I want to be that person

Okay, so it's almost Easter. And I'm in Target, perusing the candy aisle for chocolat, and I see it. A metal lunchbox for making Peep s'mores. Okay, so somebody decided to make something useful out of microwaved Peeps (I guess no toothpicks for jousting). But on the front cover is an image of a Peep holding several sticks over a campfire. And on those sticks are several miniature Peeps. So we have moved to a whole new level in Peep-dom: cannibalistic peeps. Peeps are now roasting other Peeps over campfires for eating between layers of chocolate and graham cracker.
Now, I can see the idea of Peep s'mores. But who came up with that lunchbox design? And who approved it? And who marketed it? And funded it? I want to be those people. Because apparently, they know how to have a good time. Peep torture.

Also, at Target, you can now buy red Peeps. I am not the only one who thinks they look demonic. However, upon discussing this with my supervisor one day, she came up with the suggestion of providing them with candy corn horns. Artist's rendition below.

Why Science is Awesome, Part 2

So I found my zip disc from undergrad Developmental Biology class, and I currently have a computer with a zip drive (what are the odds?), so I decided to put up some pictures, since I think they are further evidence for science being AWESOME. Also, it's just plain fun to have a camera attached to the microscope.

First, we have some polytene chromosomes. These are found in Drosophila flies, the salivary glands of the larvae, to be precise. You have to get the squirmy little buggers, find their salivary glands (using sewing pins as surgical tools), remove them intact (they look rather like clear honeycombs), then dye them, smash them just right, and some other things. Anyway, the "polytene" means the chromosomes are larger than most normal ones, better for looking at under microscopes. Also, they are pretty much alwasy undergoing synapsis, so good for studying.


This is a developing zebra fish. The big circle in the middle is the yolk sac, providing nourishment for the little guy as he develops. When he actually starts to look a little more like a fish, he'll internalize it, until he comes out and starts looking for his own food. Another one is below, a little further along (don't you love the buggy eyes? It reminds me of some Disney characters).



So, that's it. Maybe I'll put the bug-eyed one on the Christmas cards this year...

Taking a Study Break

So, I was writing a paper last weekend for one of my classes. And next thing I know, the mouse stops working. I should note at this point that the puppy was sitting at my feet munching something. Now, I would like to point out that I had just given him a rawhide. Apparently our other dog had taken it away from him, and he felt the need to take it out on my computer (while I was writing a paper). Now, if I had known that he was munching away on things not to be chewed on ("That's not food!" is a common phrase in our household, useful for both canines and children), I would have stopped him. He chewed through three different wires. Luckily they were all low-voltage ones. No power cords for him.

So, here is my question: can dogs detect the amounts of electricity running through those wires? Has anyone tested this? Is there a humane way to test this (without getting PETA on your butt. No, not that one.) So, I ask my husband, who has a degree in electrical and mechanical engineering, if batteries and electrical cords give off the same kind of electricity. He doesn't know. What is the point of having that degree if you don't know the answers to these kinds of questions? What am I supposed to do?

What anyone else in my situation would do: turn to the internet. Luckily, one can always depend on the government. The OTA did a study in 1989 on this very subject. Well, not really. But some of it at least answers some of my questions. First of all, batteries produce DC (direct current) while electricity produces AC (alternating current). This, I feel, is something my husband should have known. Moving on, electricity produces electric fields, which can be detected by some animals (see, I'm not crazy!), including "eels, sharks, and pigeons" (Biological Effects of Power Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields, OTA study 1989). Some studies have been done (lots of them with rodents), but they are mostly isolated studies in labs here and there. For instance, studies with rats have indicated that they can detect fields of just over 1 kV/meter (I don't know how or why, so don't ask). Another article I found studied baboons. They found that exposure to a 30-kY/m, 60-Hz electric field (for 12 hours per day, 7 days per week for 6 weeks) resulted in significant change in the social behavior (i.e. stress) of adult male baboons (Papio cynocephalus anubis) (Coelho, Easley, and Rogers 1990). The changes were not there before or after exposure to the electric field, only during. (How closely related to them are we again?)

As yet, I cannot find any studies on dogs (besides electroshock therapy for muscles and things). Future research people! Am I the only one who wants to know these things?

Over the River

Okay, so more like over the Bay. I've been given a new county at work, across the Chesapeake Bay. And something happens when you cross that water, and its weird. The first time my supervisor and I ventured into the wilds of the county, we were in a gas station getting some hot chocolate to warm up, and saw a portly caucasian man in a long fur coat. No hat, no boots, just regular shoes and the fur coat. It was almost like when you go to the Renaissance Festival and people think it means "dress-in-whatever-you-want-Festival." Not sure if the fur was real or not. It would be even weirder if it weren't real, because where would you find a fake fur coat that huge?



This past Wednesday, yesterday, we went to a few older sites. And found a fishbait dispenser outside one of them. It's kind of like a soda dispenser, only it dispenses fish bait. This raises all kinds of questions, the first being, Do people actually use this thing? How often do they have to restock it? Do the baits get dizzy on their way down and then have to recalibrate themselves? Does it get too cold for them in the winter and freeze them? We didn't have time to test it out and see if it was working, but maybe we should have...

Why Science is Awesome, Part 1

Seeing as I am a scientist, I'm assuming there will be follow-up posts to this one, hence the "Part 1." Science has come quite a ways since the days of boiling red ants (it makes formic acid) and Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, in which he spent considerable time, among other things, studying iguanas. Of that, he wrote,
"I several times caught this same lizard, by driving it down to a point, and though possessed of such perfect powers of diving and swimming, nothing would induce it to enter the water; and as often as I threw it in, it returned in the manner above described." (Darwin, 1839, Voyage of the Beagle).
And that was a long way from before then. But there's always something to keep it interesting. A few things that have recently come to my notice:

The platypus. A really under-studied animal, I feel. Apparently they have the sense of electromagnetic reception (like an electric eel, only they don't shock people). And if you hide batteries somewhere underwater, they will find them. Now, who thought of that; that's what I want to know. And did it involve alcohol, or were they all sober? (Anyone seen "The Day After Trinity"? Scientists can drink. And if you get them all together out in the desert to make an atomic bomb without any alcohol, they'll make their own).

