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r i get a chance one of these tidbits was a study about ground squirrels and how researchers have figured out a way to induce hibernation researchers from the university of alaska fairbanks interested in studying the biological processes that cause animals to hibernate have found a way to make them go into this state the research was conducted on arctic ground squirrels source wikipedia commons now you might be asking yourself what is a ground squirrel and is it any different than a regular old squirrel that you see in your backyard squirrels are part of a family of small rodents called sciuridae this includes your tree squirrels ground squirrels chimpmunks marmots woodchucks flying squirrels and prairie dogs a ground squirrel not surprisingly tends to live on the ground rather than in trees the university of alaska researchers wanted to study a condition called torpor in ground squirrels when an animal hibernates its heart rate and blood flow become reduced in a human this would cause brain damage but that doesn t happen in animals that hibernate animals that hibernate survive being in this state by reducing their metabolism this is called torpor when an animal is in torpor its oxygen consumption can fall to as low as one percent of its resting metabolic rate and its core body temperature can drop to near freezing in hibernating animals a molecule called adenosine plays a role in entering this state by slowing down nerve cell activity the researchers discovered that if they administer a caffeine like substance that stimulates the areas of the brain that are receptive to adenosine they could control the ground squirrels hibernation the researchers woke six ground squirrels in the middle of their hibernation season using this substance and were able to then induce a torpor state by taking away the substance in all of the ground squirrels the researchers also tried this with six ground squirrels that were woken early in their hibernation season and were only able to induce torpor in two during the summer season when ground squirrels are not hibernating the researchers weren t able to induce them into a torpor state the research was published in the journal of neuroscience so why does the ability to wake up sleeping squirrels matter in the slightest well understanding how animals survive the reduced blood flow heart rate and body temperatures that come along with being in hibernation could help scientists develop new ways to treat patients who have had a stroke or another traumatic incident where blood flow to the brain is reduced that kind of an application is a long way off but this research is still a significant step forward in understanding the biological mechanisms that underly hibernation posted by unknown at 2 18 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday july 27 2011 ok go s new video is everything it should be so its not science but i m completely nerding out to ok go s new video for the song all is not lost and i had to share like all of their videos it is pretty visually amazing and really what s not to like about people dancing in seafoam green bodysuits the answer is nothing what is different about this video is that it is interactive if you have google chrome which you should have anyway because it is the best browser i ve used to date head over to this website where you can personalize the video with your own message its a really interesting concept and it makes the video a lot of fun while pushing the envelope about what it means to connect with the music i m a big fan of ok go and their most recent album of the blue colour of the sky i saw them in october 2010 at madison s freakfest on halloween and it was one of the most entertaining concerts i ve ever attended so take a few minutes to watch the video and listen to the music it will be a great break from whatever else you have going on and show you something new about what it means to be creative in the music industry posted by unknown at 8 58 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday july 24 2011 explaining all of human history shouldn t be hard right so i m about 15 years late hopping on the band wagon for this one but i recently read jared diamond s guns germs and steel the fates of human societies the book was originally published in 1997 but at that time i was only 9 years old and most certainly wasn t ready to ponder the question of why some societies were able to dominate others in the course of human history but for my birthday this year my good friend cassi gave me a copy of diamond s book because she d heard good things about it from her dad and she thought it was something i would like for the most part she was right overall i liked the book a lot it brought up some really interesting ideas about human history that i had never considered before but i struggled a little to get through the whole book reading with the amount of concentration it deserved most of my difficulty stemmed from the way i read which is particularly disjointed and distracted on the train there are some parts of diamond s book that are just really dry but i don t think the book would work without these dry patches because explanations are necessary there are also plenty of anecdotes and more narrative portions to keep the book moving forward guns germs and steel seeks to answer yali s question and comes back to this concept repeatedly throughout the book yali is a member of a native tribe in new guinea where diamond did field work he asks diamond why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to new guinea but we black people had so little cargo of our own there is no single easy answer to this question it takes diamond 19 chapters and 465 pages to explain it and even then as he says that only gives him an average of one page per continent per 150 years to compress 13 000 years of history so then how do you go about answering a question like yali s when a lot of the context detail and narrative is stripped away the main reason diamond gives is that there are biogeographical differences between the areas of the world where societies developed and where they didn t these biogeographical differences include things like the availability of domesticable plants and animals variations in climate and differences in the navigability of different continents additionally diamond talks a lot about intellectual growth through the spread of information in addition to the spread of more dangerous components of human interaction like weapons and disease when you put the context detail and narrative back in there are a few points that diamond makes that hit me pretty hard one point is the way that contact between developing societies was critical to helping them succeed for me when i think about societies that are just starting i assume that the longer they have to develop on their own the better off they would be but the exact opposite is true societies need to develop alongside each other areas like eurasia that were way better suited for an exchange of information and ideas are the areas that advanced fastest on the other side areas like southern africa and mesoamerica struggled because their climates desert and jungles weren t suitable for traveling people weren t able to connect and because of this not only could they not learn from each other agriculture language etc they also didn t