When it comes to submarines, stealth is no longer an excuse for being anti-social. A 40-inch-long buoy may soon allow submarine captains to send text messages from under the sea.

After leaving the submarine’s trash chute, the buoy stays tethered to the vessel by miles of cables, LiveScience reports. Once sailors have texted to their hearts’ content, they can cut the buoy loose. Alternatively, Lockheed Martin, the system’s designer, also pictures buoys dropped from airplanes, which could receive submarine messages via an “acoustic messaging system” that resembles sonar and send them along in text message form.

By air or by garbage disposal, the buoys would improve current submarine communications, Rod Reints at Lockheed Martin told LiveScience.

“Currently, they have to go up to near periscope depth to communicate . . . . They become more vulnerable to attack as they get closer to the surface. Ultimately, we’re trying to increase the communication availability of the sailors while increasing their safety.”

If successful, one could only imagine the buoy’s other applications. Underwater robots, for example, could text us live updates about sunken vessels or oil leaks. Also, given that we can now text in caves and tweet in space, the buoy, by allowing people to text from miles under water, means that there is nowhere lft 2 escape.

Related content:
Discoblog: Submarine Sonar is Confusing Whales, British Military Says
Discoblog: Woman Receives First Ever PhD in Texting
Discoblog: Watch Those Thumbs Go! Champion Texter Wins $50,000
Discoblog: The New Defense Against Despotism: Text Messaging
Discoblog: Astronauts in Space Finally Enter the Intertubes

Image: U.S. Navy

Engineers hook up the data acquisition system before a test of the landing radar that will guide the next Mars rover, Curiosity, to the surface of the Red Planet in the summer of 2012. This past spring, the radar (you can see it here attached to the nose of helicopter) went through two months of flight tests over desert terrain in Southern California at different altitudes and angles intended to simulate trajectories under consideration for the Mars landing. Preliminary results show that the radar is performing as expected.

Photographer Spencer Lowell shot the recent test for Discover this spring at a small airport near NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs. Lowell: “Steve Lee, the project manager, told me that the system they were so meticulously working on is the nervous system that is responsible for getting the rover safely to the Martian surface. The tests would run the radar through a variety of flight patterns while recording all the hard data which will be used to program the actual descent system. My only restriction while shooting was to not get within three feet of the radar. After asking if they would open the hangar doors (which they did) I backed up as I could to capture the entire scene. In this particular image you can see two of the main engineers checking the connections to the computer system. What I like most about shoots like this is that I get to see firsthand that very precise science, like sending craft to another planet, often starts off looking like a mess.”

Walk among the Arctic ice and you’ll sometimes encounter distinctive patches of red snow. They’re caused by a species of bacteria called Colwellia psycherythraea. It’s a cold specialist – a cryophile – that can swim and grow in extreme subzero temperatures where most other bacteria would struggle to survive. Colwellia’s cold-tolerating genes allow it to thrive in the Arctic, but Barry Duplantis from the University of Victoria wants to use them in human medicine, as the basis of the next generation of anti-bacterial vaccines.

Colwellia’s fondness for cold comes at a price – it dies at temperatures that most other bacteria cope with easily. By shoving Colwellia genes into bacteria that cause human diseases, Duplantis managed to transfer this temperature sensitivity, creating strains that died at human body temperature. When he injected these heat-sensitive bacteria into mice, they perished, but not before alerting the immune system and triggering a defensive response that protected the mice against later assaults. The Colwellia genes transformed another species of bacteria from a cause of disease into a vaccine against it.

A similar approach has been used for decades to create vaccines against viral diseases, including polio and influenza. Usually, scientists grow a virus at low temperature until they can isolate a strain that’s sensitive to heat and can be used as a vaccine. For bacteria, scientists usually resort to a different tack – they grow the bug under special conditions, or deliberately mutate it, until they get a strain that’s not very good at causing disease. Duplantis wanted to see if the heat-sensitive approach would work for bacteria as well as it does for viruses.

