Techdirt. Stories filed under "biology"

Techdirt. Stories filed under "biology" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "biology"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 13 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Life On Other Planets Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/11575411511/dailydirt-life-other-planets.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/11575411511/dailydirt-life-other-planets.shtml abundant in the universe, but there's not that much hard evidence (yet!). Here are just a few astronomical discoveries that might encourage researchers to look for signs of life a bit more carefully.

Exoplanets have been discovered circling some extremely old, metal-poor stars, creating interesting curiosities that might expand the theories of how planets form. These exoplanets might not harbor any kind of life... or we may want to get a bit more creative about how we envision life on other worlds. [url]
A free-floating planet named CFBDSIR2149 is not orbiting a star, and it's only one of about two dozen or so known examples of a starless planet. This rogue planet is relatively young compared to the Earth, and some spectroscopic measurements suggest this planet's temperature is about 430° Celsius -- a bit too warm for our tastes (but maybe not for aliens?). [url]
Within our own solar system, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected spurts of water from Saturn's moon Enceladus. This evidence leads to some speculation of a habitable zone on some icy moons where microbes might be able to survive. [url]

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]]> http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101020/11575411511 Tue, 7 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Living On Earth (Or Elsewhere) Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090603/1212035112/dailydirt-living-earth-elsewhere.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090603/1212035112/dailydirt-living-earth-elsewhere.shtml synthetic life based on existing lifeforms). Here are just a few fascinating links on the topic of life.

Moore's law probably doesn't apply to biology, but if it did, it suggests that life as we know it began before the Earth existed. Genetic complexity as a function of time has been extrapolated backwards, but it's obviously more of an interesting thought experiment than a meaningful biological theory. [url]
NASA's Curiosity rover has analyzed some martian rock samples to answer the question: "could life have ever been supported on Mars?" The answer seems to be yes, but that still doesn't mean Mars had (or has) any life. [url]
Do we need to look for alien life that's already amongst us? A shadow biosphere on earth could be an explanation for some mysteries like "desert varnish"... or Occam's razor might start cutting in here. [url]

Rats have been given an artificial sense -- the ability to detect infrared light. An IR sensor was attached to the rat's head and after a month of training, the animal could reliably sense when researchers directed otherwise invisible IR beams of light on it. [url]

Some neuroengineers have developed a fully implantable and wirelessly rechargeable brain device that could serve as a brain-computer interface. This implant has lasted for over a year in lab animals, and it can observe, record and process information directly from dozens of brain neurons. [url]

Rat brains on two separate continents have been connected to work in tandem. The researchers are already working on connecting the brains of four rats at the same time, as well as starting on brains of larger mammals.... (insert ominous music here) [url]

A new species of tree-dwelling tarantula that's about the size of an Alien facehugger has been discovered in Sri Lanka. It has a leg span of about 8 inches across, and has unique and colorful leg and abdominal markings. It's a type of tiger spider, which are known for being colorful, fast, and venomous. [url]

Several colorful new tree-dwelling tarantulas have been discovered in Brazil. Red, pink, orange, yellow, and blue are just some of the colors that can be found on these spiders. Apparently, scientists are actually concerned that people will want these colorful tarantulas as pets. [url]

An asbestos-covered tarantula might be on the loose in Cardiff, Wales. Workers who were removing asbestos from an abandoned house found a large molted tarantula skin in the attic, which means the spider could be roaming around town somewhere covered in asbestos. While it's not a new species (experts think it's a Chilean rose tarantula), it could actually be up to twice as large as the molted skin, since tarantulas swell in size after shedding their skin... [url]

There are several TED talks on de-extinction, discussing cloning and various animals that could potentially be revived. We could learn a lot from figuring out how to take somewhat arbitrary DNA instructions and produce viable organisms. [url]

Dolly the sheep was born in 1996, and in 2003, an extinct wild goat (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was cloned, but it died with some major genetic defects. Since then, cloning techniques have gotten better, but re-creating an extinct animal is one thing. Raising a healthy animal that was once extinct is a completely different challenge. [url]

