Psssst: Check it out - Plastic Troubles

NutritionWonderland is a fantastic site which looks at nutrition from all angles, from health to ecological impact to hard science. Right now, they're running a special feature called "Plastic Troubles" about all those things that plastics make possible, like smaller testes, cancer, and marine debris. So far, you've only missed articles on BPA and Phthalates, so if you hurry, you'll catch up pretty quickly. Some horror stories about brominated flame retardants and dioxin are on the way, as well as a nice piece written by yours truly about the ecological impacts of plastics.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Puppies

Puppies are cute. Kittens are cute. Puppies DRESSED AS KITTENS: cute overload!

Conan O'Brien, you are the cute master.

(H/T @KSuzJ via twitter)

The Human Family Tree

For centuries, people have wondered about our existence. Where did we come from? How did we get to where we are today? This kind of self-reflection has founded religions and spurred the greatest achievements in science. But only recently have we had the technology to truly trace backward and unravel the mystery of our origins. We have discovered our ancestors, and found clues as to how and when we branched from the other primates. But what about after that? How did we go from a small group of hominids in East Africa to a globally dominating species?

Enter Kevin Bacon.

No, seriously.

Tomorrow, Aug 30^th, the National Geographic Channel premiers The Human Family Tree. With the combined funding of Nat Geo and IBM, one group of researchers, led by geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells, have spent the past four years collecting DNA samples from people all over the world. They set out hoping to get an ambitious 100,000 samples, but have now looked at genes from 350,000 people to determine their ancestry and when and how people populated the globe. They do this by mapping minute changes in our genomes. While we might be almost entirely alike genetically - after all, we're 99.9% the same - the small differences between us can tell a fascinating story.


It's fitting that The Human Family Tree is narrated by the talented Kevin Bacon, who, as well as being known for his acting ability, is the classic example used to show how interconnected people are using 'six degrees of separation'. Through the Human Family Tree, we really see how interconnected people are.

Through the two hour special, we learn all sorts of interesting facts about our history. Our homeland - Africa - is still the most genetically diverse place for us on the planet. Bacon and Wells take us all over the world, recreating the trails our ancestors blazed to spread from Africa to Asia, Europe, and eventually, the New World. Bacon is a great narrator, and really drives home the message that in the big scheme of things, we're all related.

Be sure to tune in to the National Geographic Channel this Sunday, Aug 30^th at 9 PM ET/PT. The Human Family Tree is a fascinating special that you won't want to miss! But if you're more of a "doer", you can become a part of the science and get your own ancestry test kit. Proceeds from the sales of the kits will help support the Genographic Project and additional research as well as education, cultural conservation, and language revitalization efforts for indigenous and traditional communities around the world.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Baby Fish!

Sure adult fish are rarely considered cute. But c'mon - their babies are downright adorable!


A little Convict Tang in Hanauma Bay (photo by moi)

Baby puffer c/o AndreaHarner.com

Little Guppies c/o Maddie's Home

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: Leishmania spp.

Ah, the joys of a tropical getaway. There's warm, clear waters, soft, sandy beaches, and of course, a whole ton of amazing parasites waiting to gorge on your delicious flesh.

Anyone who has traveled out of the US has been told horror stories of the disgusting creatures that await them. Take a nice trip to Brazil for some sightseeing, for example, and you might find yourself at the mercy of a small, intracellular protozoan parasite of the genus Leishmania.

There are many species of Leishmania living all over the world, from Saudi Arabia to Texas. No one's entirely sure how the parasites ended up in such diverse locations, or where they originated, but wherever there are sand flies, there is Leishmania. Like many parasites, it has a fairly complicated life, full of developmental stages and alternate hosts. Here's a good explanatory figure:

Leishmania is a fascinating parasite because it actively lives in our immune cells. First it must be injested by a sand fly, which feeds on human blood like a mosquito. Once inside the fly, it changes form and creates a very strange substance called "promastigote secretory gel." The gel serves a very important purpose - it blockades the gut of the sand fly. For the fly to feed during its next meal, it must throw up this gel, which, conveniently, carries the parasites into the human host. There, the parasites wriggle their way inside our macrophages and reproduce. In short, they takes our best anti-parasite weaponry and turn them into comfy homes. How it does this has been a question of scientists for years.