Duplantis used nine Colwellia genes to create heat-sensitive strains of Francisella tularensis, a bacterium that is often passed from animals to humans and can cause the potentially fatal disease tularaemia. Each of the nine genes worked on its own to varying degrees.

While some of the resulting strains were eventually able to evolve temperature-resistant forms, five of them couldn’t. This makes sense when you consider that cryophiles have been evolving in cold climes for several million years. Their adaptations are deeply rooted in their genes and it ought to take a combination of several mutations to create heat-resistant versions.

Duplantis injected these sensitive strains into rats and mice at cool parts of their bodies, like their ears or the base of their tails. While normal strains soon spread to other organs, the heat-sensitive ones didn’t. One strain in particular protected the rodents against later infections by normal bacteria. Three weeks later, Duplantis exposed the mice to a dose of regular Franciscella so large that it would normally kill them within a few days. It didn’t – they became less ill and lost less weight than unvaccinated mice and weeks later, they were still alive and well.

It was a promising result, and Duplantis thinks that the same approach should work for other species of dangerous bacteria. Using genes borrowed from Colwellia, he has already managed to create heat-sensitive versions of Salmonella enterica, which causes food poisoning, and Mycobacterium smegmatis, a relative of the species that causes tuberculosis. Whether these strains can be used to vaccinate mice, or indeed humans, is another matter.

And creating vaccines isn’t the only use for heat-sensitive bacteria. The most dangerous species are very difficult to study, and scientists need to do so in expensive facilities with stringent safety measures. But that might change if we managed to engineer strains that die at low temperatures. If the bacteria die at human body temperature, the risks of accidental infection suddenly become very low. And as Duplantis says, that would reduce the need for “full physical containment.”

Reference: PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1004119107

Image by Richard Finkelstein

More on vaccines:

• Vaccine against 2009 pandemic flu also protects mice against 1918 strain
• Retrocyclins: a defence against HIV, reawakened after 7 million years

We haven't said anything about Ophelia Benson on this blog in a long time. We stopped allowing Benson to comment here back in mid 2009, for very good reasons--among other things, she was sending us emails demanding to have other posters' comments deleted. We had a better solution. Lately, Benson has been clamoring to have her commenting status restored, based on the "Tom Johnson" flap. This doesn't make any sense, as the thread that led to her banning happened long before that affair. Still, we decided to look at what Benson was saying in favor of her restoration:
He or he and Sheril Kirshenbaum banned me from commenting at The Intersection soon after I began trying to get them to do a better job of justifying their claims and to criticize their energetic and often inaccurate bashing of new atheists. Commenters who agreed with them were not banned or even moderated, no matter how abusive their comments were. One “bilbo” repeatedly called me a liar after I posted a list of questions for M and K. Benson's banning had nothing to do with her positions. Moreover, how does she know who was or wasn't banned or moderated? We can't tell you how heavily we have had to ...

Around the United States, state governments are rushing to enact bans on K2, the hot new (and still mostly legal) drug made with synthetic cannabinoids: lab-created compounds designed to mimic the effects of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Often marketed as incense, K2 — which is also known as Spice, Demon or Genie — is sold openly in gas stations, head shops and, of course, online. It can sell for as much as $40 per gram. The substance is banned in many European countries, but by marketing it as incense and clearly stating that it is not for human consumption, domestic sellers have managed to evade federal regulation [The New York Times].

Missouri is the most recent state to move against K2, the origin of which dates back to the work of Clemson University scientist John Huffman, who was developing these synthetic compounds in the 1990s. Scientifically, the chemicals are interesting for their potential to mimic some of the pain-relieving aspects of marijuana, which advocates of medical marijuana legality point to, without the negative health effects that come with setting a plant on fire and inhaling the smoke. The chemical used in most varieties of K2 is called JWH-018.

