WIERD SCIENCE...REALLY WIERD

 

OUR MODERN "MAD SCIENTISTS" REALLY NEED A GOOD OLD FASHIONED

PSYCHOANALYSIS.

FROM JELLYFISH-SHEEP HYBRIDS TO HOMEBREWED HEROIN AND MUSHROOM AND WASP SPIT DRONES, SCIENCE MARCHES ON! 

AN END-OF-YEAR LOOK BACK AT SOME VERY ODD SCIENCE...AN EVEN DOZEN WIERD THINGS TAKEN MOSTLY FROM THE WASHINGTON POST.

 

1~ HOW ABOUT SOME LAMB...MIXED WITH JELLYFISH DNA TO MAKE ITS SKIN TRANSPARENT?

On Tuesday, the French newspaper Le Parisien reported that a genetically modified lamb -- one spliced with jellyfish genes -- had accidentally been sold, slaughtered and (presumably) consumed as food-grade meat.

But now the plot thickens like mint jelly: According to a news release from France's National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), where the lamb was created, the animal may have been deliberately sent off for consumption as some kind of prank in a professional feud.

The lamb in question was the ewe of a genetically modified mother. She'd been given the Green Florescent Protein gene of a jellyfish, which was used to help researchers study their hearts.

But allegedly, the modified lamb was PURPOSELY mixed in with non-modified sheep and sent off to a slaughterhouse.

Le Parisien now reports that INRA representatives blame the tension between researchers at the facility for the act, and have suspended one individual pending an investigation.

Again, there's no indication that those who dined on lamb in France last year have any cause to worry.

WONDER WHAT ELSE THEY DO WHEN THEY'RE ANGRY?

POOR LAMB.

2~ SCIENTISTS GAVE YEAST SOME HUMAN GENES JUST TO SHOW WE'RE SIMILAR TO YEAST.

In a study published Thursday in Science, researchers report successfully swapping out some 450 of the genes in baker's yeast with similar ones from a human.

Each swapped gene got its own strain of yeast, so hundreds were created. With about half of those swaps, the yeast survived as a human-yeast hybrid.

  Edward Marcotte of University of Texas Austin said in a statement, "It's a beautiful demonstration of the common heritage of all living things -- to be able to take DNA from a human and replace the matching DNA in a yeast cell and have it successfully support the life of the cell."

"BEAUTIFUL"?

MAYBE ED HAS SEEN A HYBRID WE DON'T HAVE PICS OF?

The scientists won't be creating gingerbread frankensteins anytime soon, but they hope their yeast strains can be used to study how defective genes that cause human disease react to different therapies.

SEEMS SCIENTISTS JUST CAN'T LEAVE THAT YEAST ALONE!

 

3~ HOMEBREWED HEROIN, ANYONE?

.

A new paper in Nature Chemical Biology suggests that yeast can be modified to produce opiates from sugar -- albeit not without a whole lot of biology expertise -- meaning that dangerous drugs could be made at home the same way hobbyists create beer. But researchers warn that regulators should act quickly to keep DIY home-brewers from figuring out the process for themselves.

AND THEN THEY BASICALLY REVEAL THE STARTING POINT FOR DOING SO.

DUHHHHHH, RIGHT?

Creating the same opiates poppies do (which go into familiar drugs like morphine and oxycodone) is an intriguing prospect from a pharmaceutical standpoint. Cultivating yeast is much simpler than growing fields of poppies, and yeast-born opiates have more potential to be tweaked for specific medical purposes.

“It’s hard to add or subtract genes into the plant, and plants grow very slowly,” lead author John Dueber of UC Berkeley told WIRED. “Whereas, we can easily put in different DNA and change combinations of genes in yeast—and yeast can double every two hours.”

 “What you really want to do from a fermentation perspective is to be able to feed the yeast glucose, which is a cheap sugar source, and have the yeast do all the chemical steps required downstream to make your target therapeutic drug,” Dueber said in a statement.

