This Week's Sci-Light!

High-speed time-lapse photos of a fruit fly banking away from a shadow threat coming from the bottom right and outside of the frame. Photograph credit: F. Muijres, University of Washington

Last week's Sci-Light was about the evolutionary development of Zebra stripes. To recap, Zebra stripes have evolved as a response to annoying biting flies. And just like Zebra's, we have developed our own technology to deter flies. For those of us who choose swatting away flies, have you ever been curious how a fly is able to dodge our efforts so well? Well you are not the only one, a bioengineer of Washington University was sci-curious too! Dr. Michael Dickinson has detailed the aerial movements flies employ to avoid our, and other animals, swatting. The characterized agile fly movements were published on April 10th in a paper entitled Flies Evade Looming Targets by Executing Rapid Visually Directed Banked Turns.

By recording Drosophila hydei (fruit flies) movements with a high speed camera capable of capturing 7,500 frames per second, Dickinson and his team of scientists could understand the 'blink of an eye' maneuvers these flies use in flight. To discover what Dickinson observed read about his research in the National Geographic article Mystery Solved: Why Flies Are So Hard to Swat. 

After that article, click the next link and discover what else you can learn!  
  

This Week's Sci-Light!

Credit: University of California, Davis campus

Tim Caro believes he and his team of researchers have discovered the reason Zebras have stripes.

I believe we can all agree zebra stripes are a peculiar phenomenon. What advantage would an animal ever have with such crazy stripes? What could ever be responsible for Zebra's avant-garde fashion sense?! Such a question has puzzled scientist's since Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin's era. Though many have pondered the curious stripes, little has been done to find answer. On April 1st, Tim Caro of UC Davis has published results that suggest he and his team of researcher's have figured out the mystery of zebra stripes.

In an article entitled The Function of Zebra Stripes published in Nature Communications, Tim Caro was able to approach the evolutionary question by utilizing multifactor models. Prior to Caro's publication, the leading hypotheses were as follows: zebra stripes may have developed as a means of camouflage, a method for disrupting predatory attack, a means of controlling temperature, a social function or a system to avoid parasitic attack from biting flies. Caro and his team could test the leading hypotheses according to a set of variables. The two part analysis started with testing how the five hypotheses correlated to thickness, location and intensity of stripes. The second part matched the five hypotheses and stripes to geographic ranges such as woodland areas, predator types, temperature and the distribution of two biting flies: horseflies and tsetse flies. As UC Davis reports in their News and Information column, Caro was amazed by their results - zebra stripes are the result of biting flies! Caro states, "again and again, there was greater striping on areas of the body in those parts of the world where there was more annoyance from biting flies.” Even more intriguing is that Caro's discovery makes one curious as to why flies are deterred from striped patterns. 

It is amazing how answers to questions can make new questions.  What are your new questions today?  They may not be about zebras, but rather closer to home.  Perhaps you're curious about what flowers or trees are blooming or delayed or maybe you're tracking the recent earthquakes.  Whatever is surrounding you or catching your attention, ask questions and seek answers.  Be Sci-Curious!

Written by Jacob Steenwyk
Edited by Cynthia Joseph

This Week's Sci-light!

Ever since we could look up to the heavenly stars, one question has persisted: does life exist outside of Earth?  If life does exist, would alien lifeforms look like us, behave like us, have similar technologies, similar anatomy and physiology, would we be able to communicate? Would they be complex organisms living off of carbon based systems? Or perhaps silicon? As we continue to ask these questions, others are dreaming up answers.

Credit: NASA/JPL/DLR image

This image shows one of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter named Europa. 

NASA wants to send a mission to Europa because of it has an icy outer layer with liquid water plumes.

Craig Venter, founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, CA, aims to change the search for life on Mars as summarized in the Los Angeles Times article entitled: In the Mojave, a scientist-entrepreneur works to 're-create' Martians'. Venter believes his novel DNA sequencing invention will be able to remotely decode DNA found in soil or water samples and send back the DNA code to a biosafety compliant laboratory just like a fax machine. From there, Venter and his team of researchers can rebuild the Martian utilizing the most advance scientific techniques of computational genomics, oligonucleotide synthesis and genome transplantation. Though Venter's idea sounds like science fiction, NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley have assisted Venter in trail experiments conducted in the Mojave desert. Are you Sci-Curious?  Click to article for more!

Not only is the Venter Institute reaching to the stars, NASA has also announced that they will soon be requesting ideas for a mission to Europa as reported in the SpaceNews article NASA To Seek Ideas for $1 Billion Mission to Europa. NASA's California based Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be working in conjunction with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to engineer the next Europa Mission.  Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have taken notice to possible liquid-water plumes on the surface of the icy moon. The idea being put forth is to probe these liquid-water plumes for organic compounds.  In reading the article NASA outlines past, current and future plans; the lesson is don't be afraid to think big and change your mind!


Written by Jacob Steenwyk
Edited by Cynthia Joseph

This Week's Sci-Light!

This photo shows the new cardiac device ― a thin, elastic membrane ― fitted over a rabbit's heart.

