Christmas Special: Christmas Tinner.

I could have done a lot of entries for Christmas. There are plenty of weird Christmas foods, including pig feet, lamb heads, and KFC, eaten around the world. Some places even omit meat entirely.  Oh, and I'm never out of winter creatures; I've just run out of Christmasy ones.

Alas, there's a new Christmas dinner on the block. It's "holiday special," "They Actually Eat That," and "Newsflash" all at once. Its name? "Christmas Tinner."

 

Yes, "tinner." As in, dinner. In a tin can. No matter where you go, Christmas dinner is a lot of food. That means somebody managed to compact a full-course meal in a tin can. Dear gods, what is this?

"A Christmas dinner with turkey, potatoes, roast carrots and broccoli sounds quite nice. Unless it's all served in a can, that is. The "Christmas Tinner," created by graphic designer Chris Godfrey, features a nine-course Christmas meal, layered into one tin can.

This dinner monstrosity is in all likelihood fake -- Godfrey created a similar meal-in-a-can project earlier this year. Currently, the can is supposedly sold out on GAME, a UK-based website for video gamers.

"The GAME Christmas Tinner is the ultimate innovation for gamers across the nation who can’t tear themselves away from their new consoles and games on Christmas Day," the website reads." -via Huffington Post.

Of course, it could all be fake- the creator's a graphic designer, after all. On the plus side, if anybody is left after the apocalypse, this is one holiday feast that'll still be around. Either way would not surprise me at this point!

Newsflash: Proteins and Dinosaurs with Funny Names!

So, I know a few people taking biology, organic chemistry, and other such things. It came up that the only reasons a Classics degree like mine was good were 1. it stokes your imagination like crazy and 2. it helps you name things for science. This led to a discussion about how things are named, including the rather bizarre Dracorex hogwartsia.

Dracorex hogwartsia was an herbivorous pachycephalosaur  ("thick-headed" dinosaurs). Like a certain other pachy who will definitely be getting some limelight this Halloween, it was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota.

Indeed, this dinosaur does look a fair bit like a dragon. The dome found on most pachies is reduced in Dracorex, leading to a very dragonlike skull. Primeval took advantage of the similarity: in one episode, a knight and a "dragon" crossed a time gap; they went so far as to give the Dracorex little fins, furthering the "dragon" idea.

But "hogwartsia?" Really, science? Forgive my use of internet slang, but "LOL."J.K. Rowling was, of course, thrilled to have a dinosaur name inspired by her work. Warning: people who know Latin tend to know science, and Rowling knows helluva lot of Latin.

Dracorex's odd pseudo-Latin is nothing compared to what some scientists have done with proteins, however. No matter how many pop culture references are named in dinosaurs, they cannot compete with how scientists have named genes and proteins lately. There have been a number of proteins named after video games or video game characters, proving just how nerdy scientists really are.

This is fanart. Not mine, just adorable.

Hey, weren't the new Pokemon games released this month? Why haven't I done anything on Pikachurin - the electric protein named after the most iconic Pokemon in existence? (There was also a carcinogenic gene that Nintendo sued over - this is not that gene.)

Pikachurin is a protein that helps the perception of light in mammalian eyes. Thisprotein is also known by the equally funny-sounding name EGFLAM ("EGF-like, fibronectin type-III and laminin G-like domain-containing protein")- we'll stick with Pikachu, thanks. It was named after Pikachu because it moved "lightning fast" and conducted electricity from the eyes to the brain. It's pretty much necessary for the human eye to function. Not a bad thing to name after a colorful electric rodent, although I'm sure the protein being discovered in Osaka, Japan had something to do with it.

Pikachu was not the first video game mascot to get his own protein. That honor goes to the sonic hedgehog protein. It is one of three genes in the "hedgehog" protein channel, with the other two being "desert hedgehog" and "Indian hedgehog." Sonic is the best studied, and with good reason: this protein has an impact on anything from brain development to the growth of digits and limbs. It's responsible for limb regulation in cetaceans, so if you ever see a dolphin with unearthly feet near the base of its tail, blame Sonic for that.

There have been some objections to naming a gene "sonic hedgehog," namely that it removes some of the sobriety that science is so well-known for. Me? I think once you've named a protein channel "hedgehog," you've already opened yourself to jokes. It's just a slippery slope like that.

Newsflash: Name That Fish and Win A Trip!

There's an unconscious gap between scientists and laypeople. Usually, the average Joe has nothing to do with labs and such. We're just the consumers of science; we don't make it. That's up to smart people in labs with white coats...right?

Well, National Geographic is doing something about that. A new fish has been discovered, and it's up to you and I to give it a common name. The scientists have their hands full tracing the fish's taxonomic history, but anyone can give it a common name. From July 31 to August 26th, National Geographic is giving one of us non-science-y folks a chance to name a colorful fish cited off the coast of Chile. More below:

"What's in a name? Whether you're star-crossed lovers in a Shakespeare play or researchers exploring the ends of the Earth, names can be everything. A proper name can transcend languages and cultures, allowing anyone around the world to know who or what you're talking about.

