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Posts

May 19, 2013

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9:13 PM | Reflecting on Applied Animal Behavior
Time for reflection (By Wieselblitz)Hi Mia! Love the lavender research! Learning that dogs show different behaviors when exposed to different scents could help us prime environments to be associated with particular dog behaviors and moods (you noted that exposure to peppermint and rosemary are associated with activity and barking while exposure to lavender and chamomile bring out resting). At the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab, we have a new paper coming out soon in Learning and Motivation -- the […]

Mason G., Clubb R., Latham N. & Vickery S. (2007). Why and how should we use environmental enrichment to tackle stereotypic behaviour?, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 102 (3-4) 163-188. DOI:

Do you believe in dog?
Academic Life | Behavioral Biology
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7:48 PM | A deeper look at the geology of diamonds
The geology of diamonds is fascinating in itself, but they also give insights into wider geological processes and history. Up until 1725, diamonds were only known from India. That all changed when Brazilians panning river sediments for gold, instead found diamonds. Recent … Continue reading →

Harte, B. & Richardson, S. (2012). Mineral inclusions in diamonds track the evolution of a Mesozoic subducted slab beneath West Gondwanaland, Gondwana Research, 21 (1) 236-245. DOI:

Harte, B. & Cayzer, N. (2007). Decompression and unmixing of crystals included in diamonds from the mantle transition zone, Physics and Chemistry of Minerals, 34 (9) 647-656. DOI:

Metageologist
Geosciences
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4:10 PM | Shrinking Alligator Penises: Using Wildlife Models to Study How Chemical Contaminants May Affect Human Reproductive Systems (Guest Post)
<!--StartFragment--> Erin on the side of a river somewhere in western NC, hard at work study obviously. <!--StartFragment-->Erin Abernethy is a Master’s student in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia, where she is studying scavenging ecology in Hawaii. Before coming to Athens, Erin lived in North Carolina earning her BS in Biology at Appalachian State. For that degree,

Guillette Jr., L., Pickford, D., Crain, D., Rooney, A. & Percival, H. (1996). Reduction in Penis Size and Plasma Testosterone Concentrations in Juvenile Alligators Living in a Contaminated Environment, General and Comparative Endocrinology, 101 (1) 32-42. DOI:

Living Alongside Wildlife
Conservation | Ecology
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3:50 PM | The extinction of the Irish brown bear
A new study by Saoirse Leonard and co-authors from the Institute of Zoology, London and the University of Liverpool model the potential survival of brown bears in an Irish glacial refugium. The study has just been published in Biology Letters, and … Continue reading →

Leonard, S., Risley, C. & Turvey, S. (2013). Could brown bears (Ursus arctos) have survived in Ireland during the Last Glacial Maximum?, Biology Letters, 9 (4) 20130281-20130281. DOI:

Edwards, C., Suchard, M., Lemey, P., Welch, J., Barnes, I., Fulton, T., Barnett, R., O'Connell, T., Coxon, P., Monaghan, N. & Valdiosera, C. (2011). Ancient Hybridization and an Irish Origin for the Modern Polar Bear Matriline, Current Biology, 21 (15) 1251-1258. DOI:

A dribble of knowledge
Environment | Conservation
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May 18, 2013

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10:20 PM | Some Quantized Flux History
In  1961, William Fairbank and Bascomb Deaver experimentally verified that magnetic flux can be quantized.  This week I read an excellent paper on the history of the experiment[1].  For those who aren't close to a library with access to the journal, (and for my own notes), here are a few of the highlights.  For more info on the Fairbank/Deaver experiment see[4] .The Other ExperimentThe first interesting thing you should know is that there was a similar experiment […]

Einzel D. (2011). 50 Years of Fluxoid Quantization: 2e or Not 2e, Journal of Low Temperature Physics, 163 (5-6) 215-237. DOI:

Doll R. & Näbauer M. (1961). Experimental Proof of Magnetic Flux Quantization in a Superconducting Ring, Physical Review Letters, 7 (2) 51-52. DOI:

Byers N. & Yang C. (1961). Theoretical Considerations Concerning Quantized Magnetic Flux in Superconducting Cylinders, Physical Review Letters, 7 (2) 46-49. DOI:

