The Twisted Cultural Conflict of Duck Genitalia Research

What happens when a conservative website “discovers” a study that studies the explosive corkscrew nature of duck genitalia and how it relates to sexual evolution? Their commenters completely lose their minds at the idea that the government would fund such basic science research (srsly, read the comments … or actually maybe don’t).

Except that basic science research like this is the cornerstone of innovation and discovery. Carl Zimmer stands up for this kind of science in this must-read article, and I stand behind him. Besides, xkcd’s money chart reminds us that this isn’t why the budget is in trouble, maybe?

Science is a journey of unknowns, a slow and careful march into uncharted territories of human knowledge. We can not predict how research will benefit humanity, because those benefits might be years, or even decades down the road. Or they might not materialize at all.

You can’t fund the invention of an MRI machine, instead you fund basic research in the physics of magnetic resonance on living tissues. Likewise, studies of sexual conflict in ducks can unlock the secrets of our own evolution, and might even help us understand mysterious conditions like preeclampsia (which killed Sybil on Downton Abbey, an event I have not fully recovered from).

This is why it is so important to share science with your friends, and to make sure that scientists and science folks everywhere are connecting with the public. Because if you don’t communicate your science, then someone else will do it for you, and nefariously. 

By this point, you probably want to see the slo-mo videos of those explosive corkscrew genitalia, right? Here ya go. 

Perhaps most tragically, the critics seem to be missing the easy opportunity to make “stimulus package” jokes … which is funny, I don’t care who ya are.

I hate waking up to bad news. Thanks to Congress and the White House failing to agree on budget cuts, and the subsequent “sequestration” (across-the-board, slash-and-burn, top-to-bottom money-trimming), NASA has announced that they are suspending all education and public outreach activities. It’s a suspension, not a cancellation … but uggghhhh. NASA knows this sucks. But they’ve been put in a place where they have to choose whether they can support their actual missions with the money they have been given, and no matter how much they value the extras (and they do), it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time for space folks. It’s hard to put presents under the tree if you’re struggling to keep the lights on. Projects like the Mars Curiosity Twitter account and NASA’s Twitter socials will continue. So what could we be saying goodbye to? These are the outreach programs that put Mars science in underprivileged classrooms, turning science into smiles. The programs that publish free ebooks of our Earth as art, erasing borders and instilling wonder in one fell swoop. Programs that allow us to travel beyond our planet in a single click. These are programs that plop down space telescope mock-ups in the middle of downtown Austin so the kid in me can do cartwheels with sciencey glee. Today, online, there are so many wonderful places that can take up the slack (blogs and websites like this). But will we be able to do this effectively if NASA can’t even do it themselves? I don’t know. But we will try. Because if we do try, then we can remind people who vote and people who make budgets of what NASA already knows: Whenever we look up, we are inspired to make new things possible, in sciences terrestrial and astronomical. And when we look back down at Earth, and those borders disappear, doesn’t it make you want to make this chart a little more even? More coverage at Universe Today. 
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I hate waking up to bad news. Thanks to Congress and the White House failing to agree on budget cuts, and the subsequent “sequestration” (across-the-board, slash-and-burn, top-to-bottom money-trimming), NASA has announced that they are suspending all education and public outreach activities. It’s a suspension, not a cancellation … but uggghhhh. NASA knows this sucks. But they’ve been put in a place where they have to choose whether they can support their actual missions with the money they have been given, and no matter how much they value the extras (and they do), it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time for space folks. It’s hard to put presents under the tree if you’re struggling to keep the lights on. Projects like the Mars Curiosity Twitter account and NASA’s Twitter socials will continue. So what could we be saying goodbye to? These are the outreach programs that put Mars science in underprivileged classrooms, turning science into smiles. The programs that publish free ebooks of our Earth as art, erasing borders and instilling wonder in one fell swoop. Programs that allow us to travel beyond our planet in a single click. These are programs that plop down space telescope mock-ups in the middle of downtown Austin so the kid in me can do cartwheels with sciencey glee. Today, online, there are so many wonderful places that can take up the slack (blogs and websites like this). But will we be able to do this effectively if NASA can’t even do it themselves? I don’t know. But we will try. Because if we do try, then we can remind people who vote and people who make budgets of what NASA already knows: Whenever we look up, we are inspired to make new things possible, in sciences terrestrial and astronomical. And when we look back down at Earth, and those borders disappear, doesn’t it make you want to make this chart a little more even? More coverage at Universe Today. 
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I hate waking up to bad news.

