John Takao Collier writes:

A few months ago my 11 year old daughter (we’ll call her “E”) and I attended a lecture at Fermilab on “Green Fluorescent Protein” (GFP).  The talk was given by Martin Chalfie, chair of the department of biological sciences at Columbia University.  Dr. Chalfie shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Y. Tsien “for the discovery and development of GFP”.  GFP has turned out to be an incredibly powerful biochemical tool; with it you can tag a gene and actually see in real-time when the gene is “on” or “off”. This ability can be used for biosensors or to see if genes are expressed under particular conditions.  You can also buy glowing zebra fish at Wal-Mart based on GFP.  If your discovery swims around in an aquarium at Wal-Mart, it’s got to be worthy for a Nobel Prize.

Dr. Chalfie peppered the lecture with amusing anecdotes.  For example, he slept through the phone call from the Nobel Prize committee and the next morning he thought to himself “OK, who’s the schnook that got the Prize this time?”  He then checked the Nobel Prize web site and discovered that he was the schnook.  Makes me think that a new reality show is in order; instead of “Jersey Shore” with “Snooki”, maybe SciCheer fans would enjoy “Columbia University  Shore” starring “Schnooki”.

Refreshments (cookies and juice) are served after the lecture; while the audience noshed on crème-filled delights, Dr. Chalfie patiently answered question after question.  Previous events have revealed that the guest of honor is surrounded by a relentless swarm of question-askers; therefore the lecturer can’t get to the goodies.  This may explain why the lecturers are usually slimmer than the audience.

“E” and I did our part to decrease the total number of available calories in the universe.  Done stuffing our faces, we pilfered some SWAG – a copy of the event poster – and headed towards the parking lot.  However, I had a sense of unease, a feeling that some business was not finished.  I finally put my finger on this sense of incompleteness:  Being a science fan-boy, I desperately wanted Dr. Chalfie’s autograph, but was too damned chicken to ask the famous Nobel Laureate for his signature.

In the time-honored tradition of cowards throughout history, I attempted to convince my daughter that she wanted the autograph.  At first she demurred, so I used reason, guile and subterfuge to change her mind.  When that didn’t work, I resorted to whining and pleading.  I pointed out that we had the nice poster that Dr. Chalfie could sign.  After a minute or so of my pitiful begging, she said “OK”, spun her little 4 foot, 8 inch body around and headed back into the building.

I then began to feel uneasy again, but now for a completely different reason:  I was using my daughter to get what I wanted – what kind of crummy father was I, anyway?  And what if the great Nobel Laureate replied to her “Autograph?  YOU want an autograph?  Why should I give an autograph to a mere mortal?  And a short one, at that?”  My poor, dear, wonderful daughter would be psychically scarred for life and, worst of all, it would be my fault.  I would have reached the pantheon of crummy dad-hood.  So, like the coward I am, I began to panic.

I now tried to un-convince her.  “You know,” I said “You don’t have to do this.  Get his autograph only if you really, really, REALLY want to.”  Since E was made of sterner stuff than her lily-livered father she said “I really want the autograph” and continued into the building.  She planted her little self near Dr. Chalfie, waited for a break in the conversation and politely asked for his autograph.

Dr. Chalfie’s face brightened as if he were a fluorescing zebra fish under a UV light; he was absolutely delighted to give “E” an autograph!  Our ballpoint pen wouldn’t write on the poster’s slick surface, so Dr. Chalfie ran around like an excited puppy dog asking people if they had a suitable writing device.

E’s Grandpa (who also attended the lecture) came to the rescue with a roller-ball, and Dr. Chalfie wrote “Good Luck & Keep Glowing!” on E’s poster (see the photo, above).

Now that E broke the ice, the autograph floodgates burst open (well, sort of) since 2 or 3 other adults saw that it was safe to ask.  Adults can be quivering, jelly-legged cowards in the face of imagined social rejection, but a child can show us that you don’t need to have rippling muscles and wear tights to be a science superhero.