Copasetic Flow
Physics
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6:06 PM | ‘Is ‘cloning’ mad, bad and dangerous?’ – an argument revisited
Seven years ago, to mark the then tenth anniversary of the announcement of the birth of the folkloric Dolly the sheep, and in the still reverberating wake of the South Korean cloning scandal, I practiced my fledgling/intermittent/debatable/wanton science communication skills with the penning of an article on the issue of ‘cloning.’ It being an anniversary with a ’0′ on the end, combined with topical relevance, suggested I might be lucky enough to get it published. And I was thus very... […]

Tachibana, M., Amato, P., Sparman, M., Gutierrez, N., Tippner-Hedges, R., Ma, H., Kang, E., Fulati, A., Lee, H., Sritanaudomchai, H. & Masterson, K. (2013). Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, Cell, DOI:

The Mawk Moth Profligacies
Religion and Atheism | Social Science
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1:23 PM | Homeostatic platsicity in a thorny situation
Synapses, the connections between neurons can strengthen and weaken depending on the specific activity at that synapse. This is called synaptic plasticity, and we've talked about it a lot on this blog (here, here, here and here).the strengthening and weakening of synaptic connections corresponds to the spine growing or shrinking (Matsuzaki 2007)However, there is another kind of plasticity that can occur at synapses. This is called homeostatic plasticity. And instead of the synapse strengthening […]

Lee KJ, Queenan BN, Rozeboom AM, Bellmore R, Lim ST, Vicini S & Pak DT (2013). Mossy fiber-CA3 synapses mediate homeostatic plasticity in mature hippocampal neurons., Neuron, 77 (1) 99-114. PMID:

TheCellularScale
Cell Biology | Neuroscience
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11:08 AM | Ocean heat puts pressure on poorest fisheries
The first evidence that climate change has affected fishing catches, revealed by William Cheung from the University of British Columbia and his team, shows tropical countries are set to be hardest hit.

Cheung, W., Watson, R. & Pauly, D. (2013). Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch, Nature, 497 (7449) 365-368. DOI:

Payne, M. (2013). Fisheries: Climate change at the dinner table, Nature, 497 (7449) 320-321. DOI:

Simple Climate
Climate Science
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9:33 AM | Darth DSM-5 and autism
Blue Harvest @ Wikipedia @ Family GuyI need to create a suitable atmosphere for this post, so try this music for size and think Blue Harvest...Right. The wait is over. The discussions / arguments / objections / agreements are all confined to history. Drum roll, spotlight centre-stage... enter DSM-5 and into unknown territory we all go, particularly with autism, sorry.. autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in mind.As you can see from the link above to the new diagnostic guidelines from the […]

Lai M-C, Lombardo MV, Chakrabarti B & Baron-Cohen S (2013). Subgrouping the Autism “Spectrum": Reflections on DSM-5, PLoS Biology, Other: Link

Questioning Answers
Psychiatry | Psychology
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6:00 AM | Ethnocentrism, religion, and austerity: a science poster for the humanities
Artem Kaznatcheev and I presented a poster on May 4th at the University of British Columbia to a highly interdisciplinary conference on religion. The conference acronym is CERC, which translates as Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium. Most of the 60-some attendees are religion scholars and social scientists from North American and European universities. Many […]

Kaznatcheev, Artem & Shultz, Thomas R. (2011). Ethnocentrism maintains cooperation, but keeping one’s children close fuels it., Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 3174-3179. Other: Link

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group
Biology | Mathematics
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May 17, 2013

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8:58 PM | poly(A) messages; lost in translation
From a virus' perspective, how do you translate your own messenger RNA (mRNA), whilst not allowing your host cell to continue manufacturing its own proteins, including those that might be detrimental to virus survival? It's a problem viruses have found various ways to overcome, often by manipulating the biology of the mRNAs, which have the following structure: The classical polyadenylated mRNA ready for translation Simply, an eIF4F cap-binding complex binds to the cap and a poly(A) […]

Rubio, R., Mora, S., Romero, P., Arias, C. & Lopez, S. (2013). Rotavirus Prevents the Expression of Host Responses by Blocking the Nucleocytoplasmic Transport of Polyadenylated mRNAs, Journal of Virology, 87 (11) 6336-6345. DOI:

Piron, M. (1998). Rotavirus RNA-binding protein NSP3 interacts with eIF4GI and evicts the poly(A) binding protein from eIF4F, The EMBO Journal, 17 (19) 5811-5821. DOI:

