ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 669
October 9, 2015
California Just Banned SeaWorld From Breeding Captive Orcas
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The 11 orcas currently in captivity at SeaWorld in San Diego, California (shown), will the be state's last. Roka/Shutterstock.
In another blow to SeaWorld, the state of California has ruled that they will no longer be able to breed their captive orcas. In a ruling made by the California Coastal Commission, they granted approval for a $100 million (£65 million) expansion to the orca tanks at SeaWorld San Diego, which will double the size of the animals’ current enclosure, but made this on the key condition that they cease all breeding of the whales.
This Lake In India Is Catching On Fire Because It Is So Polluted
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The fire may be the result of methane burning. NDTV/YouTube.
It might look pretty, but this lake in India is anything but. What you’re seeing above is water rich in ammonia and phosphate, and low in oxygen, forming an extremely toxic froth. In fact, it’s so toxic that it occasionally catches on fire due to the oil, grease, and detergents that are in it.
Bacteria Could Be Used To Prevent HIV Infections
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vitstudio/Shutterstock
Our war with HIV is far from won, and determined scientists keep adding to our ever-growing antiviral armamentarium in hope of eventual defeat. But how about fighting microbe with microbe? That’s the idea of one group of researchers, who have found that a particular species of bacteria helps create a protective net in the vagina that catches HIV and prevents sexual transmission.
Stephen Hawking Warns Us About Artificial Intelligence
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Danor Aharon/Shutterstock
He might be busy searching for alien life and working out how to escape from a black hole, but Professor Stephen Hawking has taken time out of his crammed schedule to respond to questions from members of the public.
Tech Start-Up Creates Environmentally Friendly And Meat-Free Cheeseburgers
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Impossible Foods
It is no secret that animal farming is terrible for the environment. However, it is also common knowledge that veggie burgers kind of suck compared to "the real thing". Sorry veggies, you know it's true. But fear not, a Californian start-up is hoping to create synthesized, meat-free cheeseburgers by 2016.
Practising Music Improves The Symmetry Of Your Brain
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Kotin/Shutterstock
I would argue that it’s impossible to find someone who isn’t moved by a particular song or piece of music. Like storytelling, making music is a universal human trait, shared across all cultures for many thousands of years. It has a unique effect on the brain, inducing powerful emotional responses. A new study in PLOS ONE confirms that music, if we make it our profession, actually rewires the circuitry of our brains.
Scientists Digitally Reconstruct Part Of A Rat’s Brain
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A photo of the virtual brain slice, containing around 30,000 individual neurons. Markham/EPFL
Scientists have managed to digitally reconstruct a portion of rat brain, albeit a really small piece. In the first draft of what is possibly one of the most sophisticated neural simulations ever created, researchers have modeled over 30,000 neurons connected by 40 million synapses. They have even been able to alter the inputs into the model and watch how the signals from individual neurons ripple through the simulation.
October 8, 2015
The Nobel Prizes for Serendipity
On Monday, Tu Youyou, Satoshi Omura, and William Campbell were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, for their discoveries of the antimalarial artemisinin, and avermectin, a key part of treatment for the parasitic diseases river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. On Tuesday, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, for their discovery of neutrino oscillations, which proved that neutrinos have mass.
Reading about the discoveries these scientists made, I was struck by the role serendipity played in all of them. The Kamioka Observatory was built to find evidence of proton decay (which would have been a Nobel-worthy discovery itself), and the effects of neutrinos were noise that had to be filtered out. In time, the researchers realized that the neutrinos themselves were not mere noise, but revealed a different form of new physics: neutrinos have mass. It wasn’t the discovery that the Japanese and Canadian researchers expected, but it was welcome nonetheless.
The discovery of avermectin involved an equal measure of serendipity. As The New York Times puts it, co-discoverer Satoshi Omura “wondered whether he deserved the prize,” or if the bacteria deserved all the credit. They quote an interview with Japan’s NHK, where Omura said: “I have learned so much from microorganisms and I have depended on them, so I would much rather give the prize to microorganisms.” The key to the lifesaving drug was a bacterium discovered in soil from a golf course. The Times explains that Omura “always carries around a plastic bag in his wallet so he can collect soil samples.”
Needless to say, it took substantial effort to figure out that there was something special in that sample, and to purify and tweak the compound to make a successful drug. Likewise with Tu Youyou’s discovery of artemisinin, which drew on a traditional Chinese herbal remedy as inspiration, modifying it to preserve the active ingredient. Many herbal remedies lack any substantial pharmaceutical effect, so sifting through the many available herbal remedies to find the right plant, and the right compound in the plant, took tremendous care and skill, and an appreciation for traditional knowledge and natural history. And more than a bit of luck.
In science, to a large extent, you make your own luck. Omura’s habit of carrying collection bags everywhere made it a lot more likely that he’d collect the sample he needed, and years of work gave him the skills to recognize what to collect and when he had a major find. Tu’s search involved archival searches through traditional herbal recipes and laboratory screenings of over 2,000 herbal preparations. The work at the Super-Kamiokande detector was an expansion of an unsuccessful earlier experiment, repurposed to great effect thanks to the scientists’ willingness to ask new questions with the same data. None of these researchers knew their research was going to lead where it did, but their ability to recognize a lucky break and take full advantage of it set these researchers on a course to Stockholm, and set the world on a path to health and enlightenment.
Ebola Nations Declare First Week With No New Cases
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Nixx Photography/Shutterstock
The recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa has claimed the lives of over 11,000 people to date, mainly in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, as reported by BBC News. Today, it is a pleasure to report that these three countries at the very heart of the deadly epidemic have recorded their first week with no new cases since the outbreak began in March of last year.
New Evidence Suggests Mars Had Lakes Of Water For Thousands Of Years
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This previous illustration shows what the Gale Crater lake might have looked like. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS.
It seems that scientists just can’t get enough of Mars at the moment. Fresh off the back of the discovery of salty water on its surface, new research suggests that lakes may have once been present – specifically at the Gale Crater, the location of the Curiosity rover.
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