What up, infotainment? The Monitor now appears every week.
In this episode: A scientific sting operation, a reality check on Bush's science budget, AIs programmed for neurosis, and some disturbing sex news out of Iceland.
Created, written & designed by John Pavlus / Screencasts produced by Smashcut Media / Music by Jeff Alvarez
Halo machinima clip from Red vs. Blue
My girlfriend always said I was useless, but this is ridiculous: British scientists at the University of Newcastle have coaxed female embryonic stem cells to develop into primitive sperm cells. They'd previously done it with male bone marrow cells, but this new development opens up the door to lesbian couples having children that share genes from both parents.
That same University of Newcastle team is applying for permission to turn female bone marrow into sperm cells, which one lesbian partner could donate to be turned into stem cells, which would then be used to impregnate the other partner. The next step for Prof. Karim Nayernia and team is to encourage the sperm to undergo meiosis to ensure they have enough genetic material to fertilize an egg. Nayernia first flirted with the possibility of deriving sperm from stem cells when he used sperm taken from male embryonic stem cells to fertilize mice to produce seven offspring, six of which survived to adulthood, though they did suffer from side effects.
“I think, in principle, it will be scientifically possible,” Prof Nayernia told New Scientist.
But Prof. Nayernia's methods aren't without technical and ethical detractors.
Continue reading 'Sperm created from female embryo; men now irrelevant' >
Decorating my apartment was simple — there was already so much graffiti from the crack heads and crust punks who lived here before me that it pretty much took care of itself. Now I have the privilege of possessing an original "Nutinya" as well as a first-print "I did Skeez's mom fer monee" on my wall, complete with visual anatomical references. Both are very rare.
But perhaps I should have put a little more thought into it: The art studio DNA 11 will take your genetic profile, and, for a small fee, render it as "a breathtaking piece of timeless art." Basically, they just print the code on a canvas, but they offer a wide range of colors and design choices. Prices begin at $390 for an 18" x 24" print, but why not just spring for a 36" x 54" for $790?
Once you've chosen your style and color set online, DNA 11 sends you a hyper-stylized "collection kit" with detailed instructions on how to collect your DNA sample that they will eventually use to extract your particular sequence. You then send them back the collection kit via a pre-addressed envelope, and art minions at DNA 11 "1. Extract your DNA and run it on a gel. 2. Capture a perfect, raw digital image from the gel. 3. Destroy your DNA sample," presumably so no gene thieves can make evil clones of you.
Then they digitally enhance and print your DNA artwork on a "high-quality canvas with our in-house Giclee printer," varnish, frame, provide a certificate of authenticity, and send your new piece of narcissistic artwork to you in a crush-proof package.
Continue reading 'Your DNA as art — would you hang it on your wall?' >
image cc Sa_ku_ra
A recent paper in Science has revealed that what you learned in your high school biology class -- that you inherit genes from both your mother and father, and their relative contributions are equal -- is more or less bunk.
Continue reading 'You really are more like your mom (or dad)' >
Wanna partner with a hot immune system? The Scientist has a bizarre interview with the founder of a new website promising-- for just under $2000-- to match you with the immunological sexpot of your dreams, using your DNA sequences for the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).
Matching by MHC isn’t as weird as it sounds-- people apparently find the body odors of those who have MHC alleles which are different from their own to be more attractive than those whose are similar and women, according to one study, have more orgasms with men who are different from them in this fashion.
Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by Danny DeVito:
Pygmies Trade Height For Fecundity
Full transcript after the jump...
Continue reading 'Pygmies Trade Height For Fecundity [podcast]' >
Mice aren't afraid of cats because they're bigger, have sharper teeth, and are natural predators. While that would be reasonable, the real factor is a genetic hardwiring to be terrified at the scent of cats. Japanese scientists, in yet another effort to create super-creatures that will doom us all, have changed that. "Mice are naturally terrified of cats, and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear," said Ko Kobayakawa who leads a research team at Tokyo University.
My cat just had the last bath he's ever getting.
Continue reading 'Scientists create very, very brave mice' >
Genetic change has been coming 100 times faster in the past 5000 years than at any point in previous history say Robert K. Moyzis of the University of California, Irvine, and Henry C. Harpending of the University of Utah. I imagine they then immediately shouted, NBA Jam-style, "He's heating up!" while fantasizing about the inevitability of women who sprout wings and men who shoot lasers out of their nostrils.
While the more prevalent notion has been that evolution has slowed or halted, favoring cultural rather than biological change, 7% of all human genes showed evidence of recent natural selection.
Continue reading 'From poop to laser eyes: Human evolution is rapidly speeding up' >
Oh, those creationists — you gotta give 'em credit for putting up a fight. These brief excerpts from the documentary "A Question of Origins" seek to tackle both astronomy and genetics with a cable-access budget and dime-store logic. A lot of the arguments within the astronomy doc amount to "because it exists, God did it," but I'm particularly fond of the "scientists have no answer as to why four planets have rings, or why each planet is so unique." Ha!
Check out the genetics clip after the jump, and let the laughter continue.
So there's this project, and it's of potentially huge scientific importance.
It's a bold attempt to gather DNA sequences for 100,000 different individuals.
The implications could be huge -- eventually, it's data like this that will allow us to sort out the genetic underpinnings of diseases, intelligence and personality traits. Even trace the relatedness of everyone on Earth.
Participation is free, but not without risk.
At minimum, you'd have to be prepared to deal with the following worst-case scenarios, all of which could be carried out without your permission by malicious third parties:
New data further supports that humans in the Americas arrived in a single wave from Siberia via the Bering Straight land bridge 12,000 years ago, fanning down the coast to today's South America.
Led by the University of Michigan, the study addresses a long debated topic among archaeologists and anthropologists: From where and when did people arrive in the New World. The land bridge's competing hypothesis strongly argues that people came by land and sea in successional waves over the past 30,000 years from various parts of Asia and/or Polynesia.
Continue reading 'Where did the first Americans come from? A new piece in the puzzle.' >
Dogs, chimps, people, rats, mice and cows came first, but finally the finicky feline joins the club of mammals whose DNA has been decoded and sequenced. The breakthrough cat is a four-year-old Abyssinian named Cinnamon who lives in a lab-bred colony at University of Missouri-Columbia. No word on whether cans of tuna or catnip were used in luring Cinnamon down from her genomic pedestal, but as you can tell from the picture, she's way cuter than Dolly.
The now-decoded cat genome will provide insight into both human and feline diseases; as any cat lover knows, cats get hundreds of diseases that are similar to human counterparts, including HIV, leukemia and irritable bowel syndrome (believe it -- it ain't pretty).
Continue reading 'Cat genome sequenced, hit musical adaptation in the works' >
In the fall issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Toño Angulo Daneri visits and writes about Aicuña, an isolated Argentinian town where albinism is more than two hundred times more likely to occur than in the rest of the world. Because of outsider curiosity piqued by a feature article in an Argentine magazine, the town has withdrawn even further from the outside world:
People began to arrive hoping to meet albinos. They wanted to see them, photograph them, find out what they were like and how they looked, to discover what daily life was like in the town they imagined—one filled almost entirely by people with white hair and translucent skin.
Usually, zebrafish make perfect scientific test subjects. But when they were put to work in a recent sleep study, the fish failed miserably. They stayed awake.
Zebrafish with similar protein deficiencies as narcoleptic mammals suffer from insomnia, according to a study published in last week's edition of the journal PloS Biology.
