AMUR AMOUR

A baby Amur leopard was born last month in Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, Germany. She made her first public appearance on Friday December 4.

Amurs, or Far East leopard have some very interesting characteristics. While their summer coats are about 2.5 inches long, their winter coats grow to 4 inches. A beautiful animal with widely spaced rosettes (“spots”) with thick border, Amurs have been reported to leap nearly 20 feet horizontally and 10 feet vertically in their pursuit of prey.

Unlike the better known African leopards, Amur leopards live in the temperate forests of Russia’s far eastern regions. Nearly 80% of their natural habitat has been destroyed during the past two decades. As a result, Amur leopards are critically endangered. It is estimated that less than 40 remain in the wild. At last count, there were 34.

Zoos may represent the last, and best hope, of preserving this magnificent species. This means that the final survivors will live in captivity.

Zoos often lead to conflicting thoughts and feelings in people. I know this is something some of us discussed during our visit to the Bronx Zoo. Given the critically endangered state of the Amur leopard – and other aniamals – what role do you think zoos should play in their preservation? Should the animals be placed on public display? Should they be maintained separately in more “respectful” environments?

Or should the last remaining members of the species be allowed to die in dignity in the last remaining vestiges of their natural environment?

BAD ECONOMY GOOD FOR GATORS

"Crocodile rockin' is something shocking, and your feet just can't keep still..." Elton John

Especially in those Crocs, made of real Croc. Get 'em while you can.

The New York Times reported that the downturn in the economy has had an unanticipated consequence on alligator farming. Sales of products that use alligator skin are down. Fashionistas who may have spend upwards of $12,000 on an alligator skin wristwatch strap in the past, are now hesitating. Times are tough all over I guess.

Alligator farming is tightly regulated by the US department of Wildlife to maintain a wild population of one to two million. Farmers must raise the alligators from birth, meaning that eggs have to be taken (stolen) from angry gator mommas in swampy areas who are fought off with long poles. The babies are expensive to raise, and as they get larger they frequently bite each other. Bites make their skin relatively worthless ("Yes madam, that is a scar on that handbag - hmm... perhaps I can let that one go for less, say, $5,000?"). Few make it past four feet in length before they are slaughtered.

Men enter the tanks and kill the gators with a quick, sharp stab through the head into the brain. The alligators are skinned, their meat is sent to restaurants and pet food manufacturers. For years, their skins were sent to one of about a dozen tanneries around the world that specialized in processing the leather of reptile "exotics" for fashion houses such as Hermes, Cartier, and of course, Gucci.

During the past decade, the fashion house Hermes has been buying many of the exotic tanneries. Hermes has fought for lower prices for the skin from farmers - often at prices below the cost of raising the alligators. At the same time, they have raised the market prices of tanned hides to ridiculously high levels. That "buy cheap, sell high" business strategy, in combination with the economic recession, has created a crash in the market for alligator goods. As one buyer for Neiman Marcus, the high end department store, is quoted as saying: "‘I’m not going to spend $4,000 for an alligator shoe.’ (Gee, and I thought I was the only one who thought such a thing.)

High prices, and the economic recession, have caused sales of alligator skin fashion accessories to fall dramatically. That's good for the gators, but not for the small farmers who raise them. Despite recent signs of an economic upturn, many alligator farms are closing do to losses of upwards of $15,000 a month. One farmer is opening up a tourist zoo along the highway. Others are leaving the industry altogether. It's hard to continue working on a farm that loses money while growing a crop that can bite your arm off.

I'm sure many of us wandered the dinosaur halls of the American Museum of Natural History thinking about how cool it would be if Jurassic Park were a reality. To be able to see the living, breathing bodies that brought movement to those fossilized bones we observed with wide eyes and slackened jaws. After reading this article, however I'm glad the big guys went extinct. It's both sad and demeaning to think how they too, would have wound up as fashion accessories.

"A T-Rex handbag, madame? Or perhaps I can interest the gentleman in a matched set of Stegosaurus luggage?"

We've had benefit concerts for farmers called "Farm Aid". Maybe its time for a benefit concert to help preserve the alligator population. We'll call it (pinky to mouth) - - - - Gator Aid.

PLASTIC GARBAGE PART 2

I hope you had an enjoyable weekend. I know I did. I went down to Boston to visit my son at school, and spent the night with my sister before we get together again this week for Thanksgiving.

I stopped for gas on the way out of Boston, on Boylston Street, right outside of Fenway Park. I took this photo while I was pumping my gas. The image of plants of questionable health surrounded by an island of plastic bottles was pretty disturbing. Particularly because some trash cans were readily available just to the left of the pump. Add to that the gasoline price chart hovering over it all - reminding us of the ugly side of fossil fuels, and the use of oil in the manufacturing of plastic. (In fact a study out of Sweden suggest that there is a strong link between the use of oil to manufacture plastic and global warming - everything is interconnected.)

I think we all felt a little overwhelmed last week when we discussed the floating island of trash in the Pacific. There was this sense of impotence; what could we, as individuals do about a problem so vast and so distant? This little mess made me realize - more that ever - that we truly can make a difference through small, individual actions. After taking the picture, I disposed of the trash in the container. On the drive home, I stopped along I89 to pick up some trash someone had thoughtlessly tossed out of their car. These are small actions all of us can do, to make our immediate environment a little nice, a little cleaner, and a little more beautiful.

Keep this in mind the next time you see a scrap of paper, or a wrapper of some kind lying on the ground somewhere around our beautiful campus. Don't take the beauty that surround us for granted. Be a part in maintaining the beauty of your immediate surroundings.

This action may not seem as dramatic as cleaning up the Pacific Ocean. But it will have an immediate, noticeable impact on our little community and environment. And who knows - if you spread the word, perhaps a new movement will be born.

THE PACIFIC OCEAN: THE WORLD'S GARBAGE DUMP

There is a stretch of "plastic-soup" that starts about 500 miles off the California coast, and continues west past Hawaii, extending nearly to Japan. Covering a length of ocean nearly twice the size of the United States, and in places nearly twice the size of Texas in width, this plastic island - not quite thick enough to walk on, but thick enough to serve as a raft of sorts - is made up of our plastic garbage. Gallon milk jugs, plastic wrappers, plastic shells that surround virtually every product we buy - millions of tons of plastic, held in place for the ever moving ocean currents.

For us, it's out of sight, out of mind. But not for the wild life.

Enter Chris Jordan. Jordan is a nature photographer "best known for his large-scale images of excess, rendering unimaginable statistics like the millions of pieces of plastic dumped into the ocean each hour". Pictured above is one image from Jordan's photo essay on the effects of the plastic dump on the birds of the Midway Atoll - an island located in the center of the Pacific garbage patch. I suggest you double click on the image to get a really good look at it.

The birds on the island eat the plastic, perhaps mistaking the fragments for the floating bells of ocean jellies ("Jellyfish"). Inevitably, the plastic clogs their esophagus, their gut, and digestive tract resulting in the birds' deaths.

Jordan's photo essay documents the decaying bodies of the birds, without moving a single feather - recording their final image just as he finds them on the island. Decaying flesh amidst a whorl of feather and hollow bone, and a body full of plastic.

To put this in some kind of perspective, you should know that this island is located in the middle of a remote marine sanctuary, dedicated to the preservation of marine life. It is located about halfway across the ocean. The closest continental land is approximately 2,000 miles away.

You can't get much further from human presence than this spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Yet there we are. The Human Stain. Our signature, found in the middle of a dead baby bird, on a remote island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Koyaanisqatsi.

