Meet the Pig-Nosed Turtle

photo from austinsturtlepage.com

The fly river turtle or pig-nosed turtle (Carettochelys insculpta) is found in the freshwaters of New Guinea and Australia. These turtles are so unique that they are the only living member of the family Carettochelyidae.

Check out the video from “Life in Cold Blood” with David Attenborough below.

If you want to learn more check out this website: http://www.carettochelys.com

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

Skeptically Speaking about ENCODE

The latest episode of Skeptically Speaking is out, where you can listen to host Desiree Schell talk to WIRED writer David Dobbs about Naomi Wolf’s latest book, and to your truly about the disastrous media coverage of ENCODE. Listen online, grab it in podcast form, or find on one of the many radio stations that carry the show.

A big thanks to Desiree and producer K.O. Myers for having me on the show, and helping me sound less incoherent than I might have.

I’ve got two clarifications on some dates I tossed out during the interview:

I said ENCODE has been going for at least five years. I was thinking of the post-pilot phase, which began in 2007, after the pilot phase publications. ENCODE itself began in 2003.

I said people have been studying transposable elements for at least 30 years. I had in mind the 1980 papers on selfish DNA by Orgel and Crick and Doolittle and Sapienza. But of course don’t forget that Barbara McClintock discovered transposable elements in the 40’s and 50’s, and won her Nobel Prize on the subject almost 30 years ago.

The Art of Science: Low-Carbon Footprints

Simple and lovely in both concept and execution, this “green pedestrian crossing” project created meaningful interactive art with a message. A joint project of DDB China and The China Environmental Protection Foundation, this outdoor campaign used foot power to make a point about the environmental benefits of walking versus driving. Huge white canvases imprinted with a bare tree were placed across 132 crosswalks in 15 Chinese cities. Pedestrians walked across a pad filled with eco-friendly green paint and then across the canvas, leaving a trail of green footprints. Over time, the trees were filled with footprint “leaves”, a reminder that walking instead of driving helps trees, and the whole environment, to thrive.  DDB estimated that over 3 million people passed through the installations, and the canvases were later hung as billboards in several cities.

More photos and a video are at This is Colossal

Don’t worry, it will dissolve

Each generation has its “badge of coolness”. For, kids it may be the latest superhero lunchbox. High schoolers need a car, any car. Some 25-30 year old nerds, who shall remain nameless, may feel the need to get a PhD. In the near future any member of the 60-70 year old set without a dissolving electronic implant could be doomed to “uncoolness”. Last Friday, Hwang et al published their work on dissolving electronics in the journal Science. Yes, you read that correctly, dissolving electronics.

One of the most common implantable electronic devices is a pacemaker. A pacemaker helps a heart maintain a constant beat. Sometimes, the need for the implant passes. Making a pacemaker go away requires serious surgery with all the risks to the patient that entails. Making a dissolving pacemaker go away only requires water, and our bodies have plenty of water.

The researchers built the structural components of dissolving electronics out of biocompatible silk from the silkworm cocoons. They were able to adjust how long the silk lasts in the body by subtly changing the processing of the silk. By producing silk that lasts only as long as the device is needed, surgical removal would become unnecessary.

Normally, there are metal components in electronic devices. Dissolving heavy metals into a patient could create more problems than it solves. To address this issue, the researchers used magnesium as a conductor because it is very reactive and because magnesium is a necessary nutrient, it poses no danger to the patient.

Now that these electronics exist, it can’t be long before patients will be receiving temporary, dissolving electronic devices. I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

Has ENCODE redefined the meaning of ‘gene’?

While I’ve been criticizing how ENCODE has been hyped and spun, it’s useful to take a look at the situation from the perspective of someone within the consortium. Why are the ENCODE findings supposed to be so revolutionary?

John Stamatoyannopoulos, who has made some of what I see as the most unjustified statements to the press on the topic of ENCODE, lays out his views on the significance of ENCODE in this piece. (Genome Res. 2012. 22: 1602-1611)

He argues that the view of the genome emerging from ENCODE (and, I must emphasize, from the work of other scientists who have used and developed similar technologies, but are not part of the consortium), thanks to its unprecedented detail and global perspective, has radically changed our understanding of just what a gene is. (But have we ever settled on what is a gene?) Continue reading “Has ENCODE redefined the meaning of ‘gene’?”