HE SHOULD JUST MAKE A VIDEO, POST IT TO YOUTUBE AND FOLKS CAN TAKE IT FROM THERE.

4~ HOW ABOUT A MUSHROOM AND WASP SPIT DRONE?

A group of college students created an environmentally friendly drone -- think veggie leather.

Led by one of NASA's synthetic biology experts, they made an unmanned aerial vehicle almost entirely out of biodegradable materials. After a crash, these little fliers would basically disappear.

You can make a kind of veggie leather using bacteria that create cellulose -- the tough stuff that creates cell walls in plants. The bacterial cellulose is grown in a sheet and harvested, then wrapped around the mycelium frame. When it dries, it's tough and hard.

The drone is covered in proteins cloned from paper wasp saliva, which the insects use to waterproof their nests.

ONE PERSON COMMENTED:

"The hard part was getting all those wasps to spit in a cup for the waterproofing material. "

<CHUCKLE>

 IF IT CRASHES IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE AREA, THE DRONE JUST BIODEGRADES, NO MESS, EXCEPT FOR BATTERIES, THE MOTOR...ETC.

THAT'S NICE.

REALLY GROSS, THAT WASP SPIT, BUT NICE...SORT OF.

NOT REALLY.

IT'S RATHER LIKE DOING A "STUDY" TO SEE IF BROWN-EYED FRUIT FLIES LIKE KIDNEY PIE ON THURSDAYS OR ON FRIDAYS, ISN'T IT?

IT ISN'T JUST MAD SCIENTISTS DOING WIERD SCIENCE.

5~ SEA SLUG STEALS PLANT GENES TO LIVE LIKE A LEAF.

The brilliant green sea slug Elysia chloroctica doesn't just look like the leaf of a plant: It functions like one, too. 

When it's supper time, the slug uses chloroplasts taken from local algae to photosynthesize for itself. That's not news: Scientists have known about the chloroplast theft since the 1970s.

But it turns out that the slug takes more than just the sunlight-processing chloroplasts. It also steals the algae genes it needs to maintain those food-factories long after the crime is committed.

Pierce and his colleagues went looking for an explanation as to how these sea slugs are able to reap the bounty of their algae pillages for so long. They've been known to photosynthesize for up to nine months after encountering the algae — an entire lifespan — maintaining the chloroplasts they've stolen for that entire time. But a borrowed piece of cellular machinery shouldn't keep chugging along for such a long time in a foreign host.

"How can that possibly be? There’s a piece of a plant inside of an animal, and the animal isn’t designed to keep it going," Pierce said. Even plants themselves tend to throw out their chloroplasts and start over every few days, he said. Photosynthesis is a destructive process, and the chloroplasts have to be repaired constantly.  

"It's fairly obvious that the sea slugs can't make new chloroplasts," Pierce said, "so they must be performing maintenance somehow."

WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO WHEN SEA SLUGS TURN THIEVES?

WHAT COULD HAVE DRIVEN THEM TO THAT LIFE OF CRIME?

AS IF THOSE ROBOT REINDEER WEREN'T ENOUGH....

SCIENCE FINDS NEW WAYS TO TRAUMATIZE WILDLIFE...

FROM PARACHUTE DROPS TO WILD HELICOPTER RIDES.

6~ Troublesome beavers dropped by parachute to rivers in need

Beavers are such a nuisance in Washington state that it's legal to trap and kill them -- and over 1,000 are trapped every year. But in the Yakima Valley, officials are relocating the river pests and putting them to work.

The Associated Press reports that back in the 1940s, conservationists were dropping beavers into mountain streams via parachute. (Why hasn't this been turned into a Disney movie yet?)

These days, beavers troubling residential areas just get carried (in cages) to temporary beaver lodges and released there. The group in the Yakima Valley has moved 126 beavers over the past four years, but they don't all take to their new roles as salmon protectors -- one even swam 40 miles to get back to its mate.