LIVES OF A CELL

Sophomores read Lewis Thomas' classic essay Lives Of A Cell this weekend. In this essay, Thomas reflects on the precise mechanism of cell dynamics - how the structure of molecules and organelles relates to their specific functions.

At the end of the essay Thomas jolts the reader with a question that initially seems preposterous: Is our planet, the earth, most like a single self-contained cell?

Is it a question of proportion? Are the organisms that inhabit the biosphere analogous to the molecules and organelles that transport, communicate, package, send, receive, read, translate, tranmit, decode, and create new material within the cell?

Is it all merely a question of scale and frame of reference? Are we the fleas on the elephant - incapable of seeing the whole resulting from the sum of its parts?

Sophomores typically find it a difficult concept to fathom. The earth? A cell? How can that possibly be?

Watching this video, in which digital animation recreates some familiar structures and functions of a cell - reading the genetic code, building proteins at the ribosome, the Golgi packaging the proteins in vesicles, moving these proteins through the cell membrane, and transporting them throughout the body - made me think once again of Thomas' koan (mind puzzle). For if the earth is indeed a single "cell" in a macro-universe, what is the the entire "organism"?

What hope is there for us to see, let alone comprehend, the elephant as a whole? And if we do, will we understand it, or will it forever be a mystery?

I look forward to reading your reflections on this.

CHIMERAS

Let me show you something interesting just before we move away from botany and into Zoology. A few weeks ago, a gardener in Devon, England was harvesting apples from his apple trees and was stunned to discover the apple pictured above. This Golden Delicious apple looks like half of a red apple was attached to half of a green apple. So perfect is the division in color, that some might be tempted to declare it a hoax. But this of course is not the case. The explanation is much more interesting - and bizarre.

This stunning apple is the result of a genetic mutation - a 1,000,000 to 1 occurrence that scientists call a chimera (KI - mera). In Greek mythology, Chimeras were monsters made up of parts from different animals. There are chimeras in the natural world, but they are not made up of parts from different animals. They are made from different combinations of genetic information from the same parents of an animal. Or in this case, a plant.

Chimeras form following the moment of fertilization. Two eggs are fertilized by two sperm, and form two zygotes. Normally, two zygotes will go on to form two distinct individuals. In rare cases though, the two zygotes fuse into a single mega-zygote that goes on to form a single individual containing all of the genetic information from two sperm (or in the case of our apple, two pollen spores) and two eggs. After the resulting zygote's first cell division from one cell to two cells, all future populations of cells and tissue will contain the genetic material and characteristics of the original set of parential genetic material that it has developed from. One side will show characterstics from sperm/egg combo 1, and the other side will result from sperm/egg combo 2. Two cells "split down the middle" so to speak. Then they continue to divide: four, eight, sixteen, thirty two - etc. Up through the creation of an entire organism.

Just to address the question on everyone's mind, no, this does not occur in humans. People are not split down the middle, i.e., brown hair/red hair, light complexion/dark complexion. (Though there are rare instances when odd things do occur. More on that at a later point.....)

Chimeras are indeed rare, but not unheard of. Several years ago while spending a summer in Maine, I visited the "Oceanarium" in Bar Harbor. The prize of that summer's catch was a lobster that had the typical lobster coloring along one side of its body, and a blue color along the other half of its body. The division in coloration ran lengthwise from the head to the tail. This chimera was a star attraction at the Oceanarium, and even made it into the national news. The odds of finding a completely blue lobster are about 2,000,000:1. The odds of finding a chimera in a lobster population is about 1,000,000:1. What were the odds of finding this blue chimera lobster? I'll let you do the math. The probability was small indeed. Even smaller if you figure in the odds of catching it. But even unimaginably small probabilities do make themselves seen when populations are large enough. And in a world that is connected electronically, these discoveries become known and shared instantaineously between continents.

Chimeras serve no adaptive purpose. They are simply the result of random genetic mutations and combinations. Sometimes, 1,000,000 to 1 odds become an individual's 100%.

The Wild Things

I’ve been thinking a lot about our trip to NYC since getting back. It really was a lot of fun; very enjoyable, and so many things to think about and reflect on. There were many highlights for me; I certainly won’t forget the “wows” when everyone got their initial glimpse of the Apatosaurus and T. rex skeletons. (Similar responses were noted at the Hall Of Oceans, for the model of the Blue Whale) Certainly the rhinosaurus, and gorillas at the zoo are always thrilling. And I'll always have many fond amusing memories just from our travels together. Blue Jay carrying his dinner proudly over to my table to share that he got his New York steak, and Caleigh texting Maggie – one seat away in the movie theater for example. Some moments gave me new insights into students. Lui looking at the Indian brass and artwork reflecting on her semester in Ledoc and saying how it was “weird…now I understand what this stuff means” and Caleigh, applying her knowledge of equine care to the giraffes; observing and hypothesizing that they might need medical care. Ben, whose interest in everything herpetological was exceeded only by his interest in anything edible. And rest assured I will never look at Capt. James T. Kirk in quite the same way again.

I also appreciated how many of you commented on your enjoyment and appreciation of the dioramas. It was Chris’s succinct comment about the dioramas (he thought they were “wicked awesome”) that really set me off on a great deal of thought and reflection about them. I agree with Chris, they were “wicked awesome”. But I haven’t always felt that way.

I first saw the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History when I was a kid of maybe six or eight. Growing up in Brooklyn, I went on my own school field trips to the museum, and later as an adult I brought my own kids to the museum when they were about that same age. Throughout that period of time, I must admit that I never really cared much for the dioramas. I thought of them as being fairly dull and lifeless. Antique relics of a bygone era of museum science. (or art). The dioramas were designed to make exotic, foreign life forms accessible to the masses. Keep in mind that most people had never seen live giraffes, lions, or elephants until the 19th century. Looking at the dioramas as a kid (and as a young adult) I saw an antique exhibition of inanimate, rather than living, objects. Mere stuffed relics from a bygone era.

Returning to the museum with you, allowed me to re-visit and see these dioramas with new eyes (well, older ones anyhow). I now appreciated the tremendous artistic detail that went into each the recreation of each animal’s habitat in each diorama. I was stunned at how each diorama was designed to capture a dramatic moment in the narrative of the animals’ lives. Think about the Ostrich, its wings outstretched, protecting its young from predators. Or the Cheetahs on the prowl through the forest. The two male Alaska Moose, engaged in combat thrusting his rack into his competitor’s thorax. Mountain Gorillas, with the alpha male proudly beating his chest, re-asserting his dominance over his band, or troop. And the gentle Nile River ecosystem, with its animal communities all gathering to sip the precious liquid of life.

Looking at these dioramas now, I was re-awakened to their beauty, but I also experienced a new a sense of sadness. In a span fifty years, many of these creatures have become endangered. It now seems quite possible – if not probable – that some may become critically endangered, to the point of possible extinction. Many seem to be on the verge of disappearing from the earth. The Hall Of Oceans boasted in its diorama that the polar bear is the “top predator of this icy world”. But its world of ice is melting at an alarming rate – a rate far greater than recent predictions. And polar bears – while still plentiful – are facing extraordinarily adverse conditions, and may become extinct by the end of this century. Polar bears may live on frozen land, but they are land creatures - not sea creatures. Their habitat is melting away beneath them. Adrift on glaciers, polar bears struggle to swim increasingly long distances between arctic land masses. If a top predator disappears – even one that lords over an icy world - its surrounding ecosystem collapses along with it.

