Mmmm, mmmm good: Is there anything better than a summer day and a slice of watermelon? I'll take my watermelon with seeds or without; I'm not picky.
Courtesy foreversoulsRemember the good old days of summer when you could chomp on a slice of watermelon and spit out the seeds? Those Tom Sawyer moments are getting far and few between with the growing popularity of seedless watermelon. In fact, when you go to the store, it’s hard to find a watermelon these days with the conventional hard, black seeds.
How can a watermelon grow without seeds?
Seedless watermelons have been around for more than 50 years. And while they’re called “seedless,” they actually do have small white seeds in them. What they don’t have are the large, hard black seeds that no one wants to swallow. So how do they grow? It all boils down to the chromosome level. Chromosomes are the genetic building blocks in all living things that give them their physical traits.
Watermelon breeders have discovered that if you cross breed a watermelon with two sets of chromosomes with one that has four sets of chromosomes, you end up with a melon with three sets of chromosomes. That’s called a triploid seed, and when planted, it produces a watermelon that produces small seeds that won’t reproduce. It’s the plant world equivalent of a crossing a horse and a donkey to get a non-reproducing mule. Here's a link to an NPR report about how seedless watermelons, and other seedless fruits, are developed.
While consumers have expressed their strong preference for seedless watermelons, that hasn’t put the seeded varieties out to pasture, so to speak. Seeded watermelons still play a crucial role in the production of seedless watermelons.
Along with the crossbreeding work that’s needed to create seedless watermelon seeds, seeded watermelons need to be planted among seedless watermelons for their fruit to develop properly. A field producing seedless melons will have around 25 percent of its plants being seeded melons to help in the pollination process. Bees cross pollinate between the two plants. Without that cross pollination, the inner fruit of the watermelon will not develop.
And no one would want that, now, would we?
Tags : Influenza Outlook
in Life Science, Cells, Diversity of Organisms, Interdependence of Life, Biological Populations Change Over Time, and Human Organism
Flu vaccine: This is CDC Clinic Chief Nurse Lee Ann Jean-Louis extracting Influenza Virus Vaccine, Fluzone® from a 5 ml. vial.
Courtesy CDC/Jim Gathany
Did you know back in February scientist and medical professionals selected the influenza virus strains for the upcoming flu season? Now that it is July the pharmaceutical companies are well into manufacturing, purification and testing the vaccine. Meanwhile, it is winter and flu season in the southern hemisphere and the virus is busy mutating. The big question on everyone’s mind is will it mutate so much that the northern hemisphere vaccine will be ineffective?
I agree with Dr. Steven Salzberg remarks in his recent Nature commentary…
"The current system, in which most of the world’s vaccine supply is grown in chicken eggs, is an antiquated, inefficient method requiring six months or more to ramp up production, which in turn means that the vaccine strains must be chosen far in advance of each flu season. More crucially it sometimes prevents the use of the optimal strain, as it did in 2007."
Influenza (the flu) is a serious disease
Each year in the United States, on average:
- 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu;
- More than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and;
- About 36,000 people die from flu.
Some vaccine problems in the past
In recent years the match between the vaccine viruses and those identified during the flu season has usually been good. In 16 of the last 20 U.S. influenza seasons, including the 2007-08 season, the viruses in the influenza vaccine have been well matched to the predominant circulating viruses. Since 1988, there has only been one season (1997-98) when there was very low cross-reaction between the viruses in the vaccine and the predominate circulating virus and three seasons (1992-93, 2003-04, and 2007-08) when there was low cross-reaction (CDC). So after last year’s miscalculation the committee picked three new strains for the vaccine this year. One is a current southern hemisphere vaccine virus which they expect will still be present next year. In addition, they predict a second new Type A strain, known as H1N1/Brisbane/59, to also hit, along with a newer Type B/Florida strain.