Huffman was interviewed by The Guardian last year when K2 was spreading around Europe. Now in his late 70s, he seems to understand something that many politicians can’t seem to get through their heads: Risk-taking teenagers will go to about any length, legal or illegal, to get high. Huffman says he wouldn’t oblige the numerous enterprising types who asked him how to make his substances, and that the substances are always labeled not for human consumption. But he figured someone was going to figure it out sooner or later, especially considering the chemical doesn’t show up on drug tests.

JWH-018 was “nothing special”, Dr Huffman remembered, “but it was one of the more potent compounds we made, and it was quite easy to make from commercially available materials. Probably the reason it has now caught on…. My biggest surprise was that this all hadn’t happened sooner,” he told me. “All it needed was somebody with a reasonable understanding of science to see the papers we had published and think, ‘Aha!’” [The Guardian].

The hurry to ban K2 this year started after U.S. health officials began blaming the substance for more and more hospital visits.

There has been a significant bump in calls to poison centers concerning spice. Nationwide, the American Association of Poison Control Centers logged 567 cases across 41 states in which people had suffered a bad reaction to spice during the first half of 2010. Just 13 cases were reported in 2009 [Washington Post].

But the problem health officials and politicians keep running into is that there isn’t a single K2. What’s probably happening is that dealers buy a synthetic chemical online and then spray it on their own mix of herbs and leaves. They sell the result as K2, marketing it as incense with a wink and a nod, although both parties know it’s meant to be smoked.

Thus, it’s hard for medical responders to know what’s making all these people sick: It could be the dose of the chemical, its stability during combustion, how it’s metabolized, or something else in the mix. And if you’re trying to ban the stuff, how do you do it? If state legislatures outlaw JWH-018, there are scores if not hundreds of other synthetics there to take its place. Texas legislators may attempt to draft a bill that outlaws all possible synthetic cannabinoids, though how that wording will work is unclear.

Related Content:
80beats: 1st Medical Studies on Pot in 20 Years Find It Does Relieve Pain
80beats: A Toke a Day Might Keep Alzheimer’s Away
DISCOVER: Pot Helps an Imbalanced Mind
Discoblog: Forget About Pot’s Surprising Memory Boost

Image: Buy-K2-Incense

We can celebrate another victory for skeptics and reality!

The antivax group Australian Vaccination Network has been found to give "misleading and inaccurate information" to its followers, according to an Australian government investigation. The investigation also concluded that despite their many denials, the AVN is in fact an antivaccination group and must make that clear when disseminating information.

Ouch.

The entire report can be downloaded here from the Antivaxxers.com website.

Here’s the background: Meryl Dorey is the head of the AVN. She travels across Australia talking about the dangers of vaccination, and by "talking about" I really mean spewing misinformation. She says things that are not correct, cherry picks data, misrepresents scientific studies, and basically distorts reality in order to push her propaganda about vaccines.

Given that vaccinations do work, are almost entirely safe, and have almost eliminated such diseases as pertussis, measles, polio, and smallpox, some reality-based people have taken exception to Ms. Dorey’s tactics.

That included Ken McLeod, who filed a complaint about Dorey and the AVN with the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC). There were two thrusts to the complaint: one was that the AVN is a health care service provider, because they dispense health care advice, and second that the way they dispense that advice is misleading and harmful.

The HCCC agreed on both points. First, they concluded that:

According to its own constitution and through its activities the AVN is a health education service.

I found it bizarre that Dorey would try to deny that (it was a classic "who me?" denial on her part). She’s trying to eat her cake and have it, too; dispense health care advice but then deny any responsibility for what happens when she does.

The second part is where the AVN and Dorey get handed their heads. The HCCC report goes on for page after page listing out the breaches by Dorey and the AVN, showing where they have distorted and misrepresented vaccination information, all in a biased, negative way (keep in mind that Dorey has vehemently claimed the AVN is not antivax).

