Discoblog » Where We Came From & Where We’re Going

Indian Villagers to Rare Turtle: Stay With Us, Mighty God

Brett Israel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:00:06 +0000

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…

Image: flickr / Rennett Stowe

What Head (and Other) Lice Tell Us About Evolution

Sam Lowry — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:51:07 +0000

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.”

Per NOVA, “most predators rely on strength or speed to kill their prey, and our ancestors had neither.” Instead, according to Harvard’s Dan Lieberman, Homo erectus relied on the combination of “endurance running and high activity in the middle of the day.” Unlike animal predators, early humans were mostly hairless, giving them the ability to sweat and keep cool while running and tracking their prey over long distances.

The evidence for Turkana Boy’s hairlessness comes in part from the study of louse DNA. Hair is “rarely present in the fossil record” so researchers have turned to the study of parasites associated with hair, i.e. head and pubic lice. It turns out that the human head louse is very different from the human pubic louse. On top of that the pubic louse is closely related to lice found on gorillas. Viewers are left to draw their own opinions about how humans contracted pubic lice from gorillas. When humans lost their hair, the lice were forced to navigate “the hairless geographic barrier” between the head and pubic regions.

By studying the genetic code of the two louse species, geneticists like Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute can tell when the two species diverged from their common ancestor. Their research suggests that humans lost their thick coat of body hair almost three million years ago, paving the way for Turkana Boy to outrun and kill the meat he needed to feed his growing brain.

We’re All a Bunch of Genetic Mutants, Research Finds

Allison Bond — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:57:50 +0000

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.

Image: flickr / ghutchis

Mathematicians Develop Strategy to Fight Zombies; Bruce Campbell Unimpressed

Allison Bond — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:11:54 +0000

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.

Image: flickr / thivierr

Can DNA Testing Reveal China’s Future Stars?

Allison Bond — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:20:34 +0000

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.

Image: flickr / Alex E. Proimos

Cheerleaders, Professor Team Up for Science

Allison Bond — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:22:23 +0000

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.

Image: flickr / allspice1

Worst Science Article of the Week?

Melissa Lafsky — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:05:06 +0000

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:

For Early Europeans, Cannibalism Was One Perk of Victory

Allison Bond — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:54:15 +0000

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.”

Image: flickr / stu_spivack

Toil and Trouble: Scientists Analyze 17th Century “Anti-Witches Brew”

Allison Bond — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:47:27 +0000

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.”

Lab tests revealed that the nail clippings showed little wear, so the person they once belonged to likely was well-off. And scientists know the person who produced the urine was a smoker because it contained nicotine. This discovery is both extremely cool, and a little spooky—and it makes us wonder if future archaeologists will find our daily lives bizarre, too.

Superglue: Stone Age Humans Beat Us to It

Rachel Cernansky — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:03:36 +0000

Superglue may be a modern convenience, but it might not be such a recent invention. Using Stone Age materials, South Africa-based researchers have recreated a glue that they suspect people at that time made to hold their tools together.

Red ochre dye once thought by archaeologists to only serve a decorative or symbolic purpose in present-day South Africa 70,000 years ago, may have actually been the magic ingredient in a Stone Age recipe for natural superglue.

The natural red pigment is rich in iron, and was added to the gum of acacia trees to create an adhesive, a blend that the new research shows was less brittle and more durable than glue made solely from acacia gum. Researcher Lyn Wadley said, “We discovered that when we used ochre, the glue is much more robust, and the stone tool doesn’t come off the shaft.”

How Stone Age humans devised the trick, however, is still a mystery—and quite an impressive one: Wadley said, “They couldn’t possibly have known about chemical pH or iron content.”

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Stone Age Beer
Discoblog: Worm Glue May Hold the Key to Fixing Broken Bones

Image: Wikimedia