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| Platypus Genome Found Fittingly Strange by Rick Weiss
a team of scientists has determined the platypus’s entire genetic code. And right down to its DNA, it turns out, the animal continues to strain credulity, bearing genetic modules that are in turn mammalian, reptilian and avian.
There are genes for egg laying — evidence of its reptilian roots. Genes for making milk, which the platypus does in mammalian style despite not having nipples. Genes for making snake venom, which the animal stores in its legs. And there are five times as many sex-determining chromosomes as scientists know what to do with. “It’s such a wacky organism,” said Richard Wilson, director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University in St. Louis, who with colleague Wesley Warren led the two-year effort, described today in the journal Nature. Yet in its wackiness, Wilson said, the platypus genome offers an unprecedented glimpse of how evolution made its first stabs at producing mammals. It tells the tale of how early mammals learned to nurse their young; how they matched poisonous snakes at their venomous game; and how they struggled to build a system of fertilization and gestation that would eventually, through relatives that took a different tack, give rise to the first humans. “As we learn more about things like platypuses,” Wilson said, “we also learn more about ourselves and where we came from and how we work.” |
Very cool stuff. Related: Platypus genome explains animal’s peculiar features; holds clues to evolution of mammals - Platypus genome mapping boon for human and livestock researchers - Platypus genetic code unravelled - Weird Creatures - Evolution is Fundamental to Science - Long-Eared Jerboa - Cat Joins Exclusive Genome Club - Your Inner Fish
On May 17th, in The Plains, Virginia, the Team America Rocketry Challenge finals will be held. After a full day of launches, held at the Great Meadows facility, the winners will be crowned and $60,000 in scholarships will be divided up among the top finishers.
Related: Goldwater Science Scholarships - Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology - Student Algae Bio-fuel Project
Science Studio offers podcasts by the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences with professors discussing science; it is another excellent source of science podcasts. Podcasts include:
These podcasts are great way to use the internet to serve the mission of universities: to educate. And a great way to promote science.
Related: Lectures from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center - UC-Berkeley Course Videos - Science Podcast Libraries - Communicating Science to the Public
One of the topics I care about is engineers making a real difference in the world. I lived in Singapore and Nigeria while I was growing up and traveled widely. My father was a professor of engineering (chemical, industrial), statistics and business. He was very interested in applying technology and human knowledge to help people have better lives, and I share that interest.
People like William Kamkwamba are the people that are worthy of respect. I wish the USA was more focused on people that are worthy of attention, instead of who the news media choose to show and people choose to read about. At least a few of you seem to like reading about those I do, based on the traffic this blog receives (well actually that would be a pretty poor metric, let say the attention popular science sites, magazines, podcasts, TV shows… receive).
Another video with William at TED. I posted about William previously: Make the World Better and Home Engineering: Windmill for Electricity.
Related: Appropriate Technology - posts tagged: engineers - What Kids can Learn - Water and Electricity for All
“Healing clays” hold promise in fight against MRSA superbug infections and disease
Also listen to a podcast with the researchers, Lynda Williams and Shelly Haydel, that provides much more detail. The Science Studio podcasts from Arizona State University provides great science podcasts.
Related: Soil Could Shed Light on Antibiotic Resistance - Entirely New Antibiotic Developed - Science Webcast Directory - NSF Awards $50 Million for Collaborative Plant Biology Project (University of Arizona)
Great content. Enjoy.
Related: BBC In Our Time Science Podcasts - directory of science and engineering webcasts - YouTube+ for Science from PLoS - The Best Science Books
All shows of the PBS TV show, Scientific American Frontiers are available online. The shows feature Alan Alda exploring a wide range of scientific ideas. Specific information for teachers if provided for each show. Shows include:
Related: BBC In Our Time Science Podcast Archive - Curious Cat Science Webcast Directory - Online Science Resources for Teachers - UC-Berkeley Course Videos Online - ScienceLive video archive from Cambridge University
While I worked in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) - part of the white house complex, I was able to hear some great speakers. However, those talks were only available to those of us that could make it to room 450 of the EEOB when it was scheduled. Google has far more speakers and they have posted webcasts of those talks online. It is great stuff, some excellent recent examples:
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Related: Google Technology Talks - Science and Engineering Webcast Libraries - Google Tech Webcasts #3
Webcast - In My Language - about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.
Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know
A cornerstone of this new approach — call it the difference model — is that past research about autistic intelligence is flawed, perhaps catastrophically so, because the instruments used to measure intelligence are bogus. “If Amanda Baggs had walked into my clinic five years ago,” says Massachusetts General Hospital neuroscientist Thomas Zeffiro, one of the leading proponents of the difference model, “I would have said she was a low-functioning autistic with significant cognitive impairment. And I would have been totally wrong.”