Thanks to Congress and the White House failing to agree on budget cuts, and the subsequent “sequestration” (across-the-board, slash-and-burn, top-to-bottom money-trimming), NASA has announced that they are suspending all education and public outreach activities. It’s a suspension, not a cancellation … but uggghhhh.

NASA knows this sucks. But they’ve been put in a place where they have to choose whether they can support their actual missions with the money they have been given, and no matter how much they value the extras (and they do), it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time for space folks. It’s hard to put presents under the tree if you’re struggling to keep the lights on.

Projects like the Mars Curiosity Twitter account and NASA’s Twitter socials will continue. So what could we be saying goodbye to? These are the outreach programs that put Mars science in underprivileged classrooms, turning science into smiles. The programs that publish free ebooks of our Earth as art, erasing borders and instilling wonder in one fell swoop. Programs that allow us to travel beyond our planet in a single click. These are programs that plop down space telescope mock-ups in the middle of downtown Austin so the kid in me can do cartwheels with sciencey glee.

Today, online, there are so many wonderful places that can take up the slack (blogs and websites like this). But will we be able to do this effectively if NASA can’t even do it themselves? I don’t know. But we will try.

Because if we do try, then we can remind people who vote and people who make budgets of what NASA already knows: Whenever we look up, we are inspired to make new things possible, in sciences terrestrial and astronomical. And when we look back down at Earth, and those borders disappear, doesn’t it make you want to make this chart a little more even?

More coverage at Universe Today. 

Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions I’m amazed that in 2013, we can still be smacked upside the head and reminded of how little we know about our universe. Even the most basic things about it. Like, how old it is. The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has collected 15.5 months worth of data on the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (What’s that? Click here), and today they released the most detailed map ever of those oldest remnants of the Big Bang. It says that our universe is almost perfect. Almost.  The highlights from this new map include the finding that the universe is almost certainly 13.81 billion years old, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. And we got better estimates for the stuffness of stuff: 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy. The universe is expanding, which is the whole reason that the CMB even exists, but this new map says it’s expanding slower than we thought.  The coolest part, though? The “almost perfect” part. The radiation that became the CMB was just sort of randomly splattered out, like we’d expect (and the randomness of the dots on the map above show that). But those little fluctuations aren’t the same everywhere! The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. The ESA folks say we may need “new physics” to explain why. Nice to know you cosmologists of the future will have something to work on :) Of course, all of this just goes for the observable universe. The rest, whatever it may be (or not be), has NO EDGE. Just like Hank Green reminds us. Phil Plait has tons more dirty details behind the Planck news at Bad Astronomy.
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Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions

I’m amazed that in 2013, we can still be smacked upside the head and reminded of how little we know about our universe. Even the most basic things about it. Like, how old it is.

The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has collected 15.5 months worth of data on the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (What’s that? Click here), and today they released the most detailed map ever of those oldest remnants of the Big Bang. It says that our universe is almost perfect. Almost. 

The highlights from this new map include the finding that the universe is almost certainly 13.81 billion years old, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. And we got better estimates for the stuffness of stuff: 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy. The universe is expanding, which is the whole reason that the CMB even exists, but this new map says it’s expanding slower than we thought. 

The coolest part, though? The “almost perfect” part. The radiation that became the CMB was just sort of randomly splattered out, like we’d expect (and the randomness of the dots on the map above show that). But those little fluctuations aren’t the same everywhere! The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. The ESA folks say we may need “new physics” to explain why. Nice to know you cosmologists of the future will have something to work on :)

Of course, all of this just goes for the observable universe. The rest, whatever it may be (or not be), has NO EDGE. Just like Hank Green reminds us. Phil Plait has tons more dirty details behind the Planck news at Bad Astronomy.