Virus Musings
Microbiology | Veterinary Medicine
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8:51 PM | Strategies for Breaking Even on Home Energy Consumption Suggested
When you are buying a car you always look at official miles per gallon figures to find out how much fuel it will use. At the same time, most people have only a vague idea about how much energy their houses consume, even though home energy expenditures often account for a larger share of the household budget. Read more »

N.A. McNabb (2013). Strategies to Achieve Net-Zero Energy Homes: A Framework for Future Guidelines Workshop Summary Report., NIST Special Publication, DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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6:09 PM | Scientists Trying to Photograph Photosynthesis
Photosynthetic oxidation of water is one of the central processes of life on Earth, but it is still not completely understood. Now, a German-American team of scientists has set out to observe the intermediate stages of this complex catalytic reaction using ultrashort snap shots taken at light sources including BESSY II in Berlin and the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford. Read more »

Kern, J., Alonso-Mori, R., Hellmich, J., Tran, R., Hattne, J., Laksmono, H., Glockner, C., Echols, N., Sierra, R., Sellberg, J. & Lassalle-Kaiser, B. (2012). Room temperature femtosecond X-ray diffraction of photosystem II microcrystals, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (25) 9721-9726. DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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2:47 PM | Eye of the tiger
A new study on the genetic structure of the Indian tiger has found that the current  tiger population now only retain a small proportion of the historical mitochondrial DNA  haplotypes. The new study has just been published in Proceedings of the Royal … Continue reading →

Mondol S, Bruford MW & Ramakrishnan U (2013). Demographic loss, genetic structure and the conservation implications for Indian tigers., Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 280 (1762) 20130496. PMID:

A dribble of knowledge
Environment | Conservation
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1:33 PM | The Buzz About Akkermansia muciniphila: It’s More Than Just Weight Loss
The bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila is creating quite a stir in science news, with people calling it the “weight loss bacterium”. While it’s exciting to think about a bacterium that has the ability to reduce body weight with no change in food intake, there’s another reason to get excited: The potential to treat obesity-related metabolic disorders […]

Everard A., Belzer C., Geurts L., Ouwerkerk J.P., Druart C., Bindels L.B., Guiot Y., Derrien M., Muccioli G.G. & Delzenne N.M. & (2013). Cross-talk between Akkermansia muciniphila and intestinal epithelium controls diet-induced obesity., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PMID:

Promega Connections
Biology | Biotechnology
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1:06 PM | The embodied cognition of Tesco's gendered toys
 Tesco got in trouble on the internet last week for having toy chemistry sets labelled as being for boys, not girls in their online store. There's a lot of noise about how inappropriate all this gender labelling is (and rightly so - it's everywhere and it's awful). Lots of potential customers are being very annoyed all over Twitter: so why does Tesco do this? Why is this sort of thing so very common? Oddly, I think an embodied task analysis (using our 4 questions which we describe in our […]

Wilson, A. D. & Golonka, S. (2013). Embodied Cognition is Not What you Think it is, Frontiers in Psychology, 4 DOI:

Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Philosophy | Psychology
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12:35 PM | Friday Roundup: This Week's Wildlife Links (May 17th, 2013)
This article could use a little more reflection about working alongside potentially dangerous animals and a little less sensationalism. But, it's still an incredible story: I was swallowed by a hippo. Who knew? Snakes like hot springs too. The Roundup from a couple weeks ago featured amazing pictures of a pod of Orcas attacking a group of Sperm Whales. This week's unlucky victim is a dolphin.

Wenger SJ, Isaak DJ, Luce CH, Neville HM, Fausch KD, Dunham JB, Dauwalter DC, Young MK, Elsner MM, Rieman BE & Hamlet AF (2011). Flow regime, temperature, and biotic interactions drive differential declines of trout species under climate change., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (34) 14175-80. PMID:

Living Alongside Wildlife
Conservation | Ecology
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12:32 PM | Colour costs crickets
You probably don’t feel tired when you get a tan. You probably think your friends feel more or less fatigued depending on whether they are dark skinned or fair skinned (like myself). We know that differences in colour are important lots of other species besides humans. They can play a big part in an animal’s ability to blend into the surrounding environment, for instance. What might be less appreciated is that being a certain colour might take energy. After all, many colours in animals […]

