farts farts
Five guys with the love for hamburgers.. wait.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Marrying Monkeys in India is Illegal
This scientist has been on vacation near Houston, TX during the past week. And while I learned some very cool things about where NASA is headed you'll have to look back for that update.
In the meantime, I am posting something I find very amusing... monkey marriage.
This story showed up in my RSS feed for "monkey reproduction research" on Friday, "Star-crossed simian lovers buck taboos, secretly marry in Indian ceremony". I was wondering, as I am sure you are, what this could possibly to do with reproduction or research. So I clicked on it. Let me say that is has nothing to do with either. However, here's my brief synopsis.
This love story takes place near the village Banentha in Rajasthan, India. The above picture is Ramesh Saini, a rickshaw driver, embracing his pet monkey named Raju, who Ramesh calls his "son". Apparently Raju and Chinki, a female monkey, "fell in love" and Ramesh wanted to "enjoy the feelings of a son's wedding". As a result, a wedding was planned in the village of Talwas, deep in the forests of Rajasthan. This was apparently something rejoiced by the villagers and Ramesh was expecting more than 2,000 people
Since Raju, the male monkey, was very famous, the word about the wedding traveled quickly and also into the State Forest Ranger's office. Bhavar Singh Kaviya, a forest ranger, is quoted "It's illegal to marry a monkey. Anyone found doing that or attending the marriage ceremony will be arrested."
In response, 200 armed guards showed up in Talwas on the day of the wedding only to find the large group of people waiting for the wedding, but no monkeys. Where'd the monkeys go you ask? Ramesh is said to have taken the monkeys deep into the forest away from Talwas to complete the wedding ceremony away from the officials. Officials later found Chinki, the female monkey and Raju's wife, tied to a tree with the vermilion mark on her forehead. The vermilion or bindi, is used to signify a married Hindu woman (similar to the wedding ring of western cultures). In the end, both monkeys were captured and transferred to a nearby forest.
Ramesh however was quoted saying while running through a crowd to avoid being caught by officials, "I know my son Raju, with his wife Chinki, will come back home, and I will have a big reception for them."
Give it a read, it gives some insights into Indian culture beyond what we might know about Bollywood. Scientific? Not really. Entertaining? You tell me.
In the meantime, I am posting something I find very amusing... monkey marriage.
 |
| Ramesh and Raju (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters) |
This story showed up in my RSS feed for "monkey reproduction research" on Friday, "Star-crossed simian lovers buck taboos, secretly marry in Indian ceremony". I was wondering, as I am sure you are, what this could possibly to do with reproduction or research. So I clicked on it. Let me say that is has nothing to do with either. However, here's my brief synopsis.
This love story takes place near the village Banentha in Rajasthan, India. The above picture is Ramesh Saini, a rickshaw driver, embracing his pet monkey named Raju, who Ramesh calls his "son". Apparently Raju and Chinki, a female monkey, "fell in love" and Ramesh wanted to "enjoy the feelings of a son's wedding". As a result, a wedding was planned in the village of Talwas, deep in the forests of Rajasthan. This was apparently something rejoiced by the villagers and Ramesh was expecting more than 2,000 people
Since Raju, the male monkey, was very famous, the word about the wedding traveled quickly and also into the State Forest Ranger's office. Bhavar Singh Kaviya, a forest ranger, is quoted "It's illegal to marry a monkey. Anyone found doing that or attending the marriage ceremony will be arrested."
 |
| Pre-wedding festivities in Talwas (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters) |
In response, 200 armed guards showed up in Talwas on the day of the wedding only to find the large group of people waiting for the wedding, but no monkeys. Where'd the monkeys go you ask? Ramesh is said to have taken the monkeys deep into the forest away from Talwas to complete the wedding ceremony away from the officials. Officials later found Chinki, the female monkey and Raju's wife, tied to a tree with the vermilion mark on her forehead. The vermilion or bindi, is used to signify a married Hindu woman (similar to the wedding ring of western cultures). In the end, both monkeys were captured and transferred to a nearby forest.
 |
| Indian Forest Ranger with Chinki found tied to a tree (Danish Siddiqui / Reuters) |
Ramesh however was quoted saying while running through a crowd to avoid being caught by officials, "I know my son Raju, with his wife Chinki, will come back home, and I will have a big reception for them."
