Oct 27 2009
What the heck is the above? Hints: It fit under my “Amazon Special” digital microscope; the magnification is x60; the title means something. Oh, and you won’t find an amphibian sitting here. Answer below the fold.
Oct 27 2009
Many medical professionals treat stress as if it were a supernatural force. Back problem – Probably stress-related. Headaches — Probably stress-related. Fatigue — Probably stress-related. Depressed — Probably stress-related.
Although stress might play a role in physical and mental health, too often there is an assumption that it definitely does. For those lacking better answers, it provides a handy gap-filler. Rather than “God done it” — filling a gap in our knowledge or providing a more comprehensible answer to minds averse to complexity — there is instead, “stress done it.”
For generations it was assumed that stress causes ulcers. Guess what? A type of stomach bacteria is the cause. Now new research is strongly suggesting that stress may play no significant role in depression.
In the oddly titled news release, Why antidepressants don’t work for so many (odd because the news was primarily about research into the link between stress and depression) I learned of this somewhat surprising development:
[Eva] Redei, the David Lawrence Stein Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern’s Feinberg School, found powerful molecular evidence that quashes the long-held dogma that stress is generally a major cause of depression. Her new research reveals that there is almost no overlap between stress-related genes and depression-related genes.
For those interested, below the fold I have provided material from the article that clearly spells out how the study was conducted and what the actual results were. Important stuff. Because the news release included this information, I’ve got to give it kudos, despite the misleading title.
Mind you, where you find back pain you may find stress, and where you find depression you may also find concomitant stress. Being ill is stressful. And perhaps asking any person, ill or healthy, if they are experiencing stress in their lives might yield a positive response.
In a sense, it would be nice if stress were a major cause of all that ails us. If so, medical professionals could simply prescribe things like vacations, spa visits and meditation. Some do. It would also legitimize the shifting of responsibility for illness and health onto the patient’s shoulders. For good. And for bad.
Oct 26 2009
I was pleasantly surprised this weekend upon seeing that some of the oranges on our tree were turning yellow.
Huh? The tree in question had never fruited before, not in our decade of living where we do, despite being much taller than me.
When the tree blossomed this spring I assumed it was another orange. The leaves look identical to the ones on a tree not 50 feet from it. (Unfortunately, that one is a wild, sour orange. Can’t eat the fruit.) This past Saturday, while wandering around our yard, I spied changes in the tree’s now very large oranges. They had turned yellow. It took my mind a couple seconds to break free of my prior expectations/assumptions to realize, “Hey, it’s a grapefruit tree!”
Will the fruit be sweet (at least for a grapefruit)? I hope so. Even if not, I continue to be pleased by the unique, seasonal growth of the tree species in our yard.
-
[BTW - the above pic is of an immature fruit on our orange tree.]
Oct 26 2009
Science and compassion in the same sentence? How in the world do those two go together? Allow me to explain.
In some regards I could qualify as a bleeding-heart liberal. I often think, “Go ahead and tax the very well-off — and even me, of the less-well-off but still well class — to fund project X, which will help the less fortunate. We live in a society, after all. We’re all in this together.
But I do realize that simply throwing money at a problem can miss the mark. What the practice of throwing money at a problem accomplishes is the comforting thought that you are doing something, and sometimes little else. I want to help, but not if in the end it’s not helping.
Recent analysis of the factors influencing the severity of this country’s Great Depression led to this finding: Hoover’s pro-labor stance helped cause Great Depression, UCLA economist says.
In particular, the economist in question, Lee E. Ohanian, concluded -
The policies, which included both propping up wages and encouraging job-sharing, also accounted for more than two-thirds of the precipitous decline in hours worked in the manufacturing sector, which was much harder hit initially than the agricultural sector, according to Ohanian.
“By keeping industrial wages too high, Hoover sharply depressed employment beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that act drove down the overall gross national product,” Ohanian said. “His policy was the single most important event in precipitating the Great Depression.”
