Lotus Land Pictures!

I didn't get to process any of these yet but here's the google drive with the pictures from Lotus Land!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18yLF8Xkbv1xKvP6It-I5IhxgYurEgWnx?usp=sharing

Natural Selection in Humans!

     The Bajau people (in the Philippines/Malaysia/Indonesia) are known for their impressive ability to stay underwater for almost 13 minutes at depths of 200 feet.  In all humans, holding your breath results in blood vessel size decreasing, slowed heart rate and spleen contractions; however, most people can only stay in this state for a few minutes at most.  The Bajai people are thought to have a mutation leading to an enlarged spleen, allowing for this feat.  Other marine mammals have been found to have large spleens, adding to this theory.  Melissa Llardo, who lead the study, measured the spleen size of the Bajaus and people from the mainland, and found that the Bajau spleens were 50 percent larger than the mainland spleens.  The enlarged spleen is thought to be caused by PDE10A, a hormone that is known to effect spleen size in mice.  The Bajau rely on diving to find fish, a large portion of their diet.  Therefore, it is thought that natural selection has played a role in the enlarged spleen as people who can dive longer got more fish and were more likely to reproduce.  However, some scientists think this phenomenon could be due to training and adaptation to the environment.

Fisherman diving

read more here: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/04/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science/

-Kenna Sherman

Victorian Women in Scientific Art!

Beatrix Potter was mentioned last week and, as I must always do when we talk about a scientific illustrator, I decided to look into her further. Like many wealthy and privately educated women of her time, Potter was interested in the natural world, an interest that spanned geology, archeology, entomology and mycology. Her gift was in detailed observation; she used a hand lens, photography, and eventually a microscope to see and draw as much detail as possible. She also began germinating spores and wrote a paper, now lost, called 'On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae' which she submitted to the Linnean Society in 1897.  Because the paper is lost, it is somewhat unclear what Potter's stance was on the idea that lichen was a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. Regardless of her contributions as a scientific researcher, her drawings are still a valuable resource for mycologists today because of her accuracy and  attention to detail. Here are some of her drawings!

While I was researching Potter I came across another female scientific illustrator, Margaret  Gatty. She was also a children's author but, in her spare time, she explored an interest in algae. Her drawings are also pretty cool! check them out!

Also Anna Atkins is cool https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/08/anna-atkins-algae/

Game Theory + Altruism

A cute internet game (takes about half an hour if you want to do the "free" mode for longer) that lets you play with the evolution of altruism in society and see where it takes you! The first five minutes will get you to at least try it, which I highly recommend.

Try it here. I love it so much! And we talked about altruism in class today so this is a cool way to do your own experiment!

Using Magnets to Prevent Heart Disease

When we were walking around Lotus Land there was this iron-rich rock that had a bunch of paperclips stuck to it... which made me think of how our blood is also iron-rich... which made me wonder if we can manipulate it using magnets... which made me think that if we could manipulate blood flow with magnets, things like arterial blockages or cholesterol build up could be quickly cleared up without any sort of invasive surgery!

Of course, it didn't turn out that easily, but people have tested this with a significant degree of success! It turns out blood is not ferromagnetic, which means someone couldn't just move an extremely strong magnet across someone's chest to swish around the blood and dislodge blockages. However, it is paramagnetic, meaning that blood is attracted to a magnetic field.

This in mind, researchers Tao and Huang (1) subjected blood flowing through a tube to an extremely strong magnetic field (over a million times that of Earth!). This caused red blood cells to align themselves into chains (see image to the right), flowing with the same speed and direction. They observed extremely decreased blood viscosity, a major factor in heart disease.

They launched into clinical trials (shouldn't you test this on some sort of animal model before going straight from plastic tube to human artery??), and rigged their machinery such that patients could stick a certain part of their bodies into the magnetic field apparatus (2). This bit is tricky because blood vessels flow in all directions in vivo, and the magnetic field must align with the direction of blood flow. Tao and Haung were able to create a magnetic field that was highly specific and could be applied to a large blood vessel in the right arm. 100% of patients (those with high blood pressure were chosen) were found to experience a 10-20% blood pressure decrease in 5-10 minutes. What's more the effects of the magnetic field last for hours. Tao and Huang now hope to apply their research a clinical treatment that could be used 3 or 4 times a day to keep a patient's blood pressure down. The American Heart Association is now helping these guys go through official clinical trials with the FDA.

Super rad!!!

