Weekly Dose of Cute: Trampolines, not just for kids.

This is just too adorable. It turns out trampolines aren't just for kids:

The foxes must have thought it was the greatest discovery EVER.

This Month's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: Dermatobia hominis

Mosquitoes carry a lot of parasites, many of which are global health concerns. Mosquito vectored diseases include protozoan diseases like malaria, filarial diseases, and viruses like dengue fever, encephalitis, West Nile and yellow fever. Perhaps the least-concerning creature you can get from a mosquito is Dermatobia hominis. But what it lacks in deadliness it makes up for in grossness.

Dermatobia hominis , or the human botfly, is a fairly common looking species of fly native to Mexico and Central America. From its outer appearances, you wouldn't think anything bad of it. Like other flies, the botfly has a simple life cycle; eggs that turn into maggots, maggots which grow then pupate, transforming into a fly. Most maggots feed on necrotic or decomposing tissues, hence their common appearance on corpses or other dead creatures. The botfly, however, takes its own spin on things. Its young need to eat healthy flesh to survive. Living in healthy tissues means that the larvae are protected from other creatures and the harsh world outside.

And, of course, being the human botfly, Dermatobia hominis maggots feed on our flesh, specifically. The subcutaneous (below the skin) layers of our bodies turn out to be magnificent nurseries for larval flies. It takes a larval botfly about eight weeks to grow and mature while dining on our tissues, then they crawl out and pupate in the soil. Around a week later, a small, gray adult fly emerges.

The trouble with using a human host for your eggs, though, is that it's not really a good idea to put hundreds of maggots in the same area like other flies do in decomposing flesh. That many larvae might damage the host a lot, causing the wound site to get infected. This is bad news for the botfly - infections are fatal. Since the fly larvae can only survive the entire eight-week development if the wound does not become infected, it's important for the flies to deliver only a very small number of larvae to each host, preferably one at a time in a given spot.

That's where mosquitoes come in. Dermatobia females use mosquitoes to deliver their eggs to viable sources. By using a vector like the mosquito, the flies not only deliver fewer eggs per host, they disperse to wider ranges and more hosts than they could on their own. Botfly eggs are transported by at least 40 species of mosquitoes and flies, as well as one species of tick. The female fly captures the bug and attaches her eggs to its body using a specialized glue which is melted by our body heat when the mosquito lands. The eggs then fall off the mosquito while its feeding and hatch. Botfly eggs react to the change in temperature as a signal to dig in, burying themselves under our skin.

We start to notice that a botfly larvae is growing in us because bite wounds get a little larger and more persistent then normal. As the fly larva grows, it can become visible, even be felt and seen moving around beneath the skin. The easiest way to deal with a botfly is to get it surgically removed by a doctor. However, the larvae breathe through small openings in the skin, and covering these tiny holes can coax them to leave the host on their own. Those who don't want to pay for an office visit often use bacon fat, petroleum jelly, or even nail polish to suffocate the larvae, which then move to the surface to breathe and can be removed by hand.

Here's a little video of this:

If you really want to gross yourself out, here's one being removed from someone's eyelid:

Anyhow, as you can see, while they may not be as deadly as some of the other mosquito-borne diseases, they are definitely far more disgusting. It's just like the plot of a science fiction book; a creature burrows into our bodies, consuming our flesh and blood for its sustenance before bursting out in dramatic fashion. For their creepy use of our flesh as maggot nurseries, botflies definitely are sci-fi worthy. Tune in next month for another disturbing, disgusting, and otherwise amazing parasite!

National Geographic's Exedition Week 2009

Starting tomorrow, National Geographic embarks upon a week of adventure. It's Nat Geo's Second Annual Expedition Week, seven nights of journeys to places as diverse as Mars and the deep ocean. Every night at 9PM, Nat Geo takes us on a different expedition sure to fascinate and amaze. I was lucky enough to preview this entire series, and I have to say, it's a pretty great week that's full of science as well as adventure. Be sure to tune in for any that pique your interest! Here's the lineup for the week:

The week starts with Sunday's Search For The Amazon Head Shrinkers. The documentary follows author and explorer Piers Gibbon as he follows the footsteps of Edmundo Bielawski, whose film from the 1960s supposedly revealed the actual head shrinking process as practiced by the Shuar people. The goal was to rediscover where the original scene was filmed and to learn more about the Shuar and their customs. While this show has been hyped quite a bit by Nat Geo, and this has called into question its taste in dealing with these native people, the special doesn't cross the line and remains sensitive to the unique culture of the Shuar. It's definitely worth watching, so long as you're not too squeamish!