Hmm. Was that really the case? May have been. As far as I can tell –which isn’t very far because this area of research is relatively foreign to me — this is the conclusion of one man’s retrospective analysis. Something to be taken with a grain of salt.
Still, the point remains. Sometimes we can hurt society in the long run by rushing to help in the short. I wonder about the recent financial bail-outs of struggling companies, for one.
A substantial part of the problem, as I see it, is that the cost of helping is generally spread very thin. Because it doesn’t hurt the individual all that much, people are more willing to throw massive amounts of money at a problem. Yet funds are finite, and saying “just charge it” is irresponsible. So we should be smart with how we help. And scientific thinking is the best way to determine what actually works. Which is another reason to infuse more of it into politics.
Oct 25 2009
I’m fairly certain the above structure — built onto an island hillside overlooking the Mediterranean Sea (l’isola di Ustica) — was made for Jesus and his holy ghost. Not for Casper the non-holy Ghost.
I’m not sure what’s in the building — I was on a different cliffside path, needing my zoom lens to discover the image of Jesus on the door. Couldn’t poke my head in. The purpose for the structure? Probably not a welcoming station for Jesus’ return to Earth. Maybe a mausoleum? The small building was certainly nicely locating so the souls of the dead can take flight and soar up to meet Jesus. Of course, the Bible god did not equip all souls with wings to fly — nor even the propensity to grow wings through good deeds. Consequently, many will leap and fall into a downward arc that leads to everlasting torment. Or so the story goes.
I prefer Casper the friendly ghost.
Oct 25 2009
Any animal with a brain can learn. You might say that that is what a brain is for. If learning wasn’t necessary, all behavior could be “hard-wired.”
What type of things do animals learn? You name it. Where food is, how to collect it and prepare it . . . which type of environments/situations to flee from . . . which you can risk . . . what type of novel twist to your kind’s mating dance best attracts the ladies . . . etc.
Earlier this year, research into the behavior of prairie voles revealed that the experience of young voles influences their later bonding behavior.
(Did I take too great a poetic license by referring to bonding as love in my title?)
In Yerkes researchers show early life nurturing impacts later life relationships I learned of an experiment performed on voles. The researchers controlled the social experiences of the pup voles this way: one group was raised by just the mother. The other by both parents. The results: the pups experienced different levels of attention/care, and these experiences translated into altered social bonding in their adulthood. Co-author Todd Ahern spells out the particulars -
SM-raised ["single mother"] pups were slower to make life-long partnerships, and they showed less interest in nurturing pups in their communal families.
Oh-oh. I can hear the fundamentalists rushing to apply this finding to humans. See, Murphy Brown and all single mothers are doing their children a disservice! (Of course, when it comes to human beings there are likely many more variables involved. One question I have is what the difference would be between being raised by a happier single mother and a less-happy mother bonded with a male of unknown characteristics.)
Nonetheless, this is a fascinating finding. Yes, when understanding animal behavior, genes certainly play an essential role. Yet there is more to behavior than genes.
Oct 24 2009
It is certainly nice of Gawd to animate our night skies with meteorites. He skips small stones not across the surface of our atmosphere, but into it. They incinerate as they rip through the molecules we breathe, shrinking down to nothing. Usually. So pretty. But sometimes Gawd chooses a stone too big. He hasn’t done it many times in recorded history, but man, talk about potential destruction.
I wonder what Gawd has against the moon? Perhaps he just uses it for target practice.
[photo thanks to NASA]
Oct 24 2009
Sexual reproduction is a bit of a puzzle. Even after you’ve heard the talks, studied the diagrams, and read the books. And perhaps even experienced it yourself. Why? It is very inefficient. And by that I do not mean all the money spent on fancy restaurants and nice bedding.
First, there is the time and energy spent on finding/selecting a mate, then the doing of the deed, usually more than once for good measure. There also are more hazards involved, such as fights with others over mates, fights with mates, greater exposure to disease, etc.