Give it a read, it gives some insights into Indian culture beyond what we might know about Bollywood. Scientific? Not really. Entertaining? You tell me.
A Dance with Dragons. (And, well, Romping with Ravens. And Performing with Pigeons.)
Among the only thing nerdier than contributing to a science blog is making a post celebrating the release of the next in a series of fantasy novels, and some of its biology.
So. Hey ladies, get out your halberds, it's about to get weird:
Nearly 6 years in the making, George R.R. Martin's latest novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series A Dance with Dragons hits the shelves of something called a "bookstore" today. This is the latest 1040 pages, the 5th volume in Martin's epic series that most famously began with Game of Thrones, now an HBO series everyone on your Twitter keeps talking about.
Come for the genre-bending fantasy, stay for the violence and sexual depravity, and return for the awesome raven-based mail system.
Yeah, that's right, amidst all the prostitution, incest and beheadings (not a euphemism), this fella gets hyped to see ravens deliver mail.
Really hyped, apparently. I have a lot to say on this subject:
The Game of Thrones is played between the Seven Kingdoms of the large continent of Westeros, where treachery leads to upheaval and the lands become ridden with war. And George R.R. Martin ridden with profits, he's sold 6 million books in the US.
In a series with such high political drama and vast geography, rapid means of communication are needed by the characters to prevent monstrous passages of Tolkien-esque exposition: In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Any respectable castle in Westeros keeps a maester, a monk-like man of science who is responsible for education as well as maintaining a flock of ravens for communication with other castles.
Messages tied to birds' legs and flown about a land is not that far-fetched of a concept. Pigeons' innate ability to return to their home nest and spouse has been utilized since 5th century BC in Persia and present-day Syria. They were important in the World Wars as means of communication from areas where telegraph lines were not set-up and to communicate across enemy lines.
21 pigeons even received an English Service medal, which is, I'm sure you'll agree, precious.
The basic way the system works is the carrier bird can typically only travel one way: to its home. In some cases, two way travel has been achieved with food offered at both locations. Barring some supernatural component of the world, I assume this two way travel is how this communication is achieved. The bigger castles have ravens that call that place home, and distribute them throughout the realms.
In some cases, like when Stannis is intending to spread a nasty rumor about the Lannister family (hopefully that's not a spoiler), a castle will release a lot of ravens and sort of raven-spam the kingdoms. I can't fathom how that would work, maybe they confused the ravens with magnets or something.
But this isn't Evolving.Dude.Who.Rips.Stuff.Off.Wikipedia.net (that domain name, by the way, shockingly, isn't taken).
HOW do Westeros-ian Ravens and non-nerd-world Pigeons navigate so well (the latter have been recorded in competition upwards of 1,000 miles)?
There's some debate over the mechanism, but the soundest synthesis I can gather is the following:
The most intriguing, at least as a physiology, is magnetoreception. Little is definitively understood regarding this sense, but evidence of its existence is very convincing. Some scientists propose that iron atoms in birds' beaks send signals of their interactions with surrounding magnetic fields to the brain. Others propose a compass mechanism that is light-dependent. A family of molecules known as cryptochromes may cause the release of free-radicals, or molecules with unpaired electrons . These free electrons can be influenced by the magnetic fields, and could even cause a distortion in the perceived image by the birds eye. Robins that have been blinded in one eye are unable to navigate as previous. These cryptochrome molecules, which at least serve as photoreceptors in fruit-flies, have also been implicated in butterfly migration. (Most of this is learned from birds that are known to migrate seasonally, whether it applies to pigeons specifically is unknown. Also, any references I would cite here are behind a pay-wall, but you can read this)
The longer distance navigations likely begin with this strategy, of just traveling in the general direction until you get to a location you recognize, where a bird can switch to:
Travelling via landmarks. There is less hand-waving in this component of homing pigeons' navigation capabilities. Dr. Tom Guilford attached GPS tracking devices to pigeons and noticed that their routes to their homes often fell within 4 feet of common roadways or other likely, physical landmark (free article).