Now, folks have a chance to help give a mystery fish a new identity—and for one lucky contest winner, a chance to go on a ten-day trip to the Galápagos.

Discovered in February in the seas surrounding the Desventuradas Islands (the "unfortunate" islands in Spanish) off the coast of Chile, experts say this fish (pictured) could be a new species.

The National Geographic Society is holding a contest from July 31 to August 26 to give this mystery fish a common name. People can enter their submissions in the comment box below. (Learn more about the contest rules.)

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala came upon the four-inch (ten-centimeter) creature while exploring a seamount near San Félix Island (map) in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

While maneuvering a submersible 436 feet (133 meters) down a basalt wall, Sala and colleagues spotted several brightly colored spots hovering near the rock. "We got closer and tried to focus and zoom our video camera to get a closer look, but the spots darted into a hole and disappeared as soon as our submarine lights were on them," Sala wrote in an email." Source and entry page here.

All you have to do is comment with a name on the page linked above. Then you'll be automatically entered into the drawing. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to name an animal; take it. The trip to the Galapagos is a nice bonus, too. Have fun, get creative, and good luck!

Newsflash: Guard Geese?!

For centuries, dogs have been used to guard houses. The instinct of a dog to protect its pack has been honed to perfection. Indeed, the bark of a large dog still makes me jump a little. It's hard to think that anything would change something so normalized.

There seems to be a revolution in thought, however. Recently, in China, the typical guard dog has been usurped...by geese. Chinese police stations now use geese instead of dogs to guard their stations at night. Supposedly, it works well enough that National Geographic decided to look into it further. They likely got stared down by some irate waterfowl in the process.

What're you lookin' at, punk?  (Source.)

Could geese actually be better guard dogs than, well, guard dogs? According to National Geographic, the short answer is yes:

"Would geese make good guards?

They have amazing hearing. And almost all birds have amazing eyesight. Not only do they see better at a distance than humans do, they can also see things up close [better than we do].
Our eyes have three different color sensors that combine to build the picture in our brain. Birds add a fourth—ultraviolet. They have a much wider range of wavelengths they can view. Things are going to look sharper. And they can pick out smaller things [as well as movement].

And I guess they're not shy when an intruder is sighted?
In terms of alerting people to activity, yeah, they're very vigilant. They're territorial. And certain species can be quite loud, especially the barnyard varieties.

So they're just really good watchdogs.
That's the beauty of it: It's instinct for them. They're territorial. They could fly off anywhere they want to, but they hang around their home. That's just the way a lot of geese act. Certain of them can be rather vigilant in defending their territory." - Source with more.

They also brought up the idea of guard swans. For the record, although swans may look pretty, they  are aggressive bastards. I can see why someone would think that they might be a good idea.

The one thing geese don't do better than dogs is bite. Yes, a nip from a goose hurts, but still not as much as the bite of a Rottweiler or German Shepherd. Geese simply aren't meant to bite like that, which is probably why the idea won't catch on. Yes, they're louder, but they won't necessarily attack with the same fury as a dog.  To each his own, and if it works, don't fix it.

Newsflash: U.S. Military's Latest Weapon: Cyber-Bugs!

Remember when this blog covered the Robo-roach? It turns out that the military thought that was a good idea, too. They have now made sophisticated beetle cyborgs, capable of watching you in your sleep, or naked in front of your PC.



...Y'know, as if purely mechanical drones weren't enough. More on the how and why below:

"Facing problems in its efforts to train insects or build robots that can mimic their flying abilities, the U.S. military now wants to develop "insect cyborgs" that can go where its soldiers cannot.
The Pentagon is seeking applications from researchers to help them develop technology that can be implanted into living insects to control their movement and transmit video or other sensory data back to their handlers.

In an announcement posted on government Web sites last week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says it is seeking "innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect cyborgs," by implanting tiny devices into insect bodies while the animals are in their pupal stage.

As an insect metamorphoses from a larva to an adult, the solicitation notice says, its "body goes through a renewal process that can heal wounds and reposition internal organs around foreign objects, including tiny (mechanical) structures that might be present."

The goal is to create technology that can achieve "the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system." Once at the target, "the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed ... (and) must also be able to transmit data from (Department of Defense) relevant sensors ... includ(ing) gas sensors, microphones, video, etc."

The move follows challenges the agency says it has encountered in its efforts to train insects to detect explosives or other chemical compounds, and to mimic their flight and movement patterns using small robots.

Several years ago, DARPA launched a $3 million project to train honeybees to find landmines. According to a report by the American Forces Press Service, scientists used sugar-soaked sponges treated with explosives to get the bees to identify the smell as a possible food source." -Source with more. Now you'll be carrying a flyswatter wherever you go...just in case.

Newsflash: U.S.A. Going Hog Wild.

Oh, hey, speaking of feral superhogs, wild pigs just hit a new record. They have been problematic in the Unites States for a long time, being fertile, intelligent, adaptable omnivores (sound familiar?). Bacon lovers rejoice: soon, you will be able to hunt your own. 