Dr. Salzberg feels last year’s miscalculation was a failure…
"The harm was thus twofold; people fell ill and their trust in the vaccine system was undermined. This failure could have been predicted, if not prevented, through a more open system of vaccine design, a stronger culture of sharing in the influenza research community and a serious commitment to new technologies for production. The habits of the vaccine community must change for the sake of public health."
He goes on to suggest…
"The process of choosing flu-vaccine strains needs to be much more open. Other scientists, such as those in evolutionary biology with expertise in sequence analysis, could meaningfully contribute to the selection. At present, external scientists cannot review the data that went into the decision, nor can they suggest other types of data that might improve it."
Even with all of these miscalculations, I still feel getting the vaccine is worth the risk. But that doesn’t mean the process shouldn’t be improved. So once again I will be vaccinated and I will make sure my family is too—but what can we do as citizens to improve this process? What will you do?
Signs of color preserved in stone?: Fossil feather from Brazil (left) displays similarities with recent woodpecker feather (right)
Courtesy J.Vinther/YaleResearchers at Yale University are reporting the discovery of pigmentation within the fossilize feather from a bird or dinosaur. Using a powerful electron microscope, paleobiologist Jakob Vinther and his team claim that particles seen in the 100-million-year-old fossil appear to be similar to those seen in the feathers of living birds. This could mean that color - a characteristic long-thought lost in the fossil record - could someday be determined from the remains of pigment.
Vinther’s colleagues included Yale paleontologist Derek E. G. Briggs and Yale ornithologist Richard O. Prum. The results of their study will appear in an upcoming issue of Biology Letters. The research shows that dark stripes in the Cretaceous-aged feather display many similarities to the make-up of black melanin particles found in modern bird feathers. Melanin compounds determine color in plants and animals, a trait useful for such things as camouflage, species identification, and courtship display. In humans, melanin colors our skin and also protects us from overexposure to sunlight.
For a long time, the dark granules seen in fossilized feathers were thought to be the carbon remains of bacteria that had worked at decomposing the organism prior to fossilization. But advances in electron microscope technology have given scientists a closer - and clearer – picture of the feather’s structure, and instead show them to be fossilized melanosomes containing melanin pigment.
"Feather melanin is responsible for rusty-red to jet-black colors and a regular ordering of melanin even produces glossy iridescence,” Vinther said. “Understanding these organic remains in fossil feathers also demonstrates that melanin can resist decay for millions of years."
Under the scope, the lighter bands of the fossilized feather showed only the rock matrix, while the darker bands displayed traces of residue closely resembling the organic compounds found in the feathers of modern birds.
“You wouldn’t expect bacteria to be aligned according to the orientation of the feathers,” said Vinther.
Another bird fossil showed similar organic traces in the feathers surrounding its skull. The 55-million-year-old fossil from Denmark also preserved an organic imprint of the eye that showed structures similar to the melanosomes found in eyes of modern birds.
Nanostructure studies could one day provide paleontologists with evidence of colors other than just black and gray tones, and not just in fossil feathers. Vinther figures other organic remains such as fur from prehistoric mammals or fossil skin impressions from dinosaurs could prove to be the remains of the melanin.
LINKS
ScienceNews story
Yale website story
Cosmos magazine website story
Melansome info
It was horrible: just horrible.
Courtesy Steveie-BA pipistrelle bat, local to Aberdeen, Scotland, was shocked and disgusted to find the naked leg of a 19-year-old woman thrust into the soft contours of its new cave.
Having just moved from the grim crawlspaces of an Aberdeen flat, in favor of a cozier, denim living space, the two-inch flying mammal assumed that it was set for life.
Shortly after settling in for the day, however, the pipistrelle was bludgeoned into consciousness by the colossal, pale shank of a Scottish receptionist. The invading limb was squeezed through the cloth tube like a kielbasa in the neck of a beer bottle, leaving the bat little choice but to hunker down and wait for the flesh-storm to subside.