So there you go! Martin's ravens might use ferrous beak deposits and/or cryptochromes in the eye, the ability to luse landmarks to denote paths, and perhaps some help from the Old Gods to deliver the urgent message that one has been attacked by the Others. Feel free to ponder this as you skip over these sections on your way to the next fight and/or sex scene.
Or at least imagine how a mail raven would hold up against one of Mike Tyson's 350 pigeons.
Join me in six years for the release of the next book, as I discuss the science behind why Tyrion is so effing awesome.
So. Hey ladies, get out your halberds, it's about to get weird:
 |
| *Not actually an account of my senior prom (shudder) |
Nearly 6 years in the making, George R.R. Martin's latest novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series A Dance with Dragons hits the shelves of something called a "bookstore" today. This is the latest 1040 pages, the 5th volume in Martin's epic series that most famously began with Game of Thrones, now an HBO series everyone on your Twitter keeps talking about.
Come for the genre-bending fantasy, stay for the violence and sexual depravity, and return for the awesome raven-based mail system.
Yeah, that's right, amidst all the prostitution, incest and beheadings (not a euphemism), this fella gets hyped to see ravens deliver mail.
 |
| Deliverth the Raven |
The Game of Thrones is played between the Seven Kingdoms of the large continent of Westeros, where treachery leads to upheaval and the lands become ridden with war. And George R.R. Martin ridden with profits, he's sold 6 million books in the US.
In a series with such high political drama and vast geography, rapid means of communication are needed by the characters to prevent monstrous passages of Tolkien-esque exposition: In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Any respectable castle in Westeros keeps a maester, a monk-like man of science who is responsible for education as well as maintaining a flock of ravens for communication with other castles.
Messages tied to birds' legs and flown about a land is not that far-fetched of a concept. Pigeons' innate ability to return to their home nest and spouse has been utilized since 5th century BC in Persia and present-day Syria. They were important in the World Wars as means of communication from areas where telegraph lines were not set-up and to communicate across enemy lines.
21 pigeons even received an English Service medal, which is, I'm sure you'll agree, precious.
The basic way the system works is the carrier bird can typically only travel one way: to its home. In some cases, two way travel has been achieved with food offered at both locations. Barring some supernatural component of the world, I assume this two way travel is how this communication is achieved. The bigger castles have ravens that call that place home, and distribute them throughout the realms.
In some cases, like when Stannis is intending to spread a nasty rumor about the Lannister family (hopefully that's not a spoiler), a castle will release a lot of ravens and sort of raven-spam the kingdoms. I can't fathom how that would work, maybe they confused the ravens with magnets or something.
But this isn't Evolving.Dude.Who.Rips.Stuff.Off.Wikipedia.net (that domain name, by the way, shockingly, isn't taken).
HOW do Westeros-ian Ravens and non-nerd-world Pigeons navigate so well (the latter have been recorded in competition upwards of 1,000 miles)?
There's some debate over the mechanism, but the soundest synthesis I can gather is the following:
The most intriguing, at least as a physiology, is magnetoreception. Little is definitively understood regarding this sense, but evidence of its existence is very convincing. Some scientists propose that iron atoms in birds' beaks send signals of their interactions with surrounding magnetic fields to the brain. Others propose a compass mechanism that is light-dependent. A family of molecules known as cryptochromes may cause the release of free-radicals, or molecules with unpaired electrons . These free electrons can be influenced by the magnetic fields, and could even cause a distortion in the perceived image by the birds eye. Robins that have been blinded in one eye are unable to navigate as previous. These cryptochrome molecules, which at least serve as photoreceptors in fruit-flies, have also been implicated in butterfly migration. (Most of this is learned from birds that are known to migrate seasonally, whether it applies to pigeons specifically is unknown. Also, any references I would cite here are behind a pay-wall, but you can read this)
The longer distance navigations likely begin with this strategy, of just traveling in the general direction until you get to a location you recognize, where a bird can switch to:
Travelling via landmarks. There is less hand-waving in this component of homing pigeons' navigation capabilities. Dr. Tom Guilford attached GPS tracking devices to pigeons and noticed that their routes to their homes often fell within 4 feet of common roadways or other likely, physical landmark (free article).