At the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory in Dubai, scientists have reportedly engineered a male duck to produce chicken sperm that fathered a chicken. The process of introducing chicken DNA into the reproductive organs of a male duck embryo could presumably be used in other birds (especially for other birds that may be endangered). [url]

An extinct Australian frog species has been brought back to life (almost). Scientists cloned an extinct frog (Rheobatrachus silus) by injecting its dead cell nucleus into a fresh egg of distantly-related frog, (Mixophyes fasciolatus), and observed the embryo grow -- but it didn't survive beyond a few days. [url]

James Cameron has recently donated his custom-built submarine to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (a year after his record-setting dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench). Last year, Cameron observed about 68 specimens of life on the ocean floor, and future dives could possibly turn up more discoveries. [url]

DNA characterization techniques promise to speed up the identification of new species. Ecogenomics will be used to survey biodiversity and could lead to finding hundreds of new species in a matter of months. [url]

The Dead Sea looks devoid of life on the surface, but biologists since the 1930s have known that the salty body of water is teeming with microbes that thrive in water that is over 8 times saltier than the ocean. More recently, life has been discovered at the bottom of the Dead Sea, about 100 feet down, where mats of bacteria survive near freshwater springs. [url]

The Rare Genomics Institute may have enabled the first crowdfunded gene discovery. Pioneering a new funding model for rare disease research, RGI used crowdfunding to raise $3,550 to help sequence the genes of a 4-year-old girl with a rare genetic disorder, and identify a previously undocumented gene mutation. [url]

The online game Phylo is tapping gamers from all over the world to help solve the Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) problem. The game is designed to take advantage of human visual intelligence to improve the sequence alignment of promoter regions in 521 genes associated with diseases from 44 vertebrate species. So far, the game has produced over 350,000 solutions, with 70% of them being more accurate than the alignments produced by a state-of-the-art computer program called MULTIZ. [url]

Is it even possible to protect the anonymity of genetic information that has been posted online? Apparently, it isn't that difficult to uncover the identities of people whose DNA has been made public for research purposes. Using an online genealogy service, in addition to information from public records, social networks, and other websites, researchers were able to find 5 out of 10 people in their study, including their relatives, identifying 50 people in total. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101101/09532411671 Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Life On Other Worlds Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/03531112286/dailydirt-life-outside-earth.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/03531112286/dailydirt-life-outside-earth.shtml several theories for how life might have come about, but it's difficult to design experiments to narrow down these options. In the meantime, researchers continue to look for clues and evidence for life that didn't originate on our planet. Here are just a few examples that could one day lead us in the right direction.

Meteorite fragments found in Sri Lanka *might* contain extra-terrestrial fossils -- if you kinda squint and tilt your head, the algae-like fossils support a panspermia theory for the origin of life. This isn't the first time a peer-reviewed journal has published a story like this, and it won't be the last. The real question is when will these papers actually be convincing to skeptics.... [url]
In 1996, a rock named ALH84001 made a lot more headlines when scientists claimed that it might contain evidence of life from Mars in the form of microfossils. Since then, the ALH84001 debate seems to have settled on the view that those small fossils weren't necessarily created by ET life, and the media hoopla re-affirmed that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." [url]
Maybe we'll see evidence of life outside our solar system by looking for evidence of asteroid mining operations around other stars -- if we see unusual amounts of dusty debris, it could mean intelligence life has been exploring for interplanetary resources. It might be hard to determine the difference between natural and unnatural debris, though. [url]
NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered that Mars once had an environment suitable for life. This is an important find, and it raises questions of why Mars doesn't seem to have ubiquitous life now. [url]

Yes, spiders eat bats too. Apparently, bat-eating spiders live on every continent (except Antarctica). Most of them catch bats in their webs, but huntsman spiders and tarantulas have been observed eating bats on forest floors. [url]