Perhaps one day one or more of you will return to the museum with your own students, or your own children. I suppose you will reminisce about our trip to New York way back in the year 2009. No doubt you’ll laugh at the quaint gasoline powered vehicles in which we drove down to the city, the flat screen upon which a “film” called Where The Wild Things Are was projected, and perhaps you'll even laugh at those little boxes called iPods that used to play your music. (How much longer before we all have our personalized playlists etched on a chip in our heads?)

Your students or children will no doubt also express amazement at the Apatosaurus and T. Rex skeletons. And as you make your way down from the fourth floor to the second and first floors that house the dioramas you will no doubt stop, and re-experience the wonder. But what will you say when the child you’re with asks you if you REALLY got to see a live gorilla or a giant white polar bear? How will you answer their questions about why they all died – or how people could have allowed them to disappear? Looking at all the technology that will no doubt surround you in the 21st century, how will you respond when they ask, “Why didn’t people do more to save them”?

What will go through your mind, 40 years from now, as you re-visit and gaze upon the same dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. What will it be like to be an adult, knowing that your childhood was the last during which kids grew up with the knowledge that somewhere in the world, in a place far, far away there existed a wondrous world of ice and mysterious forested jungle - places Where The Wild Things Were?

What is this?

Hello Zooboters! Sorry - I missed you guys on Friday, and I really don't know if I'll make it in tomorrow either as I'm still running a low fever from this nasty flu. (Don't think its "swine-y" though...). So this response will be wrapped up into my "sub-plan" for the day.

So I'd like you to response to this picture with your best guess of what this image actually is.

Once you decide what it is, I would like you to write a short essay about this, uh, whatever-it-is. Do not write this on the blog, just identify this thing in your response. On a SEPARATE SHEET OF PAPER please write what you imagine this "things" life cycle to be. Please discuss its birth, habitat, predator prey relationships, young life, reproduction, family and social interactions, and death.

I'll collect these stories - best one wins, er, something.

Modern Snake With Legs, and Primitive Snake With Feathers

This is just to post the picture - read and respond to the NEXT post below on Dinosaurs and Birds!

Birds DID evolve from Dinosaurs!

Scientists have long debated the evolutionary ancestry of birds. During the past decade, evidence has emerged that birds evolved from dinosaurs. This past month, scientists in China discovered an amazingly well preserved fossil that seems to finally put the question to rest.

Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing has discovered the remains of a "four-winged" dinosaur that seems to confirm that birds owe their ancestry to dinosaurs living millions of years ago. The "dino-bird", called Anchiornis huxleyi.
Until now, incomplete fossils suggested that A. huxleyi was a fully transitioned primitive bird. The fossil is clearly transitional and dinosaur-like - providing almost indisputable evidence that proves birds descended from dinosaurs.

Xu and his team discovered a dinosaur with long feathers covering its arms, tail as well as its feet. This is an arrangement of a "four-winged" dinosaur does not prove that the creature could fly. It also had long lower legs that suggest it was a good runner. But the well-preserved fossilized feathers do show a "transitional species" that illustrates how bird-like dinosaurs developed features enabling them to fly.

The astounding fossil comes from in Daxishan, in Jianchang county in northeastern China. It was found in rock dated to the early part of the Late Jurassic period, about 160 million years ago. This date means that A. huxleyi is not a true bird, but rather a a late member of the Troodontidae, a category of dinosaurs closely related to birds, Xu said.

Xu concludes that his discovery proves once and for all that dinosaurs and bird-like creatures did exist at the same time, and that the family of modern avians descended and evolved from reptilian ancestry.

As for the reptiles themselves, I only remind you of the other discovery I mentioned in passing this week - a rare snake with fully developed legs. Discovered - again - in China.

What does this modern mutant suggest to you?

A STRANGE NEW FISH? OR AN OLD KNOWN ONE?

New organisms are being discovered all the time. But sometimes, what appears new, turns out to be known.

This bizarre looking creature was caught off of the coast of Brazil this past week. About 100 pounds, and 6 feet in length, you would think that it couldn't be missed. Yet it lives in the ocean depths, and is seldom seen near the surface. Its body is highly gelatinous (jelly-like) making it less than desirable as seafood (probably a good thing, given the arguments of last week's post!). Scientists know it by it's gelatinous, bulbous "nose" at the front of its head. Hence its name: the Jellynose.

The Jelly-like body is due to the fact that the fish has an extremely high fat content in its body. This probably allows it to store energy, as food is hard to find at the depths where it lives - about 1,000 feet below the surface. Unlike most other fish, the Jellyfish body does not have scales. Nor does it have true bones. Instead, like rays and sharks, it has cartilage. Overall, their body form and function (and DNA) places them firmly in true "bony" fish family - teleosts - rather than the family of cartilaginous sharks and rays, Chondrichthyes. Jellynoses appear to be a true anomaly.

There are 30,000 known fish species in the world. Who knows how many more species have yet to be discovered. Some scientists think hundreds. But many more scientists believe that the number could go into the thousands.

Little else is known about the Jellynose family.

Seeing something like this always makes me feel humbled once again, by the great diversity of life on Earth.

AQUACULTURE

Aquaculture. No, it’s not a typo. Instead of farming cultivated plant foods we’re farming fish. And this year, we’ve reached a tipping point of sorts. The Washington Post reports that now, over ½ the fish consumed in the world will have been raised in pens, rather than caught. The implications are enormous.

Several years ago, I began the marine biology course that I taught at TA with a graph that showed the projected decline in ocean fish. The numbers of fish had been declining for several decades, but the frightening part was the projection out to the year 2050. The endpoint for this graph suggested that the oceans would be depleted of all fish. In other words, while a few species might survive in unique niches, fish - from the sharks to the scavengers – would disappear from our oceans. The oceans in a sense would become relatively lifeless pools of flooded sand.

The predator prey relationships of the past have been permanently altered given the huge increase in human population (from 1 billion to the current 6 billion in about 150 years). That increase, coupled with a commensurate increase in the world’s taste for seafood has lead to some drastic over fishing. Cheap, smaller fish are also being caught in massive numbers to be ground up into fish meal, to be fed to poultry, pigs, and ironically – farmed fish. In other words, fish are being hunted and caught to feed people. And fish.

Another article this past week discussed the imminent demise of the large blue fin tuna, a magnificent half-ton beast that is capable of swimming 3000 miles without stopping. Tuna, it seems, is about to become a victim of the global sushi craze. Tuna can’t be farmed. They are too large, too energetic, and they require too much space.

But other species can be grown from “egg-to-plate” as they say. Salmon are probably the best known and most popular of the farm-raised fish. Once considered a delicacy, salmon has literally become the “chicken of the sea”. I remember salmon selling for about $10/pound in the 1970s – that’s probably something like $25/pound today. Now, I see it selling for as little as $3.95 locally. Salmon, and now other fish, are becoming cheap and plentiful because they are being farmed, raised in huge circular pens like the one pictured above.

The fish are born into the tanks. They are raised on a diet of unused poultry trimmings from the millions of chickens that are raised in dark boxes, corn meal, and antibiotic powders. Not being free to swim the oceans, the fish also accumulate more body fat than a free, “wild” fish. This trait is particularly noticeable in farm-raised salmon. Genetically chosen for hardiness, and the ability to live in these conditions, the fish that you are eating are different from the fish your grandparents ate.