Here is the promised, sure-fire recipe for getting an autograph from a Nobel Laureate:

1. Have paper and (hopefully working) pen ready.
2. Bake scientist for 20 or 30 years in order to win Nobel prize.
3. Add one cute, science-interested little girl to ask for the autograph.

P.S. – This has added to our extensive collection of Nobel Laureate autographs; we now have a sum total of one.  Any Nobel Laureates who want to increase our collection are encouraged to send us a signature (preferably on a check, but the back of a envelope will do).

Image credit:  John Takao Collier

John Takao Collier writes:

Bizarre scientific things seem to happen to me between 4 and 5 am.

A couple of nights ago, a thunderstorm rolled in around 4:30 am.  The approaching storm woke me up, but basic laziness kept me from jumping out of bed to check for basketball-sized hail or untethered houses flying by. I laid in bed with my eyes closed, listening to the thunder getting closer and closer.  Then something very strange happened – across my visual field (or whatever you would call it, given that  I was “seeing” the darkness of the inside of my eyelids)  a moving pattern of random black and white specks, very much like television snow, flickered for a fraction of a second.

My immediate reaction was “Oh oh, the next one is gonna be really clo…”

CRACK!

The damn thing sounded like it was right outside my window.  It’s a good thing that I have adequate bladder control.

A minute or two later, when the spike of adrenaline wore off, I started to wonder just what had occurred.  Was my optic nerve, or the visual center in my brain, momentarily zapped by the nearby electrostatic field?  Did I briefly channel a vision from an alien analog TV?  Did I eat too much garlic the night before?

Recently, magnetically induced hallucinations were suggested as an explanation for  ball lightning, so perhaps my visual cortex was temporarily overloaded by lightning-induced magnetic fields.  Maybe lightning is attracted to garlic (sort of like an anti-vampire).

The next day, I did an Google search for “lightning” and “television snow” (and similar search terms)  but didn’t get any hits.  So, I’m curious if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon.  I ask my gentle readers, have any of you had a similar “TV snow” effect during a thunderstorm?  Comment away.

John-the-Tourist writes:

When: 4:00 am, February 10th, 2010
Where: My bedroom, about 30 miles west of Chicago, Illinois, USA…

Me: Zzzzz, Snort, Zzzzzz

Earth: RUMBLE, RUMBLE, THUNK!

Me (eyes popping open): What the hell was that?  An earthquake?

My wife, Lynn: Zzzzzz, snort, zzzzz.

Me (internal dialog): Maybe Lynn knocked the  book she was reading out of bed?  Hmmmm, probability of Lynn dropping the book = moderate.  Probability of earthquake near Chicago = low.  Occam’s razor* implies that it was Lynn’s book.**

Me: Zzzzz, Snort, Zzzzzz

Well, we actually did have a 3.8 magnitude trembler west of Chicago.  For those of you who live in areas of the world where there are three earthquakes every day before lunch, this news is rather ho-hum.  However, for those of us living in the Midwest of the USA, an earthquake is a novel event.

At first blush, one would think that Occam’s philosophical whisker-whacker failed, but since I didn’t jump out of bed to verify that a book fell into a gravity well or run to the computer to check the U.S. Geological Survey website, I did not examine the available evidence in order to answer the question at hand.  In other words, my scientific logic was faulty, so Occam slices and dices again.  However, my faulty logic did buy me 2 more hours of sleep.

The earthquake had a slight effect on high energy particle physics at Fermi National Accelerator Lab as reported by Fermilab Today…

Tilt meters strapped to Fermilab’s magnets recorded the vibrations at the laboratory. The earthquake shook the magnets and caused the beam to strike a collimater, losing its store.

Want to be a earth citizen scientist?   Check out Science for Citizen’s entry for “Did you feel it?” which allows you to enter information about your earthquake experience directly to the USGS.