Spiders can adapt to zero-gravity. A "Johnson Jumper" spider named Nefertiti survived 100 days on the International Space Station, during which it demonstrated a new technique for catching fruit flies in zero-gravity. Instead of jumping on its prey, it would sidle up to it. [url]

Contrary to popular belief, spiders can be sociable. Of the more than 43,678 species of spiders out there, about 24 social spider species have been identified. In a most recent discovery, researchers found that females from a social species of spider called Chikunia nigra were surprisingly tolerant of other spiders from the same colony and were willing to look after another's eggs/hatchlings as if they were her own. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110105/20192212542 Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Looking For Life In All The Wrong Places? Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/20073112537/dailydirt-looking-life-all-wrong-places.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/20073112537/dailydirt-looking-life-all-wrong-places.shtml Venter kinda cheated). Here are some astrochemists looking for clues that might help us understand the origins of life.

Two molecules, cyanomethanimine and ethanamine, have been seen in drifting in the interstellar cloud known as Sagittarius B2. The researchers who found them note that these molecules could be chemical precursors for DNA and RNA. [url]
The existence of homochirality in biochemistry is a bit of mystery, but there may be some explanations that involve radiation from distant supernovas. Finding evidence of homochirality on asteroids or comets would be a nice find.... [url]
The evidence of cellulose in interstellar space would be really exciting... if the spectroscopy data were more reliable. In 1978, polysaccharides were reported to be present near the Orion Trapezium Cluster, but confirming that finding hasn't panned out. [url]

Companies like Luca Technologies and Next Fuel are investigating the potential for microbial methane production from coal. Their approach is to stimulate native microorganisms that feed on underground hydrocarbon deposits to produce more methane. This could make it possible to extract fuel from coal reserves that have been too expensive to mine. [url]

Researchers at Purdue University are studying how termite digestion could help improve biofuel production. They found that protists, which live in the termite's gut, may play an important role in the insect's digestion of woody material. Further research could lead to finding enzymes that could one day be used to help improve biofuel production. [url]

Researchers at UC Berkeley have created a biodiesel fuel using a fermentation process that was once used to make explosives in World War I. The process uses a bacterium called Clostridium acetobutylicum (also known as the "Weizmann Organism") to ferment sugar from various sources -- including corn, sugar cane, molasses, woody biomass, or plant biomass -- and produces acetone, butanol, and ethanol. The fermentation products are then converted into a mix of hydrocarbons that are similar to those in diesel fuel. The resulting fuel burns as well as petroleum-based fuel and has more energy per gallon than ethanol. [url]

Researchers at UC San Diego have demonstrated for the first time that marine algae can also be used to produce biofuels like fresh water algae. They genetically engineered the marine alga Dunaliella tertiolecta to produce five different enzymes that could be used to convert biomass to fuel. Their finding suggests that algal biofuels could also be produced in the ocean, in the brackish water of tidelands, or even on otherwise unusable agricultural land with high salt content in the soil. [url]

Brooke Greenberg is twenty years old, but she has an extremely rare disorder (she's the only person known to have Syndrome X) that hinders her growth so that she appears to be about five years old. Researchers are looking at this girl's DNA to try to figure out if there is a genetic cause and which genes may be behind this unusual aging process. [url]

The German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg is looking at a glycoprotein called Dickkopf-1 (aka Dkk1) which seems to be involved in the cognitive abilities of elderly brains. The function of this molecule isn't entirely clear, but some researchers are trying to understand it in an effort to determine the mechanisms of declining cognitive abilities as people age. [url]

The effects of consuming resveratrol aren't fully understood yet, but when honeybees eat this compound, they eat less and live longer. So there's a possibility that resveratrol plays a role in caloric restriction when it's associated with extending lifespans of various animals. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090508/2303164806 Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Another Day, Another New Species... Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101116/10560411890/dailydirt-another-day-another-new-species.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101116/10560411890/dailydirt-another-day-another-new-species.shtml

How many species of life exist on Earth? According to the National Science Foundation's "Tree of Life" project, there may be anywhere from 5 million to 100 million species on Earth. So far we have identified only about 2 million. [url]

