The World is Your…Sewer??

My Lead Science Cutie on staff (who I pay with milkshakes and bizarre postcards) has given me an excellent topic. Recently I chose to donate to a group looking to limit/control the dumping of human waste into the ocean from cruise ships. Science Cutie naturally wondered how big an impact this could have on a body of water as large as the ocean. My answer was “very” and “because eutrophication”.

Eutrophication is enrichment of an aquatic environment with nutrients. It’s natural in lakes and ponds over time, I’m sure most people reading have been around some stinky, algae filled ponds in their time and will have seen what I mean (even if you didn’t all know it at the time). Besides clouding the water and filling pond and lake bottoms with sediment, thereby reducing clarity (and light available underwater), eutrophication allows algal blooms to flourish and grow. Without enough light, they’ll start consuming oxygen. During particularly intense eutrophication, this can essentially suffocate other species.

This can radically change a habitat, but natural eutrophication is VERY slow, and though the build-up of sediment and nutrients may result in the lake or pond disappearing completely, local species have been adapting along with the changing water body. I mean, the fish and stuff are toast, but the lake/pond would have been supporting less and less of those things for a WHILE. But then there’s Unnatural eutrophication…That is, human-induced eutrophication.

Now we get to the cruise ships…

Human-induced eutrophication is a result of organic pollution, as with agriculture runoff or the dumping of human waste from ships or poorly managed sewers. Dee-lightful. Besides the aforementioned depletion of oxygen and light availability, toxic algae and bacteria can effectively poison local species. In the ocean, we are most familiar with this process as Red Tide. Toxins build up in the food chain as predators eat many things with a little toxin, then something bigger eats many of those and so on. This also impacts us because, considering we have found a away to eat almost everything in the sea, our big tasty fish dinner may have consumed enough toxic smaller fish to make it toxic to US. Yay. So now we have Red Tide warnings to let us know when and where we’ve totally messed everything up. If that’s not enough, you see large die-offs as the algal blooms suffocate or poison local species, thereby significantly reducing biodiversity.

Lead Science Cutie is correct that while you may not see the full effect of ocean eutrophication on a global scale, the ocean is composed of many ecosystems supporting a WIDE variety of life on which eutrophication can have a profound impact. Furthermore, if you dump enough waste in one area (as happens when many ships cover the same routes), it will spread. Even if we took the impact on our fishing industry out of the equation, the kinds of dieoffs that result from that are BAD NEWS.

Fortunately, the effects are reversible. However, we should support high water quality standards to allow such affects to reverse where eutrophication has already occurred, and to prevent it from spreading elsewhere.

Which is why I’m going to link to the fundraiser that started all this:

Protect the ocean from raw sewage

Support if you like.

Sources

Mack, Jeremy. 2015. Lake Scientist. Water Quality. “Eutrophication” April 13, 2015 < http://www.lakescientist.com/lake-facts/water-quality/&gt;

Great Reptilian Minds

So I wanted to do something fun and topical for Easter, like about eggs or something. But then my windshield gave up. And I got sick. So here’s some news about the intelligence of reptiles from the New York Times!

Coldblooded Does Not Mean Stupid

Superbugs Super Suck

So by “tomorrow” I would have another post, I meant “the tomorrow after I trying to learn how to poach eggs and twerk in my kitchen”. Also no, I’m not joking; I’ve never poached an egg before.

ANYWAY. Superbugs.

You know I have one of these.

Like the lice that evolved as humans and human habits changed, so have superbugs have evolved. “Superbug” is a blanket term referring to any bacteria that has evolved antibiotic resistance. Strains that were once easily susceptible to mild antibiotics, now require stronger and stronger drugs to be eradicated. So not only are the chances or prolonged illness and death increased, but more people have to deal with harsher drugs to cure an infection. Not good.

How does this happen? By frequent exposure, or infrequent, low-level exposure to antibiotics. I can explain how this works with one of my convoluted analogies (cause I haven’t done one of those in a while).

