Blogs / Discoblog

An Irish eye surgeon has noticed a dramatic rise in the number of patients with damaged retinas this year. The condition is called solar retinopathy, and Dr. Eamonn O’Donoghue, a consultant ophthalmologist surgeon, thinks he knows what’s causing the rise.

Via BBC News:

Thousands of people have been travelling to the County Mayo pilgrimage shrine of Knock after hearing that the Virgin Mary would appear there. Some claimed to have seen the sun “dancing in the sky”.

O’Donoghue believes the pilgrims at the holy shrine—as many as 7,000 gathered on October 31st—are staring into the sun while waiting for the Virgin Mary to appear, and damaging their retinas in the process.

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If your God was going to drop down from the heavens for a stroll around your town, what form do you think he or she would choose? A turtle, perhaps?

According to Reuters:

Hundreds of poor Hindu villagers in eastern India have refused to hand over a rare turtle to authorities, saying it is an incarnation of God, officials said on Tuesday. Villagers chanting hymns and carrying garlands, bowls of rice and fruits are pouring in from remote villages to a temple in Kendrapara, a coastal district in eastern Orissa state.

Police have been trying to take the animal from the villagers since it’s actually illegal to harbor this rare turtle. (Note: That’s not a picture of the turtle to the left. The exact species isn’t clear from news reports.) The villagers are saying the turtle has holy symbols on its shell and is really an incarnation of Lord Jagannath, a popular Hindu deity.

Let us all pray to Jagannath that this doesn’t devolve into an Elian Gonzalez-type situation, with Indian authorities barging in to grab a confused reptile…

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Image: flickr / Rennett Stowe

The second episode of NOVA’s big evolution special “Becoming Human” premieres tomorrow night at 8 PM ET/PT on PBS.  Tuesday night’s show focuses on Homo erectus, the ancestor who became “basically us” almost 2 million years ago, developing the first human societies.

Much of what we know about Homo erectus comes from “Turkana Boy,” the famous skeleton found by the Leakey team in Kenya in the early 1980’s.  An important part of what we know, though, comes from the genetic study of lice.  And not just head lice.

Using “paleoartists,” digital filmmaking and the work done with Turkana Boy over the past two decades, the NOVA producers are able to paint a vivid portrait of  Homo erectus’s role in key innovations – like using fire and developing social bonds – that make us human.

The real action in the documentary starts about halfway through, when scientists tackle the question of how Homo erectus was able to obtain the protein necessary to support brain growth.   Of course, stone tools played a huge role in making sure that the humans “went home for dinner and weren’t the meal.”

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Dear reader: You’re a mutant. But take comfort—it’s not just you. According to recent research, every person on Earth introduces between 100 and 200 new genetic mutations into the human genome.

BBC News reports:

[Researchers] looked at thousands of genes in the Y chromosomes of two Chinese men. They knew the men were distantly related, having shared a common ancestor who was born in 1805.

By looking at the number of differences between the two men, and the size of the human genome, they were able to come up with an estimate of between 100 and 200 new mutations per person.

This number of mutations is small compared to the size of the full human genome, so finding them was apparently quite a feat. Such a feat, in fact, that one of the scientists reportedly said that “finding this tiny number of mutations was more difficult than finding an ant’s egg in an emperor’s rice store.”

Some mutations can give rise to health conditions like cancer, so being able to identify new genetic variations not only could teach us about our own evolution, but could even help prevent disease-causing alterations in our DNA.

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Image: flickr / ghutchis

If the possibility of a zombie attack keeps you awake at night, rest assured you’re not the only one who’s pondered such an occurence. In fact, researchers have performed a new mathematical analysis that explores how we might best approach a battle with the un-dead.

The BBC reports:

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively….

[The researchers] say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.

Although zombies may be a slightly-less-than-serious topic, there’s a serious side to the study, which was published in a book called Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress. A zombie attack could be similar to a plague of infectious disease, the researchers say.

Still, there’s one big difference: Once completely wiped out, diseases don’t come oozing and groaning back from the dead.