Shellfish too, are being farmed. Scientists report that some Chinese bays are so congested with nets, traps, and pens that they have become un-navigable. Lest you think this is an “Asian problem”, let me assure you that New England is one of the fastest growing fish farm regions in the country.

This is an unsustainable practice. As we deplete the oceans of its largest fish, and its small foraging fish, we are decimating the two ends of the oceanic food chain. Krill too – the small shrimp-like plankton that lays the foundation for the oceanic food web is also being sieved out of the Antarctic waters at alarming rates. Such over-fishing can lead to an environmental chain reaction of sorts. In the 1970s and again in the 1990s Peru exploited its anchovy population. Anchovies are small foraging fish. Not only did fish stocks decline, but so did local sea bird populations that depended on the small fish for their food. It took a change in government in 2006 to place restraints on fishing. Restraints that have lead to a recovery of the ecosystem.

That was the experience of a small, regional ecosystem. What happens when we deplete an ocean? What happens if the chain reaction truly starts, and species begin to disappear at an accelerating rate? What happens if the projections are correct, and the oceans do become dead zones in the next few years? What does it mean if the earth no longer has seafood?

What will happen to our poultry industry? What will happen to us?

Maybe we're the chickens who have lost their heads.

ZOOMING IN ON A LEAF

This 3 minute video is really cool, despite the corny voice-over narration. This is one leaf - what does this suggest about the biological detail found in a complete plant? Or in a tree?

Watch the video, and provide your thoughts and comments. (Again, you may have to cut and paste the link if it does not appear live on your computer)

www.scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2009/09/zoom_into_a_leaf.php

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS COME FROM?

This initial post addresses what Darwin called an abominable mystery - the origin of flowers.

We have seen how most of our modern garden flowers originated in China, and have even seen images of what could possibly have been the "First Flower". But was it actually the first? Scientists are continuing their work in this field - literally and figuratively. Scientists are fairly certain that Amborella, pictured above, is the oldest lineage of flowering plant. It appers to be an ancient species going back millions of years.

For the rest of the story, click on the link below (or cut and paste the link into your address bar if the hyperlink does not work on your computer) and read the article that appeared in the New York Times yesterday on this very topic. Type up your first response, as we discussed in class, and you're on your way!

What is it that flowers provided that their predecessors, the "naked seed" plants, did not?

www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/science/08flower.html?8dpc

LET YOUR MIND DANCE.....

TA faculty have been spending much of our meeting time this past year writing, and reviewing standards. As I've thought about the standard on Reflection, I've found my own self reflecting on the phrase "let your mind dance", some words that came to mind while writing a Zoobot post earlier this year. This morning, as I was doing my usual Sunday morning web surfing, I came across an article in The New Republic about President Obama's Secretary Of Energy, Steven Chu that starts with a great example of this:

"In the winter of 1984, a young scientist named Steven Chu was working as the new head of the quantum electronics division at AT&T's Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. For months, he'd been struggling to find ways to trap atoms with light so that he could hold them in place and study them better. It was an idea he'd picked up from an older colleague, Arthur Ashkin, who had wrangled with the problem all through the 1970s before finally being told to shut the project down--which he did, until Chu came along. ("I was this new, young person who he could corrupt," Chu later joked.) Now Chu, too, had hit an impasse until, one night, a fierce snowstorm swirled through New Jersey. Everyone at Bell had left early except for Chu, who lived nearby and decided to stay a bit longer. As he watched the snow drift outside, he realized they'd been approaching the problem incorrectly: He first needed to cool the atoms, so that they were moving only as fast as ants, rather than fighter jets; only then could he predict their movements and trap them with lasers. It was a key insight, and Chu's subsequent work on cooling atoms eventually earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in physics. While it may sound inevitable in retrospect, big breakthroughs like that don't come along too often."

This anecdote captures perfectly the idea of letting your mind dance. Sometimes we face problems, assignments, situations, or blog responses not knowing how to start. Whether its a paper or a painting, what is the first word or brushstroke to put on the paper or canvass. This anecdote emphasizes the importance of non-active thinking. Letting the mind wander. Looking out the window. Giving yourself the opportunity to relax enough to allow your mind to forge some natural connection between what you already know and what it is you are trying to grasp - that elusive idea that lies just beyond your reach.

I emphasized the final sentence in the New Republic piece, because it too raises an important aspect of letting your mind dance. Very often the outcome - that big breakthrough - seems inevitable when it becomes explicit. I'm sure that every Chem 1 student would know that atomic motion slows down as temperature decreases. But it took a moment of wonder (yes, and a pretty smart guy) to experience the epiphany that this simple fact could be applied in an entirely new way in order to achieve an elusive research goal.

Let your mind dance on this last thought for the semester: Current studies indicate that the Silverback Gorilla will be extinct in 30-50 years. Ishmael’s epitaph includes the statement: “With the Gorilla gone, will there hope for man”? Reflect on this statement. Dance around some of the information you gleaned from reading The Sixth Extinction article several weeks ago on the library’s lawn a couple of weeks ago. Share your thoughts.

My summer wish for all of you is that you allow yourselves the opportunity, nay - that you make multiple opportunities - to relax and let your minds dance.

Peace- out.


Posted by Gary at 4:16 AM 0 comments

THE HUMAN FOOTPRINT

For students, from Katie:

Five points on photosynthesis quiz for completing this survey and recording or saving results to share...:

http://www.myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/

ZOONOSIS

Uh-oh.

During the past few years, I have discussed avian flu (bird flu) occasionally, and somewhat cautiously, in class. I'm not a "catastrophist", someone who sees disaster lurking around every corner. I believe that climate change is real, but I also have faith in mankind's ingenuity to adapt and change. I didn't get concerned about the alleged Y2K virus that was to have shut down all personal computers, as well as global air traffic control networks, train systems, banking systems, and other computer based management systems. And as I told my wife Sue several years ago, I wasn't too concerned about avian flu, "Unless", I told her "the virus jumps into pigs - that would concern me".

Consider me concerned.

There are about 15 known strains of virus. Some effect birds/water fowl. Some effect humans. The organisms are genetically different enough in these two classes that viral strain rarely jump from one class (Aves) to another (Mammalia). There are a few viral strains however, that effect birds, swine, and humans. Swine are mammals. We are mammals. Swine there can act as a viral bridge, allowing an avian flu to "migrate" into, and infect, humans.

This transmission of disease from animals to humans is called zoonosis. (I can hear Jenny now, bristling at the notion that humans are not animals, and we consider ourselves, somehow "different". A perfect segue into our next book, Ishmael.) We may in fact be animals, but viruses seem to specialize and distinguish between different classes of animals. This distinction has shielded humans from many diseases.

The swine flu being reported in Mexico is a combination of avian and swine flu. At this time, it is being reported in Mexico, New York, California, Texas, Kansas, Israel, New Zealand, France and Hong Kong. Human immune systems are encountering this bug and saying "Huh? What's this?" Not knowing how to respond, those who are infected find themselves with immune systems going into overdrive - sometimes to their own detriment.

If I were to make a hypothesis it would be this: we are about to see a global pandemic. The first wave will be relative mild with relatively few infections. Then, Darwinian principles will kick in, the "strongest viruses will survive" and adapt to Tamiflu or whatever is being used against them, and a second, more serious wave of viral infections will occur. It's important to keep all of this in perspective. Influenza is always to be treated as a potentially serious disease. The "flu" is responsible 35,000 deaths in the US each year, mostly in our most vulnerable population groups - infants and the elderly. And there was another swine flu alert put out in 1976, but that epidemic never materialized - certainly not to anything approaching global pandemic levels.

