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The 5 Creepiest Ways Plant Diseases Mutate Flowers

Pretty blossoms aren’t immune to the body-morphing, plague-spreading powers of a good microbe. Some of the flowers you admire on a spring day might only be blooming, for example, because they’re hostages of a disease. Plant diseases can’t scatter in sneeze droplets like a human virus can. But they can change the look and behavior […]The post The 5 Creepiest Ways Plant Diseases Mutate Flowers appeared first on Inkfish.

McArt SH, Koch H, Irwin RE & Adler LS (2014). Arranging the bouquet of disease: floral traits and the transmission of plant and animal pathogens., Ecology letters, PMID: 24528408

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Strange Insect Tastes

Biology concepts – sensilla, uniporous sensilla, gustatory receptor, RNA world hypothesis Chalcanthite (copper containing) is used in traditional medicines, even though it is toxic. Recent study shows it is anti-inflammatory when mixed with egg white. A 2013 study shows that after burning off the water from chalcanthite and mixing it with egg white to eliminate toxicity, the concoction inhibits several signaling pathways that would otherwise stimulate inflammation. I’m not sure you […]

Choi EA, Park HY, Yoo HS & Choi YH (2013). Anti-inflammatory effects of egg white combined with chalcanthite in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated BV2 microglia through the inhibition of NF-κB, MAPK and PI3K/Akt signaling pathways., International journal of molecular medicine, 31 (1) 154-62. PMID: 23128312

Briscoe AD, Macias-Muñoz A, Kozak KM, Walters JR, Yuan F, Jamie GA, Martin SH, Dasmahapatra KK, Ferguson LC, Mallet J & Jacquin-Joly E (2013). Female behaviour drives expression and evolution of gustatory receptors in butterflies., PLoS genetics, 9 (7) PMID: 23950722

Koch SI, Groh K, Vogel H, Hansson BS, Kleineidam CJ & Grosse-Wilde E (2013). Caste-specific expression patterns of immune response and chemosensory related genes in the leaf-cutting ant, Atta vollenweideri., PloS one, 8 (11) PMID: 24260580

Thistle R, Cameron P, Ghorayshi A, Dennison L & Scott K (2012). Contact chemoreceptors mediate male-male repulsion and male-female attraction during Drosophila courtship., Cell, 149 (5) 1140-51. PMID: 22632976

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Cows Learn Better With Friends

My schoolteachers took effort to separate close friends when arranging their classroom seating charts. The idea was that we’d pay more attention to our lessons if we were distracted by our... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Gaillard C., Meagher R.K., von Keyserlingk M.A.G., Weary D.M. & McElligott A. (2014). Social Housing Improves Dairy Calves' Performance in Two Cognitive Tests, PLoS ONE, 9 (2) e90205. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0090205.g003

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Knotted Needles Make Knitted Knots

Step aside, infinity scarves, you aren’t infinite at all. The (5,3) torus knot cowl is where it’s at. For me, one of the highlights of January’s Joint Mathematics Meetings was the... -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

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The most beautiful animal you’ve never seen

When I first saw a sea sapphire I thought I was hallucinating. The day had been anything but normal, but this part will always stand out. I’d spent the afternoon on a small dingy off the coast of Durban, South Africa. It was muggy, and I’d been working for hours–-throwing a small net out, and […]

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New hope against tuberculosis: spectinamides

Tuberculosis (TB) represents a serious public health problem. The latest reports estimate an incidence of 8.7 million cases in 2001 and over 1.4 million deaths […] Read moreThe post New hope against tuberculosis: spectinamides appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Lee R.E., Hurdle J.G., Liu J., Bruhn D.F., Matt T., Scherman M.S., Vaddady P.K., Zheng Z., Qi J. & Akbergenov R. & (2014). Spectinamides: a new class of semisynthetic antituberculosis agents that overcome native drug efflux, Nature Medicine, 20 (2) 152-158. DOI: 10.1038/nm.3458

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New UCSC Genome Browser for the newest human genome assembly

Most folks who read this blog will be aware that a new human genome assembly has been completed, released, and is available for anyone to obtain. One of my favorite overviews of that new version can be found in this readable piece at Bio-IT World: Deanna Church on the Reference Genome Past, Present and Future. […]

Karolchik D., Barber G.P., Casper J., Clawson H., Cline M.S., Diekhans M., Dreszer T.R., Fujita P.A., Guruvadoo L. & Haeussler M. & (2013). The UCSC Genome Browser database: 2014 update, Nucleic Acids Research, 42 (D1) D764-D770. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkt1168

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Does Daylight Saving Time Affect Voter Turnout?