For example, the report points out things like:

• The AVN’s claims that vaccines are untested is simply false;
• The AVN’s claims about toxic substances in vaccinations are exaggerated and in some cases simply wrong;
• The AVN’s claims that vaccines are contaminated with viruses is cherry- picked in order to support an antivax stance;
• The AVNs claims that vaccines do not necessarily protect against disease misrepresents the facts;

and much more.

In the end, sadly, the HCCC won’t punish the AVN for its falsehoods, but it has recommended they put up a prominent disclaimer on their home page stating that they are antivax, that the information provided by the AVN is not medical advice, and that a decision to vaccinate or not should be made after consulting an actual health care provider.

But have no doubt: this is a big win for skepticism and reality! Dorey and the AVN were repeatedly slammed in this document, which is a litany of their transgressions. While I have no doubt Dorey will continue to claim she is the victim of a pogrom by people trying to suppress information and all that — and the rabidly antivax Age of Autism site has already called this whole thing fascism: yes, fascism, which doesn’t mean what they think it means — the truth is, Ms. Dorey and the AVN are guilty of spreading false, slanted information in order to spread their vicious antivax nonsense.

Ken Mcleod, who filed the suit in the first place, has issued a public statement about the report that’s well worth reading, too.

And remember, while Dorey and the AVN place themselves up on pedestals, there’s a pertussis outbreak in Marin County, California , another in Bakersfield, California, and similar reports from around the planet.

The bottom line is that mouthpieces for antivax propaganda distort reality, spread falsehoods, and consistently use fear as a tactic to spread their nonsense. This comes at a great cost: more disease, more disregard for reality, and literally more cost as money has to be spent caring for sick patients.

I’m glad that more people are taking this health threat seriously, and very glad for this victory against the antivaxxers. Keep ‘em coming!

My thanks to Rachel Dunlop, David McCaffery, Al Janulaw, Linda Mitts, and the Stop the Australian Vaccination Network website for info pertaining to this post.

Mice might turn up their noses at alcohol, but not the prairie vole. This usually upstanding rodent, famous for mating for life and sharing pup-raising duties, apparently likes a stiff drink.

“They not only drink alcohol, they prefer it over water,” Allison Anacker, a neuroscience graduate student at Oregon Health & Science University told The Oregonian.

Anacker, working under behavioral neuroscience professor Andrey Ryabinin, was looking for a model organism to study some humans’ troubled relationship with alcohol. Mice and rats fail in this role–it’s unusual to find ones that want even a sip of the stuff.

In a study published in Addiction Biology last month, Ryabinin’s team records the drunken misadventures of prairie voles. After chugging their preferred 6 percent alcohol drink (about the equivalent of beer), some thirsty voles shoved off parental responsibilities and even walked out on their mates. Though some drank responsibility, others drank to excess, stumbling away from the bar/spiked water bottle.

The study suggests that like humans, the voles also make drinking buddies, seemingly encouraging each other to have another. When caged together, the voles appear to match one another drink for drink, a practice that apparently has nothing to do with who’s buying the next round.

Related content:
Discoblog: “Drunk” Parrots Fall From the Trees in Australia
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Anticipated versus actual alcohol consumption during 21st birthday celebrations.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Beer Consumption Increases Human Attractiveness to Malaria Mosquitoes.
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Pocket science – sperm races and poison-stealing voles
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Of voles and men: exploring the genetics of commitment

Image: flickr / Gilles Gonthier / field vole

I'm on a couple of podcasts recently talking about the clash within atheism between "New Atheists" and people like me. First, I was on the "Reasonable Doubts" podcast discussing this topic for a good half hour or so. You can listen here. Many things came up, including the Templeton Foundation and the problem of online incivility. A few brief comments:
* On the Templeton Foundation, I've already had my say, and in a post that has been very interestingly ignored, reporter Dan Jones does a far better job than me at explaining why it is doesn't make sense to discount views just because they may have received Templeton support. On an intellectual level, I think Dan really deserves an answer from those who dismiss Templeton funding and those who receive it in a blanket way. (Note: My post defending Templeton has not been prominently answered either, at least that I have seen.)
* I also am tired of the label "accommodationist." It seems to imply that there is something weak about my view, as if I'm all ready to just cave to some common enemy. On the contrary, I think that I'm being tolerant and pragmatic.
There's an added point here, which is that ...