So there you go! Martin's ravens might use ferrous beak deposits and/or cryptochromes in the eye, the ability to luse landmarks to denote paths, and perhaps some help from the Old Gods to deliver the urgent message that one has been attacked by the Others. Feel free to ponder this as you skip over these sections on your way to the next fight and/or sex scene.
Or at least imagine how a mail raven would hold up against one of Mike Tyson's 350 pigeons.
Join me in six years for the release of the next book, as I discuss the science behind why Tyrion is so effing awesome.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Beauty and the Brain: in some ways we ALL think alike
The way I see it, everyone could be a winner in this scenario
I caught this story a couple of days ago, and it reminded me of a previous topic in our podcast. We talked about a reporter who allowed her brain activity to be imaged while...stimulating herself. We also discussed a study that showed a difference in one specific area of the brain, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Apparently, the OFC was more active during solo naughty time vs. when a partner provided the pleasure (try saying that 5 times fast). The OFC is associated with imagination and creative thinking, so the idea here is that you're probably fantasizing about something when engaging in "happy time", but not so much when you've got a helping hand...or two...or more...
Sorry, my OFC took over for a second there.
Go on, you know you wanna hit that Jump!
Back to this story: some recent data published in PLoS One from a group out of the University College of London show that a specific area of the OFC, the medial OFC (mOFC), became more active when the subjects experienced things that they felt were beautiful. The study included 30 paintings and 30 music samples, and the mOFC was more highly correlated to beautiful representations of either medium than any other part of the brain.
A VERY interesting idea here is that you have different people who have lived different lives and presumably have different ideas of what beauty is, but many of them - at least their mOFCs - showed they agreed on what could be considered beautiful. An article over at Discover Magazine goes into the philosophy of what constitutes beauty, and the authors of the study think that our brains may be, in some way, responsible for perceiving beauty.
As with a lot of behavioural studies, there are some caveats (I think I've used that word before - someone give me a new word for this, please). Firstly, the study showed correlation, not causation, meaning the only conclusion that can be drawn from this study is exactly what was observed: there is a higher activity in a specific region of the mOFC with a higher perception of beauty. That's not to say that the mOFC causes the perception of beauty, nor does it say that the mOFC by itself is responsible for perceiving beauty. The brain is highly connected and there are several areas that are constantly being activated and inactivated, and it's the entire milieu of interactivity that contributes to our perceptions, sensations, thoughts, etc.
This study does bring up an interesting evolutionary question: do humans share some conserved idea of what is beautiful? I just googled the most beautiful woman and Google Images spat out a string of Aishwarya Rai pics (does that happen to everyone or do I need to clear my browser history...again?). But below is a computer-generated image of a woman who possesses a combination of ideal features, as determined from a survey of men:
I've looked into your eyes, madam, and I would like my soul back!
Sunday, July 10, 2011
In (some) Theatres: Project Nim
Since this is my first post on the site, I figured I should try and fit in.
The folks behind the 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which won the Oscar that year and still sits unwatched in the wasteland that is my Netflix instant queue, are back with another documentary focusing on an abnormally talented primate.
Project Nim details the life of a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky who was passed around through various research programs in the 1970s, initiated by Herbert Terrace. Nim was taken from his mother and fostered into a human family at the age of two weeks, where he was treated quite like a human and taught American Sign Language. His name was a rather unfortunate pun towards Noam Chomsky, who asserted that language should not be considered an animal "behavior," but one that solely exists in higher functioning brains. Chomsky also claimed that the grammar that is present in language is something which is "hard-wired" into the human brain; it is heritable and inherent.
