Recently in new science stories Category

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world." - Louis Pasteur (via ScienceAlert on Facebook, where you can find many cool things.)

At ScienceAlert I also found this wonderful quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson: The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." (This is particularly relevant to a discussion we've been having over at SciBlogsNZ about interactions between scientific attidudes and people's belief systems.)

Readers - please feel free to add your own favourite quotes to the list :-) 

One of my tasks at the moment it the revision/rewriting of the study guide (along with my actual lecture notes etc) for my A semester first-year biology class. As part of that I'm reviewing some of the material I give the students to read & came across a previous post of mine on the relationship between atmospheric oxygen and the size of eukaryote organisms. And I liked it (still), so thought I'd repost it here :-)

The earliest fossils we have are of prokaryotes - a major taxonomic grouping that includes both bacteria and members of the Archaea (things like blue-green algae, aka cyanobacteria). And like modern prokaryotes, those early life-forms were tiny. Most of us are far more familiar with some of the eukaryotes, and perhaps a major reason for this is that we can see them: they are orders of magnitude bigger than microbes. And an interesting question is: what sort of trajectory took some forms of life from the tiny to the ginormous? Was there a smooth upward trend in the maximum size of living things? Or did things progress like a learner driver - by bunny-hops?

 A new post by Orac discusses various tactics of the anti-vaccine movement, with reference to a new paper published in the journal Vaccine. (Link is to a pdf - apologies if this isn't accessible to all as it's well worth the time spent reading.) In the paper (entitled Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm – An overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement), Anna Kata comments on how the combination of ready access to information via internet search engines, combined with a post-modern attitude to science as a means of viewing the world, have enhanced the spread and uptake of anti-vaccination messages.

In fact, you could argue that this combination enhances the spread of pseudoscience per se. For that reason I found Anna's concluding statement particularly valuable & (like Orac) have reproduced it here (with bolding for emphasis):

... [F]inding common ground with those who question, fear or crusade against vaccines** is no easy task. Their arguments are constantly shifting and evolving - this has been furthered by the fluidity of the Internet and social media. While acknowledging and correcting flawed arguments is important, an approach that moves beyond providing "the facts" is likely needed. With the anti-vaccination movement embracing the postmodern paradigm, which inherently questions an authoritative, science-based approach, "facts" may be reinterpreted as just another "opinion". This issue is as much about the cultural context surrounding healthcare, perceptions of risk, and trust in expertise, as it is about vaccines themselves. For these reasons it is possible the minds of deeply invested anti-vaccination activists may never be changed; therefore it is for both the laypersons with genuine questions or worries about vaccines and the healthcare professionals who work to ease their fears that keeping abreast of the methods of persuasion discussed here is essential. Recognising anti-vaccine tactics and tropes is imperative, for an awareness of the disingenuous arguments used to cajole and convert audiences gives individuals the tools to think critically about the information they encounter online. It is through such recognition that truly informed choices can then be made.

** or in favour of other modalities

 The other day my friend Renee sent through this link, & her thoughts. "This article (& website) set my woo-ometer off big time," she said. The article's entitled Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice, and begins thusly:

Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested. Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or on TV.

 ... not only do we have at least one homeopath using heat to treat burns (yes, really! That piece of burning stupid - to use an Oracian aphorism - is admirably covered here by Grant), but we also have the Daily Mail announcing that scientists have discovered - ta-daah! - a hangover cure (hat-tip to David Winter for passing the story on):

New drug lets you enjoy a drink without getting drunk, and wake up without a hangover - at least if you're a rat

Well, at least they mention that the work's been done in rats, which is a step up from many such reports (although I suspect that the first clause is what most readers will remember). What else do they have to say? From the sub-header we learn that the drug

[was] extracted from [an] ancient Chinese remedy

stops hangovers, prevents rats passing out

 and that

• rats given [the equivalent of] 20 beers in two hours.... recovered their balance in 15 minutes [when given the drug].

The drug is "now moving to tests in humans."

O-Kay...

The drug in question is called dihydromyricetin, or DHM, "a flavonoid component of herbal medicines." It's not unknown for 'ancient remedies' to turn out to actually have some pharmaceutical benefits. Think willow bark, for example. So we can go with that. But this 'stops hangovers' bit - how on earth would they know? (Hint: the research was done on rats, which I seriously doubt go round groaning "oh my aching head" the morning after.)

