Rhinos, DNA, biomimicry and more-bringing the richness of the Net to your class, brought to you courtesy of the Rondebosch Boys' High School Library (If you would like to receive a weekly newsletter of the latest items in this Scoop just mail me at library@rondebosch.com)
Honeybees have thrived for 50 million years, each colony 40 to 50,000 individuals coordinated in amazing harmony. So why, seven years ago, did colonies start dying en masse? Marla Spivak reveals four reasons which are interacting with tragic consequences. This is not simply a problem because bees pollinate a third of the world's crops. Could this incredible species be holding up a mirror for us?
For many of us, our feelings often surrender to our gonads and the hormones they produce. Ovary prefers a variety of emotions. As for Testicle…well, let’s just say he likes things simpler. But, whether you’re controlled by Ovaries or Testicles, sometimes it’s hard to explain how you’re feeling without all that awkward talking. Here at Guts HQ, Ovary and Testicle have designed these handy visual Mood Wheels so you can more easily share your innard feelings with your partner, friends, and family. Download, print, and attach to your refrigerator!
The CDC has released a first-of-its-kind report detailing the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to our health and food supply. It is not pretty.
Within the report (you can read it here, it’s very layman-accessible) lies threat assessments for a whole range of disease-causing microbes, from famous foes like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to lesser-known dangers like Clostridium dificile and drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae (yes, that last one does exactly what you think it does).
Thousands of people are killed by such infections every year. They inflict billions of dollars of medical costs and lost wages. The drug-development pipeline for new antibiotics is almost empty. New tools like fecal transplants and phage therapy are hopeful but still experimental, and at least a decade away. So what do we do?
On World Elephant Day we are reminded that poaching is a growing concern across much of Africa. Though attempts at working together to end poaching are being made, DON PINNOCK argues that stockpile sales of old ivory do nothing to curb poaching and instead promote illicit trade.
Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys."
According to a paper out today in Nature Climate Change by researchers at the University of East Anglia… a full two-thirds of all plant and animal life are expected to decline dramatically, if not disappear, if the planet continues on its current warming trend. That's a full-on disaster. Two-thirds is a staggering figure. Imagine wherever you are right now with even half of its plant and animal life. Even in the unwildest part of the largest, most industrial city on Earth, that’s an uncomfortable notion. Note that we’re not talking about the Gunnison Sage Grouse or other threatened species, but the day-to-day life we generally take for granted. And the day-to-day life that humans depend on for things like water and air purification, flood control, nutrient cycling, and eco-tourism. Not to mention slightly less tangible things like emotional well-being.
Mahala profiles Greenpop, a Cape Town business with an embedded social cause.
Poloko lives on the outskirts of Joburg with his grandmother and two younger sisters. At twenty years young, he’s seen first-hand all the ills of kasi life eMzansi. Up until last year, he had been attending the local high school where puffing the odd zol by the river nearby took pole position on his daily schedule. After getting lifted, he would slip back into the hood to check on his girlfriend who, at the time, was six months pregnant with their child.
The pressure of having a baby on the way with no gainful employment, amplified by taking care of his siblings and feeling trapped inside a public education system which persistently fails to contribute meaningfully to its students’ knowledge base, led to him seeking out an alternative. That old dirty crime story. The details are sketchy; he makes the odd comment about a near-prison stint, but evades my questions which attempt to prod further. We’re at a corner café in Braamfontein; what was supposed to be short banter has turned into full conversation as we wait for our orders – a kota for him, slap-chips for me. He gets uneasy when I mention jail, so we just skip the line of questions about the crimes he’s committed.
BuzzFeed Video has again published a viral hit. In the video How Special Are Your Physical Traits, viewers are enlightened on how rare their physical traits are, or discover just how common and boring they really are in the end.
Despite everything you may have heard from your mom, picking your nose and eating what you find may have some health benefits, according to a biochemistry professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. "By consuming those pathogens caught within the mucus, could that be a way to teach your immune system about what it's surrounded with?" is the hypothesis Scott Napper posed to his students. Napper noted that snot has a sugary taste and that may be a signal to the body to consume it and derive information for the immune system. "I've got two beautiful daughters and they spend an amazing amount of time with their fingers up their nose," he said. "And without fail, it goes right into their mouth afterwards. Could they just be fulfilling what we're truly meant to do?" Napper said his hypothesis also fits into other theories that examine the link between improved hygiene and an increase in allergies and auto-immune disorders.
The genes of an ancient fish, the coelacanth, have much to reveal about our distant past.
The South African fisherman who pulled a prehistoric-looking blue creature out of his net in 1938 had unwittingly snagged one of the zoological finds of the century: a 1.5-metre-long coelacanth, a type of fish that had been thought to have become extinct 70 million years earlier.
Since then, scientists have identified two species of coelacanth, one African and one Indonesian. With their fleshy, lobed fins — complete with bones and joints — and round, paddle-like tails, they look strikingly similar to the coelacanths that lived during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs still roamed Earth.