Another daylight saving time (DST) has come and gone without triggering the collapse of society, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had an impact. Research suggests that DST can influence energy use (pdf), the prevalence of workplace accidents (pdf), and the tendency to shirk work responsibilities by looking at random stuff on the internet (a […]

Urbatsch, R. (2014). Time Regulations as Electoral Policy, American Politics Research, DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14523034

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Acute psychosis and urinary tract infection

Today I'm highlighting the paper by Krystle Graham and colleagues [1] which talked about a possible association between the presence of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in various types of psychosis. With my interest in all things biology-behaviour, remembering such posts as impulsivity and uric acid (see here), once again we have an example of how the two areas just might fit together.The bullfighter (deceased) @Manet @Wikipedia So, take several groups of […]

Graham KL, Carson CM, Ezeoke A, Buckley PF & Miller BJ (2014). Urinary tract infections in acute psychosis., The Journal of clinical psychiatry, PMID: 24499998

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Does clown therapy really help anxious kids?

Hospitals can be strange, foreboding places for young children. One idea to help reduce their anxiety is to invite clowns onto the ward to foster an atmosphere of light-heartedness and safety. This may seem like a harmless intervention - certainly preferable to anti-anxiety medication - but does it really work?Alberto Dionigi and his team studied 77 children (aged 2 to 12, including 41 boys) at an Italian hospital. The children were awaiting otolaryngological surgery. They were accompanied by […]

Dionigi A, Sangiorgi D & Flangini R (2014). Clown intervention to reduce preoperative anxiety in children and parents: A randomized controlled trial., Journal of health psychology, 19 (3) 369-80. PMID: 23362335

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Lack of sleep impairs emotion recognition

This is a re-post of an entry I had written exactly 4 years ago. I liked it so much I decided to share it again. The ability to read emotions is an important part of the human experience; the only way to successfully navigate through complex social environments. It comes in handy especially if you don the title of psychotherapist or professional poker player. Without it, you are rendered socially inept. You enter the world of the autistic individual.Thanks to Charles Darwin we now know that […]

van der Helm E; Gujar N; Walker MP (2010). Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Accurate Recognition of Human Emotions, SLEEP, 33 (3) 335-342. Other: Link

Ekman P & Friesen WV (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion., Journal of personality and social psychology, 17 (2) 124-9. PMID: 5542557

Steadman, L. (1980). : Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands . Shirley Lindenbaum., American Anthropologist, 82 (3) 692-694. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1980.82.3.02a01130

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Matters of Appearance: Eating Disorder Patients’ Interpretations of Therapists’ Bodies

Therapeutic alliance is often highlighted in studies looking at treatment effectiveness, both in and beyond the realm of eating disorder therapy. Evidently, there are a number of factors that can impact how well we get along with our therapists, ranging from disagreements with the course of treatment or type of therapy to a simple, unnamable dislike for the person. But what about their appearance? What kind of impact could a therapist’s body size have on the therapy relationship? Rance, […]

Rance, N,M., Clarke, V. & Moller, N.P. (2014). "If I See Somebody … I'll Immediately Scope Them Out": Anorexia Nervosa Clients' Perceptions of Their Therapists' Body., Eating Disorders, 22 (2) 111-20. PMID: 24555509

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Pregnancy and breast cancer risk: why age counts

That an early pregnancy is protective against breast cancer is something I've known for ten years now. I remember one of my professors, back when I started studying genetics, saying: "Having a baby at 16 may ruin your life but it sure protects you from breast cancer." Today we know a lot more about the cellular and genetic mechanisms that a first pregnancy triggers in the body. And yet how these mechanisms turn out to be protective against breast cancer is still a mystery. "The ovarian […]

Medina D (2005). Mammary developmental fate and breast cancer risk., Endocrine-related cancer, 12 (3) 483-95. PMID: 16172188

Meier-Abt F & Bentires-Alj M (2014). How pregnancy at early age protects against breast cancer., Trends in molecular medicine, 20 (3) 143-153. PMID: 24355762

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In the Blink of an Eye

It takes around 150 milliseconds (or about one sixth of a second) to blink your eyes. In other words, not long. That’s why you say something happened “in the blink of an eye” when an event passed so quickly that you were barely aware of it. Yet a new study shows that humans can process […]

Potter MC, Wyble B, Hagmann CE & McCourt ES (2013). Detecting meaning in RSVP at 13 ms per picture., Attention, perception & psychophysics, PMID: 24374558

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Sources of error: Essentialism Fallacy

There is a mistake we all make, and keep making, over and over, at every possible occasion, and will keep making, even after realising that we make it. This happens because it is, in general terms, the most useful cognitive…Read more ›

Marcus G. (2009). How the Mind Work? Insights from Biology , Topics in Cognitive Science, 1 (1) 145-172. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01007.x

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