What we have found is that first, the parasite does a fantastic job of playing dead. It tends to live inside apoptitic immune cells and use the fact that the immune system doesn't eat them right away to grow and reproduce in peace. But how do they get into cells in the first place?

The most up to date research might just have some clues as to the amazing slight of hand pulled by the protozoans to get inside our immune cells. In a new paper published in PLoS Pathogens, researchers found that the strange gel used to transport the parasites into the human host does more than just aid transmission between fly and blood. Firstly, it attracts far more immune activity than the bite does, and in doing so, gives the parasite a wide variety of cell targets. But the gel does even more - it changes the immune cells' behavior. Instead of creating death-inducing nitrous oxide, the macrophages produce other compounds that the parasites can feed on.

Once in our cells, Leishmania is hard to get rid of. The parasite causes a disease referred to as Leishmaniasis. There are three different types of leishmaniasis: cutaneous, visceral and mucocutaneous. In all cases, the parasite causes tissue damage, often in the form of ulcers or sores. In cutaneous or mucocutaneous forms, these sores are on the surface, and though disgusting, tend to clear up without too much danger to the person. Mucocutaneous is the worse of the two, though, as it leads to infections on the face and terrible disfigurement.

But the disfigurement is nothing compared to the dangers of visceral leishmaniasis. It is the second-largest parasitic killer in the world (only topped by another protozoan parasite: malaria), responsible for about 500,000 cases each year worldwide, with around 10% proving fatal. What happens is that the parasite doesn't stay in the skin. It travels to the internal organs - the liver, spleen and bone marrow - and lives in the cells there.

Infection can seem like many other illnesses at first; fever, weight loss, fatigue, anemia and enlargement of the liver and spleen are all signs of visceral leishmaniasis. The parasite itself rarely kills its host, but in living in immune cells, it opens the person up to secondary infections like pneumonia, tuberculosis, or bacterial infections. In a way, it is very similar to AIDS, depressing the immune system enough that even a common cold can be fatal. And if that's not enough to worry about, treatment can have an unfortunate side effect - pushing the parasite to the surface, causing disfiguring ulcers that are more pervasive than the cutaneous form of infection.

Like so many other parasites, we have yet to find a way to vaccinate or prevent infection with Leishmania except for avoiding the bites of sand flies. As anyone who has tried to avoid mosquitoes knows, this is a hard thing to do, if not impossible, for people living where flies do.

As for science fiction-worthiness, how's this: some suggest that Leishmania might have did in the dinosaurs. Researchers have successfully found ancient parasites in amber-preserved insects. There are even books on dino parasites.

How could these little creatures have wreaked so much havoc? Well, some argue, they were new and invasive back then, and the reptiles didn't have the opportunity to evolve immune defenses. Massive outbreaks causing devastating population decreases and even localized extinctions could have seriously hindered dinosaur species. So it's possible that parasitic overrun might just have contributed to the fall of the great reptiles. Of course, other factors were also in play, but perhaps the parasites gave the final blow which kept dinosaurs from adapting to changing environments.

Rogers, M., Kropf, P., Choi, B., Dillon, R., Podinovskaia, M., Bates, P., & Müller, I. (2009). Proteophosophoglycans Regurgitated by Leishmania-Infected Sand Flies Target the L-Arginine Metabolism of Host Macrophages to Promote Parasite Survival PLoS Pathogens, 5 (8) DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1000555

Poinar Jr, G. (2007). Early Cretaceous trypanosomatids associated with fossil sand fly larvae in Burmese amber Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, 102 (5) DOI: 10.1590/S0074-02762007005000070

What do you look like?

Sure, you know your face in a mirror. But what do you look like to the internet?

Let's be honest - you've probably Googled yourself to see what comes up. Who hasn't? Well, now MIT has come out with an online program called "Personas" which artistically "uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity." Simply put, it shows you how the internet sees you.

The developers explain exactly what it does:

"Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person - to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile."

