Category Archives: General Science

More Waking Hours

There is more than one way to extend the total work and leisure enjoyed during one’s life. In addition to living longer, one can sleep less if it doesn’t degrade the rest of the hours. Not too much research on the latter. Here’s a gem in this week’s Economist; the good news:

With the help of Chiara Cirelli, who also works at the University of Wisconsin, Dr Tononi has created a mutant fruit fly that sleeps only two or three hours a night. (A normal fly sleeps between eight and 14 hours.)

The bad news:

…though the mutant fly is capable of learning things, it forgets them within minutes. Healthy flies retain learned information for hours or even days.

Would you trade your memory like in Johnny Mnemonic, Memento or Paycheck for an extra six hours every day? It’s like living an extra 25 years.

“I Brought You Into This World…

…and I can take you out of it.” Remember that old parent’s words of…well, if not wisdom, certainly effectiveness? Well, it may turn out that an asteroid brought dinosaurs into being. Guess it just shows that, either way, you shouldn’t mess with Ma Nature.

I’ve observed before how insular paleontology and geology can be, and how hard it was for Alvarez to get his theory accepted, because earth scientists couldn’t (or didn’t want to) imagine extraterrestrial events having such an impact (literally) on the evolution of the planet and his life. The fact that this theory seems to be taken seriously shows that we’ve started to get over that.

Oh, and because I’m reading an interesting book on the subject, extra points to anyone who knows who Wilkes Land is named after, without looking it up (and no, “Wilkes” is not a sufficient answer).

“I Brought You Into This World…

…and I can take you out of it.” Remember that old parent’s words of…well, if not wisdom, certainly effectiveness? Well, it may turn out that an asteroid brought dinosaurs into being. Guess it just shows that, either way, you shouldn’t mess with Ma Nature.

I’ve observed before how insular paleontology and geology can be, and how hard it was for Alvarez to get his theory accepted, because earth scientists couldn’t (or didn’t want to) imagine extraterrestrial events having such an impact (literally) on the evolution of the planet and his life. The fact that this theory seems to be taken seriously shows that we’ve started to get over that.

Oh, and because I’m reading an interesting book on the subject, extra points to anyone who knows who Wilkes Land is named after, without looking it up (and no, “Wilkes” is not a sufficient answer).

“I Brought You Into This World…

…and I can take you out of it.” Remember that old parent’s words of…well, if not wisdom, certainly effectiveness? Well, it may turn out that an asteroid brought dinosaurs into being. Guess it just shows that, either way, you shouldn’t mess with Ma Nature.

I’ve observed before how insular paleontology and geology can be, and how hard it was for Alvarez to get his theory accepted, because earth scientists couldn’t (or didn’t want to) imagine extraterrestrial events having such an impact (literally) on the evolution of the planet and his life. The fact that this theory seems to be taken seriously shows that we’ve started to get over that.

Oh, and because I’m reading an interesting book on the subject, extra points to anyone who knows who Wilkes Land is named after, without looking it up (and no, “Wilkes” is not a sufficient answer).

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Apparently, our ancestors and chimps just couldn’t keep their hands off each other:

The researchers, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, propose that humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for about 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines.

That genetic collaboration then gave rise to two separate branches, one leading to humans and the other to chimps.

This will no doubt drive the creationists ape.

[Via The Speculist]

Learn Something New Every Day

I did not know this. There is a breeding population of Burmese pythons in the Everglades.

[Thursday morning follow up]

Here’s more on the story from AP:

Overwhelmed with pets that eat more than they do, python owners decide to release their snakes into the wild. It’s so common in the Everglades, Snow’s had to start a python hot line.

And there the Asian natives breed and find a comfortable home in the Everglades’ water, heat and vegetation. They have no predators.

Pythons have also discovered suburbia, said Capt. Ernie Jillson, who helps run the Miami-Dade County fire department’s snake squad. They catch around 20 pythons a year.

Three years ago, a 15-footer stopped traffic when he spread himself across a four-lane road. Last year, another 15-footer gave a 60-year-old woman quite the jolt when she walked outside to find the snake sunbathing on her patio. And rescue workers had to save a cat from the 10-foot python that was chasing it around the backyard pool.

Lawmaker Poppell says he’s no snake lover and doesn’t understand people’s fascination with the slithery creatures.

“How can you want something for a pet that looks at you when it’s hungry?” he said. “I don’t want something to look at me as food, I’d rather they (pets) come to me for food.”

Broken Drain

Don’t you just hate it when your planet leaks?

Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology have calculated that about 1.12 billion tonnes of water leaks into the Earth each year. Although a lot of water also moves in the other direction, not enough comes to the surface to balance what is lost.

Eventually, lead researcher Shigenori Maruyama and his colleagues believe, all of it will disappear.

A billion years, eh? Better hurry and pass a treaty against it or something.

Let me be the first, if not the last, to blame George Bush.