Unfortunately, the young receptionist remained maddeningly unaware of the presence of the sorely abused batty for the better part of an hour. It was not until her mother was driving her to work that the nerve signals from her monstrous apparently completed the arduous journey to her brain. The screaming and thrashing that followed was no doubt tortuous for the small creature’s delicate bones and hyper-sensitive ears. One can only imagine the experience must have been to the tiny merkel cells lining the bat’s wings, as the delicate, single-haired structures were meant only to sense subtle changes in air flow, not to endure the scraping of Scotch legs.
The bat was shortly evicted from its new home, and placed into a holding cell, where it was given the humiliating nickname “Rat-bat.”
“My name,” the pipistrelle was quoted, “is Henry Fitzroy-Lennox, and I want to go home.”
Lamentably healthy, the bad wondered how things might have been different, had it been a carrier of rabies. The virus, present in the nerves and saliva, could have been easily passed to the receptionist through a quick bite (or, less likely, but intriguingly possible, via an aerosol through the mucus membranes. The infection would have necessitated an infection of immunoglobulin near the infection site, and another intramuscularly away from the site, followed by several shot of vaccine.
If the receptionist had neglected to seek proper treatment for the Henry’s well-deserved revenge, she could have looked forward to the rapid passage of the virus along her nerves, through her central nervous system, to the ultimate destination of her brain, where it soon would have caused encephalitis—painful and deadly inflammation of the brain.
There’s some small chance that a drug induced coma could have saved her brain from further damage at this point, but very likely the damage would have been done, and irreversible symptoms would soon begin to appear. Initially symptoms would be flu-like, but before long the woman would have suffered from insomnia, confusion, agitation, partial paralysis, paranoia, terror, and severe hallucinations. The receptionist would have become distinctly drippy, as her body would produce excessive amounts of tears and saliva. Her slight paralysis would have prevented her from swallowing, causing the characteristic “foaming at the mouth” of rabies. She may have developed hydrophobia—a fear of water—because the excess fluid in her mouth and inability to swallow could bring her to a panic when presented with liquids to drink (indeed, “hydrophobia” was once synonymous with rabies, so characteristic was the symptom).
Approximately one week after developing symptoms, the receptionist would have died.
So, all in all, it seems that she really dodged a bullet after throwing herself in front of a gun.
Mr. Fitzroy-Lennox was released into the wild (of Aberdeen) at the end of the lucky and inconsiderate woman’s shift. He will never again put himself into a position where a receptionist could abuse him so awfully.
Oh, good. Cyborg monkeys.
in Life Science, Scientific Enterprise, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
The scariest of robots: And how do I know there's a monkey brain inside? Look how angry it is.
Courtesy litmuseOh, you’re probably the same way—how often do you find yourself thinking, “I wish monkeys were more terrifying. Sure, they’re all fanged little were-men, with hand-feet and clever brains, but there must be some way that they could be worse.”
Pretty often, huh?
And, when you watch the news, don’t you constantly find yourself musing, “Hmm. The future is looking a little too bright.”
Well, don’t worry, Buzzketeers. The future promises to be just as dark and bewildering as ever, and horrifying cyber-apes are part of it.
“Now, JGordon, it can’t be that bad.”
Hey! Don’t sound so disappointed; it is that bad. Skeptical? Check it out for yourself—Sciencemen and Techladies have trained two macaque monkeys to control huge robotic arms…using their monkey brains!
Macaques have shown their evil little faces on Science Buzz before (murderous enthusiasm and enthusiastic murder), and I don’t think a refresher on robots is at all necessary—because there’s no escaping them.
Robotic limbs are becoming kind of a big deal these days, but even the most advanced of them rely on nerves remaining in a partial limb, or another part of the body entirely; which muscles to activate for a certain function must be relearned, or an operation like gripping with a robotic hand can be linked to a movement like shrugging the shoulders. It’s tricky to do, and it pushes the brain’s flexibility, especially considering that the only feedback the limb gives might be a hot or poking sensation at the connection point (this in place of a real limb’s feedback, like the pressure, friction, or warmth one might feel through their hands or feet).
