Unwind The Helix

SpaceX Falcon Heavy launching with 4 MerlinD1 Boosters For our final assignment in this Science writing class we have to write a feature story with a human element to draw readers in, I chose Elon Musk’s success in the privatization of space craft development and launch. Unfortunately this week I won’t be talking about that, apologies. I want to take a break from writing about current assignments because I am already tired of it and instead talk about what I wrote as a comment in another classmate’s blog. Book review round two, that’s right reader, today I will be talking about my favorite science fiction series, Ender’s game, and the trilogy that follows. For those that haven’t heard, the 2013 movie was actually adapted from a book of the same name from 1985, WOW. That book, written by Orson Scott Card, had genius boy Andrew Ender Wiggins thrust into a space militant training facility to develop the best minds into tactical war geniuses for the eventual return of the formics,...

This week’s post comes after a very stressful week for me; exams, papers, and scrambling to get ready for graduation. At the end of Thursday I ended up going home for Alec’s birthday (my little brother who just turned 14), the weekend, by contrast was very relaxing. Alec is much different than me or my older brother, probably because of the large age gap, he is obsessed with brand name clothes and shoes and the like. While having dinner on Saturday, we began to ridicule him for looking up and dreaming about $2000 Nikes, Supreme gear and Bathing Ape, so while looking for a topic for this blog, the latter brand took my interest, Above is a video about Japan’s famous “bathing apes”; the macaques. The video starts off describing the history of how a group of macaques started using naturally occurring hotsprings in the colder northern region of japan. The macaques began using these hotsprings in human establishments, so to keep both groups happy, locals built a site just for the macaque...

 A couple weeks ago I wrote a preliminary blog post talking about a book review on Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness . I skimmed through the book and wrote a rough draft last week. I was originally planning to write a simple summary of the first couple of chapters but the goal is for readers to read the actual book, not my interpretation. Therefore I’ll just use the first three chapters to highlight why you should read the first three chapters and hopefully more. Meeting Across the Tree of Life The first chapter of this book clarifies most importantly, that the author is foremost a philosopher by trade, while there is a level of depth to the explanations of evolution, neurology and the like it is not inaccessible. The way the author, Peter Godfrey-Smith writes is informative, interesting, and thought provoking. The chapter begins by sharing two fascinating accounts of curious interactions between cephalopods (subgroup of mollusks inclu...

This semester I am taking a Vertebrate Zoology class and the professor introduced us to a Facebook page, " Wildlife Issues " that has been a useful resource for keeping up with current events in conservation. For this week's blog post I was browsing the page and was surprised by a header on the timeline: " Florida's Solution to its Invasive Iguana Problem: Smash their Skulls in ". Despite it's gory implications, the disposal of these iguanas is definitely a necessity, as explained in the article by the Washington Post . The Iguanas were originally native to a broad area ranging from Mexico to South America to the Caribbean and were brought to Florida as pets around 1966. Since then they have spread from Miami to the Keys and as far as Palm Beach. To address the “smash their skulls in” portion, many biologists are going out with bolt guns to kill the iguanas, while the in-the-head portion is to reduce the suffering of the animals. The reason there is...

A recent article highlighted in Nature Journey documents a new find in the Antarctic, a huge population of Ad é lie penguins on the Danger Islands . This population numbers in around 1.5 million individuals, that were previously not known to researchers. This hotspot for penguins was found with the assistance of aerial drones to access parts of the Antarctic Peninsula that were previously inaccessible by boat. This finding gives proof of concept to this method of data acquisition, and leads researchers to look in more remote places for tracking species more closely. Contrary to the general trend associated with climate change reducing Antarctic ice mass, this population of penguins has been largely unaffected; they will however, be considered in ongoing efforts of conservation due to their large significance in the region. Throughout the continent, Ad é lie penguin populations have decreased as much as 70 due to rising air temp and decreased ice packing’s effect on prey availabi...

I have been sick for the past week and half of my spring break, so I am double posting today to make up for the lack of content. Soon after we finished our final draft for our interview assignment we began getting ready for a book review. My professor presented a list of books within the last year or two that would make good choices for a paper, and one of them, Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of Cephalopods instantly grabbed my attention. I have always been interested in intelligence in animals other than humans and I decided on the spot to stop looking and pick that one. Upon further research, Squid Empire isn’t available at my school so I looked into what else I could find on cephalopods related to their intelligence. An equally interesting title, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness , by Peter Godfrey-Smith, came up in my search and I requested it to be shipped to my campus. A scientist with philosophic leanings, Godfrey-Smith discusses the cep...

Least Weasels as drawn by skilled illustrator In a recent study in Science Journal, climate researchers L. Scott Mills, et al, are using seasonal coat changes as an example to demonstrate the need for adaptive rescue strategies for saving species from human initiated climate change. Many species in snow covered areas have adapted to seasonal snow by possessing white coats in the winter and then shedding them for brown coats when snow is less prevalent, this trait is known as winter coat polymorphism. The study tracked the coloration of four species of hares, three weasles, and arctic wolves in relation to their geographical location and annual snow cover. Using over 2500 samples from over 60 countries the researchers determined ranges for the species sampled where there are white only, brown only, and both white and brown. This research is important for conservationists to recognize the effect adaption has on fitness in changing climates. It recognizes in discreet ways how ...

Dr. Niederman For an upcoming assignment we are interviewing scientists about their work. In my last year of University I had to confront the research requirement and finally got hold of Dr. Niederman, a professor in the microbio and biochem department.­­ I had been emailing several different labs for months and remembered that my friend had been working with Dr. Niederman. I showed my interests, and got set up in the lab in the first week of the semester, although I had to change my schedule to also include his solar energy class. It took a lot for me to get out of my comfort zone to apply but he has been very helpful and accommodating, along with the other undergrads working alongside him. Chemical pathway of the photosystems of purple photosynthetic bacteria ­Dr. Niederman’s research is primarily concerned with the application of purple photosynthetic bacteria to generate electric currents and biofuels. In addition to the papers I was given to read for lab, the ...

Illustration of Tasmanian tiger from Natural Geographic New studies recently uncovered an intact genome of a recently declared extinct species of marsupial called the Tasmanian tigers, this discovery has led to new information related to natural extinction. The research, “Secrets from Beyond Extinction: The Tasmanian Tiger” , conducted in association with the University of Melbourne describes the university’s effort to reestablish a currently extinct species. After being hunted to near extinction, museums everywhere began searching for specimen to be put on display. Decades later with the advancement of genetic techniques and the development of cloning, Professor Andrew Pask put together a team of scientists to comb their records for intact, well preserved samples of the Tasmanian tiger. The article remarks on the successes of preserving and sequencing the genome of a sample of a Tasmanian tiger pup, which went extinct over a century ago. Acquiring an intact genome is the first s...

Artist's (mine) rendition of the marbled crayfish   First of all, hello and welcome to my blog “Unwind the Helix”. The goal of this blog is loosely to discuss recent events in the world of biology, genetics, and evolution. While working on a full length piece on conservation and our role in the ecosystem, I came across a news article discussing the marbled crayfish, “ Geneticists Unravel Secrets of Super-invasive Crayfish ”. The main reason for this sensationalist title is due to the origin of this species and the unique traits they picked up. Photograph: Fredrik von Erichsen It is thought that this relatively new species was first observed/ created in the 90’s in a tank in Germany when two distant crayfish species accidentally happened to breed. The resultant mixed crayfish has three sets of chromosomes, as opposed to humans and most other animals (tripoid vs diploid), and is able to breed by itself, a trait called parthenogenesis. Because it can effectively clo...