Sunspots 973

Things I have spotted that might be of interest to others.

Scientific American points out that war is a major source of substances that lead to climate change.

A  Conversation writer tells us that the biggest danger from Tik Tok is not acquisition of data, but something more fundamental.

Another Conversation writer compares the speed of the Supreme Court's reaction to the current situation with the speed of responding to Nixon's events.

... and another Conversation writer discusses the complaints against TikTok, and points out that these problems existed well before TikTok was available. (I am not a TikTok subscriber.)

NPR tells us about dreaming.

Scientific American reports on research on the evolution of new species of cuckoos, adapted to their  parasitic life style.

Sunspots 489

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Christianity: It's not out yet, but here's a blog post warning Christians not to take the Left Behind movie too seriously.
A splendid lecture on how God is seen through nature.
Computing: Be careful of pirated e-books. Apparently, some of them can hack your Amazon account.
Relevant has posted a map showing all the web-connected devices on the planet. Interesting, but perhaps not terribly surprising -- web use is concentrated in a few places.

Science: One of the advantages of being sexual is that the offspring have new and unique combinations of the genes of their parents. But Wired reports on a microscopic organism that takes such recombination much further than any other known living thing.
Wired also reports on a parasitic worm that invades the eyestalks of snails, so it can be eaten. Really. There's a short video.
Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 485

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: A post in Relevant says that complaining is a spiritual problem.
Education: National Public Radio reports on Turnitin, a service that checks the papers submitted by college students, for plagiarism.
Health: An amazing 3-minute video on what we look like to an ultraviolet camera. The video also shows graphic evidence that we should use sun-screen, aka sunblock, and that glass blocks UV waves. See here for a report on the video, in Slate.
Humor: (Or something) Coffee is now being made from coffee beans eaten, then passed through the gut, of elephants. Really, says National Public Radio.
Science:  Wired reports that city spiders grow bigger than spiders not in urban areas.
NPR reports on using people with Down syndrome as subjects for research into Alzheimer's. It turns out that, if they live long enough, all people with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer's.
Wired also reports on fungi that control the behavior of ants.

Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 448

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
The Arts: The Piano Guys show how to play a piano in some really unusual ways. It's Christmas music. Warning -- they try to sell you a CD at the end.
Christianity: (And animal husbandry) An article in Wired criticizes the planned Noah's Ark exhibit in Kentucky for not being designed to take good care of the animals that may be exhibited there.
Politics: An eye-opening post "20 things the poor really do every day," with linked documentation. The poor aren't particularly lazy, and aren't particularly on drugs, and aren't particularly likely to vote Democrat.
Science: National Geographic reports on the sequencing of DNA from ancient humanoids, which is remarkable enough in itself, but the results have apparently shaken up the prevailing views of how humans, Neanderthals, and others are related.
The Los Angeles Times reports that lemon sharks return to the place where they were born to give birth themselves.
National Public Radio reports that the US Department of Agriculture hopes to control the brown tree snake population on Guam by giving the snakes access to dead mice which are dosed with acetaminophen (aka tylenol) which is poisonous to snakes, but not to most other animals, including humans.
Wired reports on a parasite that lives in the heads of fire ants, changing their behavior in favor of the parasite, and eventually killing the host ant.

Image source (public domain)

Tapeworms before the Flood? Scientific evidence for that

Todd C. Wood is a firm believer in Young-Earth Creationism. Unlike some Young-Earth Creationists, he is familiar with the scientific literature, and accepts most of it. He also engages with scientists who do not believe like he does.

In a recent post, Wood comments on a report that indicates that there were tapeworm eggs in fossilized shark dung. (Tapeworms are commonly passed on by eggs in dung, which is eaten, accidentally or on purpose. Fossilized dung is fairly common. Such fossils are called coprolites.)

Wood doesn't argue about it, but he does not accept the date of approximately 270 million years ago for the fossil. He believes that this fossil was formed during the flood. Either way, the fossil indicates that tapeworms existed before the flood. If the date given is correct, they must have existed, not only before the flood, but before the Fall. 