Monday night we climb aboard Expedition Great White with Dr. Michael Domeier, a leading shark biologist with the Marine Conservation Science Institute, as he and his team seek to tag great whites with revolutionary new technology that will reveal the most sensitive information about white sharks to date. But attaching a tag to a 16 ft animal isn't a cake walk, and the show definitely delivers with non-stop action and breathtaking images of these majestic animals. While this tagging method has been criticized, I think anyone who watches the show will see that they are not out there fishing for great whites for fun - this is science, and its mind blowing.

Tuesday and Wednesday, the undersea adventure continues with Hunt for the Samurai Subs and Deep Secrets: The Ballard Gallipoli Expedition. On Tuesday, deep submergence vehicle pilots Terry Kerby and Max Cremer dive to depths of nearly 3,000 feet to hunt for some of World War II's largest and fastest submarines sunk by the US to hide their secrets from the Soviets. Then on Wednesday, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Bob Ballard dives to the ocean depths to explore six of the warships that sank during the Battle at Gallipoli, one of the bloodiest and most controversial campaigns of World War I that cost hundreds of thousands of soldiers their lives. Both specials explore the deep for sunken ships, bringing the past from World War I and II to life, and are definitely worth checking out if you're a history buff or enjoy watching ROVs explore the depths.

On Thursday, Nat Geo leaves Earth behind with Mars: Making the New Earth. What would it take to turn Mars, a barren, frozen wasteland, into a lush planet? The short answer is a lot, but not as much as you might think. The process of making a planet habitable by people is called terraforming, and scientists are already exploring the possibility of terraforming Mars. In this special, you get to see what scientists are learning about Mars and Earth, and how we might go about turning this freeze-dried planet into a place where we can live in the distant future.

On Friday, Nat Geo rewinds and begins a journey deep into the past with The First Jesus. Four years before the birth of Jesus, a different Messiah was beheaded and crucified by the Romans and said to have resurrected, according to a three-foot tall stone tablet from the first century B.C. His name was Simon, and at the time he was called the King of the Jews. This special travels to Israel to have a Deep Sea Scroll expert review the content of this unique and mysterious artifact while explorers travel from Jerusalem to Jericho to investigate archeological ruins that could help determine whether Simon really existed. Move over J.C. - there's a new Messiah in town! A must-see for those who like specials that seek to discover the historical realities of religious and mythic figures.

Finally, Nat Geo takes us travel even further back in time to the Cretaceous in When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs. Crocodiles are often heralded as living fossils, but they've changed quite a bit from their ancestors that dominated the prehistoric landscape. This special unearths the bizarre and gigantic crocodiles that were the ancestors of our modern animals. Far from being living fossils, modern crocodiles and alligators are but miniature versions of the frightening creatures that once hunted both on land and in the water at a time when mammals were still an evolutionary experiment and the ancestors of modern birds dominated the landscape. Ancient crocs make even the largest of the Amazon's most feared hunters look meek in comparison! This was by far my favorite of the week's expeditions, and a total blast to watch. Nat Geo definitely saved the best for last!

From prehistoric monsters to sci-fi futuristic scenarios, this year's Expedition Week is jam-packed with hard-core science, fantastic special effects, and amazing real images of explorers doing what they do best. I personally loved the set, so if any of what I just talked about sounds interesting, be sure to check out Nat Geo's Expedition Week, on every night this week at 9PM on The National Geographic Channel.

Brown Pelican Flies Off Endangered Species List

Weighing in at around 10 lbs with a wingspan of up to 8 feet, the brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) is an impressive bird. Sure, it's the smallest of the pelican species, but it hardly lacks in size. Along the shores of Florida and the Gulf Coast, these birds are common. They swarm docks and piers wherever fish are being caught and cleaned, and their acrobatic fishing techniques often catch the eyes of tourists and locals alike.