Penn State researchers have been studying the ultrasmall microbial population found at a depth of over 3,000 meters in a 120,000-year-old Greenland glacier ice core. They were able to isolate a variety of tiny microbes that were either phylogenetically new or related to other ultramicrobacteria. [url]

Microbiologists are studying "thermophiles," the bacteria found at deep-sea hydrothermal vents where temperatures can exceed 350 degrees Celsius. The record for life growing at high temperatures is 113.25 degrees Celsius. Thermophiles are not only useful in helping us look for evidence of past and present life on other planets, but they also produce enzymes that can be used at high temperatures and for genetic research. [url]

A NASA-sponsored expedition in 2011 found a huge phytoplankton bloom underneath the Arctic ice pack in the Chukchi Sea. This was the first direct observation of an under-ice algal bloom, which was previously thought to be impossible, and now scientists think such algal blooms may actually be more widespread and could be an important indicator of significant shifts in Arctic ecosystems, such as those caused by global warming.[url]

A single-celled organism in Norway doesn't quite fit the label of being an animal, plant, fungus, alga or protist -- but it is a eukaryote because it has a cell membrane. This microorganism isn't easily classified, and it might be our oldest living ancestor. [url]

Biologists are finding about 2,000 new marine species every year, but there are an estimated 700,000 to a million marine species living in the world's oceans. It's going to take a while to document all these organisms, and hopefully, we'll be able to do it before more species go extinct. [url]

Evolutionary biologists might need to re-think their understanding of how early animals developed. Previously, animals with a mouth and anus were classified as either protostomes or deuterostomes, depending on how they grew... but a recently-studied protostome throws a wrench into the naming conventions and how biologists look at the largest branch of animals in the tree of life. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101109/09093411773 Wed, 6 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Life Abhors A Vacuum Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101031/08132811661/dailydirt-life-abhors-vacuum.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101031/08132811661/dailydirt-life-abhors-vacuum.shtml

Evidence of life in a subglacial lake in Antarctica has been found, and it could mean that bacteria are much more widespread than we previously thought. Researchers still need to verify this discovery and make sure they're not looking at bacterial contamination from other sources. [url]

Frost flowers are salty ice crystals that form on calm ocean surfaces, and arctic sea meadows of these flowers may become more common with climate change near the north/south poles. About a million bacteria live in the few milliliters of frozen saltwater of a frost flower, and studying these cells could teach us more about how hardy some extremophile organisms can be. [url]

Bacteria living below the ocean and at the ocean surface have it easy compared to bacteria that live 6 miles above sea level in the troposphere. Microorganisms could play a role in cloud formation, and there is a lot we don't know about how life survives in different parts of the atmosphere. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101031/08132811661 Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Looking For Smarter Animals Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101022/09280311544/dailydirt-looking-smarter-animals.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101022/09280311544/dailydirt-looking-smarter-animals.shtml

DARPA is scanning dog brains with MRI machines to figure out which dogs are best suited for military dog training. The FIDOS (Functional Imaging to Develop Outstanding Service-Dogs) project could help train dogs more effectively for all kinds of tasks -- from detecting drugs to being better therapy companions. [url]

PBS has a great documentary that follows how raccoons are adapting to urban living. Anyone who has tried to protect their garbage cans knows how wily raccoons are. [url]

What animal would you use to model the cognitive development of human babies? If you said piglets, then maybe you should try being a neuroscientist at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois. [url]

The problem-solving capabilities of captive hyenas appear to be a bit better than their wild cousins. The tests administered to these hyenas were admittedly a bit biased.... [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101022/09280311544 Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Life, Life Everywhere Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101110/19051611808/dailydirt-life-life-everywhere.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101110/19051611808/dailydirt-life-life-everywhere.shtml

Astronauts have actually discovered a new species of life... while training in an underground cave. The astronauts were taking a week-long ESA CAVES underground training course to prepare for duties on the international space station and to acclimate to working under extreme conditions, and they found a new kind of crustacean. [url]

