Out of the world, into the fire

The image that wet a thousand astronomer's pants, Gliese 877. Courtesy of Trent Schindler

I know I usually focus on things on this earth, but I have to report on this. An exoplanet (out of this solar system) has been discovered that possibly has liquid water.

Imagine you were on this planet. An inhabitant, much like us, congratulates you on reaching such a distant place, some twenty odd light-years without liquid water to sustain you. You talk about his planet’s politics, a little about how his nine to five is. Then, he offers you a baloney sandwich. You take a bite, and promptly die.

What just happened? Copper poisoning.

See, planets are attributed different amounts of resources. Mars has an abundance of Iron, and Venus has too much sulfur. The point is, we are evolved to life on this planet, but no where else- Unless the planet is exactly like ours, Earth.

You don’t need to look far to find it. Cows, they do better in iron rich environments, like the American Midwest , the southern part of South America, and the plains of Europe. Sheep live better in mountainous habitats like Colorado and Greece. Why doesn’t it follow to reason that we should thrive only in the confines of planet Earth?

Sadly, although astronomers have the habit of wetting their pants every time liquid water is found outside of Earth, that may not be enough to support life as we know it. A major problem with many scientists and researchers is that they’re extensively trained in one subject, but often confused about another. (Some wags say that researchers and scientists are also not trained on how to communicate with people, but that’s neither here nor there.)

A side note- a lot has been made over the recent plagiarism spate at the Umass Daily Collegian. Being a journalist, I’m deeply disappointed that someone didn’t bother to accept that cardinal rule of journalism- Do Your Own Writing. As a biologist, I’m happy to tell you that the article in question is a pile of BS.

If you’ll recall a post I made on bacterial evolution, germs that occur naturally on piggies are probably a lot less harmful than germs that occur naturally on pigs that have also gained antibiotic resistance.

There are a few real lessons to learn here. Avoid taking other’s work and passing it off as your own, and if you eat pork, consider going free range, and cook your bacon well. You’ll thank me later on all counts.

Some fun with the movies

If you're around my age, you may remember a childhood movie called The Land Before Time. It's a cute movie about cute singing dinosaurs. It is also full of filthy lies.

Since I'm quickly getting to the end of my school year, I'd like to take the fun and easy route of talking about dinosaurs and their portrayal in the movies.

What you learned from Godzilla: Dinosaurs were slow moving, stupid killing machines.
Verdict: False
In an act that I find funny for several reasons, Toho studios designed everyone's favorite monster in a rubber suit after what people thought dinosaurs were like in the 1950s. As such, one of Japan's most favorite citizens was shown as a slow walking, tail dragging beast with nothing on the mind but death.
At the time, Paleontologists thought that dinosaurs were probably just oversized lizards. With the finding of transitional fossils and dino DNA, we now think that dinosaurs were something of a mix between crocodiles and birds. Behaviorists think that dinos behaved more like birds in terms of intelligence and being warm blooded.

What you learned from Jurassic Park: If Velociraptors were reintroduced to this world, we would all be dead.
Verdict? False
The raptors from the movie never really existed. The was a dinosaur about the same size and build, but it was called Utah Raptor. Apparently, velociraptor sounds scarier. The truth is, if you ran into a velocirator, you'd be able to punt it.
These raptors were around the size of a big turkey. Interestingly enough, the might have looked like one too. Many raptor fossils show feather imprints.
Jeff Goldblum was afraid of this guy? Credit goes to Marmelad

What you learned from The Land Before Time: Long necked dinosaurs could lift their heads up to pick leaves off of trees (obstensively to give to their children)
Verdict: False
When you raise your arm, your heart needs to pump at a greater rate. If your arm was 30 feet long and required hundreds of gallons of blood in it at all times, well, that could raise blood pressure by...a lot. A brontosaur lifting its head to tree level would lead to it immediately passing out, or possibly a dino anurysim.


What you learned from The Land Before Time: Dinosaurs could sing
Verdict: absolutely, unbelievablely... True.

What have I been saying all this post? Courtesy of Soto Ayam.

Convergent Evolution

Time for a confession. Those American Cheetahs I was talking about in the last post? They weren't really cheetahs.

They had a build like a cheetah and probably behaved like cheetahs, but DNA evidence taken fro fossils suggest that they were much more closely related to Mountain Lions.

How does a mountain lion come to look like a cheetah? Through something called convergent evolution.

The theory of convergent evolution basically proposes that given enough time to adapt to their surroundings, a species will exist in the form that best suits its habitat.