THAT'S SAD, ISN'T IT?
POOR THING....40 MILES.
 

THE TEA ROOM CAN HARDLY WAIT FOR THE RETURN OF THE 'MOTHERSHIP', THE NET-SNATCHING, AIR-DROPPING OF HUMANS THAT DO SUCH AS THIS BY MASOCHISTIC ALIENS... SHOULD TEACH THOSE GUYS AND THE ONES BELOW A LESSON!

7 ~ Happy Holidays, here are some mountain goats dangling from helicopters.    

This is the new "wildlife management science"?

How do you move a mountain goat nearly a hundred miles?

With a helicopter.

 

Mountain goats were introduced to Utah in the late 1960s, and since the initial release of six goats, their population has increased to more than 2,000. When a group gets too large for its range, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources captures and moves some of the goats to other populations throughout the state. The best way to capture the goats is to shoot them with a net gun, strap them in a harness, and then move them by helicopter.

 

The process is mostly harmless to the goats, though they may suffer small cuts when tangled in the net.

Netting is safer for the goats than using tranquilizers, as a partially tranquilized goat could be hurt even more.

HURT "EVEN MORE"?

 

BS, BS, BS!

THE TEA ROOM CALLS BS ON THIS METHOD!

THE TRAUMA OF BEING JERKED INTO THE AIR BENEATH THE BLADES AND NOISE OF A HELICOPTER IS JUST TOO MUCH STRESS FOR ANY CREATURE, HUMANS INCLUDED.

LOOKS LIKE THAT ONE FELL OVER THE CLIFF TO ITS DEATH, TANGLED IN NETTING, AND THOSE HARNESSES DON'T SEEM SECURE AT ALL.

ADD THE FRIGID TEMPERATURES FLYING 100 MILES THROUGH MOUNTAIN AIR, THE BUMPY, SCRAPING LANDING, AND NO!

IT'S SIMPLY CHEAPER TO DO IT THIS WAY.

SCHMUCKS!

AFTER CALLING BS, THIS MAY BE A GOOD PLACE FOR THE NEXT TWO WIERD SCIENCE ENTRIES.

 8~ HUMANS HAVE CAUSED MORE BUZZARDS TO EAT THEIR CARRION BUTT FIRST.

Maybe you already knew that vultures sometimes eat their meals butt first. But did you know that the practice is becoming more common and that humans are kinda sorta to blame? I didn't. And I haven't felt this bad about human-inflicted suffering on animals since I wrote about sea lions getting deadly dementia from climate change.

National Geographic Explorer Jen Guyton explains that a hungry vulture will go straight for the softest parts of the body: the eyeballs and the butt. Wow, everything is terrible!

Here's where it gets worse:

Guyton points out that human hunting has resulted in fewer big cats. Fewer big cats means fewer torn up carcasses, and that means more butt-first-eating vultures.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT GUY GUYTON WAS SMOKING, BUT MAYBE HE CAN MARKET IT?

WHILE WE'RE ON THE WASHINGTON POST WEBSITE AND DEALING WITH 'BUTT", THE POST ASKS,

 

9~ "DID YOU KNOW...You can earn $13,000 a year selling your poop?

Yes, your feces are perhaps your greatest untapped monetary resource.

Thanks to a nonprofit organization called OpenBiome, you can cash in to the tune of $13,000 a year -- and save lives while you're at it. 

Since 2013, OpenBiome has been processing and shipping loads of it all over the country. The frozen stool is administered to patients who are very sick with infections of a bacteria called C. difficile.

"ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE"....IT JUST GETS WORSE....SHEEESH!

THE TEA ROOM DRAWS THE LINE RIGHT THERE!

NEVER DID ACCUSTOM MYSELF TO THE "5 Ps" ...POOP, PEE, PUKE AND...NEVER MIND....

I WILL NOT DIVE FURTHER INTO THAT EXCEPT TO OFFER WHAT THE "WP" DID...