An ecosystem exists in the deepest layer of the Earth's ocean crust, in the gabbroic layer, living off hydrocarbons such as methane and benzene. This discovery could mean there may be life even deeper, possibly in the Earth's mantle. [url]

Microbes isolated beneath 65 feet of Antarctic ice might define a new limit for life to survive. These little organisms live in Lake Vida without much sunlight, without oxygen, at -13°C, in acidic salt water. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101110/19051611808 Wed, 2 Jan 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Get A Little Bit Older And A Little Bit Slower... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101109/09054111770/dailydirt-get-little-bit-older-little-bit-slower.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101109/09054111770/dailydirt-get-little-bit-older-little-bit-slower.shtml longer lives? Here are just a few links on extending our lifespans indefinitely.

Do short people live longer than tall people? Studies have shown mixed results over the last 100 years, but more recent studies are leaner towards shorter people having a slightly longer life expectancy. [url]
The immortal jellyfish has been studied for its unique ability to reverse its aging and repeat its lifecycle without dying. However, there aren't that many jellyfish experts in the world, and we still don't know much about how/why this creature can seemingly live forever. [url]
Nature (the scientific journal) has made several articles on aging open and free to the public. The science of senescence is fascinating, even if it hasn't really resulted in immortality. Who wants to live forever, anyway? [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101109/09054111770 Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Sharing Our Microbes Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101111/18082811824/dailydirt-sharing-our-microbes.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101111/18082811824/dailydirt-sharing-our-microbes.shtml

The American Gut project is looking to raise $400,000 to create an open source collection of data on the diversity of microbes in our digestive systems. This project is also looking for donations of biological samples to analyze.... [url]

uBiome is also collecting samples from volunteers to analyze and create a map of human microbe diversity. The data will be HIPAA compliant, and no personal information will be released -- and you're already spreading your personal flora around everywhere you go anyway. [url]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has an on-going Human Microbiome Project that catalogs microbial communities that live on the human body. So far, this research has gathered data on the microbes living on 200+ healthy volunteers. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101111/18082811824 Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Animals With Tools Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101022/15570011550/dailydirt-animals-with-tools.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101022/15570011550/dailydirt-animals-with-tools.shtml

A captive cockatoo has been seen creating a tool spontaneously and improving upon its design. This behavior has not been observed in the wild (yet?), and it hasn't been replicated by other captive cockatoos. Still, it shows there's tool-building potential in these birds. [url]

Female chimps are usually the innovators in primate communities. The female chimps tend to leave their families when they mature... and the socializations and sharing create opportunities for starting new cultural trends -- like ant fishing with twigs or washing food before eating. [url]

Unfortunately, a mobile chat app for bonobos didn't get funded on Kickstarter. But this could still be a really cool zoo exhibit to get people communicating with apes. [url]

Forget sharks with lasers attached to their heads. The Ukrainian navy is training dolphins "to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads." Hmm. Arming dolphins doesn't seem necessary since they're already powerful enough to kill a person underwater... but maybe dolphins with guns will look more menacing to enemies. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101022/15570011550 Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Looking At The Human Genome Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100412/0031318958/dailydirt-looking-human-genome.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100412/0031318958/dailydirt-looking-human-genome.shtml

The international ENCODE project has been looking at the human genome to try to figure out what all the nucleotides do. Less than 2% of the genome is used for making proteins, and we're just beginning to discover that about 80% of the genome is biologically active and isn't just "junk" DNA. [url]

The Genographic Project is asking the general public to participate in a genome analysis experiment to gather a broad sampling of DNA data. The results will be anonymous (but they'll have your DNA...?) and dedicated to the public domain. [url]

The 1000 Genomes Project currently claims to have the world's largest, most detailed catalog of human genetic variation. The database includes sequenced genomes from over 1,092 people and should help medical researchers develop tests for genetic diseases. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100412/0031318958 Mon, 5 Nov 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Talking Animals Are Real Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100412/0115008966/dailydirt-talking-animals-are-real.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100412/0115008966/dailydirt-talking-animals-are-real.shtml