If a big, predatory mammal lives in an environment with a bunch of small, fast moving prey, you can bet that you will see a few common changes:

• To deal with getting enough oxygen to conduct a high speed chase, a fast predator needs a giant chest cavity. Huge lungs are needed to take in the air, and a big, strong heart is needed to pump blood throughout the body. Animals with big hearts and lungs will be able to chase down more prey, allowing them to have more offspring with barrel chests. The process continues until you start seeing the deep chest characteristic of greyhounds and cheetahs
• Another thing often associated with a high speed lifestyle, a short, flat face with wide nostrils, also appears in both cheetahs and miracinonyx. This is another adaption for increasing oxygen uptake.

Something interesting about convergent evolution is that it shows there is a general body type that goes best with a lifestyle.

Take two radically different animals- hippos and alligators- that live in the same environment. Due to the need to know what is going on above the waterline, both animals have eyes positioned on top of their heads.
Hippos and crocodiles both have eyes on top of their heads, despite being from two different classes. Courtesy of Paul Williams


Or think about three other groups- seals tuna, and the now extinct ichthyosaurs- Even though mammals, fish and reptiles have little in common, all three of these animals share a bullet shaped body. This is an adaption for swimming, as the shape is perfectly hydrodynamic. Natural selection showing us that there is a "perfect" adaption for a lifestyle.

Where the antelope play

If you will be so kind as to look back in my blog a month ago, you will see something I did on vestigial traits- The odds and ends of your body that serve no good today, but may have been useful in your deep past.

Today, I think I'll show how these traits can be more than just extra teeth or a misplaced bone. Take the Antelope that live on the plains of America, for example. These little powerhouses may look a little like a midget deer, but they can run like the dickens. Where most animals living on the North American plains can't run more than about 25 mph, an antelope can almost reach highway speeds.

Why is this?

As it turns out, the antelope's ability to run like a Kenyan triathlete on crack is rooted in their species' birth, a mere 3 million years ago. During this period of American History, cheetahs stalked the plains of Kansas.

Well, they weren't cheetahs, exactly, they were a relative of pumas called Miracinonyx, (that's a post for later) but a cat that is perfectly engineered for running is still a major threat to an antelope's survival. What happened? Only the fastest antelopes would survive. After the Miracinonyx's still unknown demise, the antelope retained it's running speed.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. You might have seen this situation 3 million years ago in Kansas. Picture courtesy of Jerry Friedman

Because the antelope can outrun any predator alive today by a healthy margin, it is thought that their top speed will eventually be lower. Evolution works on a "just good enough" function, and the amount of muscle needed to run at highway speeds simply takes too much energy to grow.

Richard Clarke Talk

April second saw one of the first archetypal spring days in Amherst Massachusetts. With temperatures in the mid-sixties and a cloudless sky, one would expect the students of the University of Massachusetts to be outside, enjoying the sun. And yet, last Thursday saw over two hundred students of various majors and backgrounds crowd into a stuffy auditorium on the southeast side of campus to watch a giant in the world of American foreign policy- Richard Clarke.

Clarke was there to give a talk titled, "Thee missing pieces of the three 21st century wars: Iraq, Afghanistan, and cyberspace." For 45 minutes, Clarke outlined the significance each had in foreign policy and gave his critiques on the fading memories of George W. Bush’s America. A short question and answer session followed.

It is impossible to review America’s recent battles with terrorists across the globe without Clarke coming up. He began working for the State department during the Reagan administration and continued the job under George H.W. Bush. He gained a positive reputation due to his work in negotiating diplomatic ties during Desert Storm, and was selected for counter-terrorism operations during the Clinton years.

The second Bush administration saw Clarke’s influence start to decay. A change up in the Whitehouse staff demoted Clarke to the capacity of special advisor, where he claims that he was ignored. Clarke resigned from the administration after the invasion of Iraq, something that Clarke maintains had pushed the US away from the goal of capturing Osama bin Laden.

Clarke’s problems with the former Bush administration were apparent in his hour-long talk, which went over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the new threat of cyber warfare. Starting with the war in Iraq, Clarke made a point by point summary of how the war had allowed bin Laden to escape and escalated the likelihood of further terror attacks.

Furthermore, he argued, despite recent gains in stability throughout Iraq, it was not in the United State’s best interests to go there in the first place. “Do not allow the creeping revisionism to set in,” he stated. “Do not let people say that (invading Iraq) was a good idea. The truth is that George Bush lied to us.”

Clarke went on to describe foreign policy problems arising from the now-faltering war in Afghanistan, as well as unprotected computer networks- something that he says allows everyone with an internet connection access to the most vital parts of society. Clark gave step by step instructions on how to topple a power grid using nothing but a desktop, demonstrating how easy it could be. Once again, he accused the Bush presidency of sweeping these problems under the rug.