The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2! The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!  What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life). What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past. *Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
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The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2! The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!  What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life). What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past. *Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
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The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2! The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!  What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life). What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past. *Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
Zoom Info

The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2!

The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list! 

What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life).

What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past.

*Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.

Our brains, and how they're not as simple as we think - the danger of "folk neuroscience"

We all think the brain is amazing. But are we doing it justice? Neuroscience has given us great insight, but misusing neuroscience can do great harm.

Vaughan Bell has a must-read column at The Guardian detailing how modern neuroscience’s creep into popular culture has turned complex science into headline cliches, added “scientific” fuel to the fire of stereotypes, and obscured how little we really know about the brain. 

We need to continue to respect the complexity of this science, instead of distilling it to a tasteless extract.  

As neuroscience has gained authority over previous ways of explaining human nature, it is not surprising that people will be compelled to use it if they want to try and make persuasive claims about how people are or should be – regardless of its accuracy. Folk neuroscience has become Freud for Freud-phobes, everyday psychology for the sceptical, although in reality, rarely more helpful than either.

I recommend the whole piece, but especially his list of these popular misconceptions:

The “left-brain” is rational, the “right-brain” is creative 
The hemispheres have different specialisations (the left usually has key language areas, for example) but there is no clear rational-creative split and you need both hemispheres to be successful at either. You can no more do right-brain thinking than you can do rear-brain thinking.

Dopamine is a pleasure chemical 
Dopamine has many functions in the brain, from supporting concentration to regulating the production of breast milk. Even in its most closely associated functioning it is usually considered to be involved in motivation (wanting) rather than the feeling of pleasure itself.

Low serotonin causes depression 
A concept almost entirely promoted by pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s and 90s to sell serotonin-enhancing drugs like Prozac. No consistent evidence for it.

Video games, TV violence, porn or any other social spectre of the moment “rewires the brain” 
Everything “rewires the brain” as the brain works by making and remaking connections. This is often used in a contradictory fashion to suggest that the brain is both particularly susceptible to change but once changed, can’t change back.

We have no control over our brain but we can control our mind 
The mind and the brain are the same thing described in different ways and they make us who we are. Trying to suggest one causes the other is like saying wetness causes water.

A Toilet-Like Vortex of Bad Astronomy Bad is getting science wrong. Worse is getting science wrong because of mystical woo. Worstest is having that bad science go viral. The video discussed below has been featured on big sites like Kottke.org and I Love Charts, which shows how fast this stuff can spread. In the case of the “solar system as a vortex” videos, we have reached the darkest, worstest timeline. But science is here to help. Phil Plait has debunked this in gloriously gory detail, so please, please go read that. And stop sharing this bad science. Share this instead. First of all, that’s a helix, not a vortex. But that doesn’t matter. The planets do not trail behind the sun. It’s simply not based in reality. You can easily test this just by keeping track of the planets in the sky, and tens of thousands of people have done this throughout history. In a second video, the creator shows the planets orbiting a moving sun like a rotating drill bit. This is not the case. The solar system is indeed tipped 60˚ with respect to the galaxy. But sometimes planets are ahead of the sun and sometimes they are behind the sun. Also, the solar system does bob up and down across the galactic plane, but only once every 64 million years (this is due to the disk’s internal gravity, because it’s made of stuff). Much like a wobbling top, the Earth will “wobble” in its rotation around every 26,000 years (Google “procession” for more), but this has nothing to do with the claims of the video (although it is why the North Star won’t always be in the north). Much like how if I am walking forward at 3 mph on a train going 70 mph, I am not going 73 mph. I am going 3 mph, just in a different frame of reference. The speed of our solar wind pushing outward on intergalactic space is much higher than the speed we are traveling around the galaxy, and there’s no reason to think that all that out there is going to affect us in here. DJ Sadhu, who sadly spins lies rather than records, explains why someone would want to make all this up on his site. Enter at your own risk. Basically it’s an appeal for a model that doesn’t have us returning to the same place every year. That might sound spiritually superior, but it’s also BS. TIme moves forward, the planets and the sun move in predictable, well-studied patterns, and regardless of our position in the galaxy, the years are ours to make different. And we do a pretty good job of that without videos like this. It kind of sucks that all it takes to spread BS is a few weeks with 3D animation software and an internet connection, but hey … it can be a force for good as much as it is bad. Now commence getting this post a bazillion notes, or else the vortex will get us all.
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A Toilet-Like Vortex of Bad Astronomy