"Digging up fields and lawns, killing livestock and spreading disease, wild pigs have gone from a regional nuisance to one rapidly spreading across the nation.

The animals have razor-sharp tusks, a bottomless appetite and no natural predators, and experts say the invasion of the feral pigs has become a major problem that is moving north.

“This truly is becoming a national crisis,’’ John Mayer, the manager of environmental science at the Savannah River (S.C.) National Laboratory, told TODAY on Friday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that wild hogs, which can weigh more than 200 pounds, are responsible for more than $1.5 billion in agriculture damage and destruction every year. TODAY’s Kerry Sanders took a ride in a helicopter to see them firsthand, watching dozens on the run across the 2,000-acre South Fork Ranch in Okeechobee, Fla.

“It’s like having a rat in your house,’’ Southfork Land and Cattle Company’s Bill Wallace told Sanders. “They’re just not a good thing.”

In 1987, there were an estimated two million wild pigs in about 20 states, primarily in the South and concentrated in Texas and Florida. Now there are an estimated six to eight million wild pigs roaming 47 states.

“This increase that we’ve seen in wild pigs is unquestionably dramatic,’’ Mayer said. “We don’t have another species here in the U.S. that has increased at this same rate.”

Experts say the explosion in the wild pig population is partially due to hunters transporting them across state lines, plus some escaping from hunting preserves. The animals also produce two litters a year, rapidly swelling their numbers." - TODAY News.

Newsflash: North America, Why No Monkeys?

I've said it countless times: I am not a monkey person. That does not mean the monkeys will not be covered on this blog. They just are not my cup of tea. Every so often, however, I feel obligated to do something related to monkeys because a lot of people think monkeys make everything better- even blogs.

So, for all you monkey people out there, have you ever wondered why North America has no monkeys? Well, Popular Science did an awesome article explaining exactly why: 

"I spoke to Dr. John Flynn, a paleontologist and expert on mammalian evolution at the American Museum of Natural History, to find out why the US is stuck with lame squirrels and pigeons and stuff rather than cool monkeys. "In terms of modern primates, that's a true observation," he said. "But 50 million years ago, there were primates here." It turns out there are lots of reasons why the ancient primates that inhabited what is now the United States--and even Canada!--no longer call those areas home.

Primates came to the New World (meaning North and South America) from, we think, Africa. As improbable as it sounds, scientists think early primates crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the shores of both continents tens of millions of years ago, probably on some kind of vegetation raft. That's how most plants and animals get to isolated islands--which the Americas were, at the time. Fossils have been recovered of early primates in Texas a whopping 43 million years ago, the oldest primate fossil ever found in North America. But the continents looked very different then, compared to now; most importantly, North and South America were completely different islands. The Isthmus of Panama, which we now refer to as Central America, didn't appear until much later, by which time the climate on both Americas was very different from when the primates first landed there.
When they did first land here, the climate was much warmer than it is now, and the primates evolved and diversified to take advantage of that.

When they did first land here, the climate was much warmer than it is now, and the primates evolved and diversified to take advantage of that. During the Eocene, lasting from 56 to 33.9 million years ago, the planet warmed to an incredible degree. We've found evidence of palm trees in Alaska from that era. The entire planet, besides the very tips of the Arctic and Antarctic, was probably covered in rainforests, much of it tropical. For a monkey coming over from Africa, North America would have looked just great.

 Early primates thrived on both continents, with no contact between them. In North America, there were two main families of these primates: the omomyids and the adapids. There's some variation in size, behavior and diet, but in general, these were small, tarsier-like creatures with grasping hands and claws, large eyes, and bodies adapted to eat fruits, leaves, and insects. There's a lot of debate about the modern-day relatives to these primates; some think they're strepsirrhines, the family including lemurs, lorises, and bushbabies, but others think they're basal relatives of the tarsiers (which are primates, but not closely related to other monkeys).

Then the planet began to cool, and cool quickly. Forests died out. The poles covered with ice. Many of the flora and fauna that had populated the planet during the Eocene just couldn't survive in the new, colder world. This event is called the Grande Coupure--occurring about 33.9 million years ago, it was a mass extinction of animals, in which most of the world's creatures (aside from a precious few, like the Virginia opossum and the dormouse) were unable to adapt to the new climate and perished. It hit the primate family especially hard. In the New World, the primate population shrunk significantly. Any primate living in, say, the Great Lakes region simply went extinct, unable to cope with the new Wisconsin winters. " - Source with more. 


In other words, North America has no native monkeys for the same reason Paris and London are not crawling with monkeys. On some level, we have to sympathize; being relatively hairless primates, we wouldn't like living in Wisconsin winters, either.

Newsflash: Fatty Diets Lead to Obese Children.

In literature, there is a trope called "Lamarck Was Right." This trope originates from the idea that Jean-Baptistse Lamarck, a predecessor of Darwin, believed that traits animals acquired during their lifetimes could be passed on to their offspring. The classic example is Lamarck's giraffe: giraffes grew longer and longer necks after stretching to get their food. No Mendelian inheritance involved, nope.

