The Science Blog

Uner Tan syndrome case identified from 100 years ago

2010-11-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

In 2005 Professor Dr. Uner Tan of Cukurova University in Adana, Turkey identified for the first time a novel syndrome that came to be known as the Uner Tan Syndrome, or UTS. The syndrome's most characteristic feature is that its sufferers walk on all fours and all efforts to help them walk normally fail, even if they are given crutches or parallel bars to train on. Patients are also almost always illiterate with little cognitive ability, and they are always the products of consanguineous marriages - marriages in which the parents are closely related.

Since the initial finding of siblings in a Turkish family, several more people with UTS have been identified, both in Turkey and elsewhere, but the latest case is a man who lived in Turkey around 100 years ago.

The man was noticed in the photograph below, which was taken by British traveller W. J. Childs in 1914 near the mid Black Sea coast.

The man photographed in 1914 probably belonged to a Greek family, since the area where the picture was shot (Havza) had a large Greek population. The Greek people in Turkey during the Ottoman Empire tended to live in isolation, and there was a great deal of inbreeding.

Also interesting is that the man's arms seem relatively long compared to the leg length, although the slope and rocky terrain make it difficult to be sure. In the modern day UTS patients, the lengths of the limbs seem normal, as in the man seen below:

There was also a quadrupedal child in one of Muybridge's series of pictures, but this child apparently had polio, and it is not clear whether he had UTS. Interestingly, several of the quadrupeds in Turkey today also use quadrupedal locomotion to compensate for a leg paralysed through polio.

Another interesting feature of Uner Tan Syndrome is the genetics, and the fact that a genetic mutation appears be responsible for the quadrupedalism, at least in some subjects. If a mutation can produce quadrupedalism, could it then have been a simple genetic mutation that led us to progress from quadrupedal locomotion to bipedal? If so, the UTS patients are cases of "reverse evolution", or reverting to an ancient form of locomotion.

Original article:
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/1074

You can also read an interview with Professor Tan on reverse evolution here.

And there's a full biographical interview with here.

Dogs probably domesticated in Middle East, not Asia

2010-03-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

A study published in the journal Nature suggests dogs were domesticated in the part of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent as the human civilisation began. This is where our form of agriculture developed, and where most of our domesticated animals and cats also originated.

Earlier studies on mitochondrial DNA suggested dogs were domesticated in Asia and China, but the current study is much more extensive and covers the entire genome of dogs from various parts of the world. The genetic markers of the majority of dogs had more in common with Middle Eastern grey wolves than any other population of wolves.

Read the full story here: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100317/tsc-oukoe-uk-science-dogs-011ccfa.html

Floods in Victoria, but still the lower lakes die

2010-03-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

There are floods in Victoria with hailstones the size of tennis balls, and the water from the Queensland floods are gradually making their way down the river. But will any get to the lower lakes in South Australia?

(Floodwaters: Morguefile picture)

Eventually, some of the water ought to get down to the lower lakes in South Australia, which are the driest they have ever been in living memory. That's partly due to the drought, but is more due to mismanagement and over-allocation by successive governments. Upstream, farmers are allowed (and encouraged) to irrigate crops such as olives and grapes, that grow perfectly well without irrigation (but not quite so big, and so not quite so profitably.

Further north, they are allowed (and encouraged) to grow cotton and rice on massive farms. They consider it their water to do with as they please.

Meanwhile the lower river and lakes die, because the 'environment' gets only what bit of water is left after the greedy farmers have taken all the government says they can use. The 'environment' has no voting power. The population in the lower lakes is low, so no votes there either. So the lake dies.

Dry lake bed at Milang

This was some time ago. It's much drier than this now.

The turtles are dead, the fish are dead. Even the carp gasp for breath as the lake dries.