Bad is getting science wrong. Worse is getting science wrong because of mystical woo. Worstest is having that bad science go viral. The video discussed below has been featured on big sites like Kottke.org and I Love Charts, which shows how fast this stuff can spread.

In the case of the “solar system as a vortex” videos, we have reached the darkest, worstest timeline. But science is here to help. Phil Plait has debunked this in gloriously gory detail, so please, please go read that. And stop sharing this bad science. Share this instead.

First of all, that’s a helix, not a vortex. But that doesn’t matter. The planets do not trail behind the sun. It’s simply not based in reality. You can easily test this just by keeping track of the planets in the sky, and tens of thousands of people have done this throughout history.

In a second video, the creator shows the planets orbiting a moving sun like a rotating drill bit. This is not the case. The solar system is indeed tipped 60˚ with respect to the galaxy. But sometimes planets are ahead of the sun and sometimes they are behind the sun. Also, the solar system does bob up and down across the galactic plane, but only once every 64 million years (this is due to the disk’s internal gravity, because it’s made of stuff). Much like a wobbling top, the Earth will “wobble” in its rotation around every 26,000 years (Google “procession” for more), but this has nothing to do with the claims of the video (although it is why the North Star won’t always be in the north).

Much like how if I am walking forward at 3 mph on a train going 70 mph, I am not going 73 mph. I am going 3 mph, just in a different frame of reference. The speed of our solar wind pushing outward on intergalactic space is much higher than the speed we are traveling around the galaxy, and there’s no reason to think that all that out there is going to affect us in here.

DJ Sadhu, who sadly spins lies rather than records, explains why someone would want to make all this up on his site. Enter at your own risk. Basically it’s an appeal for a model that doesn’t have us returning to the same place every year. That might sound spiritually superior, but it’s also BS. TIme moves forward, the planets and the sun move in predictable, well-studied patterns, and regardless of our position in the galaxy, the years are ours to make different. And we do a pretty good job of that without videos like this.

It kind of sucks that all it takes to spread BS is a few weeks with 3D animation software and an internet connection, but hey … it can be a force for good as much as it is bad. Now commence getting this post a bazillion notes, or else the vortex will get us all.

