Cats Connect with People, and Particularly Women, as Social Partners
Posted on February 24, 2011 Comments (4)
“Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant,” co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. “Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!”
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The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other’s behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.
While cats have plenty of male admirers, and vice versa, this study and others reveal that women tend to interact with their cats — be they male or female felines — more than men do.
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Cats also seem to remember kindness and return the favors later. If owners comply with their feline’s wishes to interact, then the cat will often comply with the owner’s wishes at other times. The cat may also “have an edge in this negotiation,” since owners are usually already motivated to establish social contact.
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co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. “A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other’s inclinations and preferences.”
Readers of this blog already know how great cats are, but this is more evidence on how wonderful they are.
Related: The Evolution of House Cats – Cat that takes the bus – Video Cat Cam – Awesome Cat Cam
MIT Engineers Design New Type of Nanoparticle for Vacines
Posted on February 22, 2011 Comments (5)
MIT engineers have designed a new type of nanoparticle that could safely and effectively deliver vaccines for diseases such as HIV and malaria. The new particles, described in the Feb. 20 issue of Nature Materials, consist of concentric fatty spheres that can carry synthetic versions of proteins normally produced by viruses. These synthetic particles elicit a strong immune response – comparable to that produced by live virus vaccines – but should be much safer, says Darrell Irvine, author of the paper and an associate professor of materials science and engineering and biological engineering.
Such particles could help scientists develop vaccines against cancer as well as infectious diseases. In collaboration with scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Irvine and his students are now testing the nanoparticles’ ability to deliver an experimental malaria vaccine in mice.
Vaccines protect the body by exposing it to an infectious agent that primes the immune system to respond quickly when it encounters the pathogen again. In many cases, such as with the polio and smallpox vaccines, a dead or disabled form of the virus is used. Other vaccines, such as the diphtheria vaccine, consist of a synthetic version of a protein or other molecule normally made by the pathogen.
When designing a vaccine, scientists try to provoke at least one of the human body’s two major players in the immune response: T cells, which attack body cells that have been infected with a pathogen; or B cells, which secrete antibodies that target viruses or bacteria present in the blood and other body fluids.
For diseases in which the pathogen tends to stay inside cells, such as HIV, a strong response from a type of T cell known as “killer” T cell is required. The best way to provoke these cells into action is to use a killed or disabled virus, but that cannot be done with HIV because it’s difficult to render the virus harmless.
To get around the danger of using live viruses, scientists are working on synthetic vaccines for HIV and other viral infections such as hepatitis B. However, these vaccines, while safer, do not elicit a very strong T cell response. Recently, scientists have tried encasing the vaccines in fatty droplets called liposomes, which could help promote T cell responses by packaging the protein in a virus-like particle. However, these liposomes have poor stability in blood and body fluids.
Irvine, who is a member of MIT’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, decided to build on the liposome approach by packaging many of the droplets together in concentric spheres. Once the liposomes are fused together, adjacent liposome walls are chemically “stapled” to each other, making the structure more stable and less likely to break down too quickly following injection. However, once the nanoparticles are absorbed by a cell, they degrade quickly, releasing the vaccine and provoking a T cell response.
Related: New and Old Ways to Make Flu Vaccines – Engineering Mosquitoes to be Flying Vaccinators – New nanoparticles could improve cancer treatment – Vaccines Can’t Provide Miraculous Results if We Don’t Take Them
Great 3D Printing Presentation
Posted on February 17, 2011 Comments (1)
Very fun presentation by 10 year old on 3D printing and the open source Makerbot at Ignite Phoenix.
Related: 3D Printing is Here (2009 post looking at 3D printers) – Open Source 3-D Printing – Expensive Ink (for regular printers)
Tags: Engineering,fun,home engineering,kids,open source,Products,Students
Most Genes? A crustacean the size of a grain of rice
Posted on February 8, 2011 Comments (4)
The first scientists to describe Daphnia thought they were a kind of flea because they assumed the red color came from sucking blood as fleas do. It turns out they’re not bloodsuckers – they’re blood makers. Daphnia have genes that make hemoglobin, so when the animal is stressed out, those genes switch on and the animal looks red.