Aspirin and Ibuprofen boost breast cancer survival rate

2010-02-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

(PhysOrg.com Article by Lin Edwards)

An observational study of 4,164 women diagnosed with breast cancer showed those taking aspirin in the period after diagnosis had a much lower rate of recurrence, and a much higher survival rate than those who did not.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The study analyzed the use of asprin by over 4,000 nurses who had developed breast cancer between 1976 and 2002. All the women were taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study, which spanned 30 years.

The women were followed until their death or the cut-off date of June 2006. During this period 341 of the women died of breast cancer, and 400 had metastases or their cancer returned. The women who were taking aspirin were taking it for other conditions, and most were taking low-dose aspirin to ward off stroke and heart attacks.

Dr Michelle Holmes, Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Harvard Medical school, who carried out the study, found a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of death during the follow-up period in women taking aspirin. The best results were for those taking aspirin between two and five days a week (71% reduction), while those taking it six to seven days had a slightly lower (64%) reduction.

Overall, taking aspirin gave the women a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of death, and also reduced the risk of the cancer returning. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including naproxen and ibuprofen, also reduced the risks.

The study was observational and therefore does not establish definitive cause and effect or explain how aspirin reduces the risks, and the data only revealed the number of days the women took aspirin, and not the dosage. Holmes said the findings agree with the results of some earlier studies. She said that we are beginning to realize that “cancer is an inflammatory disease, and aspirin is an anti-inflammatory.” It may work by lowering the blood level of estrogens, or could prevent the early spread of cancer in some way, Holmes said.

Holmes said that aspirin has negative effects in some people and can cause bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract, and it should never be used as a substitute for traditional cancer treatments.

As the paper, published online yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, notes there may be some skewing of the results since women are advised to stop taking aspirin during chemotherapy, and this could result in an over-estimation of the benefits of aspirin. More study and clinical trials will be needed to confirm the findings, but if women with breast cancer are taking aspirin for other conditions they may also be helping to prevent their cancer from returning.

More information: Aspirin Intake and Survival After Breast Cancer, J. Clin. Oncol. 0: JCO.2009.22.7918v1. DOI:10.1200/JCO.2009.22.7918

Liquid glass spray could revolutionise everything

2010-02-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything
(PhysOrg.com) -- Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.

You will soon be able to spray liquid glass on practically everything to protect it from dirt, bugs, UV light, and more. All you will need to clean anything is a cloth dampened with warm or hot water. Toss your cleaning solutions away (you could have tossed them in favour of bicarb and vinegar already), because you will never need harsh chemicals or scrubbing again.

This liquid glass spray is as revolutionary as velcro and liquid paper, and it will change the world we live in for the better.

My only questions are, how much will a truckful cost, and can I spray my dog (so rolled-in dead fish washes off easlity).

Original PhysOrg article.

How many remain in the wild?

2010-01-19T04:50:00.000-08:00

How many northern white rhinos remain? <35
How many red wolves remain in the wild? <50
How many amur leopards? <50
How many hairy wombats? <50
How many California condor? <50, all in zoos
How many asiatic cheetah? 50
How many golden lion tamarin? 150
How many Siberian tigers? 200
How many anatolian leopards? 250
How many giant pandas? 250
How many mountain gorillas ? 700
How many manatees? <2,000
How many snow leopards? 2,500
How many black rhinos? 2,600, including zoos
How many kimodo dragons? 3,000
How many tigers? 6,000, maybe
How many blue whales? 6,000, maybe
How many Asian elephants? 16,000
How many humans? >6,700,000,000
and increasing at the rate of around 77 million per year, or an extra Britain or France, or an extra 3 + Australias.

What is happening is that the biomass of the planet is being converted into humans. There is global warming, the ice caps are melting, and we are in the midst of the greatest period of species extinction since the wiping out of the dinosaurs. And yet our idiot politicians are actually paying people to have more babies! What we need is not more human babies, but a new and different economy.

We desperately need a new economy, a new thought process, an end to global capitalism, and an end to homocentricity. Or we will end up being one of only a dozen or so species on an otherwise dead planet.