Functional Cure for HIV in a Newborn Infant Very cool news over the weekend: Doctors report that they have been able to functionally cure HIV in an infected baby born to an HIV-positive mother in Mississippi. While only a few hundred HIV-infected babies are born in the U.S. every year (thanks to antiviral treatments in pregnant mothers), over 300,000 are born in Africa annually. So this is something that needs to be tackled, Ray Lewis-style. Why It’s Cool: I want to emphasize that this is a “functional cure”. Like the “Berlin Patient” (who was functionally cured by a completely different process), the virus might still technically be there, but the baby is “cured” for all intents and purposes. Also, this was done by giving the newborn large doses of antiviral drugs that are already available and already used to fight HIV. About a month after birth, the virus was undetectable in the baby’s blood, and on visits months later (even after the mother stopped treating the child for some reason), no HIV was found. The most sensitive tests showed signs of HIV RNA and DNA, which means the virus was there, but no actual virus. What Questions Remain: This research was presented at a science conference this weekend, and needs to go through the process of peer review to be double and triple-checked, because that’s what we do. Is this the best way to prevent HIV in babies? Not all babies born of HIV+ moms get infected, only about 15-45%. And with methods already in place, that number can be reduced to more like 1%. Did the baby actually have HIV to start? Mothers and babies actually share cells across the placenta, and they are floating in each other’s bodies. Maybe there’s a chance (this is one that I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere) that thetests done to “confirm” the HIV was there to begin with actually detected some of the mother’s cells? I don’t know. Time will tell. All in all, this is a very cool report of something that hadn’t been done before. But like Sarah Boseley discusses at The Guardian, in the places where HIV+ babies are found the most (sub-Saharan Africa) the problem isn’t finding new methods. It’s getting those methods into practice, and getting mothers and doctors in Africa to take action (often against incredible social resistance). Just this week, “successful” HIV treatments were reported useless in Africa because simply people don’t use them. Great application of careful medicine, but like the “Berlin Patient”, it probably won’t end up treating HIV where it’s most needed. Not unless something else changes first.  You can find links to more stories in this post by Rose Eveleth.
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Functional Cure for HIV in a Newborn Infant Very cool news over the weekend: Doctors report that they have been able to functionally cure HIV in an infected baby born to an HIV-positive mother in Mississippi. While only a few hundred HIV-infected babies are born in the U.S. every year (thanks to antiviral treatments in pregnant mothers), over 300,000 are born in Africa annually. So this is something that needs to be tackled, Ray Lewis-style. Why It’s Cool: I want to emphasize that this is a “functional cure”. Like the “Berlin Patient” (who was functionally cured by a completely different process), the virus might still technically be there, but the baby is “cured” for all intents and purposes. Also, this was done by giving the newborn large doses of antiviral drugs that are already available and already used to fight HIV. About a month after birth, the virus was undetectable in the baby’s blood, and on visits months later (even after the mother stopped treating the child for some reason), no HIV was found. The most sensitive tests showed signs of HIV RNA and DNA, which means the virus was there, but no actual virus. What Questions Remain: This research was presented at a science conference this weekend, and needs to go through the process of peer review to be double and triple-checked, because that’s what we do. Is this the best way to prevent HIV in babies? Not all babies born of HIV+ moms get infected, only about 15-45%. And with methods already in place, that number can be reduced to more like 1%. Did the baby actually have HIV to start? Mothers and babies actually share cells across the placenta, and they are floating in each other’s bodies. Maybe there’s a chance (this is one that I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere) that thetests done to “confirm” the HIV was there to begin with actually detected some of the mother’s cells? I don’t know. Time will tell. All in all, this is a very cool report of something that hadn’t been done before. But like Sarah Boseley discusses at The Guardian, in the places where HIV+ babies are found the most (sub-Saharan Africa) the problem isn’t finding new methods. It’s getting those methods into practice, and getting mothers and doctors in Africa to take action (often against incredible social resistance). Just this week, “successful” HIV treatments were reported useless in Africa because simply people don’t use them. Great application of careful medicine, but like the “Berlin Patient”, it probably won’t end up treating HIV where it’s most needed. Not unless something else changes first.  You can find links to more stories in this post by Rose Eveleth.
Zoom Info

Functional Cure for HIV in a Newborn Infant

Very cool news over the weekend: Doctors report that they have been able to functionally cure HIV in an infected baby born to an HIV-positive mother in Mississippi. While only a few hundred HIV-infected babies are born in the U.S. every year (thanks to antiviral treatments in pregnant mothers), over 300,000 are born in Africa annually. So this is something that needs to be tackled, Ray Lewis-style.

Why It’s Cool: I want to emphasize that this is a “functional cure”. Like the “Berlin Patient” (who was functionally cured by a completely different process), the virus might still technically be there, but the baby is “cured” for all intents and purposes. Also, this was done by giving the newborn large doses of antiviral drugs that are already available and already used to fight HIV. About a month after birth, the virus was undetectable in the baby’s blood, and on visits months later (even after the mother stopped treating the child for some reason), no HIV was found. The most sensitive tests showed signs of HIV RNA and DNA, which means the virus was there, but no actual virus.

