Tag Archives | Biology

The Nazi Plan To Breed Lost Animal Species

By JacobSloan on July 7, 2012 in News 6

Jurassic Park fifty years prior? Cabinet Magazine on a strange form of zoology in Nazi Germany, centered around the cordoning off of untainted forests for the re-creation of pure, ancient breeds of ponies, boars, and a mystical striped oxen called the auroch:

In 1920, the brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck, directors of the Berlin and Munich zoos, respectively, began a two-decade breeding experiment. Working with domestic cattle sought out for their “primitive” characteristics, they attempted to recreate “in appearance and behavior” the living likeness of the animals’ extinct wild ancestor: the aurochs.

This conflation of biological and aesthetic destiny coincided with a strain of Nazi thought that sought to apply pseudo-Darwinian theories in support of a racialized conception of the state. In this mode, the zoologist Konrad Lorenz identified parallels between the changes he observed in animals as the result of their domestication and what he saw as the deleterious genetic effects of civilization.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 6

Lichen Can Survive In Hostile Space Conditions

By JacobSloan on June 30, 2012 in News 15

Humans are ill-equipped for traveling into outer space, but the same isn’t true for other earthly life forms. Should we send funguses to colonize our galaxy, before we go? Via Phenomenica:

In 2008 the European Space Agency sent a suitcase-sized experiment package to the International Space Station filled with organic compounds and living organisms to test their reaction to outer space.

When astronauts venture on a spacewalk, hours are spent preparing protective suits to survive the hostile conditions. However, no effort was made to protect the bacteria, seeds, lichen and algae attached to the outside of the space station.

The samples returned to Earth in 2009. Lichen have proven to be tough cookies – back on Earth, some species continue to grow normally. You can freeze it, thaw it, vacuum dry it and expose it to radiation, but lichen still survive.

Living organisms surviving in open space supports the idea of ‘panspermia’ — life spreading from one planet to another, or even between solar systems.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 15

Olympics Struggle With ‘Policing Femininity’

By JacobSloan on June 12, 2012 in News 12

In a potential move which seems both startlingly futuristic and archaic, the Olympics may require some of the world’s top female athletes to alter their natural bodies through surgery or hormone therapy to become more similar to what the Olympics imagines a “woman” is, if they wish to compete. Time to scrap the outdated two-gender sporting system and experiment with three or more classes? The Toronto Star writes:

There are female athletes who will be competing at the Olympic Games this summer after undergoing treatment to make them less masculine. Still others are being secretly investigated for displaying overly manly characteristics, as sport’s highest medical officials attempt to quantify — and regulate — the hormonal difference between male and female athletes.

Caster Semenya, the South African runner who was so fast and muscular that many suspected she was a man, exploded onto the front pages three years ago. She was considered an outlier, a one-time anomaly.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 12

New Life Blooming Under Melting North Pole

By majestic on June 8, 2012 in News 5

How long before someone starts marketing pure polar algae? Pete Spotts reports for the Christian Science Monitor:

Scientists have discovered a vast pea-soup-green bloom of tiny plant-like marine organisms under Arctic Ocean ice. The bloom represents an enormous, and until now, unknown reservoir of food for marine life in frigid waters at the top of the world.

These waters, in sum, appear to be far more biologically productive than previously believed.

“This wasn’t just any phytoplankton bloom,” says Kevin Arrigo, a Stanford University marine scientist and lead author of the study. “It was literally the most intense phytoplankton bloom I’ve ever seen in my 25 years of doing this type of research” in oceans around the world.

The scientists sampled only a relatively small section of ice above…

Continue Reading · 5

It Is Now Possible To Decode An Unborn Baby’s DNA

By SpaceNeedle on June 7, 2012 in News 3

Writes Bonnie Rochman on TIME:

Researchers at the University of Washington have sequenced the entire genome of a fetus. The scientific advance could help detect certain diseases in the womb, but some experts worry that the trove of genetic information may prove more scary and overwhelming than useful.