Well, it turns out Lamarck might have been onto something. A new lab study done on mice found that dads who were fed a high-fat diet were more likely to have obese children. While this might seem like a no-brainer, it means that some changes in an animal's lifetime can be passed on to their offspring. More below:

"Male mice who were fed a high-fat diet and became obese were more likely to father offspring who also had higher levels of body fat, a new Ohio University study finds.

The effect was observed primarily in male offspring, despite their consumption of a low-fat diet, scientists reported today at the annual meeting of The Endocrine Society in San Francisco, Calif.
"We've identified a number of traits that may affect metabolism and behavior of offspring dependent on the pre-conception diet of the father," said Felicia Nowak, an associate professor of biomedical sciences in Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine who is lead author on the study.

The researchers point to epigenetics -- the way genes are expressed, as opposed to mutations in DNA that are "hard-wired into the genes" -- as a possible cause of these inherited traits. Because gene expression is impacted by environmental and lifestyle factors, this finding suggests that individuals with obese fathers may be able to proactively address health concerns.

The effect of parents' diet and weight on children has been well-established in humans, Nowak explained, but scientists have been studying the issue in mice to learn more about the biological mechanisms behind the phenomenon. The Ohio University team studied the impact of the high-fat diet only with male mice parents, as most of the previous research had focused on female mice parents.

To conduct the study, the researchers fed male mice a high-fat diet for 13 weeks before mating. (The female mates were fed a matched low-fat diet.) Male and female offspring were fed a standard low-fat diet and studied at 20 days, six weeks and at six and 12 months.

Compared with offspring from control mice (who were fed the low-fat diet), the male offspring of paternal mice with diet-induced obesity had higher body weight at six weeks of age. They also were more obese at the six- and 12-month study markers. In addition, the male offspring of obese fathers had different patterns of body fat composition -- a marker for health and propensity for disease -- than the control mice." Source with more.



On the plus side, these same obese mice babies were actually more active than the average mouse. Quite a twist! So, a question for the readers: was Lamarck really right?

Shark Week/Newsflash: A Real-Life Jaws?!

Sometimes, things just click into place. This is one of those times; the perfect, Jaws-related tidbit of news came to light during Shark Week. This was too good not to use:

"BOSTON (Reuters) - A 13-foot great white shark off the coast of Cape Cod prompted Massachusetts officials on Friday to warn beachgoers to be aware of their surroundings and to use common sense when swimming.

State biologists located the shark, which had been tagged with an acoustic transmitter, near Cape Cod island of Monomoy on May 28. White shark sightings have been on the rise off the Massachusetts coast, the setting for the 1970s shark movie, "Jaws".

The Department of Marine Fisheries advised people to avoid swimming at dawn and dusk, to stay close to the shore and to avoid areas where seals congregate.

Massachusetts has been compiling data on great white sharks since 1987. Experts have said the sharks are attracted to that coast by a growing population of gray seals.

There have been eight recorded shark attacks in Massachusetts, two of which were fatal, according to Shark Attack File, which compiles data on shark attacks worldwide." - Source and more. 

 For the record, great whites and other sharks usually do not see humans as dinner. If you happen to be stupid and punch the shark in the face or something, that gives the shark an excuse to eat you. Likewise, swimming with cuts is never a good idea. The ocean's full of sharks; not all of them are lethal.

Newsflash: Animal Planet and Mermaids.

A while back, I saw a small blurb about Animal Planet's change of logo. The writer argued that the tagline "Surprisingly Human" would affect the content on Animal Planet negatively. Specifically, there were arguments about misrepresenting nature, likely by overanthropomorphizing. I wish I could find that article again; it would seem that this argument has reached its peak.

Recently, Animal Planet did a pseudo-documentary on mermaids. A friend of mine insists that I see it, which I will. I loved the thing they did on dragons aside from a few nitpicks. The mermaid thing will probably be fun as well.

Some of us are not amused. Yahoo! News reports:

Animal Planet has raised quite a furor over its airing of the "speculative" documentary "Mermaids: The New Evidence." Capping its annual Monster Week, a network once known for safari shows and puppy bowls is turning over increasing amounts of its broadcast time to cryptozoology shows like "Lost Tapes," "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real," and "Finding Bigfoot". 

In fact, "Finding Bigfoot" was at the center of another, similar, controversy reported last year by Entertainment Weekly as TV critics turned skeptics, forced Animal Planet president Marjorie Kaplan to offer a vague defense of the show as "an exploration of the secret corners of the planet," since it lacks anything approaching hard evidence.

Should They Have Aired It?

Animal Planet has 3.6 million reasons (as in viewers!) why they should've.
There's really nothing wrong with using actors to re-enact scenes for a documentary. But where is the line? "Unsolved Mysteries" gives a framework for its actors to pretend they were criminals, but actors on "Mermaids" pretend they're scientists with nothing but a tiny caveat in the credits to suggest it's anything but 100% fact. 

