ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 672

Male Birth Control Treatment Could Focus on Sperm Proteins, Not Hormones

Stockxpert

By Rachael Rettner

A male form of “the pill” has stymied researchers for years, but now a new study finds that such male birth control may be possible by blocking a single protein in sperm cells.

In a mouse study, the researchers focused on a protein called calcineurin, which is found in the sperm-producing cells of the testes as well as other cells in the body.

The researchers genetically engineered mice so that they lacked a gene that makes part of the calcineurin protein but is activatedonly in sperm-producing cells. When these mice had sex, they were infertile, the researchers said. (This genetic engineering experiment was done as a proof of concept, to show that this gene affects sperm,)

In a separate experiment, the researchers treated the mice with two drugs that block calcineurin, called cyclosporine A and FK506. Both of these drugs are already used in patients who’ve had organ transplants to suppress the immune system and prevent the organ from being rejected by the body.

After about four to five days of treatment, the mice developed defects in their sperm and became infertile. But once the treatment was stopped, these defects went away, and the mice were fertile again within a week.

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209 New Species Discovered In The Himalayas

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

A new species of dwarf snakehead fish (Channa andrao) that can wriggle on wet land for up to a quarter of a mile in order to reach another body of water. Henning Strack Hansen/WWF

Over 200 new species have been found in the Eastern Himalayas in recent years, including a noseless sneezing monkey and a fanged "dracula fish." The report by the WWF shows that they have found 133 new species of plants, 39 invertebrates, 26 species of fish, 10 amphibians, one reptile, one bird and

New Model Can Measure The Mass Of Pulsars Even If They Are All Alone

Space





Photo credit:

An illustration of a pulsar emitting bursts of radiation. NASA.

Measuring the mass of stars, planets and moons in the universe usually relies on studying how their motion relates to other bodies nearby. For some objects that are on their own in space, however, this method is impossible. But research published in the journal Science Advances describes a new technique that could prove useful.

Does this look white to you?

When you mix red and green, what do you get? White light is all of the colors, right? So, how do computer screens show you every wavelength of light? Or do they?

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Answer Monday

 

Here’s another look at our specimen from last Friday.

 

 

Really very nicely preserved. This fossil was collected in Romania, and it’s the baculum of a cave bear. What is a cave bear? Species Ursus spelaeus, a bear that perhaps fortunately went extinct about twenty-four thousand years ago, during the last glacial maximum. These bears were huge: as big as modern polar bears! Although chemical evidence suggests they ate a largely herbivorous diet, there is also plenty of fossil evidence that they at least occasionally ate meat. Their diets included such delectables as their fellow cave bears, particularly those who died during hibernation, and probably the occasional human ancestor. To be fair, it’s likely we ate them, too.

Our human ancestors (and Neanderthals, which are perhaps our ancestors as well) were interested in these giant bears. The bears often feature in cave paintings, like the one below. We’ve also found sites that suggest ritual or religious behavior involving these animals. Frankly, if I was sharing my world (and my precious cave space) with these giant bears, I could see myself developing some ritualistic means to conquer or appease them, but that’s just how I roll.

 

 

And of course, this fossil raises another exciting question: What is a baculum? I’m sure there’s someone else out there with a vaguely adolescent mind giggling about this. A baculum is a penis bone. This physiological structure in common in placental mammals like ourselves, and even in the other large primates, such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Human males, however, do not possess this bone. Why did we lose it? Not sure. They do seem to be a vestigial structure in the great apes, and are particularly tiny in chimps and especially in bonobos. The baculum’s primary function seems to largely be enabling males to have sex for long periods of time. It’s possible the structure became too evolutionarily costly to maintain as our species’ sexual behavior changed to shorter, more frequent matings..  

The winner this week? John Macdonell! Congratulations and thanks for playing! And commenters, don’t you get too crude on me, or I’ll never show you fossil penises again! If you have a fossil you want to share, send your pictures to me at schoerning at ncse.com. 

A Most Blatant Variety of Science Denial

Science

Gun violence incidents in 2015, catalogued by the Gun Violence Archive.

There have been 42 school shootings in the U.S. so far this year. Last week, 10 people were killed at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. There have been (minimally) nearly 40,000 incidents of gun violence in the US over the last year. In communities across the country, students have lost classmates to gun violence, with some classrooms consisting entirely of students who have lost a friend or family member to guns. That experience carries long and lasting effects on the students, scarring them for years to come.

Unfortunately, we don’t know as much as we should about these broader effects of gun violence, nor its causes. Part of the reason, as Maggie Koerth-Baker explored in a pair of fascinating essays in 2013, is that science is hard. A 2004 report from the National Academy of Sciences highlighted inadequate data collection and unresolved methodological questions as barriers to effective policymaking. But many of those scientific challenges arise because of ideologically-driven barriers erected by the gun lobby in Congress.

In 1996, Congress passed a law specifying “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” That has been interpreted as a barrier on research involving guns (out of fear that any research looking at the public health effects of guns would become a target for the gun lobby). A similar provision was passed in 2011, placing the same gag order on the Department of Health and Human Services. In addition, the FBI and ATF are restricted from retaining data on gun sales which might allow researchers, lawmakers, and law enforcement to understand how guns are used and trafficked (for instance, tracking guns recovered at crime scenes through their previous ownership).

How would we react if Big Tobacco blocked research on the effects of smoking on public health? What would we do if the religious right zeroed out federal funding for research on evolution or the Congress blocked federal research on climate change? The idea that Congress would forbid a line of research out of ideological fear of the results that research might reach should scare anyone, regardless of our views on gun control. However we as a society choose to regulate firearms, surely that decision should be informed by science and evidence. For the sake of our schools, our communities, and our nation, we deserve the best possible science, not political barriers.

Medicine Nobel: Sifting Nature For Anti-Parasite Drugs

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for their discoveries of a medication against roundworm parasites and to Youyou Tu for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria. Some 3.4 billion people are at risk for the diseases these drugs treat.

 

NASA Set To Launch Swarm of Laser-Guided Cube Satellites

Space





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An undeployed NASA CubeSat. NASA/OCSD

NASA is planning to launch a group of miniature spacecraft that are set to have a significant impact on ground-space communication and technology. This project is known as the Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD) and includes three satellites to be sent into orbit in the next few months. 

Researchers Trick Migrating Song Birds By Altering The Magnetic Field They’re Exposed To

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

Eurasian reed warblers migrate from Sub-Saharan Africa to northern Europe. Andy Morffew

From turtles to albatrosses, many species migrate long distances, normally in a quest for food or mates. But exactly how these animals manage to stay on track while traversing thousands of kilometers across land and sea has managed to evade scientists and remained a mystery. A new study has, however, been able to show that manipulating the magnetic field to which a migrating bird is exposed correspondingly alters its direction of travel.

You Can Now View More Than 10,000 High-Res Photos From The Apollo Missions

Space





Photo credit:

Buzz Aldrin snapped on the Moon by Neil Armstrong during Apollo 11. Project Apollo Archive/NASA.

An incredible collection of more than 10,000 photos from the Apollo missions is now available to view on Flickr. It includes every single photo taken by astronauts on the surface of the Moon, and various other images taken on Earth or in space, revealed in their raw, original form in high-resolution.