develop important immunities to disease i feel like i ve always assumed that a disproportionate amount of resources like food and animals was the reason why some cultures flourished over others in part the lack of resources in some areas was certainly a factor but i was really surprised by the idea that the continent itself could have a huge impact i think my favorite chapters by far dealt with the aztec inca and maya societies and how they were able to be conquered i think i ve always been quick to write their fall off as being caused by disease and the superior weapons of the spanish i had never really thought about how the isolation of each of these societies also led them to be more trusting and that this more than anything else is what led to their downfall another point diamond makes that i found really interesting is that there are so many factors that need to align properly for a society to succeed and it often comes down to which societies have the best balance i always think of competition between countries as a bad thing but diamond shows that competition is exactly what gave europe an edge over china when it came to dominating the colonial world a unified china struggled with implementing new technology because if the rulers didn t approve then changes didn t happen whereas in europe with so many small societies competing with each other if one group rejected an idea another was sure to adopt it and help it spread but competition also has obvious drawbacks like fighting and wars that cause widespread casualties it really comes down to having the right amount of competition and conflict that magical balance that allows a nation to surge ahead these are just a few of the ideas that diamond discusses i found this book to be very informative so much so that it was almost difficult to digest sometimes there is also a ton of background and set up so that the reader will be able to understand his analysis one place where for me this was tedious was animal domestication i already knew a lot about animal domestication from my class with animal behaviorist patricia mcconnell last semester but if i didn t i am certainly well informed for having read diamond s book there is a lot of information to be had here and if you have the stamina and the attention span you could learn a significant amount from diamond s book i do recommend it because it definitely got me thinking about history in a new way i also think its important to point out that the book stands the test of time my version has a 2003 update with a new afterward and an additional chapter about japan but even so the original text has held up well i never felt like i was reading something out of date so to sum it up its a good read but you have to really want to read it this isn t a beach book or something to read on the train like i did it deserves your full attention and if you can t give it i m not sure you ll make it through posted by unknown at 3 11 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday july 19 2011 polar bears have the luck of the irish i recently learned that i share a trait with my absolute favorite animal the polar bear in that we can both trace our ancestry back to ireland for people who follow this blog or have at least looked back through the archives a bit you ll see that i find it impossible to pass up a good polar bear story i ve written about animal healthcare mysterious death and the polar bear s status or lack thereof as an endangered species so it should come as no surprise that i can t pass up the opportunity to talk about this new research that shows an ancient irish connection to modern day polar bears via wikimedia commons a team of researchers led by beth shapiro of penn state university and daniel bradley of trinity college dublin has identified a common ancestor of polar bears ursus maritimus and brown bears ursus arctos that lived in ireland before the peak of the last ice age some 20 000 to 50 000 years ago the researchers concluded that all modern day polar bears can trace their lineage back to this ancient female brown bear the specific lineage of the brown bear that shared their mitochondrial dna with polar bears went extinct around 9 000 years ago but the research still shows that the modern species are related despite significant differences between polar bears and brown bears size coloring fur type tooth shape swimming ability vs climbing ability etc scientists have suspected for some time that the species have closely connected histories the polar bear is known to have mitochondrial dna the part of the genome contributed by the mother that traces back to the brown bear but how modern polar bears acquired this brown bear dna was a bit of a mystery via wikimedia commons the two species are known to interbreed and have been studied in captivity in addition to being spotted in the wild an example of a polar bear brown bear hybrid jokingly nicknamed grolar bear or pizzly was found in the wild canada in 2006 but even with the knowledge that the two species can co mingle scientists were still perplexed about the history of these different species the long standing theory about how polar bears evolved from brown bears had their history traced to the abc islands the alaskan islands of admiralty baranof and chichagof around 14 000 years ago but the bears genomes tell us a different story the research team led by shapiro and bradley found that the hybridization of polar bears occurred much earlier than would have been possible on the abc islands through a genetic analysis of the bears the study analyzed 242 samples from polar bear and brown bear mitochondrial dna spanning 120 000 years and several different geographical regions the researchers found that the fixation of the mitochondrial genome in polar bears likely occurred closer to 50 000 years ago in the area of present day ireland according to shapiro in addition to genetic evidence the interconnected history of the polar bear and brown bear is also supported by climate events one example of this is the british irish ice sheet which reached its maximum range around 20 000 years ago at this time parts of ireland would have been difficult to inhabit pushing bears from the warmer areas toward ice shelves and land exposed by lower sea levels this would have brought the bears into close contact with their northern neighbors showing how the animals that became two different bear species could have started out in the similar location sharing their genes the polar bear is currently considered a threatened species and future conservation efforts may be aided by this new understanding of its genetic history and its ability to hybridize with the brown bear the research is described in the paper ancient hybridization and an irish origin for the modern polar bear matriline in the journal current biology posted by unknown at 6 34 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday july 16 2011 a geek roundup the best science posts from my internship part ii i am blogging over at geekosystem for the summer and while i ve been writing about some pretty different things than what i would post about here like the official religious hat of the pastafarian movement i ve also written a few posts about some interesting science topics so here is another link round up of the interesting science stuff i ve been covering for geekosystem and as a bonus here s a cute video of c...