The feud between Clarke and the Bush administration is both bitter and well documented, with highly partisan viewpoints on who was in the right. The dispute began soon after Clarke’s demotion, and continues to the present.

Clarke maintains that he forewarned Condoleezza Rice of possible attacks by bin Laden’s terror group, al-Qaeda, while those in the Bush administration claim that he was, “out of the loop” for terror briefings. After the attacks, Clarke claims that president Bush asked him for any proof that now-deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could have been involved, something that the former administration has denied.

There appears to be little bad blood between Clarke and the Obama administration, with Clarke mentioning on Thursday’s talk that the he appreciated “Obama isn’t waging a war against an abstract word like terror- he’s concentrating on al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks.” Clark also proved invaluable to the Obama transition team.

There’s a saying that goes, “History is written by the victors.” By the looks of it, the battle over who was right on the War against Terror is still being fought.

For more on Clarke's views of cyber-warfare, please check out this video

Up in Arms

The Rough Skinned Newt- one of the most poisonous animals on the planet. Courtesy of the USGS

Last week, I mentioned that evolution is an ongoing process. In the case of germs and humans, bacteria may develop a more lethal strain, and humans develop genes more adept at avoiding this type of infection. This type of co-evolution is called the evolutionary arms race, and has been seen in many, many examples in nature.

For my first example, I would like to visit the rough-skinned newt. This amphibian is a smallish lizard like animal that lives around fresh water bodies in the Northwest coast. An interesting side note to them is that they are one of the most poisonous animals on earth.

A somewhat dubious story says that three men whom had gone camping were found dead, huddled around a coffee pot with one newt inside of it. What is known is that the poison produced by the newt’s skin is called a tetrodotoxin. This nasty toxin has no known antidote, and kills by stopping the heart’s muscles from contracting. It is 100 percent fatal.

Only one animal can eat this newt with few side effects; the garter snakes that live in the area. It is thought that both the newt’s extreme toxicity and the garter snake’s immunity are due to the evolutionary arms race.

The concept is quite similar to the cold war arms race of the 20th century. The snakes gain a gene that allows it an immunity to the poison of the newt . The newt’s offspring that have the most toxins are the least likely to be eaten by snakes- and pass those high toxicity genes to their offspring. The garter snake’s most successful offspring are subsequently the ones that are more likely to resist the tetrodotoxin.

The arms race keeps going until the newt is the most poisonous animal on earth, and the snake can consume enough tetrodotoxin to kill 20 full grown people. And then, it keeps going.

The concept of the evolutionary arms race has also been dubbed, “The Red Queen Hypothesis.” It is called this because of a line the Red Queen character has in the famous tale Alice in Wonderland, “You need to keep running just to keep up.”

This theory states that evolution is a constantly moving battle between those who need lunch and those that would be lunch. As long as both species survive, you will keep seeing camouflage getting better, teeth getting sharper, and running speeds going up. But that is a subject for next time.

Looking at Evolution through Germs part: I

Or, screwed, screwed, we are all screwed.

When it comes to talking about evolution, I like to go big and old. I mostly base my research on whales with legs, giant snakes, and dinosaurs because , well, I geek out over big animals that lived a while ago. If I could figure out why, I probably wouldn’t have this blog.

Today I’d like to switch things up and talk about evolution that’s happening in modern times, sometimes under our own noses.

Bacteria. The word itself sounds kind of icky. Bacteria themselves are one celled organisms so tiny that more than 100,000 of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Something really interesting about them is exactly how they reproduce and how fast they reproduce.

Bacteria make more of themselves through a neat trick called binary fission. That is, they split (fission) into two (binary). Both copies have they exact same DNA, which I am required by science writer code to call, “the building blocks of life.” Some species of bacteria can double their population in 20 minutes by way of binary fission.


Bacteria reproduction.

What brings us to the subject of evolution is mutation in bacterial reproduction. Evolution itself is tiny genetic mutations spread out through many, many generations. Since generations in bacteria last hours instead of years, these creatures make excellent subjects for evolution.

Mutations are generally a bad thing. Downs syndrome is a mutation. Sickle cell anemia is another one. Sometimes mutations can be neutral, like blue eyes or pointer toes that are longer than big toes. Every once in a great while, something beneficial comes out of a mutation. For many organisms, beneficial mutations typically come in the form of eating or reproducing more efficiently. For bacteria, it’s most often antibiotic resistance.

We live in a world covered in germs, and a world covered in antibiotics. We put antibiotics in ourselves when we get sick, we put antibiotics in the animals we eat, we put antibiotics in our soap. It’s little wonder that when one of these fast-mutating “bugs” gets a gene promoting antibiotic resistance, the new type spreads like wildfire. As you will see in the next post, this can lead to some very hairy situations.