Many of you have probably heard of the businesses that will blast classical music outside in order to discourage hoodlums. The idea being that angry punks have no appreciation for Bach and Brahms and, finding the music annoying, will leave. If only one business were pumping the Baroque jams, then the kids would leave and find somewhere else to hang. Should a lot of businesses try this (whether or not angry punks are actually a problem), the kids would quickly become accustomed to the music. Similarly, if only a few businesses tried it, but not at volumes loud enough to be a proper annoyance, the kids would easily develop a tolerance and never leave. As a result, the businesses that actually have a problem with angry punks and hoodlums will have to play less and less mainstream music (like opera or free-form jazz) louder in order to clear their sidewalks. But at a certain point, they’ll alienate their own customers on top of the kids that want to smoke and curse outside. Either way, the business now has a lot of Classical Resistant Angry Punks (CRAP) to deal with.

In this scenario, the kids are the bacteria and the music is the antibiotic. When people use antibiotics unnecessarily (like when folks demand some for a viral infection), not only does it kill off your natural microbiota, but the frequent exposure ensures that only bacteria tough enough to withstand the drugs will survive. Remember, even your natural bacteria can be dangerous in the right place or population size.

Another problem occurs when patients do not finish their course of antibiotics. Many people assume that just because they feel better, they can stop taking medicine. However, this can end up only killing off the weaker bacteria, leaving resistant strains to proliferate and evolve stronger resistance. Bacteria can also pass their resistance on to or receive resistance from others. That’s how we get multiple-resistant pains in the neck like Staph.

If you have a bacterial infection that will not clear up on its own (like many ear infections), ABSOLUTELY take the antibiotics your doctor prescribes. Just make sure you finish the dose and do NOT demand antibiotics if they’re not necessary. Many people (especially parents) want to feel like they’re doing something about an infection, but antibiotics are not always the answer.

Hugs not drugs, guys.

Although hugs will not cure TB.

I strongly recommend drugs if you have TB.

The RIGHT ONES though.

Minocin will not help.

Just talk to a doctor, OK?

Ophid out.

Source

–. 2014. “Stop The Spread of Superbugs.” NIH News In Health. March 6, 2015. < http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/feb2014/feature1&gt;

Arts and Grafts

Science Cutie strikes again! No, that’s not the title of a new sci-fi romance (although I like the sounds of it already), but instead, one exceptionally cute smarty who has been feeding me blog topics. Today it’s grafting.

By which I mean plant grafting, not animal grafting. Although imagine what you could get if you could graft a cobra to a panda?? An abomination, that’s what.

Grafting is a method of asexual propagation in which buds or shoots are “bonded” to a host, or stock, plant. There are many methods of grafting, and they are all typically used when the plant being grafted either won’t root well or possesses a poor root system. Additionally, gardeners may create Franken-plants to support a more delicate plant by grafting it onto a tougher, woodier relative (as with roses) or to ensure it doesn’t grow too tall (as with many fruit trees).

Although interspecies grafting is possible, it’s not a perfect science. Some plants make better stock, others thrive better as scions (the bud or shoot being grafted). The less related two species are, the less likely it is that they will be compatible. Some genuses in the same family may graft well, while others fail or are only briefly successful.

It is remarkable that grafting can be so successful, though. Grafting in animals is much more complex and much more prone to failure. Animals have much more complex immune systems that can better recognize “non-self” proteins. Plants…not so much. But you can’t just watch one episode of Martha Stewart and attach buds willy nilly with painter’s tape to your mom’s mauled roses (like I did). There are a few conditions that must be met.

First, the species need to be compatible, as I have mentioned. The cambial tissues layers must also meet in order for the scion to bond with the stock plant. Cambial tissue is a layer just underneath the inner bark. This is a vascular layer that will help provide moisture and nutrients from the stock to the scion. However, the graft can still dry out, so it must be kept moist until healed.

If you want a real step-by-step, however, check out some of my sources, or some books at your local nursery.

Soon you too can graft plant-based abominations for fun and profit!

Or maybe just fun? Let me know if anyone makes a profit.

Sources

–. “Compatability/Incompatability”. Grafting. Cornell University. Feb 13, 2015. < http://www.hort.cornell.edu/grafting/specific.grafting/compatibility.html&gt;

–. 1998. “Grafting”. Plant Propagation: Asexual Propagation. University of Arizona. Feb 13, 2015. < http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/propagation/grafting.html>

–. 2015. “Learn To Graft Your Favorite Plants”. Better Homes and Gardens. Feb 13, 2015. < http://www.bhg.com/gardening/yard/garden-care/how-to-graft-plants/>

Rose photo is mine. Rose belongs to Whitman College.

