A rare but potentially life-threatening tropical fungus is spreading through the Pacific Northwest, researchers have reported.

The culprit is a new strain of the Cryptococcus gatti fungus, and is known to have been lethal in 25 percent of the reported human infections. C. gatti usually only infects transplant and AIDS patients and people with otherwise compromised immune systems, but the new strain is genetically different, the researchers said. “This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people” [Reuters], says lead researcher Edmond Byrnes.

However, scientists aren’t sounding a public health alert because the death toll is still very small–in the United States, five of the 21 people who contracted the fungus in the have died.

The new strain of the C. gatti fungus has been found in both humans and animals like cats, dogs, and sheep, researchers write in the journal PLoS Pathogens. Because its such a rare infection, researchers warn that physicians could potentially miss diagnosing it.

C. gatti is a tropical fungus, normally found in Southeast Asia, Australia, and South America; it arrived on our continent in 1999 via imported plants or trees. In the past five years it migrated from Canada’s British Columbia province into the United States. The fungus is thought to live on the bark of about 10 species of trees, including Douglas fir and western hemlock. Epidemiologist Julie Harris of the Centers for Disease Control says the primary victims of infection have been people who spend a lot of time outdoors, often in contact with soil, and those who do woodwork and construction [Los Angeles Times].

Infection occurs when someone inhales the floating spores given off by the fungus. The spores are known to lodge in the lungs and cause a persistent cough and breathing difficulties, and have also been linked to meningitis and weight loss. But unlike bacterial or viral infections, this fungal infection isn’t transferable and can’t be passed from person to person.

Treatment for the infection includes a long course of anti-fungal medication. While the new strain is “highly virulent,” lead researcher Byrnes says there’s no cause for panic–just for vigilance. “Overall it’s a pretty low threat, and it’s still uncommon in the area, but as the range of the organism expands and the number of cases increases accordingly, it’s becoming more of a concern,” he says [CNN]. Epidemiologist Philip Alcabes, Ph.D told CNN that the emergence of a new, mutant C. gatti strain is “pretty normal” and that “it is an expectable evolutionary event in nature that has a slight amount of human fallout.” He adds that if this fungus follows previous patterns, its virulence should diminish eventually.

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Image: Duke University

Speaking of Trek, this is simply awesome.

And here’s the story behind it. You’re welcome.

A hospital in Barcelona has announced that it has successfully carried out the world’s first full face transplant.

A team of 30 doctors conducted a 24-hour surgery on the patient who had lost most of his face in an accident; in the end the surgeons gave him new jaws, cheekbones, nose, teeth, skin, and other features.

The patient now has a completely new face from his hairline down and only one visible scar, which looks like a wrinkle running across his neck, said Dr. Joan Pere Barret, the surgeon who led the team [Associated Press]. She added that if you ran into the patient at the hospital now, you would not notice anything unusual.

This is the first time that doctors have performed a total facial transplant. Over the past few years, partial facial reconstructions have been performed on ten patients, including on an American woman who suffered an unspecified trauma and a Chinese farmer whose face was mauled by a bear. All the patients were put on a strict regime of immunosuppressant drugs after surgery to ensure that their bodies didn’t reject the transplanted bones, muscles, and skin, and were also given psychiatric counseling.

The current Spanish patient is reportedly a farmer in his 30s who accidentally shot himself in the face in 2005. Prior to the face transplant, he had to breathe and be fed through tubes. After looking at himself in the mirror, post-surgery, he is said to be happy with his new visage.

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Image: Valle d’hebron Hospital

Now I know why watching Trek made my blood pressure rise.

Hey, y’know what would go well with this? Antipasto. HAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, this one certainly looks like more of a meal than the Tiny-E. And it’s weird: the secondary hull looks like a Shuttle external tank. Life imitates art imitates life.

Tip o’ the meat grinder to BABloggee cturner301 and MyFoodLooksFunny.

Happy birthday, old friend.

