Category: Uncategorized
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It is old news that exercise improves the brain–at any age, from children who walk to school, to the elderly who garden. Prolonged exercise, as in running, is what we evolved to do. Running–and the intellect involved to track down animals–led early humans into a unique form of hunting, one that required memory and calculation.…
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Atlantis of ancient ruins? Not so fast. What divers thought was an ancient Greek metropolis was actually an outgrowth of microbes. The microbes are stated to be methanogens (archaea that convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen into methane) but I think actually they are methane oxidizers. At the bottom of the ocean, methane often arises at cold seeps,…
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Buried beneath reality show headlines, the NYT breathlessly informs us, “Scientists Talk Privately” about something. To wit, a group at Harvard has a secret meeting to plan to “create” an entire set of human chromosomes. Could this really be it–an Artificial Person? Without (gasp!) biological parents? Like a rather bad Heinlein novel, there are enough contradictions…
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In A Door into Ocean, the Sharers tend their entire planet, lifeshaping each apparently wild form of life to restore balance. The corals on the floating trees get helpful microbes, while the seaswallowers get lifeshaped (engineered) to resist the invaders’ poisons. Is that where we’re headed? Already our wilderness managers radio-tag every vertebrate in sight, monitoring…
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In the face of climate change, we commonly get caught up in the vast scale of melting Antarctica and flooding Florida. But it’s also good to step back and reflect on the everyday experience of wildlife biologists contending with saving just one form of life in one imperiled habitat. For such an example, see the…
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In Orlando for ICFA 37, I had the pleasure of exploring the latest bizarre biology with Gay and Joe Haldeman, Cat Rambo, Sherry Vint, Jeanne Griggs, Sandy Lindow, among others. From tree networks to jet-lagged bacteria, it was the most fun at breakfast I’ve had in a long time. An unexpected bonus was remembering Joe’s The Forever War.…
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If you heard it on NPR it must be true. A newly discovered bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis, can munch its way through a notoriously indestructible form of plastic, called polyethylene terephthalate, or the cute acronym PET. For recyclers, it’s the #1 plastic. From strawberry containers to Ishampoo bottles, it’s all around us. What makes it so conveniently immortal?…
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Just when we need some good news, visit an oil rig 80 feet below the surface. Coral reef abounds, amid swarms of fish. Some of the older platforms were build of wood, ideal nourishment for marine life. A study in PNAS concludes, “even the least productive platform off California was more productive than surrounding natural…
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A supercomputer with proteins running in channels, powered by the living energy molecule ATP. How can this work? Find out from the PNAS article by Dan Nicolau and coworkers at McGill University. The computer involves large numbers of protein molecules flowing down channels. The channels have two kinds of junctions: split (equal chance of flow both…
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For our creature feature: How does a praying mantis hop to the next twig? By exchanging angular momentum in three dimensions, that’s how. Ballerinas and skaters do this all the time, to accomplish their seemingly impossible twists and accelerations. But mantises? Who knew?
Joan Slonczewski 