So, what’s shakin’ near Chicago?  The earth, accelerator magnets and bedrooms.

* Occam’s Razor the philosophical concept, not Occam’s Razor, the Science Cheerleader.

** Yes, I actually did have this internal dialog with myself at 4:00 am in the morning.  What can I say?  I’m weird in this way.

Image Credit:  Fermilab Today

John-the-Tourist writes:

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas“.  Not quite true – my intrepid Science Cheerleader squad member John Ohab nabbed a snazzy Einstein T-shirt while he was recently in Las Vegas and presumably got the shirt outside the city limits.

Now, if you REALLY want to do something that you don’t want your mother to find out about, you need to be in the vicinity of a black hole, in which (as far as we know) nothing can escape.  My friend Matt (who works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) quipped “What happens in the event horizon stays in the event horizon”.  Matt’s son Owen told the joke on “CBS Sunday Morning” and Matt’s wife Robin (who is a graphical designer) turned the quip into a T-shirt (modeled by their daughter Lindsay) that you can purchase from Cafe Press. There is also a light-background version of the design.

So, be bold!  Show the universe that secrets can be kept – as long as you are within the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole.

P.S. – Don’t forget our own nifty Science Cheerleader T-shirts!  Make a fashion statement and fill up your closet!

Image source:  Matt Crawford

John-the-Tourist writes:

In my attempt to keep up with high-energy physics news, I read the online publication, “Symmetry Breaking“.  “Symmetry Breaking” had an article with an fascinating set of photos of a sculpture (Quantum Man II, below). Based on your viewing angle, the sculpture would either appear solid or would melt away into an almost ethereal nothingness.  “Quantum Man II”  is a representation of the wave-particle duality of nature and is the work of artist and scientist Julian Voss-Andreae, of Portland, Oregon.

Julian has an interesting history:  During the 1990s he was a physicist and he participated in an experiment that showed the wave-particle duality of the largest object to date, the C₆₀ “buckyball”.  In the 2000s, Julian changed careers and is now crafting sculptures, many of which are based on scientific topics.   Several of Julian’s pieces are part of the “Worlds Within Worlds” exhibit, showing through April 16, 2010 at the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland (approximately 10 miles northeast of Washington D.C.).

I asked Julian for an interview, and he graciously accepted and answered my questions.  Note – In the following interview, [SC] = “Science Cheerleader” and [JVA] = “Julian Voss-Andreae.”

[SC]: While growing up, was your first “love” art, science or were you interested in both?

[JVA]:  My first love was in a way both art and science; it was my LEGO blocks. I would spend hours building stuff with them. At that time, form strictly followed function for me. I would make very functional toys like cars with motors and 4-wheel steering or vehicles that carried a detachable folded up bridge on their back. As an older kid I had hobbies in both fields, pottery for example in art or electronics as a more science-based hobby.  I also had a really cool chemistry lab in my room which I started assembling as a child. By the time I was about fifteen I had collected hundreds of chemicals. During those years I also got obsessed with computer programming which aimed mostly at creating cool visual effects. But in all my interests, including the scientific ones, I was always driven more by the sensual and aesthetic experience than by an interest in purely intellectual understanding.

[SC]:  According to your bio you were drawn to study physics due to its philosophical implications.  Which philosophical implications intrigued you?

[JVA]: As a young kid my aunt always gave me a certain popular science journal which I loved to read. Almost every issue had pictures of melting clocks and of Einsteins with crazy hairdo and his tongue sticking out and I was fascinated by the articles that came with those illustrations; partly because I found them completely unimaginable. Later I realized that Einstein’s theory of relativity is actually not nearly as challenging to our everyday assumptions about reality as quantum physics. When I started studying at the university I first took some philosophy classes and it was in such a class that I came across Roger Penrose’s fabulous book “The Emperor’s New Mind”. That book really made me want to study quantum physics because I wanted to see how far I can get in really understanding those problems. Penrose does a beautiful job in pointing out the deep problems that stem from the fact that our intuitions are not made to deal with the quantum world.

