Journalism

Jan

2011

River Blindness Parasite Relies on Bacteria to Fool Host

LiveScience, January 19 2011.

Even in the strange world of symbiosis, in which a pair of organisms can depend on each other to live, this one’s a whopper: Bacteria living inside a parasitic worm help create a cloak, shielding the worm from the immune system of its hosts (which, in this case, turn out to be us).

The worm in question is Onchocerca volvus, a parasitic nematode that causes river blindness. The worm is transmitted to humans by blackfly bites, and it has infected about 18 million people, most of them in Africa. It causes an itchy rash, nodules and, in some 270,000 cases, blindness. Read More >

Jan

2011

To Overcome Obesity, Trust Your Gut (Bacteria)

LiveScience, January 18 2011.

Bacteria living in our intestines may be a key to fighting obesity. Now, researchers have found one protein on the surface of white blood cells that plays an important role in controlling these bacteria.

It may sound disgusting and unsanitary, but the guts of mammals are teeming with bacteria. These gut-bugs help us digest food, provide us with nutrients and keep harmful bacteria away — actually playing an integral part in our health. Read More >

Jan

2011

New Metallic Glass Is Hard and Tough

LiveScience, January 18 2011.

A new member of the metallic glass family may rival Scotty’s transparent aluminum in “Star Trek” for its mix of amazing properties. This palladium and silver alloy developed by Caltech researchers is both stronger and tougher than any titanium alloys.

“Strength and toughness are actually very different, almost mutually exclusive,” lead researcher Marios Demetriou said in a statement. “Generally, materials that are tough are also weak; those that are strong are brittle.” Read More >

Jan

2011

Firmness of Touch May Evoke Gender Stereotyping

LiveScience, January 12 2011.

Holding a hard or soft ball can influence a person’s perception of how masculine or feminine others are. The finding adds to the growing insight about how connected our sense of touch is to social processing in our brains.

“What you are experiencing every day can influence your thoughts, like if you are sitting on a hard chair or a soft chair,” lead researcher Michael Slepian at Tufts University told LiveScience. Read More >

Jan

2011

New Pterosaur’s Jawbone Found in Storage Cabinet

LiveScience, January 10 2011.

In a dark corner of a storage cabinet, a pterosaur was waiting for Victoria Arbour. Well, at least its jawbone was. Arbour identified the piece of jawbone, which has been in the University of Alberta fossil collection for years, as a new species of the ancient flying reptile.

When she first pulled the bone fragment out of the cabinet, Arbour was stumped. “It could have been from a dinosaur, a fish or a marine reptile,” she said in a statement. The bone was discovered on Hornby Island, off the coast of Vancouver. Arbour studied the bone for months before identifying it as a pterosaur. Read More >

Jan

2011

Beef Fat Spill Turns the Houston Ship Channel Into a Clogged Artery

Discover, January 7 2011.

Fat is in the news: Not just because of the world’s obesity problems, but because one agriculture company accidentally fattened up the Houston Ship Channel on Tuesday by spilling 15,000 gallons of beef tallow into it.

The fat was in an onshore storage tank owned by agricultural company Jacob Sterns and Sons, which for unknown reasons leaked about 250,000 gallons of animal fat. About 15,000 gallons seeped into the channel through a storm drain, and immediately solidified after hitting the water, Coast Guard spokesman Richard Brahm told The Wall Street Journal. Read More >

Jan

2011

Aflockalypse: The Media Goes on Apocalyptic Overdrive

Discover, January 7 2011.

Since Monday’s news that a few thousand birds fell from the sky on New Year’s Eve over Beebe, Arkansas, the world has gone a little crazy with talk of the “aflockalypse”: the mass bird deaths that have been documented worldwide. Bird die-offs have been reported in not only Arkansas but also in Italy, Sweden, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. Die-offs of other animals, including thousands of fish in Arkansas, Florida, New Zealand and the Chesapeake Bay have also been noted, while dead crabs washed up on UK shores.

Causes ranging from UFOs, monsters (our personal favorite), fireworks, secret military testing, poison, shifting magnetic fields, and odd weather formations have been blamed for the deaths, but researchers are saying these types of die-offs are normal. Read More >

Jan

2011

Potty Trained Piggies Help Keep Taiwanese Rivers Clean

Discover, January 6 2011.

Toddlers can learn, cats can be taught–so why not take the next step and potty-train our livestock? Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration is encouraging its pig farmers to do just that with the countries’ six million pigs. The move will clean up the farms and help prevent water pollution, they say.

To keep the pig waste from flowing into the rivers (and to save water on cleaning up farms), the pigs are trained to relieve themselves in a trough. The “toilets” are smeared with feces and urine to attract the pigs–kinda like that spot on the carpet where the dog keeps relieving itself. Read More >

Jan

2011

Your Morning Toothpaste: Now With Weather Reports!

Discover, January 6 2011.

Mmmm… it tastes like rain today. Or at least this toothpaste tastes like it’s going to rain today. The toothpaste in question was created by the MIT Media lab as your own personal early morning weather station–it changes flavors based on the day’s forecast.

So when you’re half asleep and drooling white toothpaste foam out of your mouth onto your clean shirt, at least you know which jacket you should bring to cover that toothpaste stain. Read More >

Jan

2011

Cocaine Vaccine Could Stop Addiction in Its Tracks

Discover, January 6 2011.

By combining a cocaine analog with part of a common cold virus, researchers have created a “cocaine vaccine” that tricks the body into attacking the drug, neutralizing its high-giving powers. It has only been tested in mice so far, but the results are good:

“Our very dramatic data shows that we can protect mice against the effects of cocaine, and we think this approach could be very promising in fighting addiction in humans,” study researcher Ronald Crystal, a professor of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said in a statement. Read More >