Hopefully, I will be proved wrong (It will not be the first time!) and this whole thing will fizzle out. But this is my current thinking on the matter. Transmission is exponential; 2 pass it on to 4, and on to 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 etc. We should have a much clearer sense of where this thing is heading towards the end of this week.

While several people in Mexico have died, they reportedly did not seek treatment. At this point, no Americans have died from the swine flu. A primary concern is that this strain of flu seems to be targeting young, otherwise healthy teenagers and adults, rather then the typically vulnerable populations.

My advice to you all is the same advice I've given my own kids: wash your hands, follow new developments in the news, and if you begin to feel any flu-like symptoms (tiredness, joint-aches, fever, disorientation) get thee to a physician!

As disturbing as these recent developments are, I could not have planned a better illustration of what we have been studying these past few weeks. Infectious agents kick one's immune system into gear. The virus presents an antigen/epitope not previous known to one's immune system. One gets tested for swine flu with an Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbant Assay, and then receives treatment based on a positive or negative indicator in the test.

Sometimes the real-life connections are a little too real.

So where did this swine flu virus come from? Aren't there always viruses? How did it make the "leap" from birds to pigs to humans? How? It evolved. And that, dear students, will lead us to another relevant "real-life" connection this week as we acquaint ourselves with Darwin's elegantly simple, yet utterly profound, thoughts on the diversity of life on earth: the theory of evolution.

BIRD POPULATIONS IN DECLINE

"Evening summer breeze / sweet warblings of the meadowlark / moonlight in Vermont....."

Moonlight In Vermont. Great, great song. I was walking down the hallway past Mr. Mellinger's room last week, and heard the band practicing the tune. Stuck my head in to congratulate the musicians and singer - the song has a killer key change in the middle "bridge", and they really nailed it. Couldn't get it out of my head as I returned to the biology room....and kept thinking about that meadowlark. I couldn't recall seeing a meadowlark for a long time.

Turns out there's a probable reason for the absence. A recent study completed by the Interior Department titled "The State Of The Birds" (catchy title, eh? Just had to be a federal report...) reports that just about all non-waterfowl bird populations have dropped dramatically during the past forty years. Climate change wasn't directly implicated as the primary cuase although it most assuredly is involved. Rather, it is the spread of human populations and development of previously forested woodlands and grasslands that is to blame. As we build more houses, yards, stores, and roads we are changing, and in some cases destroying, the habitats of our bird populations. Birds that thrive in wooded areas or grasslands hesitate, or refuse, to cross over new open parcels of land, which indicate a territorial boundary to them. Invasive species move in. Disease spreads. Populations teeter on extinction.

Fortunately, bird advocates and worked with sport hunters to lobby for hundreds of millions of dollars of federal aid to protect endangered species. Yet placing birds on an endangered species list, may impact other environmentally important projects. For example, the lesser prairie chicken lives in the the southwest. Like many grassland species, its population has dropped about 40% during the last four decades. While it may deserve designation as an endangered species, doing so would place severe limitations on the entrepreneurs efforts to develop wind power turbines in that region. How does one place a value on a bird species versus the need for more, and cleaner, energy?

When I moved to the Upper Valley in the mid 1980s I was awakened each morning by a cacophony of bird song. Currently, more often than not, it is very quiet when I awaken - even on weekends. I hear the occasional song of some resident birds, but it is nothing like it was 25 years ago.

And I wonder, is this another "silent spring"? One not caused by use of pesticides, but rather, a more benign neglect in the name of progress?

The Panther

Katie's lecture on our Fast Plants' anthers got me thinking about TA panthers. One thing lead to another, and before I knew it, a famous little poem by Ogden Nash came to mind:

The Panther

The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don't anther.

A little poem that should be in everyone's memory bank I think. Connections. Even if they appear a little random at times. Let your mind dance.

OK - please proceed to this week's actual post below!

MEET THE BEETLE!

Wow.
Yes, it's real, but the question of course is: Why? If evolution is driven by natural selection for best fit within an organism's environment, what possible advantage could such armor provide? Why on earth would a beetle develop such horns? Why for that matter would an Irish elk (now extinct) carry around a rack with a width of 10-12 feet and a weight of 70-90 pounds? And why on earth would a peacock develop those beautiful, yet extraordinarily cumbersome feathers? When in flight, peacocks make turkeys look as graceful as geese.

Darwin theorized that another evolutionary process was at work in cases such as these. He called it sexual selection. Basically, Darwin theorized that females would choose mates who would offer the most protection, or the most successful hunter, or highest quality genetic material. Recent studies seem to bolster this idea.

Researchers tried shortening some of the plumage on male peacocks. Not dramatically - just a few inches. Yet the outcome was indeed dramatic in terms of preferences expressed by the peahens. Males with cut feathers were passed by in the mating process. Regardless if they were known or unknown to the females. Peahens seemed to make a conscious choice to select the males with the more extravagant plumage to father their brood.

Other organisms develop weapons to fight for the attention of the female. The Irish Elk is one of many animals that carried it's weapons around with it. Males actively fight for the females' attention. The greatest warrior won. Many examples of this remain today.

In the case of the rhinosaurus beetle pictured, an evolutionary arms race began millions of years ago that lead to the pronounced claws on the beast. This dung beetle doesn't merely push its ball of dung along a path for furtive consumption. It burrows under the dung, and drags the dung into its own tunnel network for storage and consumption. These tunneling beetles have developed their armor and huge claws not for defense, but rather as a warning. Two males may approach, they wave their claws, they perceive the threat to each other, and one will aver and back away. Claws may interlock, and the combatants may assess their relative strength, rather than inflict actual damage. Males can signal the intent, as well as their relative strength. And once again, females notice this, and it plays a role in sexual selection.

What about humans? As noted in the NY Times article which discussed this, our teeth are puny. We don't have claws. We don't look terribly menacing. (Well, most of us) But we DO manufacture our weapons. We do signal our intent. Think of the samaurai's sword. Or the military parades of tanks and gun carrying soldiers. Or the opening of the movie Iron Man.

But I gotta tell you - if I can find a helmet on eBay that looks like this rhinosaurus beetle....it's mine.

(the article on which this post is based can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/science/24armo.html?pagewanted=1&ref=science)

The Right Whale (early post for Anya!)

As you know, this past Friday I attended a workshop. The keynote speaker, and workshop presenter, was Tom Wessels, author of Reading The Forested Landscape, and a professor of biology and environmental science at Antioch College. (btw Katie, he says "hello"). Tom's presentation was wonderful, but his talk was full of the caveats that biologists seem so focused on at this point in time; ie, climate change, loss of habitat, species extinction etc. At the end of the workshop, we talked, and I asked him how he responds to his students when they ask the same question I here from many of my students: Is there any good biology news? It all seems so bleak - what can we do? What can we hopeful about?

Tom told me that he responds by telling his students that we are, indeed, on the verge of a sixth "great extinction", but not to despair - human life as we know it will disappear but life, and the earth, will go on to renew itself and prosper.

Oh. Somehow I was hoping for more.

Fortunately, I read an article in the New York Times which offered me more hope. A lot more hope.

As some of you know, I'm very interested in the history of whaling in the United States. Whaling was a brutally hazardous way of making a living, but a necessary one. Whaling providing the world with a much needed commodity: whale oil. Whale oil lit the world prior to the invention of the light bulb. And whale oil was an important energy source prior to the discovery of the oil fields in the Middle East, and the creation of the refineries that created gasoline.