Wiring a prosthetic (or any robotic device) directly into the brain—as was the case with these monkeys and their robot arms—overcomes some of the problems with existing prosthetic technology, while adding some new challenges.
With electrodes implanted right into the brain, relearning limb function can come much more quickly and naturally (awful little monkeys can do it, after all). A little too quickly, actually—a monkey at Duke University was similarly wired up this winter to make a robot in Japan walk, and the robotic body actually received the signals to walk before the monkey’s actual body did. Limbs wired the same way could be too fast or powerful for the brain to initially cope with. You might, say, run into a wall before your brain has time to create another route for your robo-legs; the speed of the limb action would be faster than the speed of thought.
However, if the prosthetics operated with a “closed neural loop,” that is to say if they could be made to provide natural feedback to the brain (like heat, pressure, strain, etc), scientists think that the brain could adapt much more quickly, and could even learn whole new pathways of motion. So a person wired up in the right way might be able to control a plane, or a nanosized robot directly with their mind. And it wouldn’t be something where you would think about walking forward and the plane would fly forward—you would learn the plane’s movements of flying, feel the flying, and control it as if you were the plane. That sort of things is still a long way off, and unless new technology is invented to sense and input to the brain in another way, it would require having a bunch of electrodes stuck through your skull and into your neurons.
This, of course, is all scientific blah be de blah, and if distracts from the real issue behind the story: cyborg monkeys. Do you know what the monkeys were actually taught to do with their metal limbs? Feed themselves. How horrible. Why not just teach them how to operate guns with their minds, or remove human brains through our nasal passageways?
In time, that too will come to pass. Look forward to it.
Can you spot the nightmare?: There he is!
Courtesy FasterDixOkay. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Every scene in Willow is frightening. Each scene is, in fact, somehow the most frightening scene. Will all of that become real too?”
Don’t worry, my doves, don’t worry.
You won’t be pursued through the forest by horrible pig dogs.
You won’t be puked on by a magic baby.
Your ethnicity won’t be slandered by drunks and soldiers.
You will not be captured and molested by hideous little rat men.
Monkeylike trolls will not chase you through derelict castles.
You won’t have to watch one of those awful trolls turn inside out and morph into a dragon. And you will not have to fight that dragon.
A shirtless Val Kilmer will not threaten you.
There will not be epic battles, nor attempted baby sacrifices.
You will not be stabbed by a man with a skull mask and an unspeakable caveman face.
A metal brazier will not chase you around a lightning-lit tower.
No wands will be brandished at you.
The town loudmouth will not belittle you in front of your family.
So, all in all, there’s relatively little to be concerned about. That said, there is one more most frightening scene to consider.
Do you remember when the army of Madmartigan and Airk Thaughbaer first laid siege to the fortress of Nockmark? Before Willow was able to fully control the powers of Cherlindrea’s wand and return Fin Raziel to her human, albeit greatly aged, form? You’ll recall that as soon as Airk, Madmartigan and Sorsha confront Bavmorda at the gates of Nockmark, the evil enchantress turns the whole of the attacking army into pigs. Once they were pigs things don’t seem so bad, but the process of turning into pigs was horrible to watch. There were hoof-hands everywhere, and emerging piggy snouts, and tusks, and oinking, and everybody looked really sweaty. It was very frightening to see, and it’s happening in our own plane of existence: human-pig hybrids have been given the go-ahead in England.
Careful examination of the story clearly indicates that half human, half pig creatures like those in Willow are neither the intent here, nor are they actually possible from these experiments. But I tend to believe what I imagine is the case more than what I’m old is the case.