[An old post I'm fond of]

Just before the winter solstice brings autumn to an end, here’s a chance to blog about the great evolutionary biologist–and student of fall foliage–William Hamilton. Hamilton, who died in 2000, has never reached the household-name status of other evolutionary biologists such as E.O. Wilson or Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould. But he deserves a place of privilege, for all his profoundly influential ideas. He found an explanation for altruistic behavior in many insect species by expanding biology’s notion of fitness to include the genes an individual shares with its relatives. He offered one of the best-supported theories for the origin of sex–as a way for a species to keep ahead of its parasites in their evolutionary arms race. And he proposed that sexual displays–such as peacock tails and rooster combs–are signals that males send to females to reveal their ability to fight off parasites and otherwise live well.

It wasn’t just the ideas he came up with that made Hamilton extraordinary–it was the way he came up with them. They just seemed to pop into his head, obvious and simple, and he proceeded to write them down in clipped, humble prose, tossing in a few equations to give a sense of their underlying beauty. And then he was off to the next idea, or a trip to the Amazon. Hamilton wasn’t much interested in promoting his ideas to the world at large, to become a talking head or a writer of best-selling science books (in part because he was extremely shy and humble). That’s probably one reason why Hamilton is sliding into obscurity even as his ideas live on.

In the current issue of Biology Letters, there’s an example of Hamilton’s enduring legacy. One of the last papers Hamilton wrote before he died (after an ill-fated trip to Central Africa to investigate a controversial theory about the origin of HIV), appeared in 2001 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. He and co-author Samuel Brown asked why it is that leaves change color in the fall. There are many possible explanations. Perhaps leaves just look that way as they inevitably die, for example. Hamilton, however, believed there was an adaptation involved. He and Brown proposed that a brilliant leaf was, like a peacock’s tail, a signal. A peacock’s tail takes a huge investment of energy, energy that could otherwise be diverted to fighting off parasites or surviving other stresses. A strong male can afford to use up this energy, which makes the tail an honest ad for its parasite-fighting genes. In the case of leaves, trees are not sending signals to other trees–they are sending signals to tree-eating insects.

Trees, after all, are as besieged by insects as birds or other animals are by internal parasites. They fight their enemies a sophisticated arsenal of chemical agents, sticky traps, and other weapons of mass arthropod destruction. Hamilton and Brown proposed that trees that have a strong constitution warn off insects by changing colors in the fall. In a sense, they say, “I can shut down my photosynthesis early in the fall, pump a lot of red or yellow pigments into my leaves, and still have enough energy left to annihilate your babies when they hatch in the spring.. So just move along.”

Warning colors are a well-established fact in biology. Poisonous butterflies and snakes deter predators with them, and other species try to horn in on the protection by mimicking their appearance. But the notion that trees were warning off insects was quite new–just the sort of brilliant notion Hamilton might have while taking a stroll one autumn day. (Note: In forumlating his hypothesis, Hamilton depended heavily on a theory called the Handicap Principle formulated by Amotz Zahavi in the 1970s.)

For evidence that autumn leaves are signals, Hamilton pointed to some interesting patterns. Aphids, for example, lay their eggs on trees in the fall; when the eggs hatch, the larva devour leaves voraciously. Hamilton and Brown found that aphids are less common on trees that have bright red or yellow leaves. And species with bright leaves tend to be burdened with more species of aphids specialized for feeding on them than trees with drab leaves.