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And that hurts autistic people, Dawson says. She makes a comparison with blindness. Of course blind people have a disability and need special accommodation. But you wouldn’t give a blind person a test heavily dependent on vision and interpret their poor score as an accurate measure of intelligence. Mottron is unequivocal: Because of recent research, especially the Raven paper, it’s clearer than ever that so-called low-functioning people like Amanda Baggs are more intelligent than once presumed.The Dawson paper was hardly conclusive, but it generated buzz among scientists and the media. Mottron’s team is now collaborating with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Zeffiro, a neuroimaging expert, to dig deeper.
Millions of users around the globe could not access YouTube for a couple hours yesterday. Why?
Well to understand, we need to start with how you normally connect to a web site. You click on a link to youtube.com. Your ISP looks up the internet address for youtube.com by looking at internet routing tables. Each domain has a name server that provides the IP address for where it should be found (for example, an IP address that shows youtube.com is 208.65.153.238).
Well what happened in this case is Pakistan decided to prevent anyone in Pakistan from accessing YouTube because the government didn’t like some video. The way Pakistan decided to accomplish this was to update their routing table to just direct all traffic that was meant to go to YouTube to a phony address which would then return nothing.
Why did many outside of Pakistan lose access to YouTube? Well their version of the routing table leaked out of Pakistan through PCCW (large internet provider), Then other internet providers adopted the incorrect information, until many around the globe were being directed to the wrong place.
You might find it amazing the routing system could allow such a thing to happen - it doesn’t seem very secure. You are right, that it doesn’t seem very sensible. When the internet was created some protocols were established that made sense then but don’t necessarily make sense for what the internet has become.
The problem was fixed when Google’s YouTube engineers contacted PCCW to inform them of the problem and have them correct it. I think if it was my site instead, I would have had difficulty figure out what was going on 
Once PCCW corrected their routing tables the fixed flowed through the system and everyone was able to see the great stuff like Marissa Mayer discussing Innovation at Google.
I would imagine Internet2 (well on its way to a computer near you) and IPv6 will take not be so venerable to such a mistake.
Related: Insecure routing redirects YouTube to Pakistan - YouTube outage blamed on Pakistan - YouTube Censorship Sheds Light on Internet Trust - The Web is 15 Years Old - Internet Undersea Cables - Harvard Course: Understanding Computers and the Internet - Net Neutrality - The Next Generation Internet - The Journey of Internet Packets - mistake proofing (the opposite of the current setup)
Related: Science Explained: What The Heck is a Virus? - Why is the Sky Blue? - Frozen Images
I posted about Polar Bear and Dogs previously. Now here is a video:
Related: Tabby Cat and Black Bear - Backyard Wildlife: Fox
I wrote about PlayPumps in 2006: Safe Water Through Play. This video by National Geographic gives more detail on PlayPumps and water needs in general. Some facts from KnowH2O
Related: Water and Electricity for All - Microfinancing Entrepreneurs
BBC In Our Time Science Podcast Archive including: Plate Tectonics - the day the Earth moved, Genetic Mutation - the error-strewn secrets of life, The Fibonacci Sequence - the numbers in nature, Antimatter - where has it all gone?, Gravitational Waves - a new window on the universe. Great stuff. This is the type of stuff that makes the internet so great. It is wonderful the amount of great science and engineering resources are online.
Related: science and engineering podcast directory - UC-Berkeley Course Videos now on YouTube - More Great Webcasts (Nanotech and more) - Google Tech Webcasts
The Savannah cat breed is from the mating of a male African serval cat to a female domestic cat. The serval grows to from 9 to 20 kg (20-44 lbs) and lives 12-20 years in the wild. It is closely related to the African Golden Cat and the Caracal. The cats in the webcast are Savannahs.
Related: Photos by cats - Bornean Clouded Leopard - DNA Offers New Insight Concerning Cat Evolution
doFlick offers user-generated educational, technical and instructional videos on science and engineering. Examples include: Simple Circuits - How to do a basic leak test in vacuum systems - Bacteria in the Human Mouth - Transverse Standing Waves - Pulsed Layer Deposition Overview
The site offers a short videos on science and engineering topics (plus some other topics as well). The site fills a niche that is different that any other site I have seen. The videos are largely tips on lab or engineering techniques or edited labs. These are videos that might appear on network TV but they are exactly the type of resource that makes the internet great. Lets build this resource: upload your own webcasts. There is a great advantage to short targeted online videos (compared to full course lectures - which are also great) because the short targeted videos allow for targeted linking specifically to the video content you want to link to.
This is definitely worth adding to your bookmarks. Or you can just bookmark our directory of science and engineering videos.
Related: YouTube+ for Science from PLoS - UC-Berkeley Course Videos - Google Tech Webcasts #3
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