An Asian elephant named Koshik can say five Korean words -- "annyong" ("hello"), "anja" ("sit down"), "aniya" ("no"), "nuo" ("lie down") and "choah" ("good"). This 22-year-old male elephant was born in captivity, and this may be the first time researchers have heard an elephant use its trunk to modify its vocalizations. [url]

Some dog owners have trained their dogs to speak short English words and phrases. In a few more (hundred) generations of human-directed breeding, maybe we'll have dogs that are fluent in human languages. [url]

Hoover the seal was famous for being the first non-human mammal to speak recognizable English words. He lived at the New England Aquarium and spoke with a thick Bostonian accent.... [url]

Beluga whales are sometimes referred to as "sea canaries" because they're so vocal, but now there's recorded evidence that at least one of these creatures can mimic human speech. A beluga whale in captivity didn't actually say anything recognizable, but it made sounds in an audible range of normal human speech -- which is much lower than usual whale noises. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100412/0115008966 Tue, 2 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Love Will Find A Way... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101004/02161811270/dailydirt-love-will-find-way.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101004/02161811270/dailydirt-love-will-find-way.shtml

French researchers devised an experiment to determine what would happen if shrimp could time travel -- re-animating preserved brine shrimp eggs from 1985, 1996 and 2007 to mate with each other. Shrimp specimens that mated with shrimp from the past or future died more quickly than contemporary mating... so Sarah Connor should be a bit wary of the pickup line, "Come with me if you want to live." [url]

Little kids might ask where babies come from, but real scientists ask, "Where did plant sex come from?" Apparently, the answer is low oxygen levels in the atmosphere that trigger some plant cells to become sex cells. This discovery could lead to new ways to manage plant seeds -- as well as a patent for plant sex under varying oxygen concentrations. [url]

Plans for colonizing other planets could be derailed by the sterilizing effects of radiation from outer space. Cosmic rays are difficult to shield away from astronauts, so there need to be a few more studies to figure out how humans will reproduce without the Earth to protect us. [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101004/02161811270 Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Fighting Biology With Biology Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101006/17095311317/dailydirt-fighting-biology-with-biology.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101006/17095311317/dailydirt-fighting-biology-with-biology.shtml

Acne plagues millions of people, and its treatments aren't always effective -- so how about some anti-acne viruses to kill off the bacteria that cause these pimples? The key trick is killing off just those specific bacteria and not all the beneficial natural bacteria that live on everyone's skin. [url]

A rare medical procedure, bacteriotherapy or fecal transplantation, attempts to restore a person's natural intestinal flora. Antibiotics can sometimes kill off too many microbes, making people sicker, and sometimes the solution is to re-create the right balance of microbes in a patient. [url]

Synthetic biology could create bacteria that prevent cavities, solve lactose intolerance, provide vitamins, and do all sorts of beneficial things for us. Imagine eating a yogurt that would replace the bacteria in your mouth or digestive tract... (and then wait 28 days for the zombie apocalypse). [url]

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101006/17095311317 Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Learning About Our Pets Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100924/10295511156/dailydirt-learning-about-our-pets.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100924/10295511156/dailydirt-learning-about-our-pets.shtml Bowlingual and Meowlingual to help us understand cats and dogs, but automated translations are notoriously imperfect. So here are just a few interesting links on studying domesticated animals.

A study from the University of Georgia tracked the behavior of 60 outdoor cats with video cameras. Over 2,000 hours of video show how cats ~~eat lasagna and make snide remarks about their owners~~ hunt for neighborhood rodents and birds. [url]
An expert on canine genetics discusses how the dog genome has affected research since its first publication 6 years ago. Researchers can compare different dog breeds on a genetic level and show that man's best friends are all descendants of grey wolves. [url]
Domestication is usually a human-lead process of taming wild animals, but some animals seem to be getting kinder and gentler all on their own. Aggression is somewhat costly behavior in nature, and under certain conditions, more peaceful species can evolve. [url]