What's interesting to me is that it keeps changing. Here are three of me I did in a row, for example:


It picked up my experience as a camp director for the American Go Association's Go Camp every time, allotting me a "management" block in two of them. Two seemed to pick up on my blog and other writing about science and health and gave me "medical," and two grabbed something about my "education." But the rest seemed to vary quite widely. You can see some of the words it pulls and what the context is, so you can get an idea of whether it's really finding you or someone else. My only wish is that you could see every link it is finding - for example, what gave me "aggression"? I'm dying to know.

Anyhow, it's pretty neat. You should check it out.

(h/t to Science Cheerleader)

Weekly Dose of Cute: Baby Sloth

Animals don't have to be adorable adults to be cute when they're kids. A classic example, as pointed out by my favorite French blogger (who also happens to have a fascination with parasites), is the sloth. As adults they're underwhelming in the cuddle department (unless you're a weirdo like me who thinks just about everything is cute). But as babies they're just darned adorable!


Like their name suggests, the six living species of sloths which live exclusively in Central and South America tend to be slow-moving, even to the point of seeming lazy. But that lack of energy isn't without purpose. Sloths live off of a diet of mostly leaves and shoots - which are poor sources of energy. To compensate, sloths have a much lower metabolic rate than most animals. Their metabolic rate is so low, in fact, that it's less than half of what we'd expect for their size. This allows them to survive on far less dietary energy. It's too expensive to be quick moving, and so sloths are slow and cautious. Because they blend in well with their environments and move so little, they're rarely prey to other species, though they will occasionally be eaten by hawks or jaguars, especially if they have to leave their homey trees to venture on the dangerous forest floor. Babies cling tight to their moms, and are so durable they usually survive if they lose their grip. The only problem is that momma sloths are very reluctant to climb down to get their fallen youngsters, so these cuties must hang on to make sure they don't get left behind!

Pssssst!

You might have noticed I've been posting a little less frequently. In part, this is because being a grad student is far more busying than being on vacation. But another part is that I've started really using Google's Shared Items. Instead of writing a ton of posts on everything I find intriguing, I pass along some of the stuff that other people have written well about. So if you're looking for even more super science news or interesting tid-bits, subscribe to my Google Shared Item's Feed (click on the "atom feed" on the right hand side).

I also re-tweet interesting articles or items that I find on twitter, so if you want to keep the most up to date on everything nerdy, follow me there, too!

And if you're on Facebook, Observation's of a Nerd on NetworkedBlogs is only TWO followers away from getting cool extra features that are given to super-special blogs... so follow there, too!

My First Troll!

We all celebrate those moments in life that mark our growth and development - our first steps, our first words, our first kisses. We all remember that first time we rode a bike without training wheels or the first place we lived in when we moved out of our parents' house. Well, you might not know this, but bloggers have key firsts, too. There's the first post, the first comment, and, last but not least, the first troll.

That's right, someone has posted a troll comment on an Observations of a Nerd post! That means I've become just popular enough to attract the kinds of people that give us the willies at bus stations! It's a momentous moment for a little 'ole blogger like myself. And to top it off, it's a nutty, anti-science religious comment. That means I've finally become a real Science Blogger!

Here's the goods, for your enjoyment, posted on my "Why I Am Not A Darwinist" post by the esteemed "Abraham Clarke ph.D":

Darwin was wrong all along. Crick-Watsonists are the new perpetuators of the evolution hoax and
that DNA (deoxynoradrenaline)exists in "cells" and makes all life somehow magically work!
This is utter balderdash. There are no "cells" in any living creature. Science has never ever shown that "cells" or DNA exist. The whole crumbling edifice of biology has hastily thrown together a hoax to blinker people to the real world. "Cells" are nothing more than bacteria feeding on the material of our bodies. DNA is nothing but a fiction cooked up by Crick and Watson to get a Knobel prize.
There are no "cells" in the human body. It doesn't need them. There is only dead matter that the Almighty, in his infinite knowlege, has animated by putting a soul into it. The soul is electromagnetic in nature and vanishes to heaven when the body "dies". Heaven can be heard on radio telescopes. It is the background "noise" created by the big bang.
Please read the Bible and repent your sins. God loves you if you don't turn your backs on him for your fantasies of "science".