Suspended in the blood of a pregnant woman — along with some added information from a dad-to-be’s saliva — lurks enough fetal DNA to map out an unborn baby’s entire genetic blueprint.

It may sound like something conjured by Jules Verne, but it happened at the University of Washington: a professor and his graduate student used DNA samples from the parents of a baby boy who was still in utero and reconstructed his entire genetic makeup from A to Z.

The account, published in Science Translational Medicine, takes prenatal testing to new heights, promising a motherlode of genetic information about a child who had not even been born — along with a corresponding trove of data that even experts don’t yet know how to interpret…

Americans’ Heads Getting Bigger In Size And Changing Shape

By Sonny Liston on June 3, 2012 in News 13

Writes Jacqueline Howard on the Huffington Post:

Did the 20th century make us big-headed? Maybe so, since forensic anthropologists at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville found that white Americans’ heads are getting bigger and bigger … in size, that is.

The researchers studied about 1,500 skulls that dated from the mid-1800s through the 1980s. They noticed that the skulls gradually became larger, taller, and narrower. As a result, faces have become longer.

“The surprising thing is the skull size increase has not been documented in modern Americans,” researcher Dr. Richard Jantz told the Huffington Post. “We might have suspected that that was happening but this documents it … The shape of the skull has also changed rather dramatically. In fact, shape change has been more dramatic than size change.”…

Continue Reading · 13

Man Goes To Hospital For Kidney Stone, Finds Out He’s A Woman

By JacobSloan on May 31, 2012 in News 14

Photo: thirdrail (CC)

What surprises life will spring upon you? ABC News reports:

A Colorado man who was admitted to the hospital for a kidney stone received surprising news when the nurse came back with test results revealing he was actually a woman. Denver photographer Steve Crecelius said he’s felt a little different all his life.

He was intersex, meaning he had both male genitalia and internal female sex organs. “The nurse is reading the ultrasound and says, ‘Huh, this says you’re a female,’ Crecelius said. “It was very liberating.” Steve, who now goes by “Stevie,” said his wife and their children accepted his new identity right away.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 14

The Special Scent of Age: Body Odor Gives Away Age

By LordSatan on May 30, 2012 in News 4

We are all going to Hell for this. Via Science Daily:

New findings from the Monell Center reveal that humans can identify the age of other humans based on differences in body odor. Much of this ability is based on the capacity to identify odors of elderly individuals, and contrary to popular supposition, the so-called ‘old-person smell’ is rated as less intense and less unpleasant than body odors of middle-aged and young individuals.

Continue Reading · 4

Can Plants Sense Human Intentions?

By JacobSloan on May 29, 2012 in News 14

Can plants, bacteria, and even yogurt identify with your pain? How wide is the gulf between man and plant, if there is a gulf at all? If you’re going to have an argument with your significant other, consider avoiding doing so in front of your potted fern:

“As the races of man speak in different languages so do the varieties of plants manifest their voices in different ways. They seem to be able to hear and understand us. For the time being, however, we must listen to them through our machines. One day, those machines may be unnecessary.”

Continue Reading · 14

Your Internal Clock Is At War With Society

By bluemana on May 18, 2012 in News 3

An interesting read for night owls and early birds alike. As Robert T. Gonzalez writes on io9.com:

Just because you sleep later than your early rising friends doesn’t mean you sleep longer than they do; nor does it make you lazier. And yet, the association between the time of day that a person wakes up and how proactive or driven they are is just one example of the many preconceptions that society upholds regarding sleep and productivity.

But here’s the problem: these expectations might actually be working against us.

In his recently published book, Internal time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag and Why You’re So Tired, German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg provides numerous examples of how social expectations surrounding time may be having a detrimental effect on large sections of the human population. Over on Brain Pickings, Maria Popova walks us through one of Roenneberg’s examples, wherein he examines the clash between adolescents’ sleep cycles and the starting times of typical school days…