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Image: flickr / thivierr

Is your child going to be a championship basketball player, or world-class pianist, or Nobel-winning physicist? Well, waiting for them to grow up before scoping out their talents can be a drag. Plus, it cuts down on precious training time.

That’s why, for $880, parents in China can send their three-to-12-year-old children to a special five-day camp where they will undergo DNA testing in an effort to predict their area of success. From a sample of saliva, scientists say, they can examine 11 genes that gauge a child’s future IQ, height, memory, and other traits. They will then recommend to the parents the best course of action to hone the kid’s innate capabilities.

CNN reports:

“Nowadays, competition in the world is about who has the most talent,” said [program director Zhao Mingyou]. “We can give Chinese children an effective, scientific plan at an early age”….

[P]arents are convinced it will help their child. It is no secret that China’s one-child policy often produces anxious and ambitious parents with high expectations for their only child.

“China is different from Western countries,” said Yang Yangqing, the lab’s technical director. “There is only one child in our families so more and more parents focus on their children’s education and they want to give them the best education.”

You can also watch CNN’s video about China’s DNA testing here.

There’s just one problem: Can DNA tests really reliably predict whether a child will be the next Stephen Hawking or Michael Jordan? After all, success is often the product not of a gene or two, but rather a complex combination, along with a properly nurturing (or incentivizing) environment—not to mention a hefty dose of hard work and luck.

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Image: flickr / Alex E. Proimos

Plenty of science aficionados want to get the general public excited about their favorite subject—but few have turned to actual cheerleaders to do it.

A physics professor is joining forces with members of the Philadelphia 76ers cheerleading squad to dole out 18 online lessons on the basics of science. The project is the brainchild of former DISCOVER staffer (and 76ers dance team member) Darlene Cavalier. You can see a slideshow here, and read more about the project here.

FOX News reports:

“Why not cheerleaders?” asked [professor James] Trefil, the Robinson Professor of Science at George Mason University. “My own philosophy is, any way you can get the scientific message across, that’s a good thing.”

Guess when it comes to raising interest and awareness about science, it pays to be…aggressive! Be, be aggressive! And miniskirts don’t hurt, either.

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Image: flickr / allspice1

Women are getting “hotter” as more beautiful women reproduce at a higher rate and have a higher proportion of girls to boys? We post, you decide:

What was eating the earliest Europeans? Their rivals, apparently. Human remains up to 800,000 years old have been found in an archaeological cave site in northern Spain. They reveal that early Europeans killed and ate their adversaries, and took a special liking to the flesh of children and adolescents.

The abundant food and water available in the area indicate that the cannibalistic practice was not one of necessity. AFP tells us:

A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents. “It is the first well-documented case of cannibalism in the history of humanity, which does not mean that it is the oldest,” said [project co-director Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro]. The remains discovered in the caves “appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting” and eaten by humans, he said. “This gives us an idea of cannibalism as a type [of] gastronomy, and not as a ritual”….

[Archaeologists] found water and food in abundance, could hunt wild boar, horses, [and] deer, “which means that they did not practice cannibalism through a lack of food. They killed their rivals and used the meat,” he said. “We have also discovered two levels that contain cannibalised remains, which means that it was not a one-off thing, but continued through time,” he said. “Another interesting aspect…is that most of the 11 individuals that we have identified” as victims “were children or adolescents.”

Lends a whole new meaning to “the sweet taste of victory.”

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Image: flickr / stu_spivack

Think you know all there is to know about the witches of the 17th century? Well, don’t be so cocky. The recent discovery of a so-called “witchcraft bottle” in England has shed new light on the beliefs of that period, thanks to CT scans, chemical analysis and other tests.

While around 200 other witchcraft bottles have been found, all of them were open and eroding—until this one, that is. This bottle held, among other things, a dozen iron nails, hair, fingernail clippings, a piece of leather shaped like a heart and pierced with a nail, what could be navel fluff, and brimstone, also known as sulfur… all bathed in human urine. Scientists say the bottle shows that people of the time actually followed bizarre-sounding recipes to combat witchcraft, such as one requiring a man to “take a quart of your Wive’s urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin.”

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