15 posts · 13,135 views
Science writer, enthusiast, living in Los Angeles.
The Lay Scientist
3 posts
Natural Selections
12 posts
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- April 29, 2011
- 05:09 PM
- 667 views
FULL OR EMPTY BEER: WHICH IS THE BEST WEAPON?
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
It's likely that if I ever witness a barroom brawl that culminates in someone's head getting smashed with a beer bottle, I'm drunk too, and the gravity of the situation is lost to the spectacle of it all. But, if i was a sober witness to the climactic crack, after everyone was deemed safe I might wonder, "Was the beer full or empty? Would it matter?" I'm just a curious person, you know.
Actually, I got the idea from researchers in Bern, Switzerland who decided to test it, applying a scient........ Read more »
Bolliger, S., Ross, S., Oesterhelweg, L., Thali, M., & Kneubuehl, B. (2009) Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 16(3), 138-142. DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013
- March 1, 2011
- 06:23 PM
- 974 views
High school student does some hard science with UCLA researchers
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
If 8-year-olds can publish a scientific paper about bee behavior in the journal Biology Letters, then high school students ought to be capable of acting like full-fledged professional scientists, right?
Alexander Jaffe proves it true. The Los Angeles high school student gave up 30 hours a week of party time over the course of two summers to work for UCLA evolutionary biologist Michael Alfaro: looking at turtle and tortoise (chelonian) shell size and asking the question--what is the optimal size........ Read more »
Jaffe AL, Slater GJ, & Alfaro ME. (2011) The evolution of island gigantism and body size variation in tortoises and turtles. Biology letters. PMID: 21270022
- February 15, 2011
- 09:45 PM
- 1,267 views
Revival of the cell phone vs. the brain?
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
I don't want to hear it again--cell phone waves are harmful to your brain...stick your face close enough for long enough and you'll turn to mush. But, there's a new paper out there that I'm afraid might catch on as fodder for the pseudoscience susceptible.[Just cool animation. Not part of the study.]Scientists at Caltech recently found that weak electrical fields in the brain might cause neurons to fire in sync. It's really kinda neat. Researchers dropped a cluster of minuscule electrodes into a........ Read more »
Anastassiou CA, Perin R, Markram H, & Koch C. (2011) Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons. Nature neuroscience, 14(2), 217-23. PMID: 21240273
- December 25, 2010
- 11:51 PM
- 866 views
HeLa, telomeres, and the death of my free time
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
I haven't posted much lately. It's because I'm obsessively reading Rebecca Skloot's new book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and spending all my free time this week curled up with it (my husband is jealous.) Crazy wild events keep unfolding, and I can't put it down.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through, just past a chapter that wonders why the cells derived from Henrietta's cervical cancer won't die. What makes them 'immortal', thriving in research labs for decades? The answer might be in thei........ Read more »
Jaskelioff M, Muller FL, Paik JH, Thomas E, Jiang S, Adams AC, Sahin E, Kost-Alimova M, Protopopov A, Cadiñanos J.... (2010) Telomerase reactivation reverses tissue degeneration in aged telomerase-deficient mice. Nature. PMID: 21113150
- November 18, 2010
- 11:15 AM
- 919 views
Does light controls your mood?
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a study involving mice...and circadian rhythms: too much low light (day or night ) or insufficient bright light (during the day) can mess with circadian rhythms and cause bodily fatigue, jet lag, seasonal effective disorder, whatever you want to call it. It made me glad I walk to work in the bright sunshine every day and sad that my bedroom wall has big floor-to-ceiling windows.
This week, I read another study involving hamsters...and circadian rhythms: too much........ Read more »
Altimus CM, Güler AD, Alam NM, Arman AC, Prusky GT, Sampath AP, & Hattar S. (2010) Rod photoreceptors drive circadian photoentrainment across a wide range of light intensities. Nature neuroscience, 13(9), 1107-12. PMID: 20711184
- October 28, 2010
- 02:45 PM
- 883 views
Rods (and low light) set circadian rhythm, too
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
I always get a little groggy when flying cross-country. My circadian clock gets knocked off it's firm pedestal and starts jumping rope inside my head and doing handsprings through my body. To begin with, light set this clock. And I smash it by leaving California at 10AM and chasing the darkness until I arrive on the east coast 4 hours later at night.
Ugh. My rods and cones hurt.
Until recently, the color-seeing, bright-light-active cone structure in the eye was the main gateway for programming ........ Read more »
Altimus CM, Güler AD, Alam NM, Arman AC, Prusky GT, Sampath AP, & Hattar S. (2010) Rod photoreceptors drive circadian photoentrainment across a wide range of light intensities. Nature neuroscience, 13(9), 1107-12. PMID: 20711184
- October 12, 2010
- 02:05 PM
- 961 views
The deaf have super vision, and other tales of neural plasticity
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
Ever been asked--if you had to choose, would you rather be deaf or blind? Its a futile hypothetical dilemma (as if the choice is ever available to anyone to make) that was probably first posed by some perpetually dramatic and irrevocably bored teenager OR--could it be--by a neuroscientist!
Perhaps we cherry pick vision and hearing for our speculative crises because they are particularly important to us and essential to achieve something our species is known for: high level mobility and naviga........ Read more »
Lomber SG, Meredith MA, & Kral A. (2010) Cross-modal plasticity in specific auditory cortices underlies visual compensations in the deaf. Nature neuroscience. PMID: 20935644
Poulos AM, Ponnusamy R, Dong HW, & Fanselow MS. (2010) Compensation in the neural circuitry of fear conditioning awakens learning circuits in the bed nuclei of the stria terminalis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(33), 14881-6. PMID: 20679237
- October 4, 2010
- 04:36 PM
- 639 views
Choosing mates: do we REALLY want what we say we want?
by Casey Rentz in The Lay Scientist
"Study shows real partners are no match for ideal mates," says a Sheffield University press release I read last week. So, sometimes we settle for less than George Clooney or Heidi Klum.