Komodo dragons. Big. Scary. Ultimate feminists. Well, maybe not. But, apparently, the females can reproduce without male assistance. Recently, a female did just that. Of course, after she had the miracle babies, they had to take them away from her so that she didn't eat them (Associated Press 2007).



Reptiles. Specifically, two-headed fossils of their ancestors. Recently found in China. This phenomenon, called axial bifurcation, is not an uncommon occurence in modern-day lizards and reptiles. Occasionally it will happen in mammals, but they don't usually live. The fossil is a hatchling, either a Sinohydrosaurus or Hyphalosaurus species. As an adult, it would be about 3 feet long. The fossil was found by a local farmer and sold to a museum (Pickrell 2006, National Geographic). I can't imagine being the person to see that and realize what it was. In one interview, one of the scientists quotes his reaction as being something along the lines of "'Oh my God!'" (Ker Than 2007, Live Science)

Why the Luddites Knew what they were Doing

Okay, so Christmas is over, and now my (almost 3-year-old) daughter has all these new tech-toys. Like a game system, which of course my husband had to buy for her, complete with a Dora game. Her favorite part (no lie) is watching someone else play the game. But the controller on this thing (and I was raised in a techie-type family, so it's not like it's your grandma we're talking about here) spins around, for easier controllability. Excuse me, but how does that make anything easier? Especially for a toddler who still doesn't know right from left? Because as soon as you rotate the freaking thing, moving the joystick to the right no longer moves Dora to the right; now she goes to the left.

And then I bought her this awesome stuffed dog that has earphones. You can hook it up to a cd player, mp3 player, or similar device, and it plays music. How cute, I thought. We'll get a nice, cheap cd player and she can dance around and no one will care too much when it breaks. No, my husband has to buy her a "cheap" mp3 player. Because it's "smaller" so it won't get "broken" as easily when said child is dancing around to the music, he says. Gullible me, I say sure.

This thing is tiny. With a tiny little button for controlling it. Push the middle, and it's supposed to "play" or "pause." The bottom arrow is supposed to change the volume (but somehow, pushing only the bottom arrow is both volume "up" and volume "down"). The top arrow is the menu button. The side arrows change selections. And yet, somehow, instead of getting it to play the music I can clearly see that it downloaded off the computer, all I can get it to do is go to the voice recorder mode. So there are now something like 15 voice recordings of me saying things like, "How do you get this thing to play music?" and "Stop freaking recording me!" and "GFPHOEPWCNECOWEFOM!!!!!"

Finally, in exasperation, I just turn it off. This is the key. When I turn it back on, it is now in music playing mode. I quickly hook it up to the dog with earphones (the whole reason we bought the stupid thing) and hand it triumphantly over to my daughter, even making the stuffed dog dance to the music. She takes the dog, promptly pushes the buttons and starts recording her own voice, and then asks me where the music went.

O, Christmas Tree

So, it's been interesting preparing for Christmas. It all started with the gingerbread house. Which I have never, ever (as craftish as I am) even attempted. But they had those houses on sale at the craft store, looking all neat-o and cool and fun on the box, and Chicklet wanted one, and how can you say no to that face?

Well, first of all, the "icing" comes as this powdered stuff that they tell you to add (and this is no lie) 5 tablespoons of water too. And that's it! And we're talking something like 2+ cups of powdered sugar and whatever other chemicals they've added. That stuff wasn't even remotely wet, let alone pasty. 1.5 cups of water later, we had something resembling "toothpaste" consistency (which is what the recipe called for). Then they want to to assemble the bottom of the house - wait one hour - and then the roof - wait one hour - and then begin to do the remaining decorating. Ummmm, who has that kind of time? So, of course, we didn't wait. And, nothing bad happened. It all stayed together as planned, and the roof didn't even slide off. And we all had fun putting candy haphazardly where we thought it would hide cracks. (Incidentally, they tell you, right in the directions, not to worry about breaking the pieces, because you can always cover it with icing. Even though you know, you know, it will never end up looking like the box if you do that.) We also discovered that both the gingerbread and the candies taste awful. I don't know how they managed to make candy taste bad, but they do. Maybe it's not really candy.

So, a few weeks later we went to get the Christmas tree at a cut-it-yourself place a mile from our house. We needed a white pine, ask my husband about that. Now, this is one of the two tree farms in our county that has white pines, and the other one is 30 minutes away. Of course, his trees start at 10 feet high. So Wally picks one that is 20 feet tall and chops away. It takes a tractor to pull it to the Jeep, and 3 men to load it on top. We get it home, and cut a bit off the bottom, and then drag it to the porch and up the steps, and then he says, "I don't know if we're going to be able to get it through the front door." At this point, I'm tired, and we are getting that tree through the door whether it likes it or not. We did, and now it takes up half the living room. And the dog is refraining from dining on the lights, like she did last year. However, she must feel that the tree is still too big, because she is slowly eating off all the bottom branches, and working her way up the tree. Every few days I come home and a few more ornaments are on the floor, and a little bit more of the tree trunk is visible.

We had more fun with painting last night. Back to the craft store again, they had ornaments and things on sale, so we got those and painted them. I've entitled it "Picasso's reindeer" by Chickie.