Refs:
http://www.worldometers.info/population/
http://www.gorillafund.org/gorilla_fun/quiz2.php
http://www.blurtit.com/q819957.html
http://www.endangeredspecie.com/specieprofile.htm

Our faulty perception of distance

2010-01-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

I found an interesting article yesterday. Scientists designed a nifty little experiment to see whether our perception of distance to objects is real or not. Subjects were asked to toss a small beanbag and told that if it landed on a gift card they would win it. Some cards were worth $0, and some were worth $25. Interestingly, they tended to toss short when trying to get the $25 card because they perceived it as being closer than it actually was.

It turns out that objects we desire appear to us to be closer than objects we don't want.

2010-01-12T19:10:00.000-08:00

Green sea slug makes chlorophyll like a plant
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from the University of South Florida in Tampa have found a green sea slug is able to synthesize chlorophyll like a plant, which makes it the first animal known to be capable of the feat.

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This is an amazing animal - the first to synthesise chlorophyll to keep chloroplasts it's stolen from ingested algae photosynthesising. In other words, after the first meal of algae it never needs to eat. In other words it's almost a cross between a plant and an animal (a planimal?)

Life on this planet is simply an amazing thing!

Introducing the Light Touch interactive projector

2010-01-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

Introducing the Light Touch interactive projector (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- UK-based company Light Blue Optics has introduced an extremely compact projector that converts any flat surface into an interactive touch video screen. Read my PhysOrg article here...

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I don't usually go overboard about new technologies, but this is pretty cool, actually. It's a tiny projector that projects a touch screen! What will they think of next?

Mayon volcano oozing lava

2009-12-30T16:30:00.000-08:00

The Mayon volcano, about 330 km to the southeast of Manila in the Philippines, started oozing lava on December 14, and has become a hot spot for tourists eager to get close to the slow-moving lava, and evidently unaware of the danger of lahars (hot mudslides that often occur when rain and volcanic ash mix). Lahars can be fast moving and much more dangerous than the lava itself. Since there's a lot more activity on the volcano, it could also be close to a full-blown eruption. Sensibly, the residents have been evacuated, but adventure tourists are moving in.

(Photo from Wikipedia - in public domain)

The Mayon volcano is the most active of the volcanoes in the Philippines, and is part of the Ring of Fire, which is a chain of volcanoes encircling the Pacific. There are so many volcanoes in the region because the Philippines lie on are what is left of a micro-tectonic plate stuck between subduction zones, and being slowly squeezed out of existence.

The Mayon volcano last erupted in 2006, and lahars were formed during the typhoon season, burying entire villages. At least 754 people were killed by the lahars.

Online References:
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/SEAsia/Story/STIStory_471904.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126085626015091733.html?mod=article-outset-box
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/987622/philippines-volcano-sprays-ash
http://www.typhoon2000.ph/stormstats/lahars.htm

Read all about how a volcano is formed here: http://www.solcomhouse.com/volcano.htm

Blue whales singing with deeper voices

2009-12-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

December 8, 2009 by Lin Edwards
(PhysOrg.com) -- Blue whales, the largest animals on earth, are singing with deeper voices every year, but scientists are unsure of the reason.
Whale Acoustics is a company that specializes in recording the songs of blue whales off the coast of California. According to their President, Mark McDonald, they have many recordings of blue whales, but each year they have had to recalibrate their song detectors to lower frequencies. Possible reasons include noise pollution at sea, new mating strategies, and changing population dynamics, but none of these theories is convincing.

McDonald, along with John Hildebrand and Sarah Melnick of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, have collected and analyzed thousands of recordings of blue whales from the 1960s onwards, from populations around the globe, and have found the tonal frequency of the songs has reduced by fractions of a Hertz every year. This has been true even though the songs differ in different oceans and the populations seem quite distinct from each other. In the most studied populations, those off California, the pitch has reduced by 31 percent during the period.