Eating Duck, Duck, GOOSE

I was on a roll posting things there and then suddenly poof! I swear I wasn’t just eating bon bons…well, I’m doing that now…but that is beside the point! Life happens, we move on.

Specifically, we move on to ducks.

DUCK

Some cutie wanted to know why it is safe and acceptable to eat duck medium-rare or rare, but not chicken. Why indeed! Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it. Apparently I do not eat enough ducks. Also, Googling this will get you a lot of cooking forums where folks suppose that ducks and geese are bacteria free.

Ducks and geese, like everything else, are exposed to bacteria in their daily lives and thus susceptible to bacterial contamination. The difference between them and chicken is actually in the muscle itself.

Although not as red as beef, duck and goose meat is considered “red”. As migratory birds, they possess fast-oxidative muscle fibers (which I described oh so long ago…). Like beef, these muscles are dense, so bacteria cannot penetrate deep into the tissue. As a result, as long as the outside of the duck or goose is cooked, the inside can safely remain pink. Of course, as the FDA always likes to remind us at the bottom of the menu, “any raw or undercooked meat or eggs carry a risk of food-bourne illness, &etc”. But The Risk is still greatly decreased.

Chicken on the other hand, is a considerably less dense white meat. Bacteria can penetrate deeper into their fast-glycolytic muscle tissue, so cooking chicken all the way through is necessary. If you don’t, that pink center will only get warm enough to incubate whatever could be living in there. And that would be gross.

Don’t be gross.

The End.

Sources

Armentrout, Jennifer. “Cooking Duck Breast: Is Medium-Rare Safe?” Fine Cooking. Feb 9, 2015. <http://www.finecooking.com/articles/cooking-duck-brest-medium-rare.aspx&gt;

Sherwood, Lauralee, Hillar Klandorf and Paul Yancey. 2005. Animal Physiology: From Genes to Organisms. Thomson Brookes/Cole, Belmont, CA.

–. 2015 “Meat and Poultry Temperature Guide.” Food Network. Feb 9. 2015 <http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/articles/meat-and-poultry-temperature-guide.html&gt;

Raw Power- Clarification

Some things have been been bugging me since I posted Raw Power the other day, and I want to make a clarification. First of all, food poisoning is serious business. Bacteria like E Coli and Salmonella can make you very sick, some strains can even kill you. Things like improper butchering or storage techniques allow for bacterial contamination and proliferation, as a result, humans invented cooking to kill any potential bacteria living in their food. Eating raw meat means you trust yours or the restaurant’s butcher and the chef that prepared it. Although there are grades of bacterial exposure (called inoculum) that range from unnoticeable to the body to lethal, it does NOT take much time for bacteria to proliferate to a lethal inoculum size (which varies between species). It can take as little as 20 minutes for a population on your food to double. So ALWAYS keep food cold and separate from other things when not preparing it and wash everything well and frequently.

Sushi, conversely, is a greater concern for parasitic contamination. Preparing sushi means choosing fish that have been carefully inspected for any parasites. They’ve also been flash frozen at incredibly cold temperatures to kill any lingering buggies (your freezer is not cold enough to do this). If you’re making sushi (or steak tartarre, for that matter) tell your butcher so they can help you choose the best and safest cuts.

Lastly, I addressed bacterial contamination at large, but it remains to be said that E Coli, Salmonella and other enteric bacteria reside in the gut, so contamination with such bacteria is indicative of exposure to fecal matter (usually due to nicking the intestines during butchering). These do not just live in your environment if you are a safe cook. Be a safe cook.

Again, there are safe ways to eat raw meat, but you and the meat have to be safe. The FDA is strict about testing for the serious stuff like E Coli and Salmonella, so I focused on other types of bacterial exposure. However, I realized my post might have minimized the dangers and thus I wanted to clarify some things.

That is all.

Superb Owl Sunday

Aw damn…aw shit I MISSED IT. I was so busy with work I forgot about the most important event of the year: Superb Owl Sunday. I know I’m late to the game, but I’d like to put in the Barn Owl for Most Superb Owl.