Nim the chimp was adopted into these circumstances, and was taught to sign with varying success. However, their hypothesis that this chimp could form a sentence in a syntax similar to humans was far from supported.
More after the jump:
As documentaries are wont to do, this film strays your feel-good, Koko the gorilla Youtube video style, far beyond the dreaded negative data (There's also a cuter sign-language chimp story with Washoe). Nim became very aggressive as he grew older, and attacks some of the female graduate students and assistants in charge of his care. After these incidents, Nim was attempted to be reintroduced back into a chimp population.
The film assuredly iterates the consequences of anthropomorphizing animals, a fallacy of which every person attempting to study animal behavior must be cognizant. Terrace also should have considered the long-term care of his chimp subject after the study has concluded, an issue that would never be allowed to occurred under today's very stringent primate animal care policies.
(Quick aside: The movie is based on a book by Elizabeth Hess, who's only other book is also on animal welfare and adorably titled Lost and Found: Dogs, Cats, and Everyday Heroes at a Country Animal Shelter. Who's anthropomorphizing now, Lizzie?)
These mistakes are absolutely something that should, be, uh.. documented, by these documentary filmmakers.
But I really hope this movie doesn't take an overly anti-animal research approach. Chomsky's "generative grammar" theories were first formulated in the late 1950s. The assertion that human-like grammar was unique to human primates was a testable hypothesis.
It's easy to look back and say "Oh, well of course chimps can't learn human grammar!" However, if grammar is indeed a heritable and inherent component of human cognition as Chomsky suggested, a chimpanzee's lack thereof would indicate to science that this trait had evolved in humans since the two species shared a common ancestor. Comparative approaches are excellent ways to examine how language evolved.
Dr. Terrace still has an active lab, and has found some really interesting stuff with his new model organism, the rhesus monkey.
I consider myself a staunch supporter of (humane and meaningful) animal research, so I marched to my local multiplex and demanded "Admit one to that monkey movie, my good man!"
I was appalled at what I saw.
Not only do the monkeys SPEAK in colloquial, grammatical English, but so do bears, lions, and gorillas. Herbert Terrace, who's name was inexplicably changed to Griffin Keyes, even takes one of the talking gorillas to a local fine dining establishment. I expected less dramatic liberties to be taken by Academy Award winning filmmakers.
So yeah.. it's not playing in Lexington yet. When it is, I'll sneak in to see it after buying a ticket to Transformers 3 and update you all. And I haven't read the book. Hopefully my reservations aren't warranted. Have any of you all seen it? Holler at me via comments.
UPDATE: It's only playing in 4 theaters and it brought in 25,820 scones this weekend. In other news, this film accepts baked goods as legal tender.
The folks behind the 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which won the Oscar that year and still sits unwatched in the wasteland that is my Netflix instant queue, are back with another documentary focusing on an abnormally talented primate.
No, I didn't hear about this next to an image of monkey genitalia
Project Nim details the life of a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky who was passed around through various research programs in the 1970s, initiated by Herbert Terrace. Nim was taken from his mother and fostered into a human family at the age of two weeks, where he was treated quite like a human and taught American Sign Language. His name was a rather unfortunate pun towards Noam Chomsky, who asserted that language should not be considered an animal "behavior," but one that solely exists in higher functioning brains. Chomsky also claimed that the grammar that is present in language is something which is "hard-wired" into the human brain; it is heritable and inherent.
Nim the chimp was adopted into these circumstances, and was taught to sign with varying success. However, their hypothesis that this chimp could form a sentence in a syntax similar to humans was far from supported.