Animal Planet's first "Mermaids" installment, "Mermaids: The Body Found," garnered 3.4 million views during its U.S. telecast premiere on Sunday, May 27, 2012. After the airing, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to release an official statement putting it, in unequivocal terms, "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found." Marine biologist David Shiffman wrote an article for Slate explaining why we should stop worrying about mythical sea life and focus on the damage being done to the sea life we know exists. He talks about fisheries where up to 90 percent of a catch is made up of unintended victims. Not the commercial fish, but "endangered sea turtles and sea birds as well as marine mammals."- Source with more.



I have no objection to things like "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real" or this new mermaid documentary. Pseudo-documentaries like this are fun, creative uses of art and science. The documentary itself causes no harm, with the mild exception of some people believing it to be real at first glance. Hint-hint: I know a friend.

So, here's the real problem: Animal Planet used to be about facts. It used to have educational programming. The mermaid documentary is akin to Avatar in that it looks at a fictional creature in a realistic ecology. It's fine if you make something like this and other things on cryptids, but at this point, you aren't talking about real animals anymore. Make that its own pseudo-science channel, perhaps? I'd watch it; I'd also watch Animal Planet. The old Animal Planet.

Newsflash: Young Leatherback Caught in Japan.

Expect this to get a full-blown entry tomorrow.  Giant turtles are cool enough to merit full entries.

Newsflash: The Birds and the...Hornets?!

Tuesday was going to be a Creature Feature. I haven't done habu yet, except as a weird food. It would be awesome to get back into the swing of things. Then, however, a close friend of mine had to show me one of the weirdest articles I had ever read.

Without spoiling anything, this newsflash covers a fetish. This is the internet- you can't even look up Pokemon stuff without getting into fetishes. If weird fetishes disturb you...yeah, this one most likely will, too. I have never encountered a fetish as odd as this one. This was just so mind-blowingly dumb and astounding in other ways that I cannot help sharing it with a blog dedicated to weird things. 

"A man in Sweden has died after trying to have sex with a hornet's nest on his farm outside Ystad.
The 35-year-old, known only as Hasse, had 146 sting marks on his body, including 54 to his genitals, News Sweden said.

His body was found by a neighbour, who said Hasse was so swollen he initially mistook him for a whale carcass.

Hasse was unconscious when he was found but died an hour later from the injuries he sustained.
Neighbour Bertil Ståhfrääs said he called over to his neighbour to ask what he was doing: "At first [I thought he was lying there by] of choice, so I called 'Hasse' to ask what the hell he was doing.

"I walked up to the body and then I recognised his tattoo on his neck. I have never in my life seen such a swollen pelvic bone. It hid the whole package [and] the scrotum was enlarged. Right now it feels heavy and unreal. We did not talk very often, but he was still my neighbour."

An autopsy of Hasse's body showed semen on some of the dead wasps and a number of the victim's pubic hair was found at the entrance of the nest. His fingerprints were also found on the nest, leading the police to believe he had been trying to have sex with the hornet's nest when he was stung to death.

"To attempt to have intercourse with a hornet's nest is a very bad idea," Siv During Livh, a psychologist and expert on sex fantasies told the news website. (No, really?)

"I don't even think about the pain he must have suffered both within himself [from his fetish] and incurred by the wasp attack."

Hornet stings are more painful than typical wasp stings because of their venom. They can also sting multiple times.

The stings are not normally fatal to humans unless a person is allergic to their venom, in which case they can go into anaphylactic shock."- Source, because this really is a thing.

Holy carp. I thought poking a hornet's nest was a bad ides. Fapping to one sounds even worse. Of all the fetishes I have seen on the internet, this one has to take the cake.

Newsflash: Human Brain Cells Grown in Lab Mice.

"They're Pinky and the Brain 
Yes, Pinky and the Brain
One is a genius, 
the other's insane.
They're laboratory mice,
Their genes have been spliced,
They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain..." 

For those of you not aware of the above ditty, it comes from a segment on an old (but very good) cartoon called Animaniacs. Listen to it here. The "Pinky and the Brain" shorts involved two lab mice who had been enhanced into super-intelligent, talking rodents, one of whom was hell-bent on taking over the world using various wacky means.  Now that we're putting human brain cells in rodents, there is a very good chance that mice, becoming ever more like humans, may well start taking over the world.

"May 3, 2013 — A key type of human brain cell developed in the laboratory grows seamlessly when transplanted into the brains of mice, UC San Francisco researchers have discovered, raising hope that these cells might one day be used to treat people with Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and possibly even Alzheimer's disease, as well as and complications of spinal cord injury such as chronic pain and spasticity. 

"We think this one type of cell may be useful in treating several types of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders in a targeted way," said Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF and co-lead author on the paper.

The researchers generated and transplanted a type of human nerve-cell progenitor called the medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) cell, in experiments described in the May 2 edition of Cell Stem Cell. Development of these human MGE cells within the mouse brain mimics what occurs in human development, they said.