[SC]:  In your paper “Towards Quantum Sculpture”, you mention that the probabilistic nature of the quantum world gives hope to the concept of “free will”.  Could you elaborate?

[JVA]:  Quantum physics provides us with a detailed statistical knowledge describing exactly the behavior of many events but it does not predict the outcome of the individual event. We can, for example, calculate the pattern of light that falls on a photo paper very accurately but if we dim the light down and look at the spots caused by single particles of light, the photons, quantum physics doesn’t predict where each photon will be detected. After a hundred years of quantum physics we now know that this is not a shortcoming of the theory but a fundamental aspect of reality. The single event turns out to be not determined by anything. It is truly random. Now, if we look at the concept of free will in a pre-quantum, Newtonian world view there is simply no space for that. Everything is caused by something, everything is deterministic. Yes, there is certainly chaos (in a mathematical sense of the word) and things like the butterfly effect, but we are still essentially puppets on a string in this world view, because everything is predestined. With the fall of the absolute reign of causality this looks different though and we can have hope that this freedom of will we seem to possess is not just an illusion of ours.

[SC]:  You and I both admire Linus Pauling (he was a sort of hero of mine in my teen years).  How did your sculpture “Alpha Helix” (below right) come to end up in Dr. Pauling’s front yard?

[JVA]:  He was a very cool scientist and an extraordinary human being. He started out doing quantum mechanics with
its founders in Europe, which he, as one of the first people, applied to chemistry. Then he went all the way over biomolecules to human health and to the health of society as a whole. I am a big fan of him as well. And I noticed around 2002 that I kept making those “alpha helix” sculptures based on the geometry of a very common spiral motif found in proteins that was postulated first by Pauling. And I made some of those pieces from Douglas firs, the Oregon state tree. When I realized that Pauling was born and raised in Portland and that there is absolutely nothing here to commemorate him, I thought this was a shame since he is certainly one of the most important sons of this city. After all, he is the only person to ever win two unshared Nobel Prizes. So my idea was to create some sort of a monument for him, namely an alpha helix out of a bronze cast Douglas fir. I typed “Pauling memorial” into Google and found that some people had proposed a building in his honor. I visited the architect who had drawn the sketches and was referred to Terry Bristol, who is best known in Portland for organizing a very successful series of science lectures. I met Terry, we had a long talk about physics and philosophy, and he wanted me to create an outdoor sculpture for the Linus Pauling Center located at Pauling’s former childhood home. Pauling had his first laboratory as a child in the basement of that house on Hawthorne Boulevard in SE Portland. The plan to do it in bronze turned out to be difficult and I came up with the idea to use a steel beam instead.

[SC]:  Many of your commissions are from scientists or scientific organizations.  Would you like your work to expand beyond this audience?

[JVA]:  Yes, I would very much like to do expand beyond the science circles. I do have a few collectors without a strong affinity to science but it is not easy to reach this kind of audience. One reason my work appeals foremost to scientists is that my works tend to have underlying concepts with an actual meaning and scientists can appreciate them for what they are. In the art world, the situation is different: A critical mass of art world endorsement is needed that most collectors dare to ‘invest’ in an artist. The ‘aura’ of the art, i.e. at what venues the artist exhibits and who talks about him or her is all-critical and in my opinion frequently rated much higher than the work itself. But I am still interested in getting more into the traditional art world circles because I feel that is where my work ultimately belongs.

[SC]:  What messages would you like your work to convey to a larger audience?

[JVA]:  My main message is simple. I have a deep feeling of awe when I behold nature. That can be a landscape or humans, or how an animal moves, but it can also be phenomena we see only through the instruments and theories of science. My first goal is to share and convey this feeling I have.