More after the jump:
As documentaries are wont to do, this film strays your feel-good, Koko the gorilla Youtube video style, far beyond the dreaded negative data (There's also a cuter sign-language chimp story with Washoe). Nim became very aggressive as he grew older, and attacks some of the female graduate students and assistants in charge of his care. After these incidents, Nim was attempted to be reintroduced back into a chimp population.
The film assuredly iterates the consequences of anthropomorphizing animals, a fallacy of which every person attempting to study animal behavior must be cognizant. Terrace also should have considered the long-term care of his chimp subject after the study has concluded, an issue that would never be allowed to occurred under today's very stringent primate animal care policies.
(Quick aside: The movie is based on a book by Elizabeth Hess, who's only other book is also on animal welfare and adorably titled Lost and Found: Dogs, Cats, and Everyday Heroes at a Country Animal Shelter. Who's anthropomorphizing now, Lizzie?)
These mistakes are absolutely something that should, be, uh.. documented, by these documentary filmmakers.
But I really hope this movie doesn't take an overly anti-animal research approach. Chomsky's "generative grammar" theories were first formulated in the late 1950s. The assertion that human-like grammar was unique to human primates was a testable hypothesis.
It's easy to look back and say "Oh, well of course chimps can't learn human grammar!" However, if grammar is indeed a heritable and inherent component of human cognition as Chomsky suggested, a chimpanzee's lack thereof would indicate to science that this trait had evolved in humans since the two species shared a common ancestor. Comparative approaches are excellent ways to examine how language evolved.
Dr. Terrace still has an active lab, and has found some really interesting stuff with his new model organism, the rhesus monkey.
I consider myself a staunch supporter of (humane and meaningful) animal research, so I marched to my local multiplex and demanded "Admit one to that monkey movie, my good man!"
I was appalled at what I saw.
Not only do the monkeys SPEAK in colloquial, grammatical English, but so do bears, lions, and gorillas. Herbert Terrace, who's name was inexplicably changed to Griffin Keyes, even takes one of the talking gorillas to a local fine dining establishment. I expected less dramatic liberties to be taken by Academy Award winning filmmakers.
So yeah.. it's not playing in Lexington yet. When it is, I'll sneak in to see it after buying a ticket to Transformers 3 and update you all. And I haven't read the book. Hopefully my reservations aren't warranted. Have any of you all seen it? Holler at me via comments.
UPDATE: It's only playing in 4 theaters and it brought in 25,820 scones this weekend. In other news, this film accepts baked goods as legal tender.
Start saving your pennies, things just may get harder.
On July 7th, the House Appropriations Committee passed the 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill for the for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and Science. There is no good news. The total funding for all will be 50.2 billion, or a six percent reduction from last fiscal year. That is also 13% below what President Obama had requested. Important to us, here at The Evolving Scientist and to you, the loyal reader, is that both NSF and NASA are both under the funding arm of the Department of Science. A reduction in funding means a reduction in grants. A reduction in grants means a reduction in graduate students getting funded during non-TA times. Should you feel sorry for us here at The Evolving Scientist, we happily take donations. We don't want to end up like the guy on the right. Donations can be sent to:
The Evolving Scientist
c/o Dustin's Pockets
Lexington, Ky 40506
Thanks to all who donate.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Podcast the Third
We have had a very interesting day here at The Evolving Scientist. After a very kind shout out from PZ Myers on his blog the traffic to the site has been CRAZY!! Apparently everyone liked the site well enough to download the podcasts as well, which left our poor server needing a good back rub and pep talk. All is hopefully well now, and I'm happy share with you the July 7th edition of The Evolving Podcast. This week we talk all things KEN HAM. From the Ark Park, to the Creation Museum and little girls riding dinosaurs. We are happy to have Joe Sonka on there with us. Joe runs the political blog Barefoot and Progressive and has been featured in the New York Times, Pharyngula, The Rachel Maddow Show and various other news avenues. Give it a listen, and tell us what you think.UPDATE*** We FINALLY got iTunes approval. So follow this LINK and subscribe through your iTunes if that's how you role. Once you subscribe the newest podcast should automatically download.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)