Whalers lead dangerous lives. The hunters' prey were the objects of callous and brutal hunting practices. In one famous historical incident, the Whaleship Essex was repeatedly rammed by a ferocious bull Sperm Whale who decided that he had taken enough. This incident probably served as the model for Herman Melville's creation, Moby Dick.

The Right Whale is a calm, slow, curious behemoth of the North Atlantic. It has lots of oil and baleen, (used by the mammal to filter food out of its waters, and used by humans for corsets), it swims close to the shoreline, and when killed, it floats on the water's surface. Curious, slow, docile, full of oil and easy to retrieve. Whalers of the 19th century named it for what it was: the right whale to kill.

By 1900, Right Whales were hunted to the brink of extinction. Their worldwide population had dwindled down to 100. Scientists were certain that the large mammal, that typically gives birth to a single calf, would not reproduce at a rate needed to sustain the population. In other words, the Right Whale appeared to be heading to certain extinction.

But a funny thing happened. People began to care about whales. Their value as an eco-tourist entity (ie,whale watching trips) began to out value their market value as a resource. As a result, many countries, including the United States, began to put legislation in place to protect the Right Whale, and other marine mammals.

During the past couple of decades the Right Whale, and several other species, have given scientists cause for hope. In 2001, a record number of Right Whale calves were born - 31. This past year, the record was broken with the birth of 39. These numbers have little to do with ocean habitat change, or food availability, or changes in acid precipitation. Rather, they're a reflection of people caring, and working to change human behaviors and their impacts on other creatures.

This article really gave me cause for hope. If we can bring the Right Whale back from the verge of extinction, there's hope for many of the other creatures currently at risk throughout the world.

Even ourselves.

I encourage you to take a look at the complete article, and its embedded slide show at
www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/science/17whal.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=science

Oh yeah...AND THE WINNER IS.....

"Yeah, my water left me for a potato with a higher salinity concentration......"
Congratulations to Dan G.!

Please keep reading for your response to the next post...

NAME THE OCTOPUS!

You can tell it's a slow night at my house. Actually, I'm just pooped after having a grandchild's 3rd birthday family celebration here. So - you get off light this week! (Use the time wisely -)

Use your comment to name the octopus! No simple name (not "Bessie") but a fake scientific name that you explain. Format: Capitalized Genus has to be Octopus followed by lower case species name of your choice. You can use fake latin. The common octopus, for example, is Octopus vulgaris.

My entry: Octopus bos cephalus, because the whole beast looks like a cow's head.

("The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk." Ogden Nash)

Best name wins a mini Snickers..........and don't try to milk the octopus for all it's worth.

(then, for further amusement - read the cartoon below)

Speaking of cephalopod intelligence.....

Oh, it's a little random, I know.

It was originally sent to me by my daughter (who was a bio major). (Disclaimer: This comic does not represent the views of the blogger, his students, his employer, his school or his personal views towards his colleague who teaches chemistry and physics. We respect chemists and physicists, and even socialize with them on occasion. We also respect and honor cuttlefish. We do not condone the training of cephalopods to do harm. We think of them more as, "cuddle fish".) (Sort of)

(Not really)

It's pretty funny though.......(you can click on the picture to enlarge it, so it's easier to read)

TWO BEES OR NOT TWO BEES? THINK ABOUT IT.

Let’s continue with our thoughts on octopus intelligence.

When we speak of intelligence, we can find ourselves on a slippery slope. I once heard a biologist make a strong case for the exhibition of signs of intelligence in the slime mold.

Yes; a slime mold.

Slime molds, like other fungi, reproduce by releasing spores. When these spores become moist they go on an amoeba-like prowl, seeking bacteria to eat. Once they chow down on bacteria, they become a moving mat called a “plasmodium”. Plasmodia may move several feet a day. When conditions dry up, or they no longer have a decaying log or plant to lay on, they go into a “puffball” stage, in which they produce more spores. The puffballs are carried by the wind to infect new areas.

Few of us would question whether the slime mold is alive. You can run down the typical characteristics of life and find examples of growth, development, response to environment, homeostasis, et al. But intelligence? I think the jury is still out on that one.

To me, (and other scientists, more well versed in neuroscience than your humble teacher) intelligence is demonstrated through a demonstration of consciousness regarding one’s actions. We have recently seen examples of this among orangutungs, and last week’s “post”-er star, the octopus (octopi? octopuses?). Remember that the stealth killer octopus did return to his tank, only to repeat his actions on another night, remember? That’s either intelligence, or an indication that the cephalopod in question has seen way too many episodes of Dexter.

It’s one thing to debate intelligence in primates, marine mammals, or cephalopods – but what about bees? This month’s Scientific American contains a story on scientists’ exploration of consciousness among our little furry pollinating friend, Apis mellifera.

You can read the brief article here: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=exploring-consciousness

(I'm afraid you'll have to cut and paste the link in your adddress bar - it isn't going live for some reason. Probably something to do with my intelligence......)

Please focus your comment specifically on this article, rather then a simple statement of your personal opinion on whether or not bees (or slime molds) are intelligent.

Maybe our next cake should have the shape and texture of plasmodia? Yummy!

OCTOPUS'S GARDEN

Big news this week from Santa Monica California.

One of their star octopus (octopuses? octopi?) Tried to make a get-away by swimming to the top of her tank, disassembling the valve that lets water into her tank, and making an attempt to get out. (She wound up releasing about 200 gallons of water all over the aquarium's floor). A planned escape sounds a little far-fetched, perhaps? Well, think back to the DVD we watched about Orangutang behavior. Octopus (octopuses? octopi?) are also pretty darn smart.But are they intelligent?

"Octopuses have a wonderful combination of intelligence, tremendous manipulative ability, curiosity, and strength," says Jennifer Mather, a psychology professor at Canada's University of Lethbridge who has studied cognition in octopuses. Indeed they do - at least so far as curiousity and strength go. Yet they can also be extraordinarily gentle and delicate. Octopuses (octopi?) actually appear to caress each other during mating. And they are gentle, caring parents.

They can also be devious. A few years ago an octopus in the New England aquarium made nightly raids on another tank, attacking and eating fish in the central tank, and then slithering back to its own tank after finishing its meal. Aquarium workers were perplexed, not knowing why fish seem to be disappearing from the central tank on a regular basis. It was only when they set up night-time cameras that they witnessed the gelatinous blob slithering from one tank to another, and then returning to its lair.

As members of the phylum cephalopod, literally "head-foot" they do not have the conventional body plan seen throughout the animal kingdom. Basically, there is no central body section, or thorax. What we refer to as arms, are actually the equivalent to legs/feet - hence their name.

Cephalopods, which also include squid, have highly evolved brains. Biologists hypothesize that these complex brains are put to good use in managing a multitude of chamoflage colors and patterns, that may also allow cephalopods to communicate. This seems to be particularly true in squid. Celphalopod communication through color pattern helped influence the final climactic scene in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, where Steven Spielberg hypothesized are initial communication with aliens would be through sound and light.

What evidence do we have of cephalopod intelligence? Why do we suspect that this octopus was trying to make a run for it?

Check out this video:

And she is not a "gifted octopus". This type of problem solving behavior has been seen in many individuals.

Still, some people continue to question whether this is evidence of "intelligence". What to you think? Provide a comment that demonstrates YOUR intelligence (sorry - couldn't resist.)

