Seriously, Science?

The physics of rug wrinkles.

Sometimes it’s the things we see everyday that we don’t even realize have gone unexplained for millennia. Take rugs, for example. We trip over cat-induced rug wrinkles on a daily basis, but what physical parameters control their formation? What is the most energy-efficient way to remove them? Even though the movement of so-called “rug rucks” are similar to other important phenomena, such as ground movements during earthquakes, we still don’t know that much about them. Fortunately, studies li …

Gene Expression

The algorithms don't lie, but people may err

For the past year or so I’ve been getting queries about what I think about Eran Elhaik’s preprint on the genetic character of European Jews. I found some of the conclusions frankly a little weird, but I assumed that things would be cleaned up for publication. Well, it’s been out for a while now: The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses. But some reporting in The Jewish Daily Forward has brought the author and his detractors a bi …

Out There

How 3D Printers Could Feed Astronauts and Mine Asteroids

If you judged by the recent buzz in the media world, you might think that 3D printers are good for one thing only: creating untraceable guns, on demand, in the privacy of your home. What makes the 3D printer such an intriguing technology, though, is the extremely broad nature of their applications. They can be used to print replacement auto parts (or maybe, someday, entire vehicles). They are great for cranking out rapid prototypes of new kinds of objects–anything from sculptures to false teet …

Gene Expression

The eternal Aboriginal

National Geographic has an interesting article up, unoriginally titled Australia’s Aboriginals. There are lots of great data in there, though not much novel for anyone who has tread this territory before. For example, Aboriginals tend to have much lower morbidity and mortality when they are living their “traditional” lifestyle. This isn’t a particular novel or surprising outcome. Rather, it seems like a supercharged version of the same problem which occurs when immigrants move from develop …

D-brief

Single Gene Leads to Longer Lifespan Across Species

Mitochondria are the cell’s workhorse, transforming the calories we eat into useable energy. They have also been the subject of lots of scrutiny over longevity, since lifespan is intimately tied up with metabolism. Now a new study reports that mitochondrial malfunction may actually be the key to extending life.

Although loss of mitochondrial function has been associated with increased lifespan in a number of species, the reasons behind this effect have been poorly understood. It’s also been …

D-brief

Neanderthal Babies Weaned Early, Fossil Teeth Suggest

“Got milk?”

It’s not just a ubiquitous ad slogan — a primate infant’s access to breast milk has significant consequences for a species’ life cycle. For the first time, researchers have been able to look back 100,000 years to understand how Neanderthal infants might have been nursed and weaned.

According to a study published today in Nature, patterns of barium distribution in the fossilized teeth of a juvenile Neanderthal indicate that the individual began weaning at seven months, …

Seriously, Science?

Can weather swing an election?

It’s pretty obvious that weather can affect overall voter turnout; many people just don’t want to go out in the rain, even if it’s to exercise their civic duty. But does weather affect some political parties more than others? Are right-wing voters more likely to skip the polls on a rainy day? Do Democrats forget to vote when the surf’s up? Well, not many people go surfing in the Netherlands, but they do have elections and weather, and this study describes the relationship between the two.

 …

Gene Expression

Saiga through the bottleneck...and back?

In the 1980s I was fascinated by the pictorially oriented books on the wildlife of the world which dated to the 1960s and 1970s. One of the great conservation success stories of that era were the Saiga antelope of Eurasia. In 1920 there were only 1,000-2,0000 Saia left in the world. By the 1960s their numbers were in the millions. And so it was until the 1980s.

But the combination of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for which the Saiga was a notable conservation success, and the rise of  …

Collide-a-Scape

Is Portland Anti-Science?

For years, Portland has ranked as one of America’s greenest cities. While its eco-minded culture has been famously lampooned in Portlandia, the city’s environmentally friendly reputation is well earned, as (Seattle-based) Grist notes:
Portland’s public transit system is held up as a model for the country. Per capita carbon emissions are down 26 percent since 1990. Portland consistently tops lists for most bike-friendly city. The city even has an eco-pub.
So how is it possible that the  …

Gene Expression

Dog and man: a 30,000 year friendship

To the left is a figure which illustrates the phylogenetic inferences from a new paper in Nature Communications, The genomics of selection in dogs and the parallel evolution between dogs and humans (see Carl Zimmer’s coverage in The New York Times). Why is this paper important? The first thing that jumped out at me is that because they’re using whole genomes (~10X coverage) of a selection of dogs and wolves the results aren’t as subject to the bias of using “chips” of polymorphisms discovere …