sometimes, I know interesting things.
item the first: so there are some biologists here in Ecuador studying the brainybits of a certain type of songbird, because apparently there is a region of the brain that about doubles in size every spring that helps with song memorization, and then shrinks back to normal after the mating season. Why is this awesome as all hell? Because, friends and relations, these birds are repeatedly growing new brain cells which means, if we can figure out how they do it, maybe we can figure out how to get US to do it, too, which would be incredibly convenient for treating diseases like Alzheimer´s.
Yup.
item the second: Emily, who just got back from Tiputini, told me about some researchers there studying a species of monkey that always gives birth to fraternal twins. The cool thing about these twins, though, is that even though they are fraternal, the way the uterus is set up the monkeybabies end up sharing blood, so their blood type is chimeric. Further research has shown that some of their organs are chimeric, too. This could be fun to play around with in terms of stem cells, aside from the fact that I just think being able to use the word "chimeric" makes any experiment awesome.
item the third: in Tropical Rainforest Ecology we were discussing the proposed possibility that we (as in the world, not our class) are failing at accurately recording temperature, and that our proposed mean temperature for the earth could be off by as much as ten degrees. Which would mean we´re completely screwed. See, to get the average temperature for any city, town, mountain, whatever, they record the temp throughout the day to get a day average, then take the day average for every day and get the mean of that. THEN, to get the global mean, they use all of the local means being recorded throughout the globe. When you are using so many mean values, the standard deviation SHOULD stabalize to practically nothing, maybe a tenth of a degree or something, so if we really are off by ten degrees then the climate is going insane and quite possibly we will all die. Talking about this in class just made me think of Warren´s "doooooooooom" links.
So yeah. On the plus side there´s growing brain cells and chimeric organs, on the downside that may not matter because we will probably all be dead, anyway.
I am such the cheerful girl.
Yup.
item the second: Emily, who just got back from Tiputini, told me about some researchers there studying a species of monkey that always gives birth to fraternal twins. The cool thing about these twins, though, is that even though they are fraternal, the way the uterus is set up the monkeybabies end up sharing blood, so their blood type is chimeric. Further research has shown that some of their organs are chimeric, too. This could be fun to play around with in terms of stem cells, aside from the fact that I just think being able to use the word "chimeric" makes any experiment awesome.
item the third: in Tropical Rainforest Ecology we were discussing the proposed possibility that we (as in the world, not our class) are failing at accurately recording temperature, and that our proposed mean temperature for the earth could be off by as much as ten degrees. Which would mean we´re completely screwed. See, to get the average temperature for any city, town, mountain, whatever, they record the temp throughout the day to get a day average, then take the day average for every day and get the mean of that. THEN, to get the global mean, they use all of the local means being recorded throughout the globe. When you are using so many mean values, the standard deviation SHOULD stabalize to practically nothing, maybe a tenth of a degree or something, so if we really are off by ten degrees then the climate is going insane and quite possibly we will all die. Talking about this in class just made me think of Warren´s "doooooooooom" links.
So yeah. On the plus side there´s growing brain cells and chimeric organs, on the downside that may not matter because we will probably all be dead, anyway.
I am such the cheerful girl.