The Ed's Up #103
Save the Parasites (Seriously)
"In the 1980s, conservationists ushered the planet's 22 last remaining Californian condors into captivity. They saved the birds, cared for them, fed them, and bred them. They also de-loused them and, in doing so, they killed off the last remaining condor louse—a harmless parasite that lived only on Californian condors. The condor population rose to over 400. The condor-louse population fell to zero. “It's a great example of a species that was knowingly, willingly, and thoughtlessly driven extinct by veterinarians,” says Kevin Lafferty, a parasitologist from the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I would hope we would act differently now.” (Image: William H. Majoros)
How People Living at Earth's Extremes Reveal the Genome's Best Tricks
"The field of genetics needs more studies like this. Humanity isn't just restricted to the cities of Europe, North America and East Asia, where most participants in genetic studies hail from. We are a species of extremes. We have spread far and wide, and evolution has sculpted our genomes to meet the toughest challenges Earth has to offer: scorching heat, freezing cold, mountains with thin air and intense sunlight, and regions where debilitating diseases are everyday threats. And by looking at the genomes of people who live in such environments, we stand a better chance of finding genetic variants that are broadly relevant to human health." (Image: Will Hybrid)
The Surprising Genealogy of Your Brain
"Take the brain. You might expect that neighboring neurons would be closely related to one another, or that entire regions would arise from the same ancestral cells. But that’s not the case. Christopher Walsh from Boston Children's Hospital has now shown that in one region, the prefrontal cortex, any given neuron is more closely related to cells from the heart than it is to three-quarters of its immediate neighbors." (Image: Ann Larle Valentine)
Snake Genomes Reveal Shared Plans for Making Legs, Penises
"Penises and limbs are clearly very different (exaggerated references to third legs aside), but they develop in similar ways. They both involve long bits of tissue that grow out from a small embryonic bud, under the direction of very similar proteins, and molecules. For example, in 1997, Takashi Kondo from the University of Geneva showed that two genes that direct the development of legs in mice are also important for building genitals. Now, Carlos Infante and Douglas Menke from the University of Georgia has shown that similar enhancers—sequences that switch genes on or off—are also at work in both organs." (Image: Christian Mehlführer)More good reads
- Alex Witze profiles four diverse voices in the debate over building a huge telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea
- Here's Nadia Drake on the recent news about flowing water on Mars, Lee Billings on why searching for life in that water will be really hard, and Rachel Feltman on our reaction to science news: " Do we really have to pick between accepting things wholesale and becoming convinced we're being duped?"
- Jamie Shreeve's piece on Homo naledi is amazingly good.
- "An Alfred Hitchcock film helped to prove one patient had been conscious while in a coma-like state for 16 years"
- “One of the world’s most important seed banks has left Syria, and it won’t be returning.” Beautiful Ross Andersen on the loss of history
- In 1915, a guy bought his wife Stonehenge. “It’s said that Mary wanted Cecil to buy a set of curtains..."
- "Stampedes will always be a challenge. Part of the problem is fluid dynamics—except people are the fluid.” By Adam Rogers
- Really good visualisation of natural/man-made contributors to global warming
More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.
-Ed
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