MetaFilter posts tagged with biology

Expeditions to the Polar Regions

netbros — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:01:49 -0800

The Polar Discovery team has documented science in action from pole to pole during the historic 2007-2009 International Polar Year, and covered five scientific expeditions. The science projects explored a range of topics from climate change and glaciers, to Earth’s geology, biology, ocean chemistry, circulation, and technology at the icy ends of the earth. Through photo essays and other multimedia, they explain how scientists collected data and what they discovered about the rapidly changing polar regions. From the awesome folks at WHOI.

Sami reports about golden eagles hunting reindeer calves confirmed by BBC

Kattullus — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:50:14 -0800

The BBC has captured footage of golden eagles hunting reindeer calves in northern Finland, confirming Sami reports. For more about the Sami, you can watch this series of videos, which cover a wide range of subjects, among them the language, arts and crafts, religion and music. And here is more about Sami reindeer folklore.

Predator Appreciation Month

kliuless — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:42:18 -0800

-Where Tasty Morsels Fear to Tread
-'Leopard Behind You!'
-A Long, Melancholy Roar

synthetic biology

kliuless — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:23:24 -0800

Our biotech century: the noocytes are coming... (previously)

Cancer Causing Viruses

mdpatrick — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:10:56 -0800

Paul Ewald, an evolutionary biologist at University of Louisville in Kentucky states his conviction, in one interview with Discover Magazine that, that by 2050 the human species will have found that between 80% and as high as 95% of cancers are caused by viruses. from Discovery Magazine Article:

Viruses push cells to the brink; additional mutations from genetic defects or the environment are needed for full-blown cancer. Keep in mind that the vast majority of mutating agents provoke cells to stop functioning or to die, meaning there is no chance for those mutations to cause cancer. Without an infection, the few mutated cells that could potentially cause cancer stop proliferating after several divisions. But infected cells can reach such high numbers that the progression to cancer is not terminated by the many mutations that kill the cells or make them nonfunctional. The small percentage that are cancer-causing can continue to proliferate.

The tale of the coelacanth

WhySharksMatter — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:47:57 -0800

The amazing story of the coelacanth is one of the wonders of the living world that inspires marine biologists such myself. Coelacanths, part of the offshoot lineage of fishes known as "lobed finned ", are very different from typical "ray finned" fishes that you usually think of. Their bizarre lobed fins are thought to be an intermediate step between fish fins and amphibian legs. Scientists had known that these weird fish existed because of fossils for over a century, but we believed that they went extinct 65 million years ago... until a South African fisherman caught one in 1938. Though the fisherman didn't know exactly what he had caught, he knew that it was noteworthy enough to save and bring to the museum in his small fishing village of East London. The head of the museum was Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, who contacted a famous South African fish biologist named J. L. B. Smith. Smith originally named the genus Malania after the South African prime minister who gave him money to search for more coelacanths, but since prime minister Malan was also the architect of apartheid, the name was eventually changed to Latimeria after the head of the East London Museum (the full scientific name is now Latimeria chalumnae, for the Chalum river where the fish was caught). Despite intensive searching and a large reward, it was almost 15 years before a second specimen was found. We now know a little bit more about this fascinating species. They can grow to larger than six feet in length and can weight up to 200 pounds. They have rough scales unlike most other existing fish species. They have internal egg fertilization, but the eggs hatch inside the mother and the young are born alive. They usually live in the deep sea, over 2,000 feet below the surface. Most alarming of all is that scientists estimate a population of only around 1,000 individuals, making coelacanths one of the most endangered animals on Earth. They survived for tens of millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct, but they now face extinction in our lifetimes. I'll share with you a thought that keeps myself and other marine biologists going during times when the job seems rough... if it took us until 1938 to find the coelacanth, what else is down there?

What Can Your Womb Do For You?

radiomayonnaise — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:28:30 -0800

What bleeds [Flash], grows babies [possibly NSFW], and "functions so efficiently that a full understanding of its processes may lead to novel treatments for a plethora of medical disorders?" The Uterus! Jacqueline Maybin, a PhD student at the Centre For Reproductive Biology at Queen's Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh, discusses her research into "the secrets of the womb" and its incredible ability to heal and repair in her essay, "The Best A Man Can't Get."

Alas, poor Quagga! I knew him, Horatio.

shakespeherian — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:57:37 -0800

Photographs of extinct animals.

Distinctly Rare and Unique Lobsters

Orange Pamplemousse — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:41:49 -0800

I heard you like lobsters. (via)

Penis information

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:32:05 -0800

Possibly NSFW: The human penis, its life cycle, size and myths about it, why it looks like that, what can go wrong with it and last but not least, the anatomy.