PS - The title of this entry brought to mind a Beatles trivia question - first person who posts the correct answer gets, um, something. Here it is: What was the original working title of The Beatles movie, "Help!"?

KOYAANISQATSI - (from the Hopi language), 1. Crazy life. 2. Life in turmoil 3. Life out of balance

Winter break is about to end, and we are about to get another snow storm. It has been a winter characterized by periods of extreme cold and lots of snow. Lots. My driveway plowing bill documents that for me in a quantitative manner.

All of this snow has also allowed a friend to play that perennial favorite game, "Gotcha!" with me. Summarizing our discussion, it went something like this: Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth, heh? Where's the global warming? Just a couple of years ago you showed me an article from the New York Times that discussed the lack of old time winters - they talked about warmer weather and decreasing amounts of snow. Look at our weather these past two months! What do you have to say about that? I mean, as a biology teacher? Do you still believe in global warming? (You can insert the "gotch" after any one of those sentences).

Taking a deep breath, I assured my friend that, unfortunately, I do continue to have major concerns about global warming, or as I prefer to say climate change. Weather patterns are extremely complex system and need to be observed at a variety of geographic and geologic locations over long periods of time to observe the potential changes scientists are discussing. Vermont's seasonal snowfall may change from year to year, but it's the long term (i.e., 50-100 year) change in regional climate that is of greatest concern to scientists. As well as the red flag alerts that are appearing in critically sensitive areas, like the poles.

Behold the picture at the heading of this post. A quick glance at the image, may suggest that some polar explorers are keeping warm around a campfire, but that is not what's happening. I took this screen shot from a news video about climate change at the poles. The image is far more ominous than it initially appears.

The frozen tundra just south of the circumpolar region is melting at an alarming rate. Aside from the obvious risks to migratory animals (ie caribou) that are having a harder time traveling in the watery mosquito infested muck, this melting land is also releasing the dead organic mulch-like material to bacterial decomposers. This is a newly released organic banquet for these critters. They're chowing down. And their excreting carbon based gases into our atmosphere at an accelerating rate.

In the picture at the top, a scientist lit a torch above the melting tundra and ignited the natural gas (methane) being released by the newly thawed land. As more of this carbon based gas is released into the atmosphere, the atmosphere will - hypothetically - retain more heat. This is turn will cause more permafrost to melt, releasing more carbon based gas, causing greater warming, causing more melting, etc. etc. etc. This is called a positive feedback loop. An increase in variable "A" leads to an increase in variable "B", which in turn leads to a further increase in variable "A" - and on and on it goes.

A couple of years ago, I attended a presentation at Dartmouth given by Aqaluk Lynge, the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). The ICC represants the people who have lived around the north pole for centuries, eking out a survival - in fact thriving - without a designated country, or government. Lynge remarked that climate change is only being debated by the western countries. "My people" he said "have observed the effects of climate change, caused by your western nations, for decades". Migratory paths are altering. Animals hunted for survival are disappearing. Insects are increasing. Glaciers are cleaving. A way of life that has existed for thousands of years is disappearing in our lifetimes.

Koyaanisqatsi. The hopi word that refers to the disintegration of a life in turmoil, also has another clarion call in its definition: "a state of life that calls for another way of living". Indeed. It's time to return to lives that are more in tune with nature; lives in balance.

One Last Darwin Birthday Wish Before Vacation Week

As we celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday this week, just before we begin our winter break, it seems appropriate to quote his autobiography Recollections of the Development of My Mind and Character.


Darwin offers us good advice for the coming week:

"My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine, would not I suppose have thus suffered; & if I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry & to listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied could thus have been kept active through use."

While I would like to remind you all to read pages 116-147 in Your Inner Fish, I would also urge you to make some time to read some poetry and listen to some music. More often than once next week!

Or, perhaps, ski....snowshow.....hike.............and update any missing blog posts!

Have a great week! - Mr. E

Have A Heart

For years, I have been teaching biology students that individual cardiac (heart) cells beat. When placed on a petri dish, cardiac cells will seek each other out; actually slithering over to each other, seeking connection. Once they touch, they communicate. The cells begin to form cardiac tissue; beating together, in a primitive re-enactment of the complete, functional organ responsible for the circulation of life's most precious fluid.

As amazing as this is, the construction of tissue - cells operating together providing a single function - is a long way from the construction of a truly complete organ.

Recently, however, science has taken a giant step closer to achieving this goal.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have constructed synthetic hearts from living tissue. Check out this 1 1/2 minute news clip: (if the link doesn't appear, it's www.wimp.com/beatingheart/

As the scientists note in the clip, pigs hearts are amazingly similar to the human heart, and even now, are used as temporary replacements, or bridges, for patients awaiting hearts for transplantation. Its a question of size, functionality, structure, and similar proteins that allows acceptance by human immune systems.

Transplanting a synthetic heart, or a pig's heart into a person is a stupendous and genuinely valuable addition to cardiac medicine. Still - it does beg questions. I mean, for centuries the heart has been thought of as the seat of emotion, the source of love, and the essence of human soulfulness. When you miss someone you feel heartbroken. When you are wild about someone, you say that he or she "makes your heart beat faster". Despite the Wizard of Oz's admonishment to the Tin Man that he had "no idea how much better off he (was) without one", we measure our lives by the heartfelt joys and sorrows we all experience.

So, what happens when it's a synthetic pig's heart that's inside of us? Do we gain life, yet lose some essence of what it means to be human?

Or perhaps we just give our beloved bacon instead of chocolate on Valentine's Day?

Seriously - it's both amazing and valuable - but how do you feel about this development on an emotional level?

How would YOU feel about having a porcine pumper in your thoracic cavity?

SIGNS OF SPRING (?!?)

I was going to note the appearance of cedar waxwings on my crabapple trees this weekend, as well as two american robins. The first, the waxwing, is a migratory bird, a true harbinger of spring. (Though being migratory, they may well make a hasty retreat after snacking on the sweet fruit) (Carbs = energy, chapter 3!) The cedar waxwing is a heavy duty frugivorous bird - a real fruit hog. A principle benefit derived from the waxwings appearance is seed dispersion. Berries in, seeds out.

The American Robin, our cheerful little friend, alas, is not a true harbinger of spring. Robins don't winter far from their breeding grounds. Instead, they congregate in large flocks in deeper wooded areas where we typically do not see them. The early bird may get the annelid, but with two feet of snow on the ground, Robins too seek small berries to get them through the winter, but tend to drop the berries' seeds within their breeding grounds. Not that there's anything wrong with that........

It was nice to see these two species. Especially with this evenings prediction of -15 degree below zero temperatures. (I'm still awaiting a pair of cardinals that have appeared for several years now. I've heard that they have been making some local appearances)

Needless to say, the picture that accompanies this week's post is not a bird. (I really hope I didn't need to point that out!) Although this little fella was a big story this week too. Indeed until very recently Tapetails (top), Whalefish (middle) and Bignoses (bottom) were thought to be three different species of fish. Tapetails, named after their long streamer-like tail, live in shallow water while the latter two fish have only been found in deep water. Whalefish lack scales, and have those large bulbous jaws, while Bignoses have, well, big noses, and have immobile jaws. (If their jaws are immobile, how do they eat? Apparently, they don't. They live off of the fat stored in their very large livers. This does not sound like an attractive lifestyle)

(Edit 2/2- My hypothesis is that the smaller adult fish with the immobile jaw is the male. There are other deep water fish that fit this model. The male attaches to the female as a parasite, providing his genetic material and living off of his stored energy until he withers away like a spent vestigial organ. Remember, most animals release only a few eggs as opposed to millions of sperm. As much as I hate to say it, males seem to be somewhat dispensable in the Kingdom Animalia. With exceptions of course!)