If you do want to waste your time with what you’re told, however, listen up:
The aim of this research is in no way to create a weird pig man. Or a weird man pig. The goal is actually to put human DNA from skin cells into a pig egg that has had its chromosomes removed, and then let it develop into an embryo. In fact, the scientists involved are attempting to create an embryo with no animal DNA left in it at all (kind of ironic, I suppose).
There’s more to it, of course, but the idea is this: the human DNA put into the eggs will be DNA taken from people with a genetic heart disease. As the scientists observe the transformation from egg to embryo, they hope to better understand the molecular mechanics of the disease. That information could then be used to create better treatments for people living with related heart conditions. None of the “hybrids” will develop past the very first stages of being an embryo (basically a featureless sphere of cells).
Or, if you’re into letting your gut and imagination do your critical thinking for you…prepare yourself for Island of Doctor Moreau Earth.
After a hard day of hanging upside-down in the trees, you’d be exhausted, too: Wild sloths are more active than those living in zoos.
Courtesy guppiecat
Turns out sloths don’t really deserve their reputation for laziness. A new study shows that sloths in the wild are active up to six hours a day more than their cousins in captivity, where earlier studies had been conducted. I guess if you’re in a zoo and all your needs are taken care of, there’s just no point in moving around a lot.
I hope you like what you see: because it seems like there's a lot of it in your future.
Courtesy kqedquestThey’re everywhere these days! Giant squid, I mean.
The carcass of a 25-foot giant squid floating off the coast of California was picked up by a research vessel last week.
The body was only just brought to a marine research station, so for the time being all that has been said about it is that it’s big, weighs hundreds of pounds, and has tentacles “as big around as a person’s leg.” Cool, as usual.
How is it that we’re so flush with giant squid corpses these days? What’s the deal here? More squid moving around and dying? More squid? Or more boats and people, and better communication? Or do I just pay too much attention to giant squid (as if that were possible).
The discovery of a new fossil of an ancient four-legged creature with both amphibian and fish traits has been reported in the scientific journal Nature.
Named Ventastega curonica, the extinct animal’s 365 million year old remains were discovered in Latvia in the near-shore marine sediments of the Ketleri Formation. It lived during the Late Devonian about 100 million years before dinosaurs. Only partial remains of Ventastega were recovered, including its skull, shoulder, and pelvis, but by studying the bones' structures scientists were able to determine that the creature had limbs rather than fins.
Fossils of other transition creatures have been found with similar degrees of advancement between fish and tetrapods (animals with four limbs), but those appear to be more fish than tetrapod, while Vestastega appears to be more tetrapod than fish.
Helping release the ladybugs.
Courtesy MeThis past Sunday I released 1500 ladybugs in my backyard with my wife and daughter. It was awesome. I had gone to the local garden center to get some more praying mantis egg cases as I was pretty sure the ones I had put out earlier this spring had died as we had a couple of very late frosts. But, while I was in there they had this bag of ladybugs, and what can I say? They are cool bugs – I couldn’t resist.
Ladybugs are helpful because they eat other insects that are damaging to gardens or crops. In fact, the Mall of America here locally releases thousands of ladybugs in the amusement park to control insect pests. Don’t confuse them with Asian Beetles – ladybugs are a native insect.
The praying mantis is not native to Minnesota, but they are okay to release as they won’t survive the winter. I put out three egg cases earlier this spring with no luck almost two months later, so I bought two more cases as I am reasonably sure it won’t get below freezing again for some time. They are also beneficial as they eat other bugs (but interestingly, not ladybugs). Each egg case could release up to 200 mantises…the potential is there for 1000 mantises. Sweet.
My neighbors are viewing my releases a little skeptically, but I can’t wait to see the mantises and to show them to my daughter, who is not squeamish at all with bugs. She was quite helpful with the ladybugs and thought the whole thing to be quite fun, even when they were crawling all over her arms.
If you are interested in releasing ladybugs or praying mantises in your backyard, there are lots of internet sites that sell them, but also be sure to check your local garden center too.
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