Back in 2006 I wrote about the rise of private space launch firms and speculated that the real Space Age is just beginning. Well, SpaceX, the launch firm founded by Internet billionaire Elon Musk, has done it. They put a satellite-sized test package into orbit atop their Falcon 1 launcher. Congratulations!
One of the more idiotic notions to come from the Romantic movement was that somehow science and rationality are the opposite pole from art and beauty. It fed into the separation of the "two cultures" of science and the humanities, as noted by C.P. Snow half a century ago, and is still going strong today.
I say it's an idiotic notion because of this: scientific images of startling beauty, courtesy of Science magazine's 2008 Science Visualization Challenge.
A tip of the beautiful science hat to Io9.
In the grand scheme of things, tetrapods tend to live longer and reproduce slower than their fellow land-dwellers the insects. But a study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this summer describing a small Madagascarian chameleon with a mayfly-like lifespan. Mayflies, of course, are those ephemeral insects that live only a few hours as adults. But it's important to remember that the adult stage is only a small part of the entire life of a mayfly: they spend quite a while as juveniles (up to a year in some species) before they mature, mate, and die all in a day. The lizard, Furcifer labordi, has clearly taken a page from the mayfly book: they spend eight to nine months as embryos inside their eggs. When the hatchlings emerge at the start of the wet season in November, they grow like crazy, reaching maturity by the end of December and mating by early January. Females lay their eggs in February, and the entire adult population is dead by the end of March. For those of you counting, that's 9 months of development, and 3 months of scratching and fighting before dying. Not one reaches the ripe old age of two.
Karsten, K. B. et al. 2008. A unique life history among tetrapods: An annual chameleon living mostly as an egg. PNAS 105: 8980-8984.
How does an idea die? When people cease to believe in it, or think about it, or write about it. Some ideas are quite durable -- liberal democracy is in its third century and still growing, cash-based market economics is about 500 years old (and despite recent events, doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon), and Judaism is three or four millennia old and doing fine.
Other ideas blossom and then fade, sometimes within a single human lifetime. The always crunchy Gene Expression web log has a fascinating post analyzing the frequency of certain academic buzzwords over the past few decades. It appears that a clutch of monumentally Bad Ideas (including academic Marxism, Deconstructionism, and allied concepts) are finally dying out, even in academia, which too often functions as a wildlife preserve for bad ideas.
The article also grapples with the rather humbling thought that individual human scholars don't seem to have much of a role in the birth or death of ideas in the academic world -- they flourish and die according to a mathematical model. Shades of Hari Seldon!
The horsehair worm Spinochordodes tellinii gets a lot of press because it's one of those insidious host-manipulating parasites that fascinates people even as it grosses them out. The worm's larvae live inside of grasshoppers, but adult worms are free-living and aquatic. Unfortunately, grasshoppers are definitely not known for their swimming ability, leaving the worm in a bit of a fix – how to get into a body of water to mature and mate when your host shows no inclination to take you there? The answer? Mind control. S. tellinii leaves nothing to chance: taking control of the grasshopper's brain, making it look for a body of water and jump into it, thus drowning the host but freeing the worm.
But this behavior sometimes leads to another problem for the worm: thrashing, drowning grasshoppers can attract predators before the worm has freed itself. If the dying host gets eaten, the hairworm can get swallowed up too. If it acts fast, it can use the same escape behavior that would have taken it out of the grasshopper to get out of a fish or a frog, squirming its way out of gills, mouth, or nostrils. But the clock is ticking – if the process takes more than 5 minutes, it's curtains for the hairworm.
Ponton, F. et al. 2006. Parasite survives predation on its host. Nature 440: 756.
In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day (you did know about Talk Like A Pirate Day, didn't you?) the excellent zine Shimmer is giving readers a free look at the electronic version of their famous Pirate Issue, including fiction by, well, me, among others.
Otherwise, enjoy the day and keep your sonic blaster handy!
Welcome to the #114th edition of the Tangled Bank, a carnival of science bloggers where you're guaranteed to learn something new and exciting. We'll start in the classroom, the "traditional" place for learning, where Irradius at Biochemical Soul discusses some news clips he's using to promote critical thinking in his introductory biology class. And over in Kobra's Corner, we find a concise explanation of the Weighted Bayesian Rating System.
Travel is also broadening, as the folks at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog show us: Luigi finds unusual fruits in the market when he visits Sarajevo, and Jeremy takes the opportunity to tour a gene bank when he's in Belgium. In case you're planning a visit to Indonesia, Carel at Rigor Vitae offers some observations about the natural history of Komodo dragons and the economics of their local human neighbors. And Mike at 10,000 Birds reports that ace migrator Winnie the Whimbrel was lost last month, after more than 5000 recorded miles of transcontinental flight.
Study something long enough, and you're bound to make a new discovery. Over at Evolving Mind, Andrew is thinking about the discovery that "junk" DNA (at least the parts that code for regulatory genes) may have played a role in evolutionary changes in the human hand and foot. Robert Stribley at Hitched to Everything is also thinking, this time about how the discoveries of neuroscience (& how it shapes personality) will affect our legal system in the future. At Lambda Delta, Tony reports on some promising work at the University of Liverpool to treat recurrent miscarriages. Two new writers at Ouroboros give us summaries of new research on aging -- Elizabeth Ewen reports on a study that identifies a gene associated with longevity, and Kristen Fortney describes a study that uses artificial intelligence techniques to identify some of the gene interactions affecting lifespan. Finally, GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life brings us the exciting news that camera traps set by the Zoological Society of London have confirmed that okapi still live in the Congo rainforest, despite more than a decade of upheaval and civil war.
Of course, sometimes it takes a while for people to accept new ideas. The Digital Cuttlefish notes that it took 126 years after Charles Darwin died before the Church of England would consider apologizing to him. But God's having none of it. He hates science.
Instead of relying on Web logs and comedians to find out about the science policy positions of this year's Presidential candidates, why not read what they have to say themselves? Sciencedebate 2008 features the responses, in their own words, by Obama and McCain to 14 questions about science issues. Read the answers and make up your own mind!
A tip of the Uncle Sam hat to Little Green Footballs for the link.
September 15 is a notable date in the history of science. It's the day the HMS Beagle arrived at the Galapagos Islands in 1835. Aboard the Beagle was a young naturalist, Charles Darwin. Darwin's discoveries in the Galapagos Islands were a key influence on his developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. He wrote an account of the voyage describing his findings in natural history and geology. But back in 1835, all that lay in the future.
Scientists may argue whether or not a virus is really alive, but no one denies that they're cellular parasites – hijacking a cell's reproductive machinery in order to make new viruses. But a study in this week's issue of Nature adds a new twist: a virus that's a virus of a virus.