Hamilton left this jewel of an idea behind after his death for other scientists to investigate. It’s a challenge to test, because there are so many links in the theoretical chain. “Vigor,” for example, is a tricky thing to measure in trees; you could, for example, shower a tree with aphids, close it up in a gigantic net, and see how well it defends itself against them. That’s a huge amount of work, however, that yields you one data point. And you’d still have to find a way to eliminate other factors, such as weather, the age of the tree, and so on.

But recently scientists have found a reliable clue to vigor in the shape of a tree’s leaves. Vigorous trees produce very symmetrical leaves, while weaker trees produces misshapen ones. Symmetry signifies much the same thing in swallow tails and gazelle horns and human faces. When a complex organ like a leaf or a feather forms, any environmental stress can throw off its development from perfect symmetry. In stronger indviduals, the develoment of the organ is better shielded from these insults.

In September 2001 a team of Norwegian biologists took advantage of the symmetry of vigorous leaves and went gathering leaves of birch trees. They collected them from 100 birch trees all told. Half of the trees were shimmering yellow, and the other half were still green. As Hamilton would have predicted, they found that the yellow leaves were consistently more symmetrical than the green ones. The researchers had gathered half their yellow and green leaves from a healthy stand of trees, and the other half from the middle of an outbreak of birch-feeding moth larvae. On average, the trees in the healthy stand had more symmetrical leaves than the moth-infested ones, once again just as Hamilton would have predicted. Finally, the biologists looked at how trees with different colors fared the following spring. They found that trees with strong colors suffered less damage from insects compared to trees with weak colors.

These results are powerful support for Hamilton, although they don’t tell the whole story. How much do aphids depend on the sight of leaves when they choose a tree, for example, as opposed to their smell? Still, it’s a disconcerting idea that’s gaining strength: a beautiful fall landscape is a giant shout of “Back off.” When you see a tree at its most autumnally glorious, be sure to remember Hamilton.

Update 9/27/04: Here is the sequel: some scientists think that fall colors mean something else.

On Saturday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe took the world’s closest pictures of the 80- by 50-mile-wide asteroid known as 21 Lutetia. Though the Lutetia visit is just a stop on the way to Rosetta’s real destination–a 2014 visit to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko–Saturday’s pictures document the closest visit to this big asteroid, the largest we’ve ever visited with a spacecraft.

We’ve known about Lutetia for quite a while: since 1852, according to Sky and Telescope. In November of that year, Hermann Goldschmidt spotted the space rock from his Paris balcony. The asteroid is now around 280 million miles from the Sun. From only 2,000 miles away, Rosetta got a much closer look at Lutetia, whipping around it at about 10 miles per second (30,000 miles per hour) as its OSIRIS camera snapped pictures recording details down to a few dozen meters.

“The fly-by has been a spectacular success with Rosetta performing fautlessly,” ESA said in a statement. “Just 24 hours ago, Lutetia was a distant stranger. Now, thanks to Rosetta, it has become a close friend.” [AFP]

Lutetia is an old chunk of rock, possibly dating back to the solar system’s birth. The big guy is also rather dense; as reported by Sky and Telescope, it has a mean density of about 5½ g/cm³—”nearly twice that of ordinary rock.” Some experts suspect it is an M-type asteroid, meaning it’s made out of metal.

Rosetta will now go back into hibernation mode as it prepares for its rendezvous with comet 67P four years from now. If all goes well, it will snag 67P with a pair of “harpoons” and coast along on a comet ride.

[I]t’ll enter orbit around the comet’s core, and drop a landing vehicle to try and find out more about its composition, firing a pair of harpoons into its surface during its descent to keep it attached and stop it from bouncing off. It’ll then accompany the comet as it approaches the Sun, before ending its mission in 2015. [Wired]

For a recording of Saturday’s live stream and other details, check out Phil Plait’s post in Bad Astronomy.