What Questions Remain: This research was presented at a science conference this weekend, and needs to go through the process of peer review to be double and triple-checked, because that’s what we do. Is this the best way to prevent HIV in babies? Not all babies born of HIV+ moms get infected, only about 15-45%. And with methods already in place, that number can be reduced to more like 1%. Did the baby actually have HIV to start? Mothers and babies actually share cells across the placenta, and they are floating in each other’s bodies. Maybe there’s a chance (this is one that I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere) that thetests done to “confirm” the HIV was there to begin with actually detected some of the mother’s cells? I don’t know. Time will tell.

All in all, this is a very cool report of something that hadn’t been done before. But like Sarah Boseley discusses at The Guardian, in the places where HIV+ babies are found the most (sub-Saharan Africa) the problem isn’t finding new methods. It’s getting those methods into practice, and getting mothers and doctors in Africa to take action (often against incredible social resistance). Just this week, “successful” HIV treatments were reported useless in Africa because simply people don’t use them.

Great application of careful medicine, but like the “Berlin Patient”, it probably won’t end up treating HIV where it’s most needed. Not unless something else changes first. 

You can find links to more stories in this post by Rose Eveleth.

Just your daily reminder that there’s a bad-ass robot powered by nuclear energy drilling holes and taking names on our neighboring planet right now, you know … lest you forget just how incredibly cool that is. This is the most recent self-portrait of Curiosity, as she (yep, it’s a she) sits atop a rocky perch named for John Klein, the late Mars Science Laboratory deputy manager. The rover is embarking on the next phase of its mission: Drilling rock samples and scooping them into its internal chemical analysis machinery. You can see the first drill holes and scooped sample in the inset photos. I’m amazed at how thin the red dusty layer is in some areas of Mars. Rather than be made of red rock through and through, those iron oxides only cover the red planet in a light dusting of rusty dust. Scrape it away or drill beneath it just a few centimeters and it’s ashy gray! Continue your exploration! Check out an enlarged version of the composite self-portrait here. And for the truly adventurous, check out this interactive 360-degree panorama (especially if you’re on a mobile device … OH MAN so cool!!!!)
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Just your daily reminder that there’s a bad-ass robot powered by nuclear energy drilling holes and taking names on our neighboring planet right now, you know … lest you forget just how incredibly cool that is. This is the most recent self-portrait of Curiosity, as she (yep, it’s a she) sits atop a rocky perch named for John Klein, the late Mars Science Laboratory deputy manager. The rover is embarking on the next phase of its mission: Drilling rock samples and scooping them into its internal chemical analysis machinery. You can see the first drill holes and scooped sample in the inset photos. I’m amazed at how thin the red dusty layer is in some areas of Mars. Rather than be made of red rock through and through, those iron oxides only cover the red planet in a light dusting of rusty dust. Scrape it away or drill beneath it just a few centimeters and it’s ashy gray! Continue your exploration! Check out an enlarged version of the composite self-portrait here. And for the truly adventurous, check out this interactive 360-degree panorama (especially if you’re on a mobile device … OH MAN so cool!!!!)
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Just your daily reminder that there’s a bad-ass robot powered by nuclear energy drilling holes and taking names on our neighboring planet right now, you know … lest you forget just how incredibly cool that is. This is the most recent self-portrait of Curiosity, as she (yep, it’s a she) sits atop a rocky perch named for John Klein, the late Mars Science Laboratory deputy manager. The rover is embarking on the next phase of its mission: Drilling rock samples and scooping them into its internal chemical analysis machinery. You can see the first drill holes and scooped sample in the inset photos. I’m amazed at how thin the red dusty layer is in some areas of Mars. Rather than be made of red rock through and through, those iron oxides only cover the red planet in a light dusting of rusty dust. Scrape it away or drill beneath it just a few centimeters and it’s ashy gray! Continue your exploration! Check out an enlarged version of the composite self-portrait here. And for the truly adventurous, check out this interactive 360-degree panorama (especially if you’re on a mobile device … OH MAN so cool!!!!)
Zoom Info

Just your daily reminder that there’s a bad-ass robot powered by nuclear energy drilling holes and taking names on our neighboring planet right now, you know … lest you forget just how incredibly cool that is.