Tomorrow marks 20 years since the space shuttle Discovery carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. And to mark the occasion, NASA released the latest in a long line of incredibly gorgeous images of nebulae and star birth. This is the Carina nebula, which the telescope first shot in 2007. “We wanted to have an image that will be at least as spectacular as the iconic ‘pillars of creation,’ says Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, referring to a widely reproduced 1995 Hubble image of the Eagle Nebula. “This particular image can arguably be called ‘Eagle Nebula on steroids’” [Science News]. This sweeping view comes thanks to the Wide Field Camera 3, installed during a Hubble upgrade last summer.

There’s plenty more Hubble love to go around. DISCOVER blogger Phil Plait promises a few surprises in his “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble.” And if you’ve already seen the Eagle Nebula more times than you can count, check out our gallery of the most underrated Hubble images.

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Image: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

'What is it, exactly, that distinguishes us from other species?' So begins a recent article by UT professor Michael Webber, who offers an interesting take on a subject that's long been debated. He suggests that what makes us human is the way we manipulate energy:
I contend that what really separates humans from all the other species is that we are the only ones to manipulate energy. The First Law of Thermodynamics tells us that energy has many forms (for example, chemical, thermal, kinetic, electrical, atomic, radiant) and that we can convert from one form to another. And though all species benefit from the natural conversion of radiant energy (for example, sunlight) into chemical energy (derived from, for example, photosynthesis), humans are the only species that will specifically manipulate energy from one form to another — for example converting chemical energy (fuels) to thermal energy (heat) or mechanical energy (motion).
And, thus, a new definition of humanity is born: Humans intentionally manipulate energy.
With this in mind, Webber argues that we ought to accept responsibility for its negative effects. In other words, his definition implores us to be better stewards of this pale blue dot. It's a perspective I like very much. Go read ...

The fight against global warming has a brand new weapon: whale poop. Scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division have found that whale poop contains huge amounts of iron and when it is released into the waters, the iron-rich feces become food for phytoplankton. Phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, the algae is in turn eaten by Antarctic krill, and baleen whales eat the krill. Through this neat cycle, globe-warming CO2 is kept sequestered in the ocean. Scientists have long known that iron is necessary to sustain phytoplankton growth in the oceans, which is why one geoengineering scheme calls for adding soluble iron to ocean waters to encourage the growth of carbon-trapping algae blooms. While environmentalists have fretted over the possible consequences of meddling with ocean chemistry that way, this new study on whale poop suggests an all-natural way to get the same carbon-trapping effect: Increase the number of whales in the ocean. When Stephen Nicol of the Australian Antarctic Division analyzed the feces of baleen whales, he found an astounding amount of iron in it. New Scientist reports:
Nicol's team analyzed 27 samples of faeces from four species of baleen whales. He found that on average whale faeces had 10 million times as much ...

The oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico is finally out, as the Deepwater Horizon sank into the sea yesterday and hope for finding 11 missing workers began to fade. The damage assessment for the oil spill, however, has just begun.

Oil from an undersea pocket that was ruptured by the rig, which was leased by the energy company BP, has begun to spread outward. The spill measures 10 miles (16 kilometers) by 10 miles, about four times the area of Manhattan, and is comprised of a “light sheen with a few patches of thicker crude,” U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Cheri Ben-Iesau said today [BusinessWeek]. Whether or not the 700,000 gallons of diesel on board Deepwater Horizon is part of the spill remains unknown. Transocean, the company that owns the rig, admitted that it failed to “to stem the flow of hydrocarbons” before the rig sank.

The biggest concern this morning is that the spill could be headed for the coast of Louisiana, less than 50 miles away, which would maximize the environmental damage. Ed Overton, an LSU environmental sciences professor, said he expects some of the light crude oil to evaporate while much of it turns into a pasty mess called a “chocolate mousse” that ultimately breaks apart into “tar balls,” small chunks of oily residue that can wash ashore. “It’s going to be a god-awful mess for a while,” he said. “I’m not crying doomsday or saying the sky is falling, but that is the potential” [AP]. Once oil hits land it’s far more difficult to clean up; even 21 years after the Exxon Valdez accident, its oil can still be found in Alaska beaches.