It's just too bad that I couldn't find hide nor hair of Abraham Clarke anywhere. I would love to know what his PhD, if he exists, is in.

*Sigh*. I'll always remember this moment - the day I became a real Science Blogger, important enough to troll. I better get back to work before I get all teary-eyed.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Chirp, Chirp!

I find it harder and harder to top the amazing cuteness provided by ZooBorns (a must-follow if you come here for cuteness!). They had these two youngsters there this week:

On the left may look like a common duckling, but this little Meller's Duck is highly endangered. You won't find it flapping around the ponds and lakes around home - that is, unless your home is Madagascar, where the ducks are endemic to. At first conservation for the species was hindered because, outwardly, it looks very similar to the extremely common Mallard. Thinking the ducks in the area were nothing unique, people didn't protect their habitats or the animals themselves. Thankfully, they realized their mistake before the birds were wiped out, and captive specimens like this little one's parents give the species fresh hope.

On the right is a little bird you might not recognize, though, Allie, you should. It's a baby piping plover. Once prized for its feathers, this shoreline bird was almost driven to extinction by hunting and habitat loss. But their conservation story is one of success. Once on the verge of destruction, piping plover populations have been on the rise, and the species is now listed as near-threatened rather than endangered. Conservation and protection are still very important for the little plovers, since their native home is the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast that beachgoers covet most, but so long as we keep up our efforts this species is likely to be just fine.

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: Mermithid Nematodes

There are a lot of parasites that cause strange changes in their hosts. Parasites turn hosts into zombiesgorge on the flesh of the host from the inside out, even assist a host's suicide. But one of the most interesting and extreme changes caused by a parasite is achieved by the mermithid nematode. Simply put: it makes dude mayflies look like ladies.

You see, like many other nematodes, the adults of the species are free living. But their young enjoy all the comforts of living off the hard work of other species, specifically the mayfly. Mayflies are known for their peculiar life cycle - they spend about a year as a wistful youth, swimming around freshwater systems, before spending a brief and sex-filled day or two as an adult. After fleeting joys, the female flies deposit their eggs back into the water, while the males simply die wherever they are.

This poses a slight problem for a parasite that lives in water most of its life. You see, mayfly nymphs eat the eggs of the nematode accidentally in their long and drawn out youth, and carry the worm until their deaths. When the nematode infects a female fly, it waits around until she goes to put her eggs in the water, growing all the while, then busts free through her abdomen in a very alien-esque manner. But male flies don't deposit eggs. Since infection occurs by the fly nymph ingesting the parasite's eggs, there's no way for the parasite to control ending up in only female flies. If the parasite infects a guy, it'd be SOL if it had no way to get the boy to water.

I say it would be, because, of course, the parasite has a way of guaranteeing it gets what it wants. It does this by turning the male flies into females. Infected males have feminized features, mate with other male flies, and then fly dutifully to deposit their "eggs" in the nearest stream. Somehow, the worm disrupts the normal male hormonal signals and turns the guys into gals to get what it needs. How, exactly, the parasite does this remains a bit of a mystery.

Just imagine if there was a parasite that could turn human men into women, not just visually but behaviorally, too, all for its eventual goal of using our bodies as food and safe keeping for its growing young. *shiver*

What does Earth look like without water?

While we often think of features like the Grand Canyon as impressive, majestic landscapes, we forget that only 1/3 of this planet of ours is above sea level. The rest is underwater. And while many of us may know what coral reefs or near-shore habiatats look like, we rarely get to see what the seabed looks like on a grander scale. National Geographic, as it turns out, decided that the hidden landscape of the ocean floor needed to be revealed.

Thanks to cutting edge technology and amazing CGI animation, this Sunday, Aug 9^th at 9 PM EST, National Geographic Channel is airing its newest spectacle, Drain The Ocean.

Drain the Ocean takes us on a majesstic journey under the sea, revealing the features that lie beneath the surface. The undersea landscape is far more spectacular than the greatest treasures on land. There are mountains that dwarf Everest and canyons that put the Grand Canyon to shame. And no matter how deep or how far from land, there is life everywhere. Every time we venture to these remote landscapes, we discover more creatures that we didn't know existed and discover new and fantastic features that we never even imagined.