1. Tao, R., Huang, K. (2011) Reducing blood viscosity with magnetic fields. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 84(1 Pt 1)

2. Gaal, R. (2017) Easing the Heartache with Magnetic Fields. APS Physics. 25 (5)

Animal Relationship Cartoons

Found a cool artist that makes little cartoons about animal relationships in the wild, covering all sorts of different reproductive strategies that we talked about in class. It's really cute and informative! Here are two examples, and the link will make let you see them larger. The artist is named Humon, you can also google her to see more of these



The image below discusses sneaky breeding males ;) There is a diagram of the real side-blotched lizards in the book, in chapter 51!

Beautiful Diatom Art

On Tuesday John mentioned Victorian diatom art, where artists would collect different diatom species of different shapes and arrange them in beautifully intricate patterns. This art form was popular in the Victorian era when people were fascinated by nature, and the art and sciences were usually studied together, unlike today. However, diatom artists were competitive and did not write down or share how to make these microscopic works of art, so it's very difficult to do it today and is an almost dead art form. But one modern artist, Klaus Kemp, spent 8 years figuring out the right glue formula to mount diatoms on and create similar complex arrangements like the ones from 150 years ago. Here's a very short but interesting documentary about Klaus Kemp and diatom art:

https://vimeo.com/90160649

And here's some examples of diatom art:
        

Mantis camouflaged as a Dead Leaf!

Phyllocrania paradoxa

Common name: Ghost Mantis

Considered miniature species are 1.8 to 2.0 in long. There is sexual dimorphism present as females reach 5-6cm and males smaller.  Their color ranges from various dark brown tones, that change in-between molts. Phyllocrania paradoxa have an average life span of about a year, with males on the short end of a year. Ranges across African continent and its islands, as well as south Europe. Spends time in dry areas like savanna bushes and shrub, rainforest limits, fields and gardens. 

 It is camouflaged as desiccated leaf material that would be found on ground in habitat. Their main body appears to be a crumbled-up leaf, and each of their legs seems to be fragmented leaf attached to a stem. Their eyes are almost the exact same color as molt. Phyllocrania paradoxa will tuck its fore limbs to assume a “leaf shape” and sway slowly back and forth, mimicking leaf in the wind. Oothecae hatch up to 36 young and they are already camouflaged as ants. Males are less camouflaged. Wings are present in adult from of both sexes with pigmented coloration to mimic veination of a leaf. They have very successful camouflage from their predators of birds or other small vertebrates.  

Sources

“Ghost Mantis – Phyllocrania paradoxa.” Keeping Insects. Keepinginsects.com, n.d. Web. 23 June2015. http://www.keepinginsects.com/praying-mantis/species/phyllocrania-paradoxa/

Tomasinelli, Francesco, and Andrea Mangoni. “Biology and Captive Breeding of the African Dead Leaf Mantis Phyllocrania Paradoxa.” Mantis Study Group Newsletter 23 (Feb. 2002): 1-12. http://mantodea.myspecies.info/sites/mantodea.myspecies.info/files/MSG%20NL%2023%20%28February%202002%2

“Spectral Leaf- Ghost Mantis, Creaturefact. 30 June 2015 https://creaturefacts.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/spectral-leaf-ghost-mantis/

“Phyllocrania Paradoxa.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllocrania_paradoxa.

Fungi, Tardigrades, and Star Trek

In the range of 420 to 370 million years ago, the fungal genus Prototaxites was widespread across the planet. In the late Silurian and Devonian periods, it formed large structures and crazy fossils for us to discover. Today, this group is extinct.

Imagine the year 2256, and the discovery of a new species: Prototaxis stellaviatori. I invite you once again into the world of Star Trek, pushing our conception of where science can go. We study biology and recent scientific discoveries hoping to someday make our own. Lots of current technology (FaceTime, Siri, etc) was first imagined on Star Trek and then brought to life in our reality. Here's how Star Trek Discovery imagines the future of research in fungi.


Paul Stamets, a Star Trek character, wandering in a dimension that is mostly mycelial network for P. stellaviatori

The mycelial network of P. stellaviatori extends across the universe through space, and into Star Trek's "subspace" as well. Tardigrades (also known as water bears) could travel along the network naturally, and Starfleet scientists designed a "spore drive" to allow their ship to do the same. After harvesting the spores of P. stellaviatori, the displacement-activated spore hub drive would enable a starship to jump from one part of the mycelial network to another. This somehow allows for high speed travel without breaking the speed of light as far as Star Trek mechanics are concerned. It also allows for travel through the multiverse into other universes. The mycelial network not only spans an impossible distance through our universe and into other dimensions, but is also capable of regenerating itself and is even suggested on the show to be the reason life can flourish across our universe and others.

This is a basic summary--for more information about the development of the spore drive and its various applications in Star Trek, click here.



The mycelial network as seen from the bridge of the Discovery

Sources:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Mycelial_network (basic info from star trek wiki)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Prototaxites_stellaviatori (fungi info, including the origin of the name in latin roots)