In fact Daphnia have an astonishingly large number of genes. “We count more than 31,000 genes,” says [John] Colbourne. By comparison, the human genome has more like 23,000 genes. If Guinness tracks such things, Daphnia would hold the record for the most genes of any animal studied to date.
“Many of those genes – we estimate around 35 percent of them – are brand new to science,”
Daphnia can grow its own spear and helmet when threatened by an attacker
Related: Our Genome Changes as We Age – Amazing Designs of Life – One Species’ Genome Discovered Inside Another Species – Bdelloid Rotifers Abandoned Sex 100 Million Years Ago
Tags: animals,biology,genes,genetics,Life Science,Science,science facts,university research,water
Why Do People Invest Large Amounts of Time and Money?
Posted on February 6, 2011 Comments (2)
According to Neil deGrasse Tyson the reasons people/societies take on huge expenditures (Great Wall of China, Manhattan project, Apollo space missions, Spanish ocean exploration, TVA, Egyptian pyramids, Cathedrals):
- defense/war
- economic return
- veneration to power
“The urge to discover is not there, I wish it were it is just not.” Many countries have figured out the economic benefits of large investments of science and engineering: China, Singapore, Korea… Europe and the USA are limiting such investments while continuing less useful spending. I think the results will be very obvious 20 years from now. It isn’t that the USA and Europe are not making such investments, they are, but at a much lower rate than probably is wise economically.
Related: Neil Degrasse Tyson: Scientifically Literate See a Different World – Vaccines Can’t Provide Miraculous Results if We Don’t Take Them – Nanotechnology Investment as Strategic National Economic Policy – Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership
Red-light Cameras Save Lives, Could Save More if Used in More Cities
Posted on February 1, 2011 Comments (6)
Red light cameras saved 159 lives in 2004-08 in 14 of the biggest US cities, a new analysis by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows. Had cameras been operating during that period in all large cities, a total of 815 deaths would have been prevented.
“The cities that have the courage to use red light cameras despite the political backlash are saving lives,” says Institute president Adrian Lund. The researchers found that in the 14 cities that had cameras during 2004-08, the combined per capita rate of fatal red light running crashes fell 35 percent, compared with 1992-96. The rate also fell in the 48 cities without camera programs in either period, but only by 14 percent.
The rate of all fatal crashes at intersections with signals — not just red light running crashes — fell 14 percent in the camera cities and crept up 2 percent in the noncamera cities. In the camera cities, there were 17 percent fewer fatal crashes per capita at intersections with signals in 2004-08 than would have been expected. That translates into 159 people who are alive because of the automated enforcement programs.
This result shows that red light cameras reduce not only fatal red light running crashes, but other types of fatal intersection crashes as well. One possible reason for this is that red light running fatalities are undercounted due to a lack of witnesses to explain what happened in a crash. Drivers also may be more cautious in general when they know there are cameras around.
Based on these calculations, if red light cameras had been in place for all 5 years in all 99 US cities with populations over 200,000, a total of 815 deaths could have been avoided.
“Somehow, the people who get tickets because they have broken the law have been cast as the victims,” Lund says. “We rarely hear about the real victims — the people who are killed or injured by these lawbreakers.” Red light running killed 676 people and injured an estimated 113,000 in 2009. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths were people other than the red light running drivers — occupants of other vehicles, passengers in the red light runners’ vehicles, bicyclists, or pedestrians.
Previous research has established that red light cameras deter would-be violators and reduce crashes at intersections with signals. Institute studies of camera programs have found that red light violations fell at intersections where cameras were installed and that this effect also spilled over to intersections without cameras. An Institute study in Oxnard, Calif., found that injury crashes at intersections with traffic signals fell 29 percent citywide after automated enforcement began.
The new study adds to this by showing that cameras reduce not only violations and crashes throughout entire communities but deaths, too.
Red-light cameras save lives, study says
Related: D.C. Red-Light Cameras Fail to Curb Accidents – Do Red Light Cameras Make for Safer Intersections? – Traffic Congestion and a Non-Solution – Engineering a Better Blood Alcohol Sensor
Tags: cars,Engineering,human health,Research,scientific inquiry
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