But it wasn't always so easy to see these large birds in action. DDT use decimated the pelican population to such low numbers that in 1970, it was placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Preservation Act, the first version of the current Endangered Species Act. DDT interfered with the shell formation in pelican young, making their shells too thin and unable to support the growing chick. Pelicans were one of the many species that DDT damaged, leading to a nation-wide ban of the pesticide's use in 1972. Since then, pelican populations have been fighting back to regain their numbers.

The pelicans have been overwhelmingly successful. Since the ban of DDT, brown pelican populations have increased 65 fold. The Fish and Wildlife Service removed the brown pelican population in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and northward along the Atlantic Coast states from the list of endangered species in 1985, but the remaining populations, including those in the "pelican state" of Louisiana, still remained protected until they could fully get back on their webbed feet.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar happily announced on Nov. 11th that the brown pelican's numbers had rebounded so well throughout its range that it is no longer considered threatened.

“At a time when so many species of wildlife are threatened, we once in a while have an opportunity to celebrate an amazing success story,” Salazar said in a press release about the decision. “Today is such a day. The brown pelican is back!”

The removal of this species from the Endangered Species Act is a huge success for conservation efforts. While fewer laws now watch over the pelicans, it's important to note that they are not completely unprotected. Additional federal laws, such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Lacey Act, will continue to protect the brown pelican and its nests and eggs. U.S. Fish and Wildlife will also continue to keep a watchful eye via their Post-Delisting Monitoring Plan, which is designed to monitor and verify that the recovered, delisted population remains secure from the risk of extinction once the protections of the ESA are removed. If the pelican shows significant declines, they won't hesitate to relist them.

The final rule removing the bird from the list of threatened and endangered species will be published in the Federal Register and will take effect 30 days after publication. By 2010, it will be official that the brown pelican is no longer threatened anywhere in its US range.

Salty Science Carnival is up!

Hey there fellow nerds! Carnival of the Blue #30 is now up at Oh For The Love Of Science!. Be sure to swing by and get your feet wet.

And if you're blogging some salty news yourself, be sure to submit your posts for the next Carnival of the Blue to... ME! December's Carnival of the Blue will be hosted right here at Observations of a Nerd.They've got this new handy-dandy BlogCarnival submission form you can use now to submit your posts! If you have any trouble, feel free to e-mail me at NerdyChristie [at] gmail [dot] com.

FrankenPenis!

Sci-Fi authors will tell you that the next big breakthrough in medical technology will be the ability to grow our own organs for transplants. In the idealized future, you'll have a heart or kidney cultured from your own cells on hand for whatever emergency might come up. Well, scientists have taken another step closer to creating functional replacement tissues, detailing the creation fully-functional penis part replacements in rabbits in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. .

Yes, I did say penis part replacements. They are serious. Hey, if you're going to start figuring out how to make body parts, why not start with one so well-used?

The Wake Forest Baptist team that created these engineered penis tissues was the first in the world to engineer a human organ in the laboratory, creating bladders that have been implanted in about 30 people. But penile tissue is a much more complex challenge due to its form and function, and to date, no one has been able to surgically restore function to badly damaged penises.

To be clear, they didn't put cells in a petri dish and grow them into a penis. Technically, they engineered replacement corpora cavernosas, the columns of tissue that fill with blood during an erection. And even these weren't grown entirely from scratch; they used scaffolds made from functioning penises whose cells had been stripped away with detergents. They then added smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells that they cultured from rabbit erectile tissue. These scaffolds provided the necessary support and structure for the injected cells to develop properly.

In the end, they gave 12 male rabbits the Bobbit treatment and then replaced their lost parts with newly engineered ones. The researchers said the rabbits seemed to immediately notice the return of their missing appendage, and went at the females like, well, rabbits. Four of the 12 successfully became fathers.

"We were able to show the tissue was able to integrate and function in the long term, which means we can start planning clinical applications," Anthony Atala, M.D. (institute director at Wake Forrest where the research was conducted) told HealthDay. This research gives new hope to those suffering from erectile dysfunction whose condition isn't treatable with drugs, although we're nowhere near ready to try this trick in people.

A little rant you might enjoy...