Seriously. That is one Superb Owl.

I have heard the suggestions of osprey or guys really enthusiastic about America, but those are ridiculous ideas. Neither of those are owls. Barn owls, however! Besides being damn fine raptors, they are an excellent natural mouse trap; a family of owls will consume 1300 rats per year! How can a fish hawk or star-spangled bros compare? I don’t see either of THEM eating that many rodents.

Barn owl populations are greatly threatened by human activity and development; they’re hit by cars and they can fly into barbed fences or power lines. To help them out (besides watching for animals when driving), get an owl box! Just don’t bug them once they get settled. They don’t like that.

Sources

Frendt, Don, Andy Harmer and Phil Johnson. 2011. “Natural History”. The Hungry Owl Project. Feb 2, 2015 <http://www.hungryowl.org/education/natural_history.html&gt;

Raw Power

Have I expressed my love of eating? I love eating. Food is beautiful and delicious and beautifully delicious. I will tunnel my way through a box of Cheezits or meander my way through some world class Thai cuisine. If it’s edible, I will try it at least once. Some of my favorite foods involve raw meat: sushi, venison carpaccio, steak tartarre. As a result, I am often pronounced “brave” (sometimes also “semi-feral”, if they’ve seen me eat) by some of my friends and family.

Raw and undercooked foods, particularly meat, do have a risk of causing food poisoning. If they’re contaminated with hostile bacteria, it can make you all kinds of BLEAH. Veggies have a decreased chance of carrying such bacteria, and they don’t make for as tasty of an environment for them, either.

So why would anyone eat raw or undercooked meat? As I’ve covered previously (see previous) our bodies have natural microbiota and other strong defenses against pathogens. Anything that makes you sick has to overwhelm the initial defense. A few bacterial cells won’t even make a dent; those bastards need a LOT of buddies before they pose a significant health threat. Smaller children, the elderly and the immune compromised can get sick a lot more easily because their immune systems are not as strong; it takes less bacteria to make them sick.

Think about all those times you’ve had everyone’s favorite raw treat: cookie dough. We’ve all had some, yeah? Cookie dough is DELICIOUS and anyone who says otherwise is lying. And you know, a little cookie dough that goes straight from the mixing bowl to my mouth, with little waiting around is not going to be a hospitable environment for bacteria to grow. At no point does the dough get warm enough for any bacteria present to multiply into significant numbers. Ideally, it has also never been exposed to harmful bacteria, cause we know that even beneficial bodily microbiota can be dangerous if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Besides, unless you sterilize your kitchen constantly, there WILL be bacteria in your kitchen. And if you do, well…you got issues, man.

Delicious, delicious salmonella risk…

As with the raw cookie dough, raw meats are kept chilled until serving, at temperatures too cold for bacteria to proliferate. By the time they make it to my plate, exposure to foreign bacteria is minimal and it’s perfectly safe to eat.

Although ideally there is some exposure to Worcestshire, maybe some rock salt or a nice vodka marinade.

Hm, pardon me while I get some lunch. Next time I’ll address why duck is safe undercooked but chicken is not.

Cheers!

Sources

-. 2010. GRE Subject Test: Biology 5th Ed. Kaplan, New York.

Saucy Ribcage

Continuing on with answering questions posed before my “short” hiatus…

“Are there any living creatures that have solid rib-cages, and, if not, would this be an actual physical possibility?”

Besides being delicious smoked and dipped in sauce, ribs help provide structure to the torsos of many animals. That’s actually a function of the skeletal system in general, cause without a rigid framework, we’d all be literal meatbags. But besides providing keeping us meatbags upright, when expanded or compressed via muscle action, the ribcage assists in the inflation and deflation of the lungs. That expansion and compression of the thoracic cavity (with assistance of the diaphragm) expands and deflates the lungs by altering the pressure around them. I am referring of course to land animals, because fish in fact have a pretty dainty ribcage. Considering they respirate using gills, and strong swimming muscles throughout the body provide structure, they hardly need a ribcage at all. That’s great news for them, choking hazard for the rest of us.

