The Ed's Up #71
How the Scorpion Lost Its Tail (And Its Anus)
Here’s the problem. A scorpion’s anus isn’t where you think it probably would be. Instead, it’s at the end of the tail. The gut extends all the way through the tail and opens up at the back of the fifth segment, just before the bit with the sting. So, when a scorpion performs autotomy, it leaves the final bits of its digestive tract writhing on the ground. And since the tail never grows back, that scorpion can never defecate again. (Image: Camilo Mattoni)
Jumping DNA and the Evolution of Pregnancy
Think of the jumping DNA as the infrared sensor in your television. The sensor recognises a stimulus—the signal from your remote control—and switches on the TV. Imagine that the sensor makes thousands of copies of itself, and somehow wires these into appliances all over your house. Now, when you press the remote control, your TV whirrs into life, but your lights also flicker on, your washing machine starts up, your computer boots, and your radio starts playing. By duplicating and spreading the sensor, you ensure that the same stimulus now turns on a multitude of things.This is what happened during the evolution of pregnancy (Image: Klaus)
Chicks Put Low Numbers on the Left, Just Like Humans
"In a really clever experiment, Rosa Rugani from the University of Padova has shown that baby chickens probably have a mental number line too. Once they fixate on a specific number, they associate smaller numbers with the left side of space, and larger numbers with the right—just like us. This supports the idea “that culture is not crucial for the mental number line." (Credit: Rosa Rugani)More good reads
- A stunning piece from Virginia Hughes on hypersomnia—a condition that makes people sleep for ages without ever feeling truly awake
- New skull shows that Homo sapiens was living next to Neanderthals in Middle East 55,000 years ago, filling a major gap in our history between Africa and Europe. By Ewen Callaway. (And a related editorial)
- BREATH: a film
- A beautiful audiovisual piece about traumatic brain injury in veterans and an art project that’s helping them to heal. There are two paragraphs of text, and the first is incredible in how much story it conveys. By Caroline Alexander and Lynn Johnson
- From the Department of Unintended Consequences: in some parts of Africa, mosquito nets that are meant to keep malaria out are being used to haul fish in. By Jeffrey Gettleman.
- The word “abracadabra” was formerly used as a talisman against malaria. By Rebecca Kreston
- “Some time in the late 1940s, a very patient, elderly beaver called Geronimo was put in a box, flown to an altitude of between 150 and 200 metres, and tossed out the side of an aeroplane. Over and over and over again.” By Bec Crew
- Meet Bill Marler, the lawyer who’s making America’s food supply safer through litigation. By Wil S. Hylton
- In Russia’s Far East, an orphaned female tiger is the test case in an experimental effort to save one of t”he most endangered animals on earth. By Matthew Shaer.
- “Instead of catching a moon in the act of forming, scientists may have glimpsed a moon in the act of dying”- Nadia Drake on the sad kinda-life of Peggy, Saturn’s would-be moon
- Why many Native Americans have concerns about DNA kits like 23andme: a well-reported piece on the clash between science and cultural tradition, by Rose Eveleth
- Want to plan or practice a complicated surgery? Why not 3-D print your patient’s body parts? Great story by Karen Weintraub
- Meet the glass-blower, squid collector, venom milker, and data mechanic in Nature’s tribute to the unsung heroes who make science work.
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