[SC]:  The Oregon Public Television video showed you experimenting with balloons and resin; this caused me to think of the speculated space-time “foam” at the Planck length.   Did you have a particular theme in mind as you were exploring the balloon and resin method?

[JVA]:  I came to that idea by thinking of a natural way to connect dots in space. I started out writing my own
algorithm for this which turned out to be trickier than I had thought. Then I contacted an old physics professor of mine and asked him about some irregular lattices he had used in his research which I still remembered from my student days. He pointed me into the direction of so-called Voronoi cells and from there it was only a small step to the structure of foam. He was actually studying quantum chromodynamics, the dynamics of quarks. He did his calculations on random lattices instead of the regular grid to avoid computational artifacts. After I had gone into a dead end with modeling foam on the computer, I decided to create a real foam-like system by using water balloons as bubbles and filling the gaps in between the balloons with a hardening liquid. At the end I pop the balloons and I am left with the cellular structure of foam. I have made several trial objects and one cast bronze piece in that technique. I later called the bronze piece “The Universe” (above, left). This sculpture was actually directly inspired by the hypothesized smallest cells of space and time you were mentioning in your question. In fact, its initial title even was “The Cellular Structure of Space and Time”.

[SC]:  You contributed to the ground-breaking experiment in 1999 that showed the wave-particle duality of the largest object (C₆₀ “Buckyball”) to date.  What did this experiment tell us about the borderline between the classical and quantum worlds?

[JVA]:  Essentially it tells us that there is no such borderline between the quantum world and the world of classical physics. This divide is a man-made concept, (or, to be more accurate, it was Niels Bohr-made); it is an artificial separation. In principle, we can see quantum effects on every scale, not only in the microscopic realm. That we don’t usually see them and that it is very difficult to perform such an experiment even though the 1-nanometer buckyball is still quite small compared to us, has to do with the fact that larger systems are much harder to separate completely from the environment.

[Editors Note - An article just recently published proposes using optical levitation to separate objects from their noisy environment, thus possibly allowing quantum experiments on objects with millions of atoms.]

[SC]:  Your work tends to deal with the very small.  Might you sculpt works based on the very large (e.g., cosmological scale)?

[JVA]:  I have been thinking about the stars in the night sky and I have made pieces that allude to that imagery. But larger than that? I am not sure. I did call that piece I mentioned above “The Universe” though… I guess the cosmological scale is just too mind-boggling to me. I just read a book about the possibility that we have not just one Universe, but an infinite amount of Universes. I prefer small things for now. Maybe later!

[SC]:  At “Science Cheerleader”, we like to have fun.  Which of your sculptures do you consider the most whimsical?

[JVA]:  You know, that is actually a tough question for me. In my culture, ‘Kunst’ – fine art – is something very serious – well, you know, I am from Germany. Not that art is necessarily all that depressing where I come from, but it tends to be seen as something profound, something concerned with deep questions. When I went to Art College in the US I was surprised that Americans generally don’t seem to feel like that. Fine art can easily be whimsical, even comical here. So even though humor and silliness are important to me in my personal life, there is really no space for that in my art. But there is a sculpture I made a few years ago that might qualify as ‘whimsical’: It is a piece of square lumber my dog chewed up. It looks really neat since he was balancing it in his snout which gave the stick sort of a narrow, almost regular waist. Right before he broke it, I took it away, lacquered it and made a metal stand for it. A fellow art student suggested the title “Monument to Chomp” (above, right) playing off Duchamp’s name and it is still called like that. The piece is actually included in my current “Quantum Objects” exhibition in Washington DC.

[SC]:  Your work explores the intersection of science and art.  Might you one day explore the intersection between, say, science and cheerleading?

[JVA]:  I find cheerleading actually quite fascinating. I find it certainly much more entertaining than the sports usually following it. It is impressive from a performance point of view and also interesting to me because it is all about conveying excitement, the very essence of any art. I am not sure though if I will one day directly reference it somehow in my work… But it would probably be really fun to take space-time measurements of cheerleading moves and turn them into a sculpture or other kind image.