Related content:
80beats: Rosetta Photographs a Crescent Earth on Its Way to a Comet Rendezvous
Bad Astronomy: Live stream of Rosetta’s July 10 asteroid flyby
Bad Astronomy: Rosetta takes some home pictures
Bad Astronomy: Rosetta swings past home one final time

Image: ESA / Final sequence of images before closest approach

Will this solution finally be the solution? Today in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is attempting to secure another containment cap onto its oil leak, which the company says could trap and collect all the oil gushing from the leak—if it works.

On Saturday BP removed the leaky cap that had been catching a little bit of the oil, meaning that the oil is now flowing unchecked into the Gulf as engineers race to install the new one. This is the latest try in a string of attempts to cap the leak, and BP’s Kent Wells says that engineers are lowering the new, tighter-fitting cap into place this morning.

The new cap, which should eventually not allow any gas or oil to escape, will be used to divert more oil to collection ships that will be brought in over the next two to three weeks, Mr. Wells said. “We’ll continue to ramp up the capacity so that sometime along the line, whatever the flow is, we’ll capture it all,” he said [The New York Times].

BP says it hopes to have the new cap installed by the end of the day. Still, it could be mid-week by the time they know how successful they were.

Once the cap is firmly in place, the company will begin “shutting in” the well by closing perforated pipe at the top. The company will be looking to see if the pressure rises under the cap. If it does, that means there are no other leaks, and the cap is stopping oil from leaking into the Gulf. But lower pressure readings may indicate leaking elsewhere in the well. In that case, Suttles said, the company will work to collect the leak with surface vessels and by dropping yet another cap on top of the stack [AP].

While BP continues to play musical containment caps, its backup project—drilling relief wells to ultimately stem the flow—continues. Company spokespeople say the new wells could intercept the old well by the end of July, though even after that it would take a few weeks into August to pump in enough mud and cement to stop the leak—if it works.

“At this point, there have been so many ups and downs, disappointments, that everybody down here is like, ‘We’ll believe it when we see it,’” said Keith Kennedy, a charter boat captain in Venice, La [MSNBC].

Recent posts on the BP oil spill:
80beats: BP Oil Update: Tar Balls in Texas & Lake Pontchartrain
80beats: Gulf Coast Turtle News: No More Fiery Death; Relocating 70,000 Eggs
80beats: Next from X Prize: An Award for Cleaning up BP’s Oil Spill?
80beats: BP to Kevin Costner: We’ll Take 32 of Your Oil Clean-up Machines

Image: BP

Thought for the day: it just occurred to me how incredibly ironic it is that, when the Pledge of Allegiance was changed in 1954, they actually put "under God" in between the words one nation and indivisible.

Susan, a graduate student, writes,

I got my tattoo in 2008 after raising enough money by carrying around a jar marked “tattoo fund” as I bar hopped for my 21st birthday. The tattoo is of a Permian cephalopod from the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas, Cooperoceras texanum.

I have loved paleontology for as long as I can remember. When I was looking at colleges, I came across a program called “Earth, Life, and Time” at the University of Maryland. It was a 2 year program as a part of an honors living and learning program called College Park Scholars. ELT was run by two amazing paleontologists, Dr. Tom Holtz and Dr. John Merck. The program was what convinced me to go to UMD and without these two great professors, I might not even be alive today. They are not only wonderful human beings, but also some of the greatest teachers at the university. Of all the classes with a natural history or evolutionary focus offered at the university, the classes they taught were truly of the highest caliber. To honor them, I got the mascot of the Earth, Life, and Time program, Cooperoceras texanum, tattooed on my leg. Unfortunately, the program is no longer offered at the university, due to shifting research goals in the the Geology Department, but Dr. Merck and Dr. Holtz now run a new program called “Science and Global Change”. ELT remains in the hearts and minds of the decade worth of students who came through it’s classroom.

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.