Anyway, what was the actual scientific study about? The full article is behind a paywall but you can read the abstract for free here. It turns out that the researchers weren't looking for a hangover cure, & in fact were not looking at hangovers at all. They were instead looking at potential means of treating 'alcohol use disorders' (AUDs), which they describe as "the most common form of substance abuse" & characterise thusly:

The development of AUDs involves repeated alcohol use leading to tolerance, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, and physical and psychological dependence, with loss of ability to control excessive drinking.

In other words, they're talking about alcoholism.

It seems that when rats were injected with DHM they didn't develop "acute alcohol intoxication"; nor did they suffer from withdrawal symptoms. The drug also cut back on the animals' drinking. It seems to do this through its effects on particular receptor molecules in the brain, some of which are inhibited and others enhanced. Identifying some of the key molecules in the brain that are involved in addictive responses to alcohol, and of a compound that seems to block the development of this addiction, opens the way for the possibility of developing a pharmacological means of treating alcoholism. 

But a hangover cure, it ain't.

Y.Shen, A.K.Lindemeyer, C.Gonzalez, X.M.Shao, I.Spigelman, R.W.Olsen & J.Liang (2012) Dihydromyricetin as a novel anti-alcohol intoxication medication. The Journal of Neuroscience 32(1): 390-401. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4639-11.2012

 And yes, punctuation & grammar skillz, I has them :-) That apostrophe really is in the right place - read on to find out why.

The tale of the panda's thumb is well-known, & an excellent example of how the action of natural selection can result in jury-rigged solutions to problems: a result that works, but not necessarily a perfect result. I first encountered it way back when, through reading Stephen Jay Gould's wonderful book of the same name**.

A book which refers to the familiar black-&-white giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). I'd never really thought about it before, but of course we have 2 species of panda: the big fellas, & the much smaller red panda (Ailurus fulgens). Do they have 'thumbs' too?

As a post by Brian Switek shows, the answer is 'yes; yes, they do'. And this is really interesting, as the two pandas aren't closely related. Giant pandas are bears, while reds are more closely related to raccoons. Yet they both have modified a modified wrist bone, the radial sesamoid, that functions as a thumb and allows them to grip & manipulate bamboo - a lovely example of convergent evolution.

**The original essay, with the title The panda's peculiar thumb', is reproduced here.

Via ResearchBlogging I found a post with the eye-catching title of Circumcision, preventing fraud, and icky toilets. What an odd juxtaposition, I thought. Darn good post, though! 

Last night I gave a talk up in Auckland, on various biological oddities (mostly from the animal kingdom and, all right, mostly to do with s*x). You can slip a lot of serious science in once the audience's attention has been captured by the naughty bits! (I would hate folks to think that biologists are totally obsessed with s*x. This is not true. But related stories do tend to focus the attention.)

Anyway, I was chatting sbout it with some of our grad students this morning and they said, oooh, we wouldn't might reading more about that. Various people (including me & Grant) have blogged them all before, so I'll bring all the links together in one place but won't fill in too many of the gaps.

Over on SciBlogs(NZ), Elf has an interesting post about rhinoviruses, the causal agent for the common cold. I've just read it  & thought it particularly apt in light of a recent paper on the impact of placebo treatments on the duration of cold symptoms (hat tip to the inimitable Mark Crislip).

The Medscape review for the research (you need to sign up to read this, but registration is free; you can also find the paper on PubMed) is entitled Placebo effects modest in treating the common cold, which is probably slightly generous given the actual research findings.

From the 'I wish I had seen that first!' files come the following fascinating posts:

The incredibly loud world of bug sex - in which tiny little bugs make incredibly loud noises as part of their sex lives :-)

Wait, what? They did a study to find THIS out? - a question which I will confess to asking now & again. The study this blogger examined was into the effects of violent TV programs on kids' sleep patterns. (Darcy, you need to read this. Really.)

Biocranial baloney - a critical look at a new chiropractic technique...

and

Is your crappy boyfriend stressing you out? - an entertaining and interesting look at the effects of bad relationships on those caught up in them.

Enjoy.