Sculpture image credits:  Julian Voss-Andreae

From John-the-Tourist:

At the risk of revealing how ancient I really am, I just missed the “Sesame Street” era when I was younger.  By the time the lovable Muppets were a staple on public TV, I was “too old” to watch such juvenile fare (although I have to admit that I secretly watched an occasional show because they were just too darn fun not to watch).

Now that I’m a lot older and don’t have to worry about “looking cool” any more, I can relish two excellent videos, starring puppets, that explain “science stuff” in an extremely fun and entertaining way.  The videos were produced by The Sounds of Science, “…a small group of graduate students and recent alumni of UC Berkeley that share a common love of science and music.”

Their first video, “The Nano Song” won an award from the American Chemical Society for clearly explaining what the heck nanotechnology is…

The second video, “The Safety Song”, shows why safety in the lab is very important (especially if you shed purple hair)…

The songs are informative, the puppets are funny, and Ms. Glory Liu is an impressive singer.  Now that I’m no longer in the 5th grade, I don’t give a hoot if anybody sees me watching a puppet video.

From John-the-Tourist:

Looking for that perfect holiday gift for the science cheerleader in your life?  Having a hard time finding it? I had that problem a couple of years ago, then I saw a blurb in the print version of Discover magazine titled “Micrograph Chic” which showed a pair of absolutely stunning earrings – the colors were vibrant and the pattern was beautifully abstract. The reason for the cool colors and impressive pattern was that the earrings were a photomicrograph of crystallized brain chemicals (dopamine, serotonin, etc), which was photographed through polarized light and then magnified about 600 times. Unfortunately, the Discover article didn’t include a URL, and my Google Search at the time didn’t come up with anything.  Sadly, I had to buy my wife some lame present like a frying pan.

Since I’m a cool science guy (and don’t want to get smacked on the head with another frying pan), I tried another Google search this year and I hit the jackpot!  The earrings are the handiwork of Amy Sweetman, a psychologist with a passion for jewelry design.  On her website DopomineJewelry.com you can find necklaces, cuff links, bracelets, key chains and (of course) earrings.  Not only can you get brain chemicals, but you can get photomicrographs of brain altering chemicals such as the ever popular “caffeine” and a wide assortment of cocktails.

Amy and I shared a few emails about her interest in science and what she’s doing to merge science and art; here’s what she wrote…

I read about the Science Cheerleader and was very impressed.  Darlene has definitely been added to my list of admirable figures.  If possible, I would love to meet with her the next time she visits Los Angeles.  I am sure we could find a lot to talk about, and I look forward to help support her efforts.

Like Darlene, I was also captain of my high school cheerleading team, so I can definitely relate to her spirit.  Also, I worked as a cocktail waitress to fund my college education.  At the age of 22, I obtained my Masters degree and was very fortunate to land a full time position as a professor of psychology at a local community college.  My specialization is Biological Psychology which attempts to analyze behavior and its correlation to brain and nervous system processes.  Additionally, I have a couple of businesses that are science related and fit right in with the Science Cheerleader’s mission of “making science Sexy”.  My company is named Dopamine Jewelry, and it showcases microscopic photographs of behavior altering chemicals.  The line features pictures of neurotransmitters, hormones, and caffeine.  However, I also decided to utilize my bar related experience and knowledge to include cocktails and wine as well.  The jewelry not only illuminates the beauty of science, but is also educational.  Each item comes with two informational cards: one that tells about the chemical; the second explains the microscopic photography process.    The line has been featured in Discover Magazine and is sold in museums across the nation.

