News from the Front in War on Cancer–Mission Not Accomplished

May 2, 2012

Online News: “The genetic code details when cells should grow, divide and eventually die. Cancer is a disease of misinformation—cells ignore the rules, growing despite multiple molecular signals telling them to stop and invading other tissues because they no longer respond to biological messages to stay put or even destroy themselves. In the past four decades scientists have identified thousands of genetic mistakes that either cause cancer or boost the risk of developing it.”

Photo of a DNA microarray created by National Institutes of Health, via Wikimedia Commons

Tree Rings Tell a Tale of Climates Past

June 2013

Magazine photo feature: “For dendrochronologists—scientists who analyze tree rings—each tree’s story can add up to a narrative about past climate. This willow’s rings have varying widths, which suggests that some years were favorable for growth and others were less so, says Connie Woodhouse, associate professor in the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona. The rippled rings on the right are part of a burl—an abnormal growth possibly created by some kind of infection. She also notes that the tree has two centers, which means it may have begun its life as a twin and later the siblings fused.”

Image by Bryan Nash Gill, author of Woodcut, Princeton Architectural Press, New York City, 2012

Gallery page

Crawl Space: Invasive Ant Armies Clash on U.S. Soil

March 2, 2013

Online news story: “The Argentine ant has spread to every continent except Antarctica, overwhelming native ants with sheer numbers and fierce battle tactics. But they may have met their match in a recent arrival: the Asian needle ant. The cross-species face-off, a surprise to entomologists, could topple ecosystems where the battle lines are drawn.”

Ant tending scale insects. Photo by L. Shyamal

Yes, a Child Has Been Pronounced Cured of HIV—but Can It Be Duplicated?

March 5, 2013

Online news story: “A child born to an HIV-infected mother in Mississippi may be cured after a swiftly administered course of drugs. A number of factors make the child’s case unique, however, and clinicians caution that we have not discovered a general cure for HIV yet. Still, the medical first may hint at ways to fight the AIDS-causing virus.”

The Joy of Fungal Sex: Penicillin Mold Can Reproduce Sexually, Which Could Lead to Better Antibiotics

February 8, 2013

Online news story: “By turning off the lights, setting up an oatmeal-based bed and slipping some extra vitamins into their food, researchers have persuaded the supposedly asexual mold that makes penicillin to have sex. The fungi’s ability to switch it up sexually could help industrial scientists breed more efficient antibiotic-producing strains or even lead to the discovery of new, useful compounds.”

Image by Henry Mühlpfordt via Wikimedia Commons

Fractals, Chaos and Other Mathematical Visions Reside on The Islands of Benoit Mandelbrot

December 21, 2012

Online news story and video: “Mandelbrot, a Polish-born French and American mathematician, invented the word “fractal” in 1975 to describe complex shapes that remain so at different levels of scale and show self-similar patterns. Fractal geometry is often found in the jagged edges of nature—ferns, clouds and mountains, for example—but the artificial fractal images that most resemble these forms are produced by trial and error. Some computer-generated fractal mountains do not resemble any rocky spires of earthly geology—they are crazed pinnacles of implausibility.”

Photo by Marissa Fessenden

Bug-Eared: Human and Insect Ears Share Similar Structures

November 19, 2012

Online news story and graphic: “A rainforest katydid has ears that evolved to be remarkably like those of humans and other mammals. The insect’s hearing organ, although tucked in the crook of its front legs, has components that echo the structures of our own middle and inner ear, researchers have discovered.”

Graphic:

Does Congress Get a Passing Grade on Science?

October 17 2012

A Major Study Speeds Food-Allergy Treatments

October 2012

“Bites from Vampire Bats Might Protect People against Rabies”

August 2, 2012

Online news story: “Rabies, the disease that drives infected victims wild, is almost always fatal once it reaches the brain. A new finding from two remote communities in the Peruvian Amazon may reveal a chink in the virus’s armor. Scientists have tested six native people there who have never received a vaccination yet appear to have developed natural antibodies to the virus. The researchers think that vampire bats, common in the region, bit the sleeping humans and passed along small amounts of the virus over time. The multiple, low-dose exposures gave each person’s immune system a chance to learn how to fight back.”

Vampire bat by JLplusAL

“Beautiful Algae”

Spring 2012

Feature story: “Beneath the ocean-weathered planks of the Santa Cruz municipal wharf, a sleek sea lion snorts and rolls languidly in the waves. Honey-gold sunlight glows through gauzy morning mist. Ian Hunter, an undergraduate from UC Santa Cruz, eyes the surging swell. The waves are high and heavy, colored dark green with tints of yellow and brown—like a fading bruise. Graduate student Lisa Ziccarelli joins Hunter on a dock below the pier. The boards are slick, but this morning’s mission demands that someone cross the slippery timbers.

Ziccarelli dashes down a small flight of stairs to the edge of a platform, uncomfortably close to the waves. She reaches over and hauls up a rope festooned with brightly colored disks. Each disk has a teabag-like pouch, holding plastic beads the size of millet grains. They’ve floated in the surf for a week, gathering chemicals that drift unseen in the water. The students will take those bags back to a lab on campus to analyze them for traces of poison.

The poison comes from marine algae, also called phytoplankton. Normally, algae float harmlessly through the waves, soaking up sunlight. When the water chemistry and temperature are right, they bloom in rapid spurts of growth, sometimes even coloring the waves. Most algae are benign, but some blooms spout toxins. Endangered sea otters, dolphins, sea lions, and humans have all gotten sick or died from eating the marine creatures that devour algal blooms.”

…read more here.

Also includes:

A podcast on sea otter health and a multimedia video on marine algae:

Beautiful Algae by Marissa Fessenden from SciCom Slugs on Vimeo.

“Vocal Fry Creeping into US Speech”

December 9, 2011

Credit: Yaymicro.com/MonkeyBusiness

Online news story: “A curious vocal pattern has crept into the speech of young adult women who speak American English: low, creaky vibrations, also called vocal fry. Pop singers, such as Britney Spears, slip vocal fry into their music as a way to reach low notes and add style. Now, a new study of young women in New York state shows that the same guttural vibration—once considered a speech disorder—has become a language fad…”

Episodes: “Skeptic Check: Energy Vortex,” ”Material Whirl,” “Getting a Spacelift,” “Rife with Life,” “Skeptic Check: Prog-Not-stication,” “Seth’s Cabinet of Wonders,” and “Catch a Wave”

Blog posts: “Sci-fi tour of our solar system,” “Toxic newt versus frog,” and “Cosmic questions: superheroes and swiss cheese”