...

To generate MGE cells in the lab, the researchers reliably directed the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells -- either human embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells derived from human skin. These two kinds of stem cells have virtually unlimited potential to become any human cell type. When transplanted into a strain of mice that does not reject human tissue, the human MGE-like cells survived within the rodent forebrain, integrated into the brain by forming connections with rodent nerve cells, and matured into specialized subtypes of interneurons.

...

"The hope is that we can deliver these cells to various places within the nervous system that have been overactive and that they will functionally integrate and provide regulated inhibition," Nicholas said.

One mystery and challenge to both the clinical and pre-clinical study of human MGE cells is that they develop at a slower, human pace, reflecting an "intrinsic clock." In fast-developing mice, the human MGE-like cells still took seven to nine months to form interneuron subtypes that normally are present near birth.

"If we could accelerate the clock in human cells, then that would be very encouraging for various applications," Kriegstein said." - Source with more.

Of course, the scientists are doing this to cure neurological disorders, That includes everything from autism to back issues. The result might still be mice with the intellects of human children, if the internal clock is to be believed.

That said, Pinky's more realistic.

Mind, this isn't quite gene splicing. It's a tissue implant of human cells into a rodent body. We really don't know what will happen with this; the neurotransplant technique is only a couple of years old. Give it time; they'll try to take over the world eventually. If the enhanced mice start talking and one of them starts saying "narf," we'll know for sure that these scientists have seen Animaniacs.

Newsflash: Polar Bears Not As Threatened As We Thought?

Since global warming was made a thing by Al Gore, the polar bear has been its spokesperson. We were, well, not thrilled to see the polar bear put on the endangered species list, but kind of glad it got there so as to raise awareness of global climate change.

But are they really that threatened?

It sounds like a silly question. After all, the polar bear is an environmentalism mascot, just like pandas, tigers, and whales. They're one of those animals every zoo either has or tries to get because the species is going out of fashion in the natural world.

Then this tidbit came up on NPR. Recently, a writer went to the Arctic to write about polar bears. While there, he found an honest scientist who kindly showed him some polar bear droppings.The droppings revealed that the polar bear, which according to the interwebs has a diet consisting largely of seals, was also fond of goose meat and reindeer- Christmas dinner, if you will. (If we had more citations, we would give them.)

And yet, we cannot find this blurb on the internet. It made it to National Public Radio, but the surprisingly diverse diet of the polar bear has not yet crept onto the interwebs. Consider it crawling around, now. Treat it as a rumor if you like; it will get confirmed/debunked eventually.
The absence of this information on the internet baffles us, even when it shouldn't. Considering how many places say that the polar bear mainly eats seals, surely this would revolutionize something.

There are a few reasons why this hasn't gotten out, assuming its truth to begin with.  Facilities who have polar bears want to make them as big a draw as possible, which means making the bears sound rarer and more fragile than they actually are. Hell, zoos have a special "polar bear diet" that I'm pretty sure does not consist entirely of seal meat (Google it). There's something shady going on.

Don't get us wrong. The polar bear is still under legitimate threat from global warming. It's just not quite as bad as we thought.

Newsflash: If We Could Talk to the Animals...

...or, well, control them with telepathy. That is exactly what happens towards the end of the clip above: a human's brainwaves move the tail of a living, but anaesthetized, rodent. Admit it: making furry little slaves is what people who want to talk to animals really want to do.

Here's the whole deal on that clip: Researcher Seung-Schik Yoo at Harvard Medical School has successfully linked a human's mind with a rat's body. Several volunteers were hooked up to a numbed rat via EEG's, which are basically your standard electrodes. A certain EEG pattern would stimulate the rat's motor center, making it move. It is piggybacking off of a previous experiment that surgically linked the brains of two rats together, allowing them to cooperate at an unparalleled rate. Now, look, no surgery necessary!

What's really creepy is that the article is geared towards controlling other people like living puppets. There are a million creepy uses for human-controlled rat puppets, but a million and a half creepier reasons for wanting to control other people. Call us paranoid, but this article just came right out and said, "yeah, we wanna do this with humans." Creepy.

Some say that the test is completely invalid. The rat was under painkillers, so there's no way to tell if it was really being mind controlled or not. The link is still astonishing, and it's neat that the human mind can manipulate an animal body. Imagine how many people would sign up to be dogs for a day if given the chance.

Source: NewScientist.com.

Newsflash: Obama, Obama and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain.

The human mind is a tricky thing. If one section of the brain is kicked out of commission, another part will at least try to take over. The right and left halves of the brain are so intertwined that the whole right brain-left brain thing is really about as effective as that old taste bud map- which has been proven false, by the way.

Oh, and now we're trying to map the brain.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed an effort to map the brain's activity in unprecedented detail, as a step toward finding better ways to treat such conditions as Alzheimer's, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injuries.

He asked Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a project that will explore details of the brain, which contains 100 billion cells and trillions of connections.