Here’s what it takes to be the perfect poop donor.

"It's harder to become a donor than it is to get into MIT," joked co-founder Mark Smith (who would know, as he got his PhD in microbiology there).

WELL, HE STILL WOULDN'T KNOW UNLESS HE'S ALSO DONATED POOP.

HE'D JUST KNOW ABOUT MIT, MAYBE.

 

10~ A METAL THAT IS 99.9% AIR.

The material, known as a "microlattice," was developed by scientists at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California, which is co-owned by Boeing and General Motors. The new microlattice is made up of a network of tiny hollow tubes and is roughly 100 times lighter than Styrofoam.

In an effort to save fuel, aerospace and automotive companies constantly strive to make their materials as lightweight as possible without sacrificing structural integrity. The process used to build the new microlattices holds huge promise, the researchers say, because the materials created are not only incredibly light, but also very strong.

DIAMONDS MAY NO LONGER BE A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND.

11~ A NEW TYPE OF CARBON IS HARDER AND BRIGHTER THAN DIAMONDS.

Scientists have designed a new type of carbon that is harder and brighter than naturally formed diamonds.

For those who want to wear a one-of-a-kind sparkler on their fingers, the new material, called Q-carbon, also gives off a soft glow.  

[RADIOACTIVE?]  

"It has novel electrical, optical and magnetic properties."

Scientists still don't fully understand how diamonds are formed.

Lab created diamonds have, so far, left something to be desired.

Scientists at North Carolina State University heated up an unstructured mass of carbon atoms, known as amorphous carbon, with tiny pulses of lasers.

The incredibly focused light beams melted the interior of solid carbon into liquid carbon. Then, they used a process known as quenching, which rapidly cools material by submerging it in a liquid, the researchers reported Dec. 2,  in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Normally, thermodynamics dictates that carbon atoms should change how they arrange themselves at lower temperatures. But the quenching process cools the liquid carbon at 1.8 billion degrees Fahrenheit per second (1 billion degrees Celsius per second).

"We do it so fast that we can fool Mother Nature," Jagdish Narayan, a materials scientist at North Carolina State University, told Live Science.

That rapid quenching "freezes" the carbon atoms in place, leaving them squished together in a tightly woven matrix.

Creating a carat of Q-carbon takes 15 minutes

The result? A super hard material that is brighter than ordinary diamonds.

12~ "SPOOKY ACTION" HEATS UP; ENTANGLEMENT ACHIEVED AT ROOM TEMPERATURE.

[ The phrase "spooky action at a distance" is synonymous with quantum entanglement

and was coined by Albert Einstein to represent strange effects of quantum mechanics, when two particles may interact instantaneously over a distance.]

I'VE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS FOR QUITE SOME TIME, SO I SAVED THE "BEST" (READ THAT AS PERHAPS MOST "FAR-OUT")  FOR LAST...

The world of the very small can get pretty wacky — particles can be in two or more places at once, and even become entangled, wherein actions on one entity can affect its partners across the cosmos. Physicists have broken all kinds of records in proving the existence of so-called quantum entanglement, and now, they have done it again, coupling together thousands of atoms at room temperature.

Previously, these atoms could be paired only at temperatures cold enough to liquefy helium.

This new achievement could one day be applied to enable more sensitive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, super powerful quantum computers and even unhackable quantum communications networks.

NO BRAG, JUST FACTS, PLEASE.

Quantum physics explains [WELL, NOT REALLY EXPLAINS, IT'S A THEORY, BUT...] how all known particles behave.