Anyway! A solid ribcage would be physically unable to expand or compress, making it incredibly difficult to breathe. If you had a solid rib cage, it would probably have to be a lot bigger (to make room for fully inflated lungs), and your diaphragm would need to be stronger and would have to work harder in order to inflate and deflate the lungs on its own. If you want an idea of what it would be like, try holding your ribs still while breathing. It is not comfortable. A solid ribcage would not be comfortable. Go for a normal ribcage. Smoked and dipped in sauce.

These are the ribs you want.

Sources

Sherwood, Lauralee, Hillar Klandorf and Paul Yancey. 2005. Animal Physiology: From Genes to Organisms. Thomson Brookes/Cole, Belmont, CA.

Photo courtesy of Applebees.

Hyrax, Elephants and Florida

“What unlikely cousins are there in the animal kingdom? (looking at elephants and the hyrax.)”

Didn’t…you just answer that a little…? Hm…Well, I’ll tell you what: there are MILLIONS of “unlikely” relatives in the animal kingdom. Or at least, they LOOK very unlikely, but for a variety of reasons (most of them evolution….all of them evolution), it does make sense that they now seem so different. With regards to the hyrax and the elephant, they are one another’s CLOSEST living relatives. Which means they had other, closer relatives, but they’re all gone now (to Florida, maybe?). To get from the small, furry hyrax to the gigantic, wrinkled elephant, millions of years of divergent evolution occurred. There was an accumulation of different traits between populations of their common ancestor that led to different species. As these different traits were selected for and emphasized with evolution (ex. Animals evolved bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller as it proved advantageous), the descendant species came to look more and more different. Eventually, some species’ traits proved deleterious; they were selected AGAINST and at an increasingly severe disadvantage in terms of survival and reproduction. These species are the elephant/hyrax’s relatives that are currently extinct (or in Florida).

My point is that if you go back far enough, EVERYTHING has some hella unlikely cousins. These cousins seem particularly unlikely when you no longer can see the gradient between X and Y species. Is this a downer? Hell, probably. Am I making evolution less mysterious? God, I hope so. The elephant and hyrax may not look like they belong at the same family reunion, but the fact that they who are SO different remained while the rest of the family kited off to Florida, is damned impressive.

The State of No Return

So I know this is not the answer you’re looking for, but in researching this, I realized a few things: 1) there are several ways to answer that question 2) one of the ways I could answer that would be very hard for me to personally determine 3) I did not know what a hyrax was (apparently, not a type of goat). I could list off things that are closer to one another than to other things that make more sense (which I can still do, cause hey! It’s fun), but again, evolution ruins the party because those “close” relatives are millions of years of evolution, and many closer relatives apart.. I could personally determine which animals’ closest relatives are such and such surprising thing (as with the elephant and hyrax), but that research would take time that I do not have. Conversely, I could look at existing lists (which I will link to), but I’d prefer to be original here. Also, I think I was confusing hyrax with ibex. THESE ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

You can tell the difference thusly: this bro is cute and twee…

…while you can tell by the eyes that this guy WILL push you off a ledge. That one. That ledge. Avoid that ledge.

And now, a list:

• Shrimp and potato bugs (aka pill bugs, aka sow bugs, aka woodlice, aka the bug I tracked into the apartment yesterday &etc) are more closely related than potato bugs and millipedes or centipedes. That’s because they’re both crustaceans and the blanky-pedes are not (they’re myriapods).
• Cephalopods (squid, octopods, cuttlefish) and snails and slugs and oysters Rockefeller are all Molluscs.
• After decades of debate, scientists have decided that pandas are less like large, greyscale red pandas and more of an “aberrant bear”. A-BEAR-rant, right? Ha ha…ha…
• Hyenas, despite looking like hairy, ‘roided up pit bull/wolf hybrids, are more closely related to cats and have stinking ADORABLE pups.

• Sea pigs are related to sea cucumbers. Sea pigs exist. They exist and just…WHY. THEY ARE GOO WHAT WAS EVOLUTION THINKING.

WHY

Sources

Laidler, Keith. 2009. Animals: A Visual Guide to the Animal Kingdom. Quercus Publishing Plc, London.

Zweifel. 2002. “Hyraxes”. Encyclopedia of Animals. Barnes and Noble Books, New York.

Two separate CRACKED articles about unlikely animal relatives

5 Species You Won’t Believe Are Related

10 Animals You Won’t Believe Are Closely Related