Now the task is to stem the tide. Fearing a potential environmental disaster, BP announced Thursday that it was dispatching a flotilla of more than 30 vessels capable of skimming more than 170,000 barrels of oil a day to protect sea lanes and wildlife in the area of the sunken platform [The New York Times]. According to the AP, BP had put down 6,000 feet of containment boom by last night, with 500,000 more feet en route. The company is also preparing to dig a secondary well to try to plug the ruptured oil deposit with concrete and mud.

The scale of disaster remains to be seen. Energy experts at first estimated a worst-case scenario of more than 300,000 gallons of oil leaking into the sea per day. However, the size of the oil pocket remains unknown. If it’s a small one, the containment would be far easier. And in a bit of hopeful news, the Coast Guard said it found no new leakage yesterday.

If you’re a fan of DISCOVER, check us out on Facebook.

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Images: United States Coast Guard

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. I spent ten years of my life working on that magnificent machine, from using observations of a supernova for my PhD, all the way to helping test, calibrate, and eventually use STIS, a camera put on Hubble in 1997.

Last year, I published Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble, and I don’t think I can really add much to it here. I also have a lot of new readers since then, so I’ll simply repost it now as my tip o’ the dew shield to the world’s most famous observatory.

Introduction

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery roared into space, carrying on board a revolution: The Hubble Space Telescope. It was the largest and most sensitive optical-light telescope ever launched into space, and while it suffered initially from a focusing problem, it would soon return some of the most amazing and beautiful astronomical images anyone had ever seen.

Hubble was designed to be periodically upgraded, and even as I write this, astronauts are in the Space Shuttle Atlantis installing two new cameras, fixing two others, and replacing a whole slew of Hubble’s parts. This is the last planned mission, ever, to service the venerable ’scope, so what better time to talk about it?

Plus, it’s arguably the world’s most famous telescope (it’s probably the only one people know by name), and yet I suspect that there are lots of things about it that might surprise you. So I present to you Ten Things You Don’t Know About the Hubble Space Telescope, part of my Ten Things series. I know, my readers are smart, savvy, exceptionally good-looking, and well-versed in things astronomical. Whenever I do a Ten Things post some goofball always claims they knew all ten. But I am extremely close to being 100% positive that no one who reads this blog will know all ten things here (unless they’ve used Hubble themselves). I have one or two big surprises in this one, including some of my own personal interactions with the great observatory!

Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble

David Hanson’s robots are by now somewhat familiar faces, including his Einstein robot currently being used as a research tool at Javier Movellan’s Machine Perception Lab at UCSD, and the punk rock conversationalist Joey Chaos. A less familiar face is that of Bina Rothblatt, the blonde at the end of the table in the above photograph. Bina is a robot commissioned by Sirius Satellite Radio inventor Martine Rothblatt to look like her beloved wife. Take that, uncanny valley!

Photographer Timothy Archibald and I worked closely on this project with the idea of creating portraits, and maybe a kind of family portrait, of the Hanson robots. After flying to Texas to shoot Hanson and robots at his home and workshop in Dallas, Texas, Archibald wrote to me.

“Here is a big house in a Texas suburb that looks normal on the outside. On the inside it is robot making company made up of a floating array of 9-12 employees sculpting things, working on the electrical stuff and writing code for software…taking over the living room, den, kitchen, etc. On the upstairs level is where Hanson, his wife and 3 year old live. They they are in month three of this arrangement. There is no down time. People trickle in at 11:00 AM and stay until 1-3 AM everyday including weekends. They are cranking right now, trying to hit deadlines with The Android Portrait of Bina Rothblatt as well as a potential consumer robot called ZENO. Curiously, Hanson’s son is also named Zeno. There is a story on how that came to be, of course…”

To see more photography from this story, check out DISCOVER magazine’s May 2010 issue on newsstands now.

Katherine Batiste of Hanson Robotics working on a computer with “An Android Portrait Of Bina Rothblatt” sits on the table.

Here’s a lecture Steven Johnson gave last night at Columbia about the future of text. (Steven has a transcript here.) Lo and behold, that degree in semiotics twenty years ago makes a lot of sense now!