McDonald originally thought the cause could be more noise pollution in the oceans through increased shipping traffic, since it is known that ambient noise in the oceans has increased by over 12 decibels in the last fifty or sixty years. However, McDonald said that if whales were trying to be heard above increased ambient noise, they would be expected to sing at higher frequencies rather than lower.

Another possibility is that sounds travel differently through water that is now warmer, more acidic, and contains more absorbed carbon dioxide than before, and the whales are responding to the changes. McDonald said he doubts this is the cause since the effects are so small, and the shift in frequency is relatively large.

Blue whales were hunted almost to extinction during the early twentieth century, and since hunting has stopped populations are recovering, and it has been suggested that the songs were higher pitched in the 1960s than they are now because they needed their songs to be louder to reach the more scattered populations. The problems with this idea are populations that were not hunted have also lowered the frequency of their songs, and low frequency sounds are known to travel further than high frequencies.

Another possible reason for the lowering of frequency may be connected with selection of mates, since only male blue whales sing, and larger, more mature whales tend to sing at lower frequencies. The hypothesis is that younger males may be trying to impress females by emulating their seniors, but little is known about how blue whales use their songs, and their social dynamics are poorly understood.

The research paper was published in the October edition of Endangered Species Research.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com

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One of the comments after the article made an interesting suggestion, and that is that the average age of the whales is increasing since the species is recovering from being almost wiped out by whaling, and older (and bigger whales have deeper voices). Apparently the whales can live up to 80 years, but do they continue to grow after maturity? If the deepening voices were simply due to that, there should have been a levelling off as the males reached maturity, but the increase is pretty linear, and occurs even where blue whales populations were not reduced by whaling.

Eureqa, the robot scientist

2009-12-07T15:03:00.000-08:00

Eureqa, the robot scientist (w/ Video)
December 7, 2009 by Lin Edwards

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new program, Eureqa, takes raw data and formulates scientific laws to suit, and it is available by free download to all scientists.

When the program first appeared in April this year, it was fed information on a double pendulum and in just a few hours it inferred Newton's second law of motion and the law of conservation of momentum from the data. Given other data, it could find laws that have so far eluded scientists.

Eureqa is a successor to robots that work out how to repair themselves, which were developed at the Computational Synthesis Lab at Cornell University by Dr Hod Lipson. The same algorithms that were used in the robots have been adapted for the analysis of any kind of data. These algorithms may help scientists find complicated equations and laws.

The program begins by examining the data for numbers that appear to be connected, and then suggests equations that fit the connections. Of the proposed equations most fail, but some are less wrong than others, and these are selected and modified and then repeatedly re-tested against the data and tweaked until a workable equation is identified.

In some cases there is not enough data to enable Eureqa to find equations, but in these cases the latest version of the program may identify the gaps in the data and even recommend experiments to supply the missing data.
Eureqa was able to calculate in hours equations that Newton took years to find, and Lipson hopes it can do the same for data such as the interactions between proteins, genomes and cell signals, which are so complicated that describing the interactions mathematically has so far been impossible. While Lipson envisaged the program as having application mainly in biological fields, it will analyze any data that can be presented in a spreadsheet.

more... inc video
© 2009 PhysOrg.com

'Super-river formed the English Channel

2009-12-06T16:08:00.000-08:00

'Super-river' formed the English Channel
December 2, 2009 by Lin Edwards
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Anglo-French scientists studying sedimentary deposits in the Bay of Biscay have concluded that Britain and France were separated by a "super-river" during three periods of glaciations, and they have produced a more complete picture of the process of separation than previously available.
Approximately 500,000 years ago, south-east Britain was connected by a land bridge, near present day Dover, to the Artois region of northern France. Then, roughly 450,000 years ago during a glaciation (ice age), water became trapped between the British and Fennoscandian ice sheets, and an enormous glacial lake was formed bounded by glaciers in the north and the land bridge in the south.

Many rivers fed into the lake (located under what is now the North Sea), and it eventually burst its banks and flooded into the wide river valley, gouging through the soft chalk and taking sediment with it into the Bay of Biscay. The "super-river" is known to geographers as the [i]Fleuve Manche[/i] (Channel River).