Roff D. & Fairbairn D. (2013). The costs of being dark: the genetic basis of melanism and its association with fitness-related traits in the sand cricket, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, DOI:

NeuroDojo
Biology | Neuroscience
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11:32 AM | TMI Friday: Taking it to third base ..literally
The variety of foreign bodies in the rectum tests a surgeon's ingenuity to solve a myriad of geometric puzzles So begins Major PT Mcdonald's  1976 paper, in which he has to deal with a  patient with a somewhat unique problem. The patient, a 49 year old baseball fan, who had serious trouble with his bowels ever since the Oakland A's won the world series in 1974. The doctors examined him, and noticed  " a firm, fixed, round object barely palpable which was lodged high in the […]

McDonald M.P.T. & Rosenthal C.D. (1977). An unusual foreign body in the rectum—A baseball report of a case, Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, 20 (1) 56-57. DOI:

Memoirs of a Defective Brain
Microbiology | Biology
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May 16, 2013

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11:34 PM | Angelina no longer has them. Does that mean I should get rid of them too?
We love them and yet we hate them. They get censored, augmented, reduced, replaced, covered, exposed. They get grilled, occasionally, but those are not the ones I'm talking about. We want to see them and yet we pretend we don't. We criticize them and yet we forget what they are made for, the most beautiful thing of all: nourish a new life.Yes, I'm talking about breasts. Angelina Jolie's breasts have been extensively discussed this week, more now that they are reportedly gone than when they were […]

Hall, J., Lee, M., Newman, B., Morrow, J., Anderson, L., Huey, B. & King, M. (1990). Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21, Science, 250 (4988) 1684-1689. DOI:

Bernstein, L. (2008). Identifying population-based approaches to lower breast cancer risk, Oncogene, 27 DOI:

CHIMERAS
Biology
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9:43 PM | Want to be happier and live longer? Protect green spaces
Central Park almost didn’t exist. When it was first proposed, no comparable urban green space could be found in the whole of the United States—and it seemed unlikely that one would arise on land that could be put to other, more profitable use – especially with New York real estate values on a steady rise. [...]

White, M., Alcock, I., Wheeler, B. & Depledge, M. (2013). Would You Be Happier Living in a Greener Urban Area? A Fixed-Effects Analysis of Panel Data, Psychological Science, DOI:

Diener, E. & Chan, M. (2011). Happy People Live Longer: Subjective Well-Being Contributes to Health and Longevity, Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3 (1) 1-43. DOI:

Literally Psyched
Neuroscience | Psychology
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9:02 PM | Does Loss of DNA Methylation and Hydroxymethylation in the Brain Lead to Loss of Memory?
5-methylcytosine (5-mC) and 5-hydroxymethycytosine (5-hmC) are two major epigenetic modifications of DNA.  Dynamic changes in 5-mC and 5-hmC levels are tightly regulated and impact neural cell development, differentiation, and other biological functions. Deregulation of 5-mC and 5-hmC has also been implicated in various human diseases. However, whether 5-mC and 5-hmC are involved in aging-related neurodegenerative ...

Chouliaras L, Mastroeni D, Delvaux E, Grover A, Kenis G, Hof PR, Steinbusch HW, Coleman PD, Rutten BP & van den Hove DL & (2013). Consistent decrease in global DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's disease patients., Neurobiology of aging, PMID:

Mastroeni D, McKee A, Grover A, Rogers J & Coleman PD (2009). Epigenetic differences in cortical neurons from a pair of monozygotic twins discordant for Alzheimer's disease., PloS one, 4 (8) PMID:

EpiBeat
Biology | Biotechnology
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8:00 PM | Hard at work against the hardening of arteries
Sanford-Burnham researchers identified a potential drug target to prevent the hardening of arteries in patients with atherosclerosis. The gene Dkk1 encodes a protein that plays a key role in increasing the population of connective-tissue cells during wound repair, but prolonged Dkk1 signaling in cells lining blood vessels can lead to fibrosis and a stiffening of artery walls.