University of Illinois and Washington University

On February 25th, groundbreaking research utilizing 3D printers was published by John Rogers of University of Illinois in Nature Communications. The article, 3D-printed 'electronic glove' could help keep your heart beating forever, summarizes how researchers have use computer modeling technology in tandem with a 3D printer to create a synthetic membrane capable of sustaining a heart beat indefinitely. A membrane custom made to fit around a heart is outfitted with a series of sensors and electrodes able to detect and measure the heart's electrical activity.

This technology has come a long way since it was first introduced as the 'cardiac sock' in the 1980's. From the once crude sleeves, Roger's has revamped the 'cardiac sock' concept by exploiting bends, turns and curls in his lay out design of electronics giving them elastic-like properties. With a tight fit achieved through 3D printing, Roger's has created what he compares to the naturally occurring pericardium or double walled membrane surrounding the heart.

For now, the 'electronic glove' will be used as a research tool to better understand how the heart reacts to different variables. In the future, one could imagine that such technology could replace pacemakers, deliver electric shocks in cardiac arrest events, or prevent heart attacks all together by regulating the heart beat of at-risk individuals.

For you, this innovation could become a career search looking into the pathways into materials science, computer modeling, biomedical engineering, and 3D computer generated imaging and printing.  Don't stop with the act of gaining information.  Let the new information guide you to the next steps.  In case you need some support moving from inspiration to perspiration, let an article on the SACNAS website entitled Building your Individual Development Plan (IDP):  A Guide for Undergraduate Students guide you through the process!   

Written by Jacob Steenwyk
Edited by Cynthia Joseph

This Week's Sci-Light!

A National Geographic article, The Lurker: How a Virus Hid in our Genome for Six Million Years, discusses Dr. David Markovitz's work at the University of Michigan investigating the blood of people infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) that weakens the host's immune system making the host susceptible to other pathogens. By investigating what other viruses could have attacked the host, Markovitz and colleagues found a virus that seems to have originated in a common ancestor of chimps and humans!

First, let's review a little background, and then move on to the discovery.  HIV is a type of retrovirus. A retrovirus is a virus that integrates it’s RNA genetic code into the host genome after being reverse transcribed into DNA - amazing! Within the human genome, researchers have identified 100,000 sequences of retrovirus DNA across over fifteen chromosomes. These sequences comprise nearly 8% of the human genome. 

Dr. Markovitz and his colleagues analyzed the DNA of HIV patients and found an endogenous retrovirus called HERV-K in a form previously undiscovered.  They wondered if this virus could have been lurking in the human genome and checked the human genome sequence, which is about 95% compiled.  With no luck, they turned to the completed chimpanzee genome and found once copy of HERV-K which they named K111.

The researchers came back to the human genome and discovered K111 was indeed hidden there!  The data suggests that "the virus infected our ancestors not long before the split between humans and chimpanzees roughly six million years ago."

To follow the details of their discovery and its implications, check out the article.  This story calls me to remember there's so much to learn and understand and calls us all to be Sci-Curious!

Written by Jacob Steenwyk
Edited by Cynthia Joseph

This Week's Sci-Light!

Let's have some fun.  After all, it's Friday!  Take a quiz testing your knowledge of science and technology sponsored by Pew Research Center.  The quiz was set up to measure the public's knowledge of current scientific topics and some fundamental science concepts. 

Here's the catch, if you score well, you don't get to gloat.  Your mission is to become a teacher.  After all, exploration is fun, but telling someone what you discovered doubles the satisfaction.  That's all part of being Sci-Curious!

This Week's Sci-Light!

Garden of Fugitives (plaster casts)

Pompeii!  The very word brings chills and soon 3D visuals to the big screen with the film Pompeii  directed by Paul W.S. Anderson releasing in just a couple of weeks. 

The history of this Roman city is well embedded in popular culture through tales of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, the BBC dramas series Doctor Who, named "The Fires of Pompeii," Pink Floyd's live concert Pink Floyd:  Live at Pompeii and countless theatrical productions, an opera, films and a mini series. 

While we have been fascinated with our own species' violent demise, Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University in China and his scientific research team from have proposed that humans weren't the only ones who were part of this kind of mass distinction event.  In fact, thousands of well-preserved fossils have been discovered in the northeast of China at the Yixian and Jiufotang formations.  They include plants, birds, dinosaurs and mammals.  Many of the fossils are so intact that researchers can determine what that dinosaur had for breakfast the day it died. 

Deborah Netburn writes for the Los Angeles Times that scientists have evidence that these "mass mortality events were pyrocalstic flows from nearby volcanoes--the same phenomenon that destroyed and preserved the ancient civilization of Pompeii." 

These photos show the typical entombing poses of the Jehol terrestrial vertebrate fossils (a., Psittacosaurus; b.-c., Confuciusornis). Their boxer-like poses are typical of victims of pyroclastic density currents, resulting from postmortem tendons and muscles shortening. (Photo: Baoyu Jiang)

Understanding the effects of blasts of volcanic ash and poisonous gases help us understand not only the dangers but how these events affected and changed large ecosystems.  Studying earth's geological history gives us clues to how the planet and subsequently life evolved.  

If you're curious, check out these tips on the paleontology career and do some investigating of your own!  After all, acting on your curiosity is what Sci-Curious is all about!