On specialization in biology

dhruva — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:18:24 -0800

An Outsider's View "Over the past fifty years, factions of biologists have had a complex relationship. Some scientists have continued to carry out relatively traditional natural history work, with little need to delve into molecular (or computational) biology. Others have given little attention to natural history, focusing their efforts instead on deciphering the complexities of a membrane channel, or building new algorithms for identifying open reading frames. In some cases, biologists have bridged this divide, and the result has been a fruitful collaboration. But in other cases—such as the DNA studies on whales and hippos—one group moves into the other's traditional territory, sparking new conflict."[via]

Smile for the camera

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:53:21 -0800

North American Insects and Spiders - 7000+ close-ups of wolf spiders, black widows, honeybees, a ladybug eating an aphid, gulf fritillary butterflies, praying mantises, and much, much more

DNA Not The Same In Every Cell Of Body

GuyZero — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:13:31 -0800

DNA Not The Same In Every Cell Of Body. "...calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell... if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset"

A sea of green

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:33:49 -0800

"Algae is the ultimate biological system using sunlight to capture and convert carbon dioxide into fuel... I came up with a notion to trick algae into pumping more [fuel] out." Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics partners with ExxonMobil in a $600M project to harvest biofuels from genetically engineered algae. "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry." [previously] "Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make."

Disturbing but awesome facts about the Giant Pacific Octopus

WhySharksMatter — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:57:51 -0800

By popular demand, your new resident marine biology nerd has compiled some cool information about the Giant Pacific Octopus.The Giant Pacific Octopus (Octopus dofleini) is one of the strangest animals in the sea- and one of the smartest. Though it is commonly believed that vertebrates are always "smarter" than invertebrates, these guys defy that convention. As this video shows, they are able to easily open jars and retrieve food from inside. They are also, as the "Giant" implies, enormous- the biggest one on record was 30 feet across (according to National Geographic) If the size and intelligence of this animal doesn't alarm you, perhaps this will... they have been known to kill sharks by using their powerful arms to break the shark's spine, and have even been known to leave their own tank to eat something in a nearby tank. They are also so flexible that, despite their immense size, they can fit through any opening slightly larger than their hard beak. Fortunately, we have a way to fight back against this molluscan menace- they are very sensitive to polluted water, and there's no shortage of that in today's world. And yes, just like snails and oysters, octopuses are molluscs. And yes, the plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi.

prehistoric woof

Pants! — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:42:14 -0800

The Village Dog Project is an ongoing research project to document genetic diversity in pariah dogs. These dogs haven't been subject to breed pressure, and may be able to help researchers learn more about the transition from wolf to dog. (via)

Genesis Revisited

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:00:41 -0800

Genesis Revisited scientifically summarises the scientific field of Creation Science (warning: science) [transcript]

Nature's Elegant Solutions

netbros — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:12:04 -0800

Imagine nature's most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you can enter "filter salt from water" and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels. That's the idea behind AskNature, the online inspiration source for the biomimicry community. The featured pages are a good starting point. Cross-pollinating biology with design. Biomimicry is the science and art of emulating Nature's best biological ideas to solve human problems. Non-toxic adhesives inspired by geckos, energy efficient buildings inspired by termite mounds, and resistance-free antibiotics inspired by red seaweed are examples of biomimicry happening today.

Discover Your Inner Frankenstein

amyms — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:23:52 -0800

"In Massachusetts, a young woman makes genetically modified E. coli in a closet she converted into a home lab. A part-time DJ in Berkeley, Calif., works in his attic to cultivate viruses extracted from sewage. In Seattle, a grad-school dropout wants to breed algae in a personal biology lab. These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes." They might be discovering cures for diseases or developing new biofuels, but are their experiments too risky? Via. Additional links from the article: "In her dining room lab, Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop a bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine." "This home experiment for extracting DNA from strawberries [YouTube video] uses a zip-lock bag, a glass, detergent and some strawberries." "Read more about Katherine Aull's experiment in her closet lab." "DIYbio Group co-founder Mackenzie Cowell explains some of the initiatives [Vimeo video], and the community lab the group is setting up in Cambridge, Mass." Related: The Biohacking Hobbyist Biohacking: The Open Wetware Future The Open Biohacking Project