Cheng, S., Shao, J., Behrmann, A., Krchma, K. & Towler, D. (2013). Dkk1 and Msx2-Wnt7b Signaling Reciprocally Regulate the Endothelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Aortic Endothelial Cells, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, DOI:

Beaker
Biology | Medicine
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6:04 PM | Researchers Develop New Way to Produce Hydrogen From Water and Sunlight
Using a combination of microanalytic techniques that at the same time image photoelectric current and chemical reaction rates across a surface on a micrometer scale, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have shed new light on what may become a cost-effective way to generate hydrogen gas directly from water and sunlight. Read more »

Esposito, D., Levin, I., Moffat, T. & Talin, A. (2013). H2 evolution at Si-based metal–insulator–semiconductor photoelectrodes enhanced by inversion channel charge collection and H spillover, Nature Materials, DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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5:34 PM | The Element Astatine Has Been Revived
etsy/exhaltationEfforts to improve chemotherapy have prodded scientists to get around to uncovering the chemical properties of Earth's most rare element, astatine. Astatine, which appears as element 85 on the periodic table, was dusted off by an international team of scientists in order to explore whether it could be used in alpha therapy, a type of chemotherapy given to cancer patients. Through laser experiments at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, the researchers were recently able to measure a […]

Rothe S., Andreyev A.N., Antalic S., Borschevsky A., Capponi L., Cocolios T.E., De Witte H., Eliav E., Fedorov D.V. & Fedosseev V.N. & (2013). Measurement of the first ionization potential of astatine by laser ionization spectroscopy, Nature Communications, 4 1835. DOI:

Tina's Blog
Physics | General Science
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5:07 PM | Receta para hacer un encéfalo transparente
El paso 10 de abril aparecía publicado en Nature un método que “hacía transparentes” los encéfalos, llamado CLARITY y que, por su espectacularidad, ocupó periódicos y noticiarios televisivos. Pasado un tiempo razonable, creo que puede resultar interesante para alguno saber cuál es el fundamento de la técnica, que es un prodigio de química aplicada. Permítaseme ir directamente al grano. Para una introducción general este artículo es tan bueno como cualquier otro […]

Chung K., Wallace J., Kim S.Y., Kalyanasundaram S., Andalman A.S., Davidson T.J., Mirzabekov J.J., Zalocusky K.A., Mattis J. & Denisin A.K. & (2013). Structural and molecular interrogation of intact biological systems, Nature, 497 (7449) 332-337. DOI:

Experientia docet
General Science
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4:51 PM | Conversion to Christianity in Viking Age Scandinavia
Examining religion is a tricky thing to do, especially in societies that are over a thousand years gone and have lost large amounts of their archaeological record. First, it can be difficult to tell what religion someone is based solely on their burial and body. There are many indicators of religion like the church one … Continue reading »

Lund, J. (2013). Fragments of a conversion: handling bodies and objects in pagan and Christian Scandinavia 800–1100 , World Archaeology, 45 (1) 46-63. DOI:

Bones Don't Lie
Archeology | Anthropology
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4:00 PM | Global Warming Consensus: We can haz it!
An important study has just been published1 examining the level of consensus among scientists about climate change. The issue at hand is this: What is the level of agreement in the scientific community about the reality of climate change and about the human role in climate change? The new paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic…

Cook, J., Nuccitelli, D., Green, S., Richardson, M., Winkler, B., Painting, R., Way, R., Jacobs, P. & Skuce, A. (2013). Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Environmental Research Letters, 8 (2) 24024. DOI:

Greg Laden's Blog
General Science
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3:14 PM | "Fool Me Twice, Shame on ME," Says Sea Slug
"Simple" is often a compliment in the human world, used to describe low-fuss dinners or closet solutions. When scientists use "simple" to describe an animal, they mean something more like, "That sac of goo has no business acting clever." An especially simple creature—a sea slug—recently demonstrated that despite its humble resources, it can learn from experience and form new hunting strategies. Smaller goo sacs, beware. Despite its squishy stature, the sea slug Pleurobranchaea […]

Noboa, V. & Gillette, R. (2013). Selective prey avoidance learning in the predatory sea-slug Pleurobranchaea californica, Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI:

Inkfish
Biology
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1:00 PM | The Psychological Science of Storytelling
It hit me about two years ago, sometime after I started this blog. Somewhere between the comedy shows and alarming amount of documentaries I began watching, and the seemingly endless number of people I have met in the last few … Continue reading →

Lacey S, Stilla R & Sathian K (2012). Metaphorically feeling: comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex., Brain and language, 120 (3) 416-21. PMID:

Skeptikai
Psychology | General Science
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