[Update: I embedded the video here this morning, but it starts on its own, and sometimes it shows a lecture by someone else. Future of journalism, indeed--c'mon, Columbia! Here's the place where I think you can find the video.]

Since I’ve been talking about the possibility of admixture with “archaics” (I’m starting to think the term is a bit too H. sapiens sapiens-centric, is the Neandertal genome turning out to have more ancestral alleles?) I thought I’d point to a paper out in PLoS ONE which reiterates the basic fact that the overwhelming genetic evidence today suggests a massive demographic expansion from an African population within the last 100,000 years. Study after study has supported this contention since the mid-1980s. The question is whether this is the exclusive component of modern human genetic ancestry, which is a somewhat more extreme scenario. In any case, the paper is Formulating a Historical and Demographic Model of Recent Human Evolution Based on Resequencing Data from Noncoding Regions:

Our results support a model in which modern humans left Africa through a single major dispersal event occurring ~60,000 years ago, corresponding to a drastic reduction of ~5 times the effective population size of the ancestral African population of ~13,800 individuals. Subsequently, the ancestors of modern Europeans and East Asians diverged much later, ~22,500 years ago, from the population of ancestral migrants. This late diversification of Eurasians after the African exodus points to the occurrence of a long maturation phase in which the ancestral Eurasian population was not yet diversified.

They took 213 individuals, a little over half from diverse African groups, and the other half split evenly between Europeans and East Asians, and sequenced 20 distinct noncoding autosomal regions of the genome. ~27 kilobases per person. The noncoding part is important because they are trying to look at neutral regions of the genome, not subject to natural selection (this is obviously an approximation, as there is some evidence that even noncoding regions may have some selective value). The variation is what you’d expect, Africans more varied than non-Africans, and the two Eurasian populations are distinct from each other, but less so than either is from the Africans. Lots of statistics ensue, and an “Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) analysis.” I’ll cut to the chase, the highest probability model is illustrated in panel A of figure 4. Expansion out of Africa ~60,000 years ago, major bottleneck, a ~40,000 year interregnum where there was a relatively unified Eurasian population genetically, and then a separation between East and West Eurasians ~20,000 years ago.

I’ll stipulate that I haven’t dug deep into the statistics, nor would I really comprehend all the details if I did spend a weekend on it. But I’m rather skeptical of the 40,000 year period of a common Eurasian population. Reading the text where they discuss this finding it seems clear that it was surprising to the authors, and I’m not sure how convinced they are about it either. It is interesting that the second most probable scenario, B, is a simultaneous expansion out of Africa by two different groups which lead to East and West Eurasians. That makes me a little less confident about the details on Eurasian demographic history overall than I’d already been. They do note that some Y chromosomal data imply that all Eurasian populations may have derived from a Central Asian group, and the settlement of Europe ~35,000 years ago may actually indicate population replacement (though it’s pretty clear that many Central Asian groups have been recently heavily admixed with the incursion of Turks from Mongolia in historical time overlain upon a Iranian substrate, and some sequencing of ancient Cro-Magnon mtDNA shows that their haplgroup is still found in many Eurasian, and even New World, populations). Perhaps there is a more complicated story to be told about the replacement of early modern H. sapiens sapiens by later H. sapiens sapiens. I wouldn’t discount it, but one analysis does not push me to consider this at all likely. Additionally, they obviously couldn’t test the “two wave” model Out-of-Africa whereby there was a southern migration which skirted the Indian ocean along with a north wave which pushed into Central Asia; they didn’t have any “southern” Eurasian samples. Also, I do want to make a note of the fact that they had a lot more parameters in their model than I’m mentioning, including migration between the two Eurasian groups.