I do a number of fundraisers for local schools, and I find it very rewarding educating people about the various brain chemicals and their affect on behavior.  I have recently launched a new line simply called “Science”.  This jewelry line features the molecular structure of my best selling images, which are caffeine, dopamine, and serotonin.   The line also includes a beautiful science symbol (atom with orbiting electrons) with gemstones that I think would be perfect for the science cheerleader.  Other designs in the line feature magnifying glass jewelry.   I have also manufactured Christmas ornaments of the molecular structures.  My design aim for this particular line was to create something that is science based, sleek, beautiful and sexy without being geeky – like the science cheerleader herself.

One of my greatest contributions of educating the public about science is through the “Brain Bee.”  The Brain Bee is part of the National Brain Awareness initiative that seeks to educate the general population about neuroscience research.  High School students study a booklet created by the Society for Neuroscience and then competes to determine who has the most brain science knowledge.  I established the first Los Angeles Brain Bee last year.  Up until then, there were no local brain bees on the west coast of the United States.  I completely organized and funded this event and was able to take the winner and her father to compete in the National event held at the University of Maryland.  This year, I am making improvements to the Brain Bee by working with UCLA and USC Neurosurgeons. These doctors will be giving talks and conducting tours of their neuroscience labs.  Very exciting!

Another future goal is to create a Brain Art Exhibit which will feature a variety of art that illustrates the beauty of scientific phenomenon.

I truly admire what the Science Cheerleader is doing, and please convey to Darlene that she can count on me to be part of her squad!

John-the-Tourist again:  I’ve purchased a beta-endorphin necklace for my wife.  If I got her another frying pan, I’d need a shot of beta-endorphin to manage the pain of my re-flattened head.  May your heads retain some curvature and may you have a wonderful holiday season!

P.S. – If you still need a few other gift ideas, don’t forget soft and cuddly sub-atomic particles, giant stuffed microbes and (of course) our very own Science Cheerleader T-shirts.

Image credit:  Amy Sweetman

John-the-Tourist writes:

Getting information on how individual neurons fire was, until recently, nearly impossible in animals moving around because the detection devices were too delicate.  In the October 14, 2009 edition of Nature, a team of neuroscientists have figured out how to keep a mouse’s head stationary while it runs around on a Styrofoam ball that controls a virtual environment.  Keeping the mouse’s head still allows the delicate measurements to take place.  The virtual environment is created via the open source engine for the video game Quake 2.  So, in some sense, the mouse is playing a video game.  We do not yet know if mice are subject to video game addiction.

The information gleened from experiments like this will help scientists understand how brain cells work while animals navigate their environment.

The scientific community eagerly awaits the first Wii Sports playing guinea pig to see if rodents prefer baseball over tennis.

More details can be found at Wired Science (including a diagram of the apparatus)

John-the-tourist writes:

Research published in the October 13th online edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases suggests that the reason why warm-blooded animals may have evolved was because fungal diseases can’t stand the heat.  The wide-ranging study, covering over 4000 different fungal strains, shows that fungi do not fare well at the body temperatures of mammals and birds.  Cooler operating animals (such as amphibians and reptiles) are rife with fungal diseases, while warm-blooded animals suffer from significantly fewer mushroom maladies.

Burning hotter does have a price – we have to eat a lot more than our cold-blooded cousins.

So, the next time you see an attractive person pigging out at the desert table, think to yourself “Ohhh, they are so hot – and free from fungus?!”

More details at EurekAlert.

Image credit:  The Frog Store

John-the-tourist writes:

The first “mainly vegetarian” spider known to science was announced today (as reported by EurekaAlert and other sources).  Of the 40,000 or so species of known spiders, all have been mostly carnivorous.  The Bagheera kiplingi is the first spider to dine primarily at the salad bar.

If the name of the spider sounds vaguely familiar, the genus was named after Bagheera, the black panther in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”.  I find it rather ironic that the first vegetarian spider is named after meat eating mammal.

What’s next?  Tofu munching arachnids?  Stay tuned.

Image credit:  Seacoast Eat Local