All this and I didn't link to the Time Cube

metaBugs — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:45:54 -0800

Timepieces! Ancient calendars, ancient clocks, beautiful clocks, atomic clocks and the clocks built into your brain that determine how you perceive time and form memories. All the good stuff is inside: How we count and perceive time is fascinating. Very early civilisations developed sophisticated calendars: the Sumerians 5,000 years ago in what's now Iraq; Stonehenge 4,000 years ago (and more recently, ManhattanHenge); the Chinese calendar system between 3,500 - 4,000 years ago; Calendars from North American societies dating from 500BC; the Julian Calendar from 45BC; and finally our current Gregorian calendar in 1582. Much younger but arguably just as important as the other calendars is Epoch or Unix time, the common time counted by UNIX and LINUX-based computers worldwide, providing a foundation for communication across networks. (previously) More recently, clocks have become crucial. Harrison's very beautiful series of clocks (H1, H2, H3, H4) were accurate enough to calculate longitude and opened the seas for reliable trade, exploration and systematic mapping. The spread of fast travel by rail lead to the standardisation of time zones, with towns in Britain and the USA moving from local solar time to "railway time". Knowing the right time rapidly became a commodity: three generations of the Belville family made their living by providing London's clock-owning homes and businesses with the correct time. Our best atomic clocks can now be accurate to within 1 second every 300 million years and are essential for systems like GPS and global communications. At the other end of the scale, the Long Now foundation wants to build a clock to measure 10,000 years. If you'd prefer something a little more practical, you could always get this wall-mounted 100 year alarm clock instead. We have a multitude of different clocks ticking away inside our brains and bodies. An healthy heart, for example, will keep a steady rhythm indefinitely without any signals from the brain. Our second best-known timekeeper is the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It keeps us on an amazingly accurate cycle that averages 24h11m +- 16 minutes, keeping our bodies to this cycle even if forced to live a 28-hour day or living in a light-free cave with no watch. This 24-hour cycle controls an amazing array of bodily functions, including hormone levels, body temperature, your immune system's activity and much more. It gets re-adjusted daily by sunlight so we can trick it into adopting longer days, which will be useful for when humans get to Mars. Jet-lag sufferers (whose "deep sleep" clock becomes detached from their REM sleep clock) know that this isn't nearly enough, so will be interested that eating breakfast after at least 16 hours without food beats jet lag by immediately kicking your cycle into "morning" mode, at least in mice and one Formula 1 driver (about 50 minutes in, probably UK only). Shorter times (fractions of seconds to hours) are counted by several different systems including the basal ganglia and the parietal lobe. The rate at which these clocks tick determines how fast we perceive the world and form memories; so by altering these ticks we can seem to speed time up or slow it down. It's well known that various drugs can affect our perceptions of time: Caffeine makes time go slower, anaesthetics make it speed up. THC can give a sense of timelessness, possibly by blocking a a clock circuit that measures time in the seconds to minutes range. Memory load, time of day and mood also have effects, but surprisingly, one of the biggest factors seems to be body temperature. Just like in The Matrix, fear really does make time seem to go slower, letting us pick out details that otherwise we couldn't perceive. Some people claim that they've learned to exploit this in sports and actually stretch their perception of time to see the ball moving slower to get an advantage. Finally, this is what started me down this train of thought: a thought-provoking radio programme from the BBC, in which an astrophysicist, a classicist and an author talk about what time means to them.

Do they preserve scientific transparency, protect profits or both?

zarq — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:16:38 -0800

On behalf of medical organizations, universities, & individual patients, pathologists and genetics researchers, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against Utah-based Myriad Genetics and the US Patent and Trademark Office. Myriad holds the US patents to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, associated with hereditary causes of breast and ovarian cancers. Their patents guarantee the company the right to prevent anyone else from testing or studying those genes, which the ACLU says is unconstitutional and inhibits researchers from finding treatments and cures. The ACLU has posted a FAQ explaining the suit. It might be news to some that genes, gene fragments and the tools used to assess them can be patented. Here's some general info on patent eligibility and qualifications. Some question whether such patents spur or stifle research Myriad's BRCA test to measure the likelihood that someone would develop ovarian or breast cancer was in the news a couple of years ago, when a study revealed that it produces false negatives. Concerns were also raised in the EU over the patents when they were initially filed. Previously on MeFi

This one brief day forget thy children dear...

thatwhichfalls — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:35:50 -0800

The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? In the view of paleontologist Peter Ward life on Earth is intrinsically poisonous. His Medea hypothesis (TED lecture video) argues, "the natural world is a doomsday device careening from one cataclysm to another. Long before humans came onto the scene, primitive life forms were busily trashing the planet, and on multiple occasions, Ward argues, they came close to rendering it lifeless. Around 3.7 billion years ago, they created a planet-girdling methane smog that threatened to extinguish every living thing; a little over a billion years later they pumped the atmosphere full of poison gas. (That gas, ironically, was oxygen, which later life forms adapted to use as fuel.)" (From Peak Energy) and as such is the anti-Gaia hypothesis. via

Secrets Of The Phallus

hippybear — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:33:08 -0800

Why is the penis shaped like that? [T]he human penis is actually an impressive “tool” in the truest sense of the word, one manufactured by nature over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. You may be surprised to discover just how highly specialized a tool it is. Furthermore, you’d be amazed at what its appearance can tell us about the nature of our sexuality.

The Biology Textbook That Wished It Was A Progressive Rock Album

jonp72 — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:07:29 -0800

This is your biology textbook. This is your biology textbook on drugs. Any questions?

Swamp Thing, I think I love you

kliuless — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:55:31 -0800

Slime Molds Show Surprising Degree of Intelligence - A creature with no brain can learn from and even anticipate events. (via)