I went off on sharks and cancer over at ScientificBlogging.Com... You might enjoy it :)

Busting Marine Myths: Sharks DO Get Cancer!

Hormones are a real turn-on for velvet bellies!

Living in a world of sunshine and electricity, we tend to take light for granted. Heck, we complain when clouds diminish our bright sunny rays. But dip just beneath the surface of the ocean and light becomes a rare commodity. More than half of the light that penetrates the ocean surface is absorbed in the first three feet. As you go deeper, different colors disappear. Red is the first to go, followed by yellow and green, until you're truly immersed in murky blue. At about 200 m deep, there is so little light that plants cannot survive, as there isn't enough light energy to power photosynthesis. Drop down again to 850 m and you no longer see any light because our eyes aren't sensitive enough to detect the trace that trickles down. Dive another 150 m down to 1000 m deep and you enter the aphotic zone, where even the most sensitive eyes no longer see the sun.

It is in these dark depths that many creatures have adapted to produce their own light. Called bioluminescence, this biologically created light plays a big role in the lives of deep-sea creatures, being involved in everything from camouflage and signaling to hunting. While only a handful of organisms above the murky depths have bioluminescent capabilities, it's estimated that 90% of deep-sea marine life produce light in one form or another. This plethora of glowing organisms have given deep sea biologists plenty to study.

All the fish so far studied use nerves to somehow turn on and off their chemical lights. Nerves provide an excellent means of control as they can be fired quickly and selectively, allowing for rapid and precise responses. But new research into one particular species of deep sea fish, called the velvet-belly lantern shark, has found that it uses hormones instead to turn on and off it's bright display. This alternate route suggests that bioluminescence has evolved multiple times, a process called convergent evolution.

The velvet belly lantern shark (or simply velvet belly), Etmopterus spinax, is a fairly small member of the dogfish family and is one of the most common sharks in the deep northeastern Atlantic. It tends to hang out somewhere around 500 m deep, where there is still a trace of visible light from above. If it's name didn't give it away, the velvet belly lantern shark is capable of bioluminescence, and lights up its belly to camouflage its shape when viewed from below, a process called countershading. While it's not fished for profit, large numbers are caught as bycatch in other deepwater commercial fisheries, and the intense fishing pressure throughout it faces its range does worry conservationists who recognize that like other sharks, its slow reproductive rate make it highly susceptible to overfishing.

The researchers first thought to investigate hormones in this species because the shark's bioluminescent cells, called photophores, weren't hooked up to a complex nerve system like in many other bioluminescent fish species. They decided to test if nerves controlled the shark's light-producing cells by injecting neurotransmitters, such as adrenaline and GABA, into the skin and measuring the light produced with a luminometer. None of the neurotransmitters tests were able to stimulate the skin to glow. If the photophores not linked to nerves, the scientists thought, they must be being triggered by some other mechanism. So they began investigating the possibility of hormonal controls.

Indeed, they found that three hormones control this species bioluminescence on and off switches: melatonin, prolactin and alpha-MSH. Melatonin is well known in humans for controlling sleep regulation. But when skin patches of lantern sharks were exposed to the hormone, they lit up for several hours. Similarly, exposure to prolactin also led to light production, though the glow was brighter lasted only about an hour. Alpha-MSH, the researchers found, did the exact opposite - when skin was exposed to it before the other two chemicals, the lights stayed off.

Evolutionarily, it makes sense that this little shark would control its skin lumination with hormones. While in bony fish, skin color is controlled by nerves, the cartilaginous fish (including sharks, skates and rays) control their skin pigmentation with hormones. It is thought that nerve control of skin pigmentation is a later evolutionary development, occurring after the split between cartilaginous and bony fish. While hormonal regulation doesn't allow for as rapid or precise a response as nerve triggering does, it does work well, and using a hormone that already is triggered by darkness like melatonin makes perfect sense.

This drastically different mechanism of turning on and off bioluminescence suggests that sharks and other fish evolved the ability to produce light separately. It's likely that the same evolutionary pressure to produce light - the dark depths of the sea - led both groups of organisms to evolve mechanisms of glowing. The researchers believe that further investigation into other light-producing sharks will find that they, too, use hormones to control their bioluminescence.