Studies then showed remarkable similarities between mitochondrial DNA between tapetails and whalefish. Virtually identical. (mitochondrial DNA is a much smaller subset of code passed from mother to offspring). More DNA studies ensued, and as a result, scientists at the Smithsonian discovered preserved specimens of fish that appeared to be in transition from one form to another.

What we have here folks, are three stages in the life of a single fish, representing the larval stage and the fully mature adult male and female of the species. It's a remarkable metamorphosis, and one that helps us look anew at the lifecycles of organisms and cycles of life on the planet.

As for me, I'm still awaiting the metamorphosis that occurs with each spring. Until then, I watch for the arrival of my cardinals, I rejoice in the sun arcing higher into each day's afternoon sky, and prepare for the festive celebration we call Founders Day.

Each day brings its own beauty.

A SERENDIPITOUS MONOCHROMATIC IMAGE

What is this and why do all those dots look the same?

Why is it monochromatic - a single color?

And how can an image be serendipitous (to use Neil Shubin's favorite word)? Well, let me explain.

The image is serendipitous in that I found a magazine haphazardly laying about in Mr. Chabot's room last week (not to imply that Mr. Chabot's room is any less orderly than my own) and it opened itself to the article containing this image, and the one that follows. Doing a "quick read" of the article got me thinking about one of your student comments from last week. I realized I had struck gold.

As for the rest, read on, dear students, and comment on the FOLLOWING post.

FALSE-COLOR IMAGES; Why do they do that?

Thanks to all of you who jumped right in and wrote those great comments for last week's post! One of the most exciting things for me about writing this blog is that it allows us to establish a dialogue beyond the classroom on questions or topics provoked by a posting. There were many interesting comments and questions - some of them we worked into class discussions (e.g., phytoplankton blooms) but others, equally interesting, went unanswered. I'd like to use one of those questions as a jumping off point for this week's entry.

Mike asked about the need to create false-color images. Good question! It does seem odd to apply a false color to something that presumably has color. But not everything does emit energy that we can observe as "color".

Think about it. What is "color"? Color is visible light energy. You may remember from 9th grade science, or physics, that the visible light spectrum represents only a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum of wave energy that travels through our universe. Radio waves, microwaves, infra-red waves, ultra-violet waves, x-rays and gammas rays travel through the universe undetected by human eyes. Yet that energy does exist, and there are times when scientists require a means to "see it".

Probably the most common example of a picture that presents false color, or color not readily seen by the human eye, are those pictures that show different temperatures zones in a geographical area, or weather map. UV (ultra violet) photography allows us to "see" hot areas as red, warmer areas as orange, and cooler areas as blue. This technique is also used to assess houses for insulation efficiency, and heat loss.

A true "false-color image" shows color where no color exists, or applies color to selectively separate parts of an image for analysis. Basically, scientists create a color key. Take a look at the picture at the top of this post. This remarkable picture shows us the nuclei (plural of nucleus) of a zebrafish embryo during its initial 24 hours of development. The image has been falsely colored to provide a key to the activity thats taking place. The green nuclei have locked in place. The orange colored nuclei are in motion - swirling in an ever tightening vortex, hurtling towards the center of the embryo in this initial phase of development called gastrulation; the process of differentiating an outside layer (ectoderm) a middle layer (a mesoderm) and an inner layer (an ectoderm).

Its like rolling a ball of Play Dough in your hands, placing the ball on your desk, punching the ball down, and enclosing the resulting hollow space. It's how life develops from a ball of undifferentiated (unspecialized) cells to an embryo. (That's for all of you who clicked your primary interest in zoology!)

The above image was created with a new technology developed in 2008. By falsely coloring different nuclei, scientists are able to watch processes that had previously been invisible. The single color image appearing above this post shows the end result. Note the cluster of nuclei running longitudinally from the top to bottom poles of the embryo. The false-color image shows us the path the nuclei used to move into position. Pretty cool stuff. I can't think of a better image to illustrate the idea we discussed last week that life has order.

Similarly, by falsely coloring the changing UV energy, scientists can "watch" phytoplankton migrate in the oceans. And by falsely coloring the shift in unseen UV energy emitted by stars, scientists can color and observe the most distant objects in the universe. (Light shifting due to movement is similar to sound shifting due to movement. Think of the difference in a siren's pitch as a fire truck approaches and as it moves further away from you. This is called the Doppler Effect.)

Of course, some of this unseen energy (UV light) is unseen to us, but is in fact visible to other organisms. Birds use the UV light emitted by the sun to navigate along migratory routes. Bees use wavelengths of energy unseen humans to locate flowers for pollination. The need for false-color images is often just a human one. The wavelengths of energy that flow around us are often used, and sensed by a multitude of other organisms for their survival.

So - here's the question I pose to you this week. Look at the zebrafish embryo again. Can this 24hr cluster of cells truly be considered to be "alive"? If so, when did life begin for this embryo? Or has it not yet crossed some threshold over which you would consider it alive? (Boy - talk about provocative questions!) There's obviously no single answer, let alone a "correct" one. We've been talking about the characteristics of life this week, and while its very early in the semester, it's as good a time as any to consider the question of life itself - when do you think life begins?

I'm really interested to read your thoughts on this. Personally, I'm still trying to figure it out myself - so give it a shot!

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT OUR HOME PLANET

Every once in awhile something appears on the magical world wide web that inspires awe. One would think that in this age of information overload such epiphanies would be easy to come by. Yet I find that my routine of surfing the web for political, scientific, literary, and musical news oftens results in a dulling, rather than heightening, of wonder.

Case in point: the other day the great political blogger Andrew Sullivan had this in his blog, The Daily Dish, at TheAtlantic.com".

Now, I admit that was pretty cool! Slow motion photography revealed the beauty of shooting a pomegranate and having its seeds showering over a classic still life arrangement of fruit. The resultant "slowing down of time" gives the viewer a new frame of reference for observing the process, and the literal framing of the still life encourages the observer to view this event in an artistic context, rather than a destructive one. Ah yes. Within a minute, I was onto the next blog entry, the next link, the next wonder. That's the nature of the internet.

But this morning I came across something that truly gave me pause. (I know one is not suppose to begin a sentence with "but". But this is my blog.) Boston.com has a post on their blog called The Big Picture that exhibits 25 images of Earth taken from satellites.

The image that heads this entry was taken from that series. While each image is fascinating, and awe inspiring, there was something about the scale of this image (number 5 in the series if I remember correctly) that made my jaw drop. (Figuratively, if not literally. It was about 6:30AM sunday morning, and I did have a mouth full of coffee).

The image resembles frost on a pane of glass. But it's not. (There's that but again.) You're looking at an image of the snow covered Himalayan mountains in Tibet. In 9th grade science we discuss the importance of having a frame of reference when we discuss motion. This image, provides us with a frame of reference for our place on this planet.

Compare this image with the images of development in Las Vegas or Khartoum - or any of the other images on the page - and share your thoughts and impressions. (I suggest the image of Las Vegas, because when I was growing up Las Vegas was a very small city in the middle of an arid desert. It's changed a bit since then. And no, that was not a hundred years ago.)