But let’s jump to the conclusion and highlight a portion which is relevant to what I’ve been discussing on this weblog over the past few days. As I observe above they constructed scenarios with different parameters to see which fit the data best, and one of those parameters was interbreeding with older hominin groups in Eurasia. Here’s what they say in the discussion:

For those historical and demographic parameters that have been previously studied, our co-estimations are in agreement with previous reports, highlighting the general accuracy of our estimates. For example, our estimation of the replacement rate of archaic hominids by modern humans, although indicating that the introgression of archaic material into the gene pool of modern humans has been minimal, did not rule out the presence of minor archaic admixture of other hominids in modern humans in agreement with previous observations…However, it is important to emphasize that our inferences are based on non-coding neutral regions of the genome and that adaptive introgression from archaic to modern humans may have occurred to a greater extent…Indeed, in contrast to neutral alleles, adaptive variants may attain high frequencies by natural selection after minimal genetic introgression. Future studies comparing coding-sequence variation in modern humans and extinct hominids (e.g. Neanderthals) should help to answer this question.

Their models don’t offer any plausible scenarios where more than 1% of the sequence which they analyzed was derived from populations which were not from the recent Out-of-Africa movement. But, they do specifically say that they lose power to ascertain whether there was admixture at levels below 1%. At some point in the medium term future when we have a fair amount of ancient DNA from Neandertals sequenced, as well as a lot of genomes of modern human beings, if we still don’t find any evidence for alleles which have introgressed from other lineages which had long been separated, the time for hedging may be over. But at this point there’s still some wiggle room. What I’m wondering though is how the University of New Mexico group found lots of evidence of introgressed lineages when other groups have not. Granted, they had 10 times as many individuals and more diverse populations, but presumably far less of the genome. If there was admixture which we could detect, in light of the nearly two decades of this sort of stuff, I assumed it would be cases of adaptive introgression. Here a very low level of admixture could still lead to the increase in frequency of a haplotype which bears the hallmarks of having been in a distinct population from H. sapiens sapiens for long periods of time (like haplogroup D for the microcephalin gene). In other words, I assumed that evidence of introgression would be a story of genetics & natural selection and not genomics & admixture. For instance, particular metabolism genes and the like which new Africa populations might have picked up just like they’d eventually develop their own adaptations from mutation or extant variation if they didn’t admix. I guess 614 microsatellites may not count as genomics, but if adaptive introgression on a few select genes was how we’d detect interbreeding between native Eurasian groups and the Africans this not a way I’d assume you could find any evidence of that.

Citation:Laval G, Patin E, Barreiro LB, Quintana-Murci (201). Formulating a Historical and Demographic Model of Recent Human Evolution Based on Resequencing Data from Noncoding Regions PLoS One : 10.1371/journal.pone.0010284

Genetic studies suggest that genes have a big influence on a child’s reading ability. Twins, for example, tend to share similar reading skills regardless of whether they share the same teacher. On the other hand, other studies have found that the quality of teaching that a child receives also has a big impact on their fluency with the written word. How can we make sense of these apparently conflicting results? Which is more important for a child’s ability to read: the genes they inherit from their parents, or the quality of the teaching they receive?

According to a new study, the answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is both. Genes do have a strong effect on a child’s reading ability, but good teaching is vital for helping them to realise that potential. In classes with poor teachers, all the kids suffer regardless of the innate abilities bestowed by their genes. In classes with excellent teachers, the true variation between the children becomes clearer and their genetic differences come to the fore. Only with good teaching do children with the greatest natural abilities reach their true potential.

This study demonstrates yet again how tired the “nature versus nurture” debate is. As I wrote about recently in New Scientist, nature and nurture are not conflicting forces, but partners that work together to influence our behaviour.

This latest choreography of genes and environment was decoded by Jeanette Taylor from Florida State University. She studied over 800 pairs of Florida twins in the first and second grades. Of the pairs, 280 are identical twins who share 100% of their DNA, and 526 are non-identical twins who share just 50% of their DNA. These twin studies are commonly used to understand the genetic influences of behaviour. If a trait is strongly affected by genes, then the variation in that trait should be less pronounced in the identical twins than the non-identical ones.

Florida just happens to collects data on the reading skills of its young children, using a test called the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) test. The twins’ scores told Taylor how good they were at reading, and the improvement in the scores of their classmates told her how good their teachers were. Crunching the numbers, Taylor found that genes influenced around half of the variation in reading scores (47%), while shared environments (like a common household) accounts for 37% and non-shared environments accounted for 16%.

