Category: Curiosities of Nature

Sunday Science Poem: Science and doubt on the naked shingles of the world

Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’

Dover BeachFor at least a millennium in the West, Christianity was the dominant public perspective on how the world operates. That is no longer true. In our culture, science now explains the world.

Despite widespread private expressions of piety, in our public culture science is what we believe. Intelligent design, fad diets, ESP, or any other ideas that make a go at competing on science’s materialistic home turf all end up measured by science’s standard. This is why pseudo-science exists: you have to dress your ideas in a lab coat and protective eyewear if you want other people to believe your ideas about the physical world. That was not true when Victoria inherited the British throne in 1838, but it was largely true when she died in 1901. This was the result of a tectonic shift in the psychology of an entire society, and Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ captures the mental anguish of that shift. Continue reading “Sunday Science Poem: Science and doubt on the naked shingles of the world”

Meet the Pangolin

pangolin-tongueThe pangolin (Order: Pholidota) is a mammal covered in keratin scales. They can be found in Asia as well as Africa and their size ranges from 1 foot to just over 3 feet. These weirdo cuties eat thousands of ants everyday. Their oversized claws help them dig out ant colonies. As the video below explains, the pangolin uses its super-long tongue to reach the ants. Oh yeah and when it wants to protect itself from predators it pulls an 80s style popple move and rolls up into a tight ball.

Photo credit: Mark Sheridan-Johnson
Photo credit: Mark Sheridan-Johnson

“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.

Better stem cell tech, more controversy

Over at Pacific Standard, I offer brief layman’s guide to the latest pluripotent stem cell technologies, and I argue that better stem cell technology will not make the ethical controversy go away. (In last week’s Nature, Martin Pera & Alan Trounson make a similar point.)

To understand where I’m coming from, let’s take a step back a few years, in the aftermath of the Bush Administration’s controversial decision to limit NIH-funded research on human embryonic stem cell (ESC) lines. Back then, much of the debate was over the merits and ethics of ESC’s versus lineage-restricted adult stem cells: ESCs were for the most part derived from leftover IVF embryos or aborted fetuses (and thus didn’t carry the genome of a patient). Adult stem cells could be taken from patients, but were much more restricted in their potential applications. Dolly the sheep was old news at that point, but the technology to create Dolly (and thus also create embryonic stem cells with the genome of a living adult) did not actually work with human cells. Continue reading “Better stem cell tech, more controversy”

Meet the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect

Photo credit: Rod Morris http://www.rodmorris.co.nz

Dryoceocelus australis lives solely on an island group in Australia. They were thought to be extinct after 1930 until two dozen were spotted again in 2001. The IUCN lists them as critically endangered currently.

Read more here about the conservation efforts by zoos in Australia to ensure the species survival.

Pair bonding between the male and females has been reported, but is not definitive. Anecdotal evidence suggests the Lord Howe stick insects are gregarious and thus finding a male and female together may just be the expression of this trait. Research from Patrick Honan in 2008, examined 9 pairs from the Melbourne Zoo found that the behavior was consistent for each pair daily, but varied depending on the pair. Some pairs were always found together, but in some cases the female would be found in the nesting box and the male outside the nesting box.

Finally, here is an amazing video of hatching Lord Howe island stick insects from Zoos Victoria if you haven’t seen it already.

Lord Howe Island Stick Insect hatching from Zoos Victoria on Vimeo.

“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.

 

Pedantic Cow

The Laughing Squid is a font of linkjoy, like this stylized, but functional illustration of a cow’s digestive processes.

Cow from Nova Jiang on Vimeo.

Nova Jiang’s sculpture, Cow, is not, however, a “Rube Goldberg-style” machine, as described in the Laughing Squid piece:

“Cow” is an interactive wooden sculpture that demonstrates the complicated digestive system of a cow with a complicated Rube Goldberg-style mechanism. – EDW Lynch

Rube Goldberg-style machines are unnecessarily complicated. The game Mousetrap involves the construction of a Rube Goldberg-style machine. The “This Too Shall Pass” video from OK Go we featured as our Song of the Week shows the operation of a Rube Goldberg-style machine.

This machine is not unnecessarily complicated. It is necessarily complicated, because digestion in cows is complicated.