This is the most recent self-portrait of Curiosity, as she (yep, it’s a she) sits atop a rocky perch named for John Klein, the late Mars Science Laboratory deputy manager. The rover is embarking on the next phase of its mission: Drilling rock samples and scooping them into its internal chemical analysis machinery. You can see the first drill holes and scooped sample in the inset photos.

I’m amazed at how thin the red dusty layer is in some areas of Mars. Rather than be made of red rock through and through, those iron oxides only cover the red planet in a light dusting of rusty dust. Scrape it away or drill beneath it just a few centimeters and it’s ashy gray!

Continue your exploration! Check out an enlarged version of the composite self-portrait here. And for the truly adventurous, check out this interactive 360-degree panorama (especially if you’re on a mobile device … OH MAN so cool!!!!)

The vermin only teaze and pinch Their foes superior by an inch. So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ‘em, And so proceed ad infinitum. -Jonathan Swift What’s the most common living thing on Earth? A smart guess would be to start with bacteria, which make up over half of all biomass on Earth (you did watch that episode of my YouTube show, right?). And since the oceans cover considerably more than half the planet, a marine bacterium would also make sense. Until very recently, almost everyone with an opinion on these things would agree. See that bacterium in the electron microscope image above? It’s called Pelagibacter ubique, an ocean-dwelling microbe whose family of relatives make up a stunning one-third of aquatic life forms (by sheer numbers). Why so numerous? One popular theory was that because they are immune to infection by bacterial viruses, they could grow unchecked. Thanks to some creative science, that theory now appears dead wrong (here’s the paper in Nature). By diluting seawater over and over (that is what grad students are for), Stephen Giovannoni’s team was able to isolate single ocean viruses, most of which had never been identified before. Then they stuck them in with P. ubique and waited. Amazingly, some of the viruses could infect this previously uninfectable bacterium! Those little blobs in the image above are actually viruses ready to burst out of their unfortunate little host. They sequenced the DNA of those viruses, when back to the ocean, and found that one of them, with the unremarkable name “HTVC010P”, is … well, basically everywhere. This “smaller flea”, which itself feeds upon something so mind-bogglingly numerous, is now our best candidate for “The World’s Most Abundant Thingy”. Whether or not it’s a life form? I’ll leave that up to you …
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The vermin only teaze and pinch
Their foes superior by an inch.
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.

-Jonathan Swift

What’s the most common living thing on Earth? A smart guess would be to start with bacteria, which make up over half of all biomass on Earth (you did watch that episode of my YouTube show, right?). And since the oceans cover considerably more than half the planet, a marine bacterium would also make sense.

Until very recently, almost everyone with an opinion on these things would agree. See that bacterium in the electron microscope image above? It’s called Pelagibacter ubique, an ocean-dwelling microbe whose family of relatives make up a stunning one-third of aquatic life forms (by sheer numbers). Why so numerous? One popular theory was that because they are immune to infection by bacterial viruses, they could grow unchecked.

Thanks to some creative science, that theory now appears dead wrong (here’s the paper in Nature). By diluting seawater over and over (that is what grad students are for), Stephen Giovannoni’s team was able to isolate single ocean viruses, most of which had never been identified before. Then they stuck them in with P. ubique and waited. Amazingly, some of the viruses could infect this previously uninfectable bacterium! Those little blobs in the image above are actually viruses ready to burst out of their unfortunate little host.

They sequenced the DNA of those viruses, when back to the ocean, and found that one of them, with the unremarkable name “HTVC010P”, is … well, basically everywhere.

This “smaller flea”, which itself feeds upon something so mind-bogglingly numerous, is now our best candidate for “The World’s Most Abundant Thingy”.

Whether or not it’s a life form? I’ll leave that up to you …