That's a relatively small investment for the federal government — less than a fifth of what NASA spends every year just to study the sun — but it's too early to determine how Congress will react.
Obama said the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs, and told scientists gathered in the White House's East Room that the research has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people worldwide.

"As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away," Obama said. "We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."" - Source with more.

Obama has a valid point. Compared to other fields of science, we know very little about the human brain. However, out of every newsflash I've done so far, this one worries me the most.

Deeper studies of the human brain also lead to the distinct possibility of mind control - or at least manipulation the likes of which have never been seen before. We're talking the potential for mind control, here. Psychology is also used in advertising all the time; the fact that most fast food labels have red (the color that catches the human eye the most for a multitude of reasons) in them is a good example.

There is also a good chance that it won't work. A theory came up in my biology class: a system can never fully comprehend itself, or else it'll break. This could be 100 million spent to break our brains. Yep, such a nice idea. It could pave the way for cures to life-threatening diseases, or it could make the Flesh Machine become a real thing.

Newsflash: Milky Way Bubbles.

Our news is so preoccupied with local and global disasters that one domain often goes forgotten: Outer space. Yeah, we're so worried about things like hurricanes, global warming, and saving the rainforest that it scarcely crosses our minds that a giant meteor might come along and wreck it all. Or, umm, a black hole, which is basically an exploded star that became a pit of void. (It's a lot more complex than that, but off the top of my head.)

Make that two black holes. Yes, millions of years ago, there was a black hole collision in our galaxy. NewScientist has the scoop:

"A tiny galaxy that collided with the Milky Way spawned two huge bubbles of high-energy particles that now tower over the centre of our galaxy. This new model for the birth of the mysterious bubbles also explains discrepancies in the ages of stars at the galactic middle.

In 2010, sky maps made by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope revealed two lobes of particles billowing out from the heart of the Milky Way, each one stretching 25,000 light years beyond the galactic plane.

Astronomers suspected the bubbles were inflated by a period of violence in the galactic centre about 10 million years ago, but no one could say what had triggered the outburst.

Earlier this year, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was discussing the problem with Tamara Bogdanović from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

"We pieced together all the evidence and realised they could be explained by a single catastrophic event – the collision between two black holes," recalls Holley-Bockelmann.

...

We know that a supermassive black hole weighing as much as 4 million suns lurks at the core of the Milky Way. We also have an array of dwarf galaxies orbiting our much larger spiral galaxy, as well as hints that past satellite dwarfs have collided with us.

According to the new theory, a small galaxy with its own central black hole dove into the Milky Way and began spiralling through our galaxy. After billions of years, the stripped-down dwarf's black hole made it to the galactic centre.

The two black holes then performed a tight gravitational tango before finally merging. This final act produced violent forces that flung out many of the stars that were born in the Milky Way's middle, explaining why astronomers now find far fewer old stars there than they have every right to expect.

The whirling black holes also disrupted giant clouds of gas, some of which got squeezed so much that they collapsed to form clusters of bright new stars. Much of the rest of the gas swirled into the merged black holes, getting so hot from compression that it radiated huge amounts of energy.

"We think it's both the energy from this 'burp' near the black hole and the winds of gas from the starburst that inflated the Fermi bubbles," says Holley-Bockelmann." - Source. 

So, to recap: There is a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. At one point, it collided with another black hole, causing a giant energy burst. The article says this needs more evidence, but it's still pretty scary if it's true. If it can happen once, it can happen again. It may even happen near our planet - who knows?

Newsflash 2: Many Finding Nemo Species Endangered.

Now for something completely different but nonetheless heartbreaking: A lot of the species in  Finding Nemo are in danger of going extinct. Scientific American put out this little tidbit in 2011:

"One in every six species related to characters in the movie Finding Nemo is threatened by extinction, according to a new study out today. The authors examined the extinction risk of 1,568 species within 16 families of well-known marine animals represented in the 2003 Academy Award-winning animated film.

All species of marine turtles (“Squirt” and “Crush”) and more than half of all hammerhead sharks (“Anchor”), mackerel sharks (“Bruce” and “Chum”), and eagle rays (“Mr. Ray”) are threatened. Seahorses (“Sheldon”) are the most threatened group of bony fish in Finding Nemo, with two in five species at risk of extinction. Clownfish aren’t safe now, either, and they certainly weren’t in 2003 after the film’s release when local RotoRooter dispatch centers received calls from families whose kids flushed the fish after watching the movie. Charisma, in other words, is not enough. Despite a demonstrated need for conservation action, regulation of trade in endangered marine species is severely deficient for those with high economic value, like sharks."

- Source. 


So even though the film reeeeeaaaalllly pushed "kids, don't snag fish straight from the reef," a bunch of kids went and did it because NEMO! Yes, clownfish are adorable. No, one should not go all the way out to the reef to get one of a kid who has not kept anything beyond a goldfish. Aquariums are complex, difficult to maintain systems, with saltwater (as Nemo's would be) being even harder than fresh. Not cool.