Last month, the chief medical officer of Britain called antibiotic resistance a “ticking time bomb” and a threat as dangerous as global warming. In Europe alone, 25,000 people die every year from antibiotic-resistant bacteria — and that’s only counting the infections that were picked up in supposedly sterile hospitals. For more than 80 years, antibiotics have been nothing short of miraculous. Capable of killing bacteria without killing people, they’ve turned grave illnesses into mere annoyances, providing doctors with license to shoot first and ask questions later, and do so safely — or so we thought. Broad-spectrum antibiotics are powerful fighters with one flaw: unable to smite every bacterium, those immune to their wrath thrive. With every ear infection we treat, and every healthy cow prophylactically dosed with antibiotics (which also helps fatten the animals), we make these drugs less useful for future generations.
Bee colonies are weaker than ever. Are we doing enough to protect our natural pollinators?
For the last several years scientists have fretted over the future of bees, and although research has shed much light on the crisis, those in the bee business—from hive keepers to commercial farmers—say the insects remain in deep trouble as their colonies continue to struggle.
Wolves were once native to the US' Yellowstone National Park -- until hunting wiped them out. But when, in 1995, the wolves began to come back (thanks to an aggressive management program), something interesting happened: the rest of the park began to find a new, more healthful balance. In a bold thought experiment, George Monbiot imagines a wilder world in which humans work to restore the complex, lost natural food chains that once surrounded us.
September 15: The Rhinose Foundation hopes that educating the Asian market that rhino horns have no medicinal benefit may save millions of the endangered species.
An unusual dinosaur from Utah’s Cretaceous period has been categorized as a new genus, offering a new portrait of two distinct dinosaur communities in what is now the western United States. Described in a study published in the current issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Nasutoceratops titusi, or "big-nose, horn-face," is named for its most significant features: the two enormous horns protruding from its head and its prodigious snout. It the first from the group of short-frilled, horned dinosaurs to have been found in the American south, revising previous theories that those dinosaurs lived only in the north.
It’s the dream of kids all around the world to see giant beasts walk the Earth again. Could -- and should -- that dream be realized? Hendrik Poinar gives an informative talk on the next -- really -- big thing: The quest to engineer a creature that looks very much like our furry friend, the woolly mammoth. The first step, to sequence the woolly genome, is nearly complete. And it’s huge. (Filmed at TEDxDeExtinction.)
Hendrik Poinar is a geneticist and biological anthropologist who focuses on extracting ancient DNA. He currently has his sights set on sequencing the genome of the woolly mammoth -- and cloning it.
Although genetic information continues to improve medicine, there is data about the human body that goes one step beyond the genome. Genes by themselves don’t directly make us who we are. Instead, they produce proteins, which are dispatched into the body to execute the genetic will. If the genes are the blueprints, the proteins are the working parts, controlling every cell in your body. And just as the genes collectively make up the genome and have given rise to the science of genomics, so too do all your body’s proteins make up your proteome, which has its corresponding discipline: proteomics.
Each father and mother pass down traits to their children, who inherit combinations of their dominant or recessive alleles. But how do we know so much about genetics today? Hortensia Jiménez Díaz explains how studying pea plants revealed why you may have blue eyes
Now that summer is here, people will again be filling their freezers with Popsicles and ice cream for a cool treat. But have you ever noticed that brittle layer of ice that builds up on foods sometimes when left in the freezer too long?
It’s pretty gross and basically ruins the food for good. But why wonders Minute Earth? Sublimation. The water moisture in the food actually exits and freezes on the outside. Kind of like freeze drying your food.
There’s a long standing myth online that a person can only take 45 DEL units of pain. The claim continues to say that women experience 57 DEL while in child birth, but men can feel over 9,000 DEL when kicked in the balls.
Of course, the fact that DEL doesn’t even exist as a unit of measure didn’t stop this old (or new) wive’s tale from spreading.
But seriously, which is worse, getting kicked in the balls or going through child birth?
To properly evaluate the question, Asap SCIENCE says we must first have a firm understanding of what pain is in the first place.
Dr. Mark Lorch celebrated the 60th anniversary of the DNA double helix’s discovery by making delicious DNA models using licorice, jelly babies, and toothpicks. For the full instructions, as well as a tutorial on how to extract DNA from kiwi fruit, take a look at his article at The Guardian.
The first Earth Day, in 1970, was inspired by anger. The nation was a mess. Four million gallons of oil from a blown offshore well were smearing California beaches. Flames leapt from the surface of Ohio’s Cuyahoga River. Bald eagles, our national symbol, had been winnowed by hunting and chemical pollution to a few hundred breeding pairs in the lower 48 states. It’s no wonder that 20 million people took to the streets.
Today that passion has morphed into guilt. Our lifestyles are driving global climate change, and developing countries want to grow and consume like wealthy nations. Earth Day has become a day for penance—picking up trash, turning off lights—and debating whether the environmental movement has lost its way.
Introspection is healthy within limits. And yes, saving the planet is more complicated now than it seemed 40 years ago. But analysis and what-ifs shouldn’t obscure a simple point: Without an environmental movement, the United States would be a lesser country. As Hemingway wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls, “The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for.” Many people have lived out those words by saving beautiful spots that otherwise might be paved over, polluted, or flooded today. Here are seven examples to be thankful for, all open for visits year-round and prime destinations to enjoy on Earth Day.
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