyl acetate. Certainly to my untutored nose, hexanone and heptanone smell the same and I doubt if I could separate the ester mix either. So I worry about the poor mice in search of the sweet life making a decidedly poor life choice.

Of Mice and Parrots


Today my attention was caught by some rather interesting work from Sven Petersen and his team (1) who have shown that the bacterial load in the gut has a marked effect on behavior. The work was with mice, not men, but my first thought was ‘Well, yes’, what’s going on in my gut certainly affects my behavior, whether its after a high dose of broad spectrum antibiotics or a meal of tainted chicken. However, reading in a little more detail shows that not only do hormone levels change, but also gene expression is altered which affect the neuronal circuits. The result is the mice are much more adventurous, running about all over the place, showing much less anxiety.

The critical period for the micro-flora to be affecting the brain development was the prenatal and early postnatal period. In my January 31st post I drew attention to the work on the ablation of the paternal Grb10 gene giving rise to dominant behavior. One is left to wonder what was Mighty Mouse’s mom eating?

With the thought that reporting on the research of others is simply ‘parroting’ the information comes the urge to share the findings of Dr. Brown of Macquarie U in Oz. His work shows that the parrots in Oz are either right or left footed. The surprise though is that sulfur crested cockatoos are all left footed. Humans are the only other species to show strong limbic preference, with 90% being right handed. Our daily squawk is something else we have in common, although some are more raucous than others.

Reference
1. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/26/1010529108

Harmony Abides


My Oregon Grape has opened its first flower but no insect is brave enough to come out and admire it. The clear sky is a strong cobalt color overhead and drifts to a pastel baby blue at the horizon. The sun is bright but the breeze chill is winning at this time in the morning.

It’s two days since I paid attention to the ponds and in my absence our bridge-to-nowhere has been tagged by a couple of no-talent graffiti-ists. Also someone has flushed the ponds and the water level is now about two and a half feet lower than when I last saw it. The waterfront nesting properties now have lengthy beaches of black mud and pebbles. Large stretches of the ponds consist of exposed mud and grey, sad looking reeds.

The geese seem to like it however, and a large number have returned from their sojourn on the grass. There are a lots of white rumps pointing at the sky as the long necks can now reach the tasty morsels on the bottom of the pond. Peace and harmony seem to be the rule, save for a couple of geese engaged in a noisy courting ritual, which involves a lot of neck contortions and honking; the goose equivalent of teenagers perhaps?

The car lots have their New Year models on display in long lines with trucks lined up, wheel arch to wheel arch, like an army with the large aggressive grills that are favored as this years fashion but which look as attractive as a wood-chipper looks to a freshly pruned branch.

Of Mice and Frogs


The gene scene today is again interesting. A new paper by Dr. Ward and his colleagues (1) describes some work with mice and the Grb10 gene were the father contribution has been switched off so that the imprinting possibility is solely from the maternal allele. In this case the adult developed a marked dominance, nibbling off some of their fellows fur and whiskers and generally being the Genghis Khan of their mouse world. It is interesting to remember that we too have the Grb10 gene, but I’m stuck with chewing my own whiskers.

Following on with unexpected genetic developments is the news item on Gastrotheca guentheri, a frog that prefers to live in trees (2). It is the only frog that has a full set of teeth. Frogs evolved to loose their lower set about 200 million years ago. Now our tree frog re-evolved the bottom set about 20 million years ago and has been happy with that ever since.

Already I can here the clamor ‘Why is this important unless you’re G guentheri?’ Well, it has provided a loophole in Dollo’s law. Louis Dollo was a Belgian paleontologist, who in 1893 taught us that evolution is irreversible. This has provided a good subject for discussion. The argument for the view is that evolution is the result of many different genetic changes resulting in a survival advantage but the route is not necessarily optimal and reversing that route would give too many options for there being a significant probability of getting back to the same starting point.

The possibility of ongoing genetic development, combined with an evolutionary advantage to have a full set of teeth, if you are a frog living up trees, seems a perfectly reasonable idea to me and that there is no need to reverse the total genetic evolutionary process. However, a rash minute or two following the threads on the blogosphere, rapidly take one down intelligent design rabbit holes insisting on the reversibility of time. A very scary proposition, which again leaves me chewing on my whiskers, and trying not to think about the reversing of my eating lunch.


References:
1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7331/full/nature09651.html

2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9365000/9365076.stm

Wow!


I have been reading today about Susie, who is a refugee from Sumatra and an orangutan. She has just had her genome sequenced by Dr. Locke and his international team and they have concluded that her genetic make up means that she is more closely related to our common ancestors than either chimps or other people that I’ve known. The observations that peeked my interest were that the study indicated that the genes involved with the metabolism of glycolipids and those involved with visual perception were some of the most involved in the differentiation of our ancestral lineage. Both of these bits of information chimed with other  items of news today.
                               
 image courtesy: Jamie Goodwin; 
 http://jamies-art-blogg.blogspot.com

Firstly, John Hurt for the BBC’s Human Planet gives us a recipe for kiviaq, a highly nutritious food that is rich in glycolipids and comes from northern Greenland. Glycolipids are a source of energy, which is in great demand in the long north Greenland winters. Packing auks inside sealskins and allowing them to ferment during for the summer months, until food is short in the winter, is how we should make Kiviaq. It apparently tastes like strong Gorgonzola cheese, but I can’t confirm that as I am still waiting to try it.

Secondly, the visual perception issue has come to the fore with the rapid expansion of 3D films, games and TV sets to show them on. The BBC Click Newsletter reports that there is grave concern over the health effects of watching 3D images. The concern over very young children may be reasonable, although I suspect exposing 2 or 3-year olds to some of the movies might be bad, even if they weren’t in 3D. However, the concern over the exposure of senior citizens, and especially those who have had a beer or two, seems a little bizarre. Most seniors that I know who are stuck in front of a movie, 3D or not, after a few beers have their eyes closed and will be quite protected from perceptual overexcitement.