The 2-hour special is fantastic. As a total nerd, I watch a lot of nature and marine programming. As it is, a lot of the impressive stuff is recycled - watch enough Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and you'll see the same images of dumbo squid or whatnot over and over. I was pleasently surprised to find that Drain the Ocean was full of creatures and oceanic landscapes I'd never heard of, let alone seen in any other TV program. And, since so much of it is focused on the deep sea, you can be sure that the Deep Sea News Boys and The Southern Fried Scientist will all approve.

I would tell you all more about it, but it's really worth the time to watch it. You'll see the globe in a whole new light. I strongly suggest that everyone tune in this weekend and check it out. But, just to be sure you're interested, here's a little clip to get your mouth watering. It's about the newest Hawaiian Island rising out of the sea:

The good, the gorgeous, and the not-so-much

Took this yesterday while playing with my new camera's "Panoramic" setting at Hanauma Bay. Yeah, it's that gorgeous here :)


Ok, a couple more beautiful shots:
The best place to play baseball. Ever.

Perfect scenery

But, like just about every beautiful island, Oahu has its share of invasive and introduced species which have wreaked havoc on the native and endemic species. Take this leaping little guy, for example:
This is an Indian mongoose, one of the many introduced species which now calls most of the islands of Hawaii home. In the 1800s, as the islands became more and more in contact with the rest of the world, sugar cane plantations popped up like weeds. The sugary crop attracted rats, another invasive, much to the chagrin of the cane plantation owners. In an attempt to fight back, they introduced Herpestes javanicus, with hopes that these hungry little mongeese would eat all the rats. Of course, like most introduced species, they had a much bigger impact than hoped.

Mongeese are highly abundant on Oahu and many of the islands - at Hanauma Bay we saw at least ten while leaving the park, and they were everywhere. Kaua'i and Lana'i are the only islands here that are mongoose-free (though there have been recent sightings, and considering the entire population that lives here now descended from 9 animals, any sightings are bad news). Folk legend says that when they were shipped to Kaua'i to be introduced, one bit a dockworker and he threw them all overboard, though it's been said that, in fact, it was the unhappy local residents who didn't want the pesky creature which drowned the incoming shipment.

The locals were right to be worried. Instead of hunting rats, which are usually nocturnal (compared to the daylight-feeding mongoose) and fight back fiercely, the voracious monsters went after native bird eggs, decimating the populations of many native species, including the beloved Nene, or Hawaiian Goose. Hawaii isn't the only place these pests have taken over - the IUCN lists them as one of the top 100 worst invasive species in the world because they grow quickly, breed quickly, and can survive almost anywhere on almost anything, from bugs to birds and, rarely, the rats they're so often introduced to get rid of. Based on the public health damages, killing of poultry, extinctions of amphibians, reptiles, and destruction of native birds, it is estimated that this one species of mongoose is causing $50 million in damages each year in Puerto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands alone, despite control methods including trapping, hunting, and poisoning. Basically, they're a complete menace.

Although I think I am even more pissed that stupid humans introduced mosquitos here in 1826. There weren't blood sucking flies or mosquitos here before then. Now that would have been unbelievable paradise!

Weekly Dose of Cute: Cheetah Cub

Ok, so I've kinda missed a week or two.

What? None of you noticed? Oh. Nevermind then.

Wait a second, I see someone noticed. Just look at that face - so sad that I didn't post a Weekly Dose of Cute last week!


c/o the ever-adorable Zooborns

This unhappy cub is one of four lovely little 2 month olds being raised by the San Diego Zoo's all too happy staff. Cheetahs are amazing animals. They're able to reach speeds of up to 75 mph in short bursts, and are able to accelerate from 0 to 70 in about 3 seconds. Unfortunately, like so many large cats, their future is uncertain. Their numbers have dwindled, mostly due to habitat loss and poaching, and are so genetically related that they face almost certain extinction without extensive conservation effort on our part. Who knows - perhaps we can save them. Just looking at that sad little face certainly makes me want to try.