Genes are clearly important, but teaching mattered too. At the highest echelons of teaching quality, genes explained around 70% of the variance in reading scores. At the lowest troughs, they only accounted for around 30%.

Taylor confirmed the effect of teaching quality in a couple of different ways. She took a sample of 42 pairs of identical twins and found that those whose reading skills were below average did indeed have poorer teachers than those with above-average skills. She also looked at 216 pairs of identical twins, where each twin had a different teacher. Among these children, the difference in quality between their teachers strongly predicted the difference in their reading abilities.

These results are somewhat different to previous genetic studies, which found that around 65% of the variation in children’s reading skills can be explained by genetic factors. These same studies have suggested that outside influences, like family and school, are far less important – the genes are at the wheel, and the environment is in the backseat shouting instructions.

But Taylor says that the twins in these earlier studies often came from similar and wealthy backgrounds. If they all get similar educations, that would mask the effect of teaching. So she deliberately set out to recruit twins from a wide variety of ethnic groups and social backgrounds. A third were Hispanic, a third were white, and around a quarter were black. Half of the children came from families that qualified for free lunches on the grounds of low income.

There are many caveats to the study, which Taylor herself lists. The reading improvements of a classroom may reflect the school, students or resources, as well as the quality of teaching. You might see different results if you used different measures of teaching quality (like class observations), or of reading skill. The effect of teaching quality might also be different in higher education, or in richer schools.

Nonetheless, Taylor’s work does demonstrate that poor teaching constricts genetic variation in reading ability so that it never germinates. Only in the light of quality teaching does that variation bloom. Teachers should be pleased with the result, for, as Taylor says, “Reading will not develop optimally in the absence of effective instruction.” Likewise, putting really good teachers into a classroom won’t magically make all the students into literary Jedis, and (contrary to what some parents expect) it won’t benefit all students equally.

I wrote about something similar in my New Scientist piece – a variant of the MAOA gene can lead to aggressive behaviour, but only in people who were raised in abusive environments. Again, the environment sets the stage in which genetic actors can express themselves.

Reference: Science 10.1126/science.1186149

Image: by Tostie14

More on education:

• Gender gap in maths driven by social factors, not biological differences
• Simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students
• Teaching scientific knowledge doesn’t improve scientific reasoning
• When learning maths, abstract symbols work better than real-world examples

More shots from Perth Zoo’s wonderful orangutan exhibit. Orangutans are all too capable of walking on two legs from time to time, and this penchant for bipedalism allows them to negotiate tricky parts of the canopy. One of the females in Perth Zoo is particualrly fond of ambling around on two legs. These photos of her doing so look for all the world like a human in an orangutan costume…

UPDATE:  SOLVED at 12:29 CDT by Roger

Ah, Saturday.  Named for Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.  Dies Saturni became the Old English Saeternesdaeg, which became Saturday; the only day of the week where the English name comes from Roman mythology.

No, that’s not a clue for your riddle today… but it does give me some interesting ideas.  The riddles will be getting progressively tougher now, leading up to the bonus riddle.  Are you ready to play?  Got those neurons fired up and ready to go?  Grab a cup of coffee, and good luck:

Serpens, held by Ophiuchus - Image in public domain, from Urania's Mirror, London, c. 1825

Although thought of in the singular, this is composed of many parts.

An 18th century discovery, its image is recognized world-wide.

While it’s not visible to the naked eye, it doesn’t necessarily require a telescope to see parts of it.

It is well worth seeing, because it’s immensely beautiful… even if you don’t “get it”.

On a cosmic time scale, it is very young.

Even so, today’s subject may already be gone.

Today’s subject does feature in some modern fiction, but not as much as you’d expect.

Well, what do you think?  Do you know the answer?  I’m hanging out in the comments, as usual, and I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

Lurking, lurking, lurking... oh, hi!