 

A key feature of quantum physics is that the universe becomes a fuzzy, surreal place at its very smallest levels. For example, atoms and other building blocks of the cosmos actually exist in states of flux known as "superpositions," meaning they can seemingly be located in two or more places at once.  [Quantum Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

 

One consequence of quantum physics is quantum entanglement, wherein multiple particles can essentially influence each other instantly regardless of how far apart they are. Albert Einstein dismissed this seemingly impossible connection as "spooky action at a distance," but decades of experiments have proven entanglement is real. [MAYBE]

However, magnetism or heat can easily disrupt entanglement. To entangle macroscopic ensembles, previous research used super cold temperatures of about minus 454 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 270 degrees Celsius) and huge magnetic fields stronger than the kind used in conventional MRI scans.

 

Now, scientists have entangled macroscopic ensembles at room temperature using magnetic fields as weak as those seen in refrigerator magnets. Furthermore, they achieved this entanglement in a commercial semiconductor material routinely used to make devices such as LEDs, the researchers said in the new study.

The new technique uses infrared laser light, instead of frigid temperatures, to align the magnetic states of thousands of electrons and atomic nuclei on a wafer of silicon carbide, which is often used in devices by the semiconductor industry. It then uses electromagnetic pulses much like those used in MRI scans to entangle the particles in a space the size of 40 cubic microns, or about half the size of a normal red blood cell.

The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 20 in the journal Science Advances.

Let me just compare that to this....because it seems to fit.

 

DRUNK SQUIRREL TRASHES CLUB

According to an account given to the BBC, the Honeybourne Railway Club was totally trashed by a squirrel who may have been totally trashed himself.

The secretary of the club reported finding the place covered in tipped over glasses, then seeing a squirrel -- one who he believed had gotten into the beer and had a few too many -- stagger out from behind some potato chips. 

We'll never know whether the squirrel -- which was captured and released out the window -- was actually sloshed. But it's not a crazy concept. Plenty of animals have been driven to intoxication in lab setting for study, and others don't even need human intervention. Some just like getting drunk.

Vervet monkeys have been into booze since they first discovered fermented sugar cane. Researchers estimate that one in five members of the species will pick alcohol over water given the choice, and some 5 percent could be considered alcoholics. They even steal liquor from Caribbean bars on occasion.  

Wild chimpanzees have been observed going after palm wine left unharvested by humans. They drink it habitually, even going so far as to devise tools to help them drink more efficiently, and they exhibit classic characteristics of drunkenness.

 

And while they don't act drunk, pen-tailed treeshrews scurry around drinking nectar that's 3.8 percent alcohol. Their main source of food is basically naturally occurring beer, so their blood alcohol levels are quite high when tested -- but they've adapted to have an enviably high tolerance, so you won't catch them stumbling out of the trees. 

[WHY THE HELL AREN'T WE STUDYING THESE LITTLE GUYS!? THINK ABOUT IT!
NO MORE DRUNK DRIVERS, FOR ONE THING, IF WE COULD FIGURE THIS OUT FOR HUMANS.]

I HAVE PERSONALLY WITNESSED RACCOONS VISITING ELDERBERRY BUSHES AFTER THE BERRIES FERMENTED, EATING MANY, STAGGERING AWAY, FALLING OVER AND ROLLING ABOUT A BIT AS THEY DEPARTED.

THE FIRST TIME I SAW IT, I THOUGHT THE THING WAS RABID.
THEN HE SMILED AND I SAW HIS STAINED TEETH.

WELL, WE'VE DRIVEN THEM ALL TO DRINK....

REMEMBER THOSE BUZZARDS...NO, DON'T REMEMBER...

SOMETHING REALLY MUST BE DONE.

THIEVING SLUGS, BUTT-EATING BUZZARDS, DRUNK SQUIRRELS, FLYING GOATS,
OH, MY, AS DOROTHY SAID.

OR WAS THAT "LIONS AND TIGERS AND...." ?

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, PEOPLE OF PLANET EARTH!

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T CELEBRATE SUCH, JUST STICK YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS AND HUM WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED...THERE...BETTER, RIGHT?

OH, WAIT, YOU CAN'T SEE THAT QUESTION....

WIERD SCIENCE...MAKES MY HEAD SPIN.