Studies like this one show that we still have much to learn about these glowing creatures that live so far below the ocean's surface. The more we explore these depths, the more we learn about the fascinating organisms that survive these cold, deep waters and how they live in a world without light.

Claes, J., & Mallefet, J. (2009). Hormonal control of luminescence from lantern shark (Etmopterus spinax) photophores Journal of Experimental Biology, 212 (22), 3684-3692 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.034363

Weekly Dose of Cute: Bongo, baby!

No, not the small little drums. I'm talking about Bongos, the vibrant antelopes:

c/o the Houston Zoo and ZooBorns

Bongos are a kind of large antelope native to the lowlands and some mountains of Africa. They're at least two different subspecies: Tragelaphus eurycerus eurycerus (the lowland bongo) and Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci (the eastern or mountain bongo). Both subspecies are facing constant threats; the lowland bongo is listed as near-threatened by the IUCN and the mountain bongo is endangered, with more specimens in captivity than in the wild (~400 in Zoos in North America). The eastern bongo is one of the most threatened large mammals in Africa, with the most recent estimates numbering less than 140 animals, far below a minimum sustainable viable population. Captive breeding is this subspecies last shot at survival.

On a completely side note, this reminds me of a Manu Chao song... I'm the king of bongo, baby, I'm the king of bongo-bong. King of the bongo, king of the bongo...

Scientia Pro Publica

Science is for the people... so welcome, people, to the newest edition of Scientia Pro Publica! Sit down, buckle up, and get ready to be taken on a wild ride that includes everything from vampires to vegetarians, the dawn of the universe to current affairs, and anything in between!

While the ghosts and goblins may have gone back into hiding after this weekend's All Hallow's Eve, the debate still rages at Southern Fried Science as to whether vampires can survive a zombie apocalypse. So if you haven't had enough Halloween, be sure to weigh in your $0.02!

The biosphere seems all shook up about this vegetarian spider that scientists recently found, but not the Bec Crew at Save Your Breath For Running Ponies. They explain how Bagheera kiplingi is really a vegetarian for all the wrong reasons.

This edition of Scientia is certainly for the birds - Roger from Birds and Science explains Bird moult allometry, while Jean Paul Perret talks about Second Chances: Rediscovering Lost and Extinct Birds I at Neotropical Birding. There's some fascinating photos and information about Grand Canyon Condors at Reconciliation Ecology. John at DC Birding also talks about his own eBird milestone - so be sure to check them all out!

We move out of the air and into the sea with a disgusting post by Kelsey at Mauka to Makai about big, slimy balls of Marine Mucilage. And once you're done grossing yourself out, you can travel back in time and learn why giant sea scorpions got so big thanks to a great post by Greg Laden. And while we're in the past, be sure to take a look at human origins with Reexamining Ardipithecus ramidus in Light of Human Origins by Eric from The Primate Diaries. Go waaaaay back and check out Greg Laden's explanation about the age of the universe in his post Universe lets age clue slip. You can bring yourself slowly back to the present by learning a bit more about the history of Botany and the role of Louis Trabut thanks to a nice historical narrative posted at vaviblog.

For those who are more sports-minded, Jackie has posted a great piece about where football and brain science collide (thanks to all those collisions) at New Voices for Research.

As scientists, though, it's not just about the science. We're play a large role outside the lab, and it's good for us to be reminded of our greater affect on society. Dan Vorhaus criticizes the UK's new genomics program while explaing Why the Errors of the Human Provenance Project Will Echo Beyond the U.K.’s Borders over at Genomics Law Report. The program seeks to use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality, which is a tough ethical issue that we now face thanks to advances in genetics research.

ScriptPhD reminds us that A Picture is Worth a Thousand Trees as we read about deforestation, climate change, and carbon emissions. This post is a deep and fascinating look into the science and policy of global warming.

Finally, we are reminded that we must be humble as we seek to understand the world around us through science. As Eric from The Primate Diaries points out, science is the worship of doubt far more than it is the worship of truth.

That's it for this edition of Scientia Pro Publica! Be sure to get your submissions in for the next edition! You can use this handy submission form. And if you're interested in hosting Scientia at your blog, be sure to get in touch with Grrlscientist ASAP!