One of the bright sides of being stranded at Perth by a giant ash cloud was a visit to Perth Zoo and, particualrly, visiting their orangutan exhibit. I’ve been to quite a number of zoos in my time and that had to rank with the best enclosures I have ever seen. The zoo is part of an international conservation programme and its six or so orangutans have a sizeable area to roam around, complete with tall towers, ropes, ladders and more. The next couple of posts will showcase some of the photos I took of these animals, and will help to fill some bloggy time as I wind my weary way back to the UK.

We start with the baby, who was undoubtedly the highlight of the day. Just try and look at these photos without grinning.

After taking the shot below, I asked a keeper about whether the orangutans ever undid the fixtures in their enclosure. She grinned and told me about the story described in this news report. One of the females actually undid a rope and swung out into the visitors’ area, showing remarkable restraint in just ambling along the wall and in not making a Tarzan noise. Because, clearly, that’s what you or I would have done.

One of the cooler blogs out there is Ironic Sans by David Friedman (the same guy who made scientific Valentine cards). He’s started a new blog called SundayMagazine.org, where posts and discusses old issues of the New York Times Sunday Magazine from the ancient archives.

In his first one, he found quite the catch:

How cool is that? The article is about a lettered French scientist speculating about what life would be like on other planets. David has a PDF of the article as well, which is an absolute delight to read. How wonderful to see something like that; an apparently scientifically-minded article, but free to have fun and take the reader to a totally different place than what they might expect!

It’s inspiring, in fact. Given that kind of freedom today, I wonder what other famous scientists of today would write about.

My next installment as a Point of Inquiry host just went up--you can download here and stream here. Here's a description of the show:
For many of us, chemistry is something we remember with groans from high school. Periodic Table of the Elements—what a pain to memorize, and what was the point, anyway? So how do you take a subject like chemistry and make it exciting, intriguing, and compelling? With her new book The Poisoner’s Handbook, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Deb Blum has done just that. Blum takes a page from the "CSI" franchise, and moves that familiar narrative of crime, intrigue, and high tech bad-guy catching back into the early days of the 20th century. There, in jazz age New York, she chronicles the birth of forensic chemistry at the hands of two scientific and public health pioneers—the city’s chief medical examiner Charles Norris, and his chemistry whiz side-kick Alexander Gettler. And while chronicling their poison-sleuthing careers, Blum also teaches quite a bit of science. Her book is a case study in science popularization, and one we should all be paying close attention to. Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and has been a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ...

A Cassini illusion. Click to make the image larger and spot the illusion. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here we have an image of Saturn’s moon Rhea, the F-ring and the little moon directly above Rhea in the rings is Prometheus.

Rhea is the second largest of Saturn’s many moons with a diameter of 949 miles (1,528 km) and Prometheus is only 53 miles (86 km) across.

Having the rings edge-on creates an illusion. Click the image to see the full sized version before clicking the “more” link below to learn what the illusion is.

It appears the moon Rhea is in the foreground.  It’s not.  Rhea is actually further away from Cassini’s camera than the rings and little Prometheus.

To see this image in its original context click here.

Images in pathology. Invasive squamous cell carcinoma of vulva that wanted to be a puppy.

“Squamous cell carcinomas of the vulva are usually well differentiated. Foci of invasion may be well circumscribed and show maturation (the head of the puppy). For such foci located close to the epidermis, diagnosis of invasion may pose a challenge. Careful examination and deeper levels may disclose clear cut foci of invasion. How many such foci can you find here? For answer see below.”

“Answer:
At least 3:
Below the hind foot
In front of the neck
Above the tail”

Images in pathology. Even the bone smiles!

“Figure 1 shows an unusual bone finding from a 56-year-old woman’s biopsy. We encountered a “smiling” osseous trabecula; we do not know why it is so happy; nevertheless we want to share it with all fellow pathologists because a beautiful smile is always a beautiful smile!”

Images in pathology: parotid bunny eating carrot.

Just look at that cute fluffy little tail!

Images in pathology: Snoopy in flight gear.

“Electron microscopy of a mesangial region from a glomerulus demonstrating an
interesting artifact.”

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