And very significantly, sexual reproduction is slower than asexual reproduction. It results in fewer offspring and fewer generations. What’s the evolutionary payoff for this seemingly wasteful way to generate more of one’s kind? Why do the vast majority of species “do it”?
Two words: genetic diversity.
A recent study into the sexual lives of nematode worms has shed more light on the issue. The news release clearly explains sets the stage for the study before sharing the results.
Sex with self in the animal and plant world is known as selfing. Offspring born from selfing share all of their genes in common with their parent, and each is capable of producing another generation of offspring. Offspring from outcrossing share 50-percent of each parent’s genes, and some are born males incapable of bearing offspring.
Selfing populations don’t have to deal with pesky males for reproduction. Because males do not produce offspring of their own, selfing populations avoid what biologists call “the evolutionary cost of males,” which allows them to increase in size at twice the rate of out-crossing populations. In fact, says UO biology professor Patrick C. Phillips, “biologists going all the way back to Charles Darwin have been puzzled why sexual reproduction via outcrossing exists at all.”
Selfing, by the way, is different from asexual reproduction. It does involve sex and fertilization. But with self. Whether or not there is pornography involved. Still, selfing avoids many of the costs that asexual reproduction avoids. And has some of the same advantages.
The selfing nematodes were chosen because they are a species that go both ways (or maybe “two ways”): standard sexual reproduction or self-sex reproduction, thanks to their hermaphroditic nature. The researchers were thus able to compare two groups. Those that did it with others, and those that did it with themselves.
What was the finding?
They found that purely selfing populations were much more susceptible to accumulating harmful mutations and were not able adapt to rapidly changing environments.
Gee, that’s quite supportive of evolutionary theory. I wonder why.
I love this short paragraph -
While males may be problematic for a wide variety of reasons, from an evolutionary point of view, their benefits outweigh their costs, which helps to explain why having sex with others is the rule rather than the exception within natural populations.
Were truer words ever spoken?
Oct 23 2009
In a bull-fighting ring, the bull battles not a cape, but a matador. Although its focus is drawn to the cape again and again.
Although we are drawn to the flashy, colorful petals of blossoms, what is the interest all about? In our perception of beauty, while the outward appearance is a cape, what psychological drive might be the matador within?
Of course, it is possible that my analogy is more misleading than enlightening.
Oct 23 2009
It is high time for those opposing evolution to wave a white flag, adjust their worldview, and get on with their lives. The massive mountain of evidence supporting evolution is growing by the day. And the strength of that evidence is likewise increasing.
Consider this gem of recent research. The finding involves genetic mutations in bacteria that have been tracked. And guess what — yes, “random” mutations can be beneficial.
Lenski, Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology at MSU, started growing cultures of fast-reproducing, single-celled E. coli bacteria in 1988. If a genetic mutation gives a cell an advantage in competition for food, he reasoned, it should dominate the entire culture. While Darwin’s theory of natural selection is supported by other studies, it has never before been studied for so many cycles and in such detail.
And the results? As told in, Time In A Bottle: Scientists Watch Evolution Unfold -
By the 20,000-generation midpoint, researchers discovered 45 mutations among surviving cells. Those mutations, according to Darwin’s theory, should have conferred some advantage, and that’s exactly what the researchers found.
Booyah! Yes, species evolve. And this has been observed. Numerous times.
It seems to me that evolution deniers look at the “crime scene,” so to speak (if they bother to look at all) and say -
Yes, you have Evo’s fingerprints on the scene, the weapon, bloody tracks leading out the door and back to Evo’s home, and DNA evidence that is accurate to one part in billions, but you don’t have a motive nor an eye-witness. Besides, the crime can be explained by the actions of a Suspect with a motive in a parallel universe. So I’m not convinced.
What we have in our population is not a hung jury, but a stadium-sized panel of judges (scientists) who have ruled in favor of evolution. As for the jury of citizens, they are hung only so far as some members are so hung up on their worldview that they exercise not reasonable but irrational doubt when viewing anything that challenges their favored worldview.
Feeds