It also really doesn't help that Australia has been hit hardest by global climate change. Much of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering from bleaching - not tossing bleach in there, but a strange whitening of the coral. It's pretty much the equivalent of chopping down an underwater rainforest.Yeah, that pretty reef in the movie won't be around much longer.

Remember, do your homework when buying exotic fish. Buy captive-bred only. The reef's suffering enough; harvesting is the last thing it needs.

Newsflash 1: Kraft Mac n' Cheese Contains Toxic Dyes.

So, for today, I found two entries that really struck me as news. They're both eye-openers, both relate closely to modern culture, and both deserve to be shamelessly whored on as many blogs as humanly possible. This entry is almost like an extra dose of "They Actually Eat That," and the candidate will surprise you: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Here's the skinny, as per Change.org:

 
"We recently discovered that several American products are using harmful additives that are not used – and in some cases banned – in other countries. One of those products is an iconic staple that almost every American, us included, has had at one time or another: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in the US contains the artificial food dyes Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. These unnecessary – yet potentially harmful - dyes are not in Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in other countries, including the UK, because they were removed due to consumer outcry. Kraft reformulated their product for the UK, but not for their fellow American citizens.

It’s time we demand the same here in the US!

Note: Yellow 5 (labeled as tartrazine) is also used in these products in Canada, and we're sure they don't want to have it in their food either!

Artificial food dyes...

- Are man-made in a lab with chemicals derived from petroleum (a crude oil product, which also happens to be used in gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, and tar).

- Require a warning label in other countries outside the US.

- Have been banned in countries like Norway and Austria (and are being phased out in the UK).

- Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are contaminated with known carcinogens (a.k.a. an agent directly involved in causing cancer).

- Cause an increase in hyperactivity in children.

- Have a negative impact on children’s ability to learn.

- Have been linked to long-term health problems such as asthma, skin rashes, and migraines.

- Add absolutely no nutritional value to the foods we are eating and are solely used for aesthetic purposes only.

To prove this last point we personally tested both the US and UK versions of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and found virtually no difference in color or taste."

Hyperactivity and a negative impact on learning? No wonder we're a nation of idiots. People also say that ADD is fake. Now we see why.

The petition can be signed here. A video dwells therein as well. Sign it; American food is more poison than food.

Newsflash: Manipulation of Monarch Butterflies.

It's almost March. That means Spring will be coming soon. This also means that several other animals, such as monarch butterflies, will soon be flourishing in our lawns. 

For those of you who know nothing about monarch butterflies aside from what they look like, you are missing out. Monarchs migrate from the cooler parts of North America down to Mexico as soon as winter hits. They give birth there, then die. The new monarchs that result then fly their way back up north when things get warmer. They are the only insects that migrate 2,500 miles a year. One of the classic butterflies happens to be one of the most impressive in several regards.

One mechanism has been found to play a tole in this intense migration: monarch butterflies have an uncanny genetic instinct to migrate to the exact same spot every year. The monarchs mate, then die, leaving their offspring to navigate the exact same path. That's 2,500 miles, all wrapped into genes like the world's finest GPS. Beat that, Google Maps.

Now, scientists have found what makes these butterflies tick. Here's the deal:

"Until now, researchers didn’t know what triggered the trek north. They suspected environmental factors such as temperature or changing day length could cue the monarchs. To find out, Reppert’s team studied southward-migrating monarchs captured in the eastern United States. The scientists housed one group of migrants in an incubator for 24 days and turned down the temperature to 4° Celsius during dark “night” periods and 11° C during light “day” periods — the average temperatures in the wintertime butterfly roosts. The team exposed a second group of butterflies to the same temperatures while also simulating the subtle increase in daylight that monarchs see over the winter while in Mexico.

Then the researchers took the two groups outside and tethered them one by one inside a flight simulator — a white plastic barrel that gauges flight bearings. In both experimental groups, the lab-wintered butterflies flew north. In fact, Reppert says, “the data were identical.”
Also, southern-migrating monarchs that had been captured in Texas and kept in the lab under fall conditions — with no pulse of nightly cold temperature — continued to head south when hooked up to the flight simulator.

“It’s astounding,” says ecologist Karen Oberhauser of the University of Minnesota, who supplied captured butterflies to Reppert’s team. She’s convinced that just 24 days of cold temperature is enough to switch butterflies’ flight direction from south to north. But she’s also curious about the effects of day length alone.

Reppert says the direction trigger might be modified by changes in day length, but “clearly coldness is the main factor.” Next, his team hopes to figure out exactly how the monarchs sense temperature."


Source + more here. 

This is neat stuff.A lot of people don't really think about seasonal cycles in wild animals. We're kinda used to animals, including humans, mating all the time. In reality, animal mating cycles are fine-tuned such that mommy only gives birth when there is an abundance of food available. Humans and domestic animals usually don't have to worry about that.

More importantly, however, this revelation on the impact of temperature may mean that the monarch is in trouble. If global climate change messes with their migration patterns, the species could die out. Enjoy the magnificent butterflies while we have them; if these findings are any indication, we might not have them around much longer.