In the study, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, the researchers tested the sediments found at the sea bottom and identified three periods at which sediment was deposited by the Fleuve Manche. Their results show the super-river existed during three glaciations, approximately 450,000, 160,000, and from 90 to 30,000 years ago. In the interglacial warm periods the English Channel was filled with water and separated Britain from Continental Europe.

One of the project leaders, Professor Phil Gibbard of the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, said they were the first to examine the sedimentary material left by the Fleuve Manche in the Bay of Biscay. Until the present study, the only data available to scientists was from sediments in coastal Europe, but many deposits have been eroded and are incomplete. The Bay of Biscay deposits have been undisturbed at the bottom of the sea for thousands of years, and give a much more complete picture than previously available.

Professor Gibbard said the study adds profoundly to the knowledge of how Britain was populated. During glaciations the sea level dropped sufficiently to allow people, plants and animals to cross from the Continent, until the glacial lake overflowed and the Fleuve Manche was formed. At this time the large amount of cold water entering the Bay of Biscay would also have affected sea currents and the environment of the time.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com

Pork meat grown in the lab

2009-12-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

PhysOrg.com
Pork meat grown in the laboratory, December 1, 2009 by Lin Edwards

Scientists from Eindhoven University in The Netherlands have for the first time grown pork meat in the laboratory by extracting cells from a live pig and growing them in a petri dish.

The scientists, led by Professor of Physiology, Mark Post, extracted myoblast cells from a living pig and grew them in a solution of nutrients derived from the blood of animal fetuses, although they intend to replace the solution with a synthesized alternative in the future.

Professor Post said artificially cultured meat could mean the meat of one animal could be increased to a volume equivalent to the meat of a million animals, which would reduce animal suffering and be good for the environment. As long as the final product looks and tastes like meat, Post is convinced people will buy it.

At present the product is a sticky, soggy and unappetizing muscle mass, but the team is seeking ways to exercise and stretch the muscles to turn the product into meat of the consistency we are familiar with. Post described the current in-vitro meat product as resembling wasted muscle, but he is confident they can improve its texture. Nobody has yet tasted the cultured meat because laboratory rules prevent the scientists tasting the product themselves.

The research is partly funded by the Dutch government, but is also backed by the Dutch sausage-making firm Stegeman, which is owned by food giant Sara Lee. The scientists (and presumably, the sausage makers) believe the meat product may be available for use in sausages within five years.

Other groups are also working on trying to produce cultured meat. NASA has funded research in the US on growing fish chunks from cells and meat from turkey cells, with idea that the technology could have wide application in future space travel, since growing edible muscle would allow future astronauts to avoid a range of problems associated with using live animals in space travel. In a June 29 paper in the journal [i]Tissue Engineering[/i] a group of scientists proposed new techniques that could lead to industrial production of meat grown in cultures.

The reaction of vegetarian groups has been mixed. A representative of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) said as long as the meat was not the flesh of a dead animal there would be no ethical objection. Last year PETA even offered a prize of $1 million to the first person or group who could come up with a commercially viable cultured meat product. Other vegetarians have been more guarded, with a representative of The Vegetarian Society said the main foreseeable problems would be labeling issues, as it would be difficult to label in a way that vegetarians would trust.

2009-09-11T08:38:00.001-07:00

The Link Between Weight and Importance

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study has demonstrated what we must have known all along at some level: that there is a link between the physical act of carrying heavy objects and the abstract concept of importance.

2009-09-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

The Link Between Weight and Importance

My first PhysOrg article

2009-09-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Extinct Mammal Used its 'Sweet Spot' to Club Rivals

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists in Uruguay studying extinct mammals called glyptodonts have discovered they used a "sweet spot" in their tails, just like baseball players use the center of percussion (CP), or sweet spot, in their bats to hit the ball with maximum power and minimum chance of injury.