If they did, as the evidence indicates, then their must have been parasites before the Fall. This, as Wood well knows, would raise some interesting questions for Young-Earth Creationists. (There are other kinds of Creationists. See here for an example.)

In this post, I speculate on dung, and also about organisms that probably existed before the Fall, such as bacteria and mosquitoes.

Thanks for reading. Read Wood.

Sunspots 365

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science: Fox News reports on a study that indicates that wind farms are causing the surface temperature in their vicinity to increase, which may have some bad effects.

NPR reports on zombie ants -- ants with a fungus growing out of their bodies, which actually controls the movement of the ants. There's more to the story . . .

Politics:  (And Religion) A Canadian student faces expulsion from his public school for wearing a tee-shirt that says "Life is wasted without Jesus."

Christianity: Ken Schenck, Bible scholar, posts about who wrote the first five books of the Bible.

Image source (public domain)

Parasitic wasps create zombie cockroaches

That title could serve as the name of a musical group, I guess.

However, it refers to another article by Carl Zimmer, a fine science writer. (Unfortunately, this particular article has a few typos, but it's worth reading, anyway.)

Zimmer reports on research into the life of a cockroach, and a small wasp, which parasitizes the cockroach. The wasp stings the cockroach in such a way that the wasp can guide the roach into the wasp's burrow, where it spends the next few days of its short life serving as a meal for a developing wasp, while still living.

Recent research has indicated the particular part of the cockroach's brain that is stung, and has begun to discover why being stung in that area makes the roach docile, but there's a long way to go before full understanding comes, if it ever does.

An interesting article.

Carl Zimmer muses on parasitism

Spontaneous generation was the best explanation for parasites, given the evidence at hand. But, it was also a profound heresy. The Bible taught that life was created by God in the first week of creation, and every creature was a reflection of His design and His beneficence. Everything that lived today must descend from those primordial creatures, in an unbroken chain of parents and children -- nothing could later come squirting into existence thanks to some vital, untamed force. If our own blood could spontaneously generate life, what help did it need from God back in the days of Genesis?
The mysterious nature of parasites created a strange, disturbing catechism of its own. Why did God create parasites? To keep us from being too proud, by reminding us that we were merely dust. How did parasites get into us? They must have been put there by God, since there was no apparent way for them to get in by themselves. Perhaps they were passed down through generations within our bodies to the bodies of our children. Did that mean that Adam, who was created in purest innocence, came into being already loaded with parasites? Maybe the parasites were created in him after his fall. But wouldn't this be a second creation, an eighth day added on to the first week. . . Well, then, maybe Adam was created with parasites after all, but in Eden parasites were his helpmates. They ate the food he couldn't fully digest and licked his wounds clean from within. But why should Adam, created not only in innocence but in perfection, need any help at all? Here the catechism seems to have finally fallen apart. Carl Zimmer, Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures (New York: Free Press, 2000, p. 5)

See here for Zimmer's blog.

Thanks for reading.

Parasitism, again

This is a photo of Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora.

Indian Pipe is a flowering plant, and there are flowers on the plant in this photo. Almost all flowering plants have chlorophyll, a green pigment. This plant does not, and it does not carry out photosynthesis. Hence, it needs to get its energy some way. The Wikipedia article on the plant says that it is a parasite, living on underground fungi, which surprised me. Fungi are often parasites on flowering plants. Well, why not the reverse, once in a while?

We found this along a hiking trail in the Beaverhead National Forest, in Montana, USA.

Thanks for reading, and looking.

Speaking of parasitism

In my previous post, I made a brief reference to a parasitic relationship. There are some really amazing, or perhaps strange, such. Here's a YouTube video, of a parasitized snail. The video is about 90 seconds in length. The parasite has changed the behavior of the snail, to the detriment of the host, but to the advantage of the parasite.

Note that if a parasite is too harmful, it will destroy it's own ecological niche -- parasites need hosts.

Thanks for reading.