--
read more... Read more »
Alexandre Courtiol1, Sandrine Picq, Bernard Godelle1, Michel Raymond, Jean-Baptiste Ferdy. (2010) From Preferred to Actual Mate Characteristics: The Case of Human Body Shape. PLoS ONE. info:/
- September 28, 2010
- 02:54 PM
- 843 views
HEAVY METAL SHIELDS FLOWERS FROM DISEASE
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
Look out! This little white flower can protect itself...in a major way. Alpine pennycress, a dandelion-looking plant found growing in the dirt next to former mines can absorb metal and use it to shield itself from disease, says a recent study in PLoS Pathogens. Why are we always so surprised to witness a seemingly primitive plant or animal adapting to things in post-industrial human societies? It's their world, too.
Anyway, back to the story--Zinc, nickel, or cadmium, if sucked up in high enoug........ Read more »
Fones H, Davis CA, Rico A, Fang F, Smith JA, & Preston GM. (2010) Metal hyperaccumulation armors plants against disease. PLoS pathogens, 6(9). PMID: 20838462
- September 20, 2010
- 01:17 PM
- 770 views
OUCH! First ID of proteins involved in pressure-type pain
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
Ouch! I just pinched my finger in the silverware drawer...again. The signal travels up my peripheral nerve fibers, contacts nociceptors, and proceed into my thalamus, insular cortex (which distunguishes pain from things like itch and cold), and other places in my brain. Soon, I'm shouting PAIN! PAIN! PAIN! But, until now, scientists had nothing but guesses as to the molecular domino that starts the cascade of effects. What happens directly after a pinch?
One team of scientists may have a ........ Read more »
Coste B, Mathur J, Schmidt M, Earley TJ, Ranade S, Petrus MJ, Dubin AE, & Patapoutian A. (2010) Piezo1 and Piezo2 Are Essential Components of Distinct Mechanically Activated Cation Channels. Science (New York, N.Y.). PMID: 20813920
- September 13, 2010
- 01:28 AM
- 771 views
MAX-C: What's the right way to do sample return?
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
Upcoming Mars rover mission, yet to be greenlit, but has an interesting strategy..... Read more »
Lisa Pratt, David Beaty, Abigail Allwood. (2010) The Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C): A Potential Rover Mission for 2018. Astrobiology, 10(2), 127-163. DOI: 10.1089/ast.2010.0462
- July 16, 2010
- 08:06 PM
- 712 views
Which came first, the scientist or the sensationalist?
by Casey Rentz in The Lay Scientist
The best headline I read last week is from Metafilter blog: "Scientists prove that lunch came before breakfast." In fact, journalists at major news sites all around the web reported that scientists have solved the infamous chicken-and-egg problem.
Which came first? The chicken. Definitively.
--
read more... Read more »
Freeman CL, Harding JH, Quigley D, & Rodger PM. (2010) Structural Control of Crystal Nuclei by an Eggshell Protein. Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English), 49(30), 5135-5137. PMID: 20540126
- July 9, 2010
- 03:38 PM
- 967 views
NEWS: Bermuda rock lizard takes an long journey
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
Imagine you're a lizard living under a rock on the coast-land of South Carolina (officially a state in, oh, 50, 000 years.) You're small--about 3 inches from snout to tail.
You scurry around hunting crickets and crustaceans, bask in the morning sun, and don't expect to leave your coastal abode for your entire 20-year life. But, low and behold, the sky darkens, the wind kicks up in furious, chaotic sweeps. A full blown hurricane picks you up, whirls you around, and drops you back down on t........ Read more »
Brandley MC, Wang Y, Guo X, Nieto Montes de Oca A, Fería Ortíz M, Hikida T, & Ota H. (2010) Bermuda as an evolutionary life raft for an ancient lineage of endangered lizards. PloS one, 5(6). PMID: 20614024
- June 29, 2010
- 05:49 PM
- 990 views
NEWS: Texas canyon carved in just three days
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
Normally, geologic events happen over hundreds of thousands of years. In January, I was surprised to read that the Mediterranean sea may have filled with ocean water in a mere two years. (Check out that post at the Lay Scientist.)
Again--I am surprised to find that in a mere three days, floodwaters carved this impressive 2.2-kilometer-long and 7-meter-deep canyon in solid Texas bedrock. In 2002, a particularly menacing rainstorm sent water gushing over Canyon Dam in central Texas, carving thi........ Read more »
Lamb, M., & Fonstad, M. (2010) Rapid formation of a modern bedrock canyon by a single flood event. Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo894
- June 23, 2010
- 03:31 PM
- 906 views
Football fandom--psychological diff between Scottish and British
by Casey Rentz in The Lay Scientist
Gooooaaal!
Cheering for your home team evidently solidifies your national identity if you're Scottish, while English tend to see their fan-dom as an individual preference, finds scientist Jackie Abell at Lancaster University.
This sounds like a study my 12 year old nephew would come up with. From the paper..
Support for the England football team is
not necessarily an expression of collective social identity and pride.
--
read more... Read more »
Jackie Abell. (2010) ‘They seem to think “We're better than you”’: Framing football support as a matter of ‘national identity’ in Scotland and England. British Journal of Social Psychology. info:/
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