The Return Of Bed Bugs – Smarter Ones January 13, 2010
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Animals, Evolution, Insects, Tough Stuff.Tags: bed bugs, bites, DDT, infestation, pests
2 comments
Your mattress may be home to more than your pillow or favorite stuffed animal. It could be the home of bed bugs!
The title reads like a horror movie but for those who have battled it out with bed bugs, it makes a lot of sense. Others might think that ‘don’t let the bed bugs bite’ was just some bedtime line their parents used as a cute joke.
In fact, let’s see now who knew that bed bugs really existed. Try out the poll below (be honest!).
Bed Bug Basics
Bed bugs are small, reddish brown insects that feed on human blood, which engorges them and makes them bigger. They are from the insect family Cimicidae and common bed bugs are formally called Cimex lectularius. They tend to be most active at night, coming out of the cracks in walls or bed frames and other hiding places to get their bloody grub. They can travel in suitcases, so hotels are a hot spot for bed bugs as well as other places that see plenty of people coming and going. Cornell University has an ace fact sheet to give you the lowdown on bed bugs. You can also have some fun playing around on Pest World for Kids, a website created by the National Pest Management Association (NPMA). But let’s get back to finding out why these wee pesky critters have returned and what makes them smarter today.
Gone But Not For Long
Here we have a bed bug hiding in a wood bed frame. The bed bug looks like it's having a Sunday snooze but I bet it's getting rest so it can hunt for fresh blood! Image credit: Thomas Oldani
Bed bugs were once nearly destroyed in our modern environment, where the use of chemicals such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane – otherwise more easily known as DDT – kept these beasties at bay. DDT is a pesticide that is either very useful or very toxic, depending on who you ask or what journal study you read. Ultimately though, it was banned.
The Good And Bad Of DDT
DDT was used to keep mosquitoes under control, mostly because they spread malaria. It was used to keep lice numbers down too. So what happened when it was banned? As somewhat of a side effect of its use, DDT had kept bed bug numbers down. After it was banned, a bunch of other chemicals were used to treat bed bug infestations. The bed bugs, however, got smart and developed resistance to some of these chemicals. That resulted in a big UH OH for society as bed bug infestations are now on a major rise! Scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Korea’s Seoul National University decided that it would be important to find out more about resistant strains of bed bugs in New York. The work was published in the Journal of Entomology. Let’s see what they discovered, shall we?
When researchers got busy observing bed bugs in New York, they found these pests had mutations in their nerve cells. What does this mean? It means they are resistant to the chemicals used to kill them. Where the chemicals would previously have paralyzed and killed the bed bugs, the mutations mean that bed bugs are now outsmarting their opponents – us!
Let The Bed Bug Collecting Begin!
To get the scoop on bed bug resistance, researchers took a sample of easily controllable ones from Florida and compared these to ones from New York that were harder to deal with. So just how resistant were these little bugs?
Look at this partially engorged bed bug. It probably looks similar to the bed bugs in Milan after they feasted on my blood. Oh, and a fun fact of the day: the Italian word for bed bugs is cimice dei letti.
Researchers found that the bed bugs in New York had up to 264 times the resistance to the modern chemical used to kill bed bugs – deltamethrin. If we picture a nerve cell, it has these little sodium channels on the outer membrane bit. This is where the flurry of nerve impulses come to life. In the New York bed bugs, this nervous system mutation means they can keep feeding long after those Florida ones have been exterminated.
Grossaroo
When I was in grade 3, I made up the word ‘grossaroo’ to describe anything yucky. This word is fitting in the case of what happened to me recently when I spent a month working at an agency in Milan. After a few nights at what seemed to be a nice corporate flat, I began to get loads of itchy, inflamed red bites. I awoke one night to find a flattened-looking bug moving across my otherwise clean, crisp white sheets.
I yelped and quickly squished it with my slipper, only to see it turn into a smattering of blood, which it just took from its recent feeding of my body! Just after, I saw another one. By morning, my bed looked like a crime scene with all those splats of blood and bugs. Eeek! Fortunately, I got moved to a new place and had everything washed. Hopefully, those Milan bed bugs weren’t too hard for the building owners to get rid of, unless they’re resistant beasts like those New York ones.
Bed Bug Warrior To The Rescue
So now you know (if you didn’t already!) that bed bugs do exist. Not only that, but they’re continually evolving to get smarter, doing so in ways that make it harder to get rid of them. For now, you can be smart by being extra cautious when traveling. Always check for signs of bed bugs around the mattress and furniture. Since not everyone shows bites from these little pests, prevention will remain the best line of defense. And while it’s not necessarily smart, it sure is fun when checking for bed bugs to yell “YOU’RE GOING DOWN!” If your parents ask what you’re doing, you can explain that you’re the self-appointed family warrior here to protect everyone from bed bugs.
Image credits: Unless otherwise specified, images courtesy of the National Pest Management Association.
del.icio.us 
digg 
reddit
Science Gets Pretty November 30, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Easy As Pie, Human Body.Tags: science and beauty, science contest, skin
4 comments
Science can be a lot of things – including being pretty as I found out in a recent contest here on the blog. I asked readers to tell me about the weird and wacky science things they had seen or learned about, whether that was at school or on their own.
While I was impressed with all of the entries, the winning one I liked because it was about everyday science. It really represents something simple but still very random and cool. And, as I mentioned, something pretty – a beauty aid, in fact! Maybe best of all, it’s about discovery, one of my favorite aspects of science.
The winning entry goes to Michelle of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her prize is the new Seeing is Believing book by Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Here’s part of what Michelle had to say:
You know the aspirin for headaches? My mum crushes it up with water and puts it on her face. It’s weird but she says it helps her spots. She said if I get spots it will get rid of them. She doesn’t know why it works but says her friends use it too and they told her about it.
The Science Of Aspirin
Hmmm – so what is it in aspirin that would potentially help skin? It’s possibly the ingredient acetylsalicylic acid. Many cosmetic face creams and products today use salicylic acid to exfoliate the face and improve skin tone and clarity. How this has become the trendy skin treatment is beyond me though!
Careful With Your Skin
I wouldn’t personally recommend you use aspirin on your face – mostly because it’s not meant for your skin and could be irritating to people, especially if your skin is sensitive. But it’s still a neat example of how science fits into daily life. Thanks Michelle and enjoy your book!
del.icio.us digg reddit
Don’t Believe Everything You See September 15, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Easy As Pie, Environment, Human Body, Ocean, Psychology and Behavior, Technology.Tags: Believe It or Not, Ripley's, science books, Seeing is Believing
add a comment
Tiko looks like he's immersed in the new Ripley's book. But looks can be deceiving! We all know dogs can't read. Hmmm, perhaps Tiko is captivated by the cheddar cheese carving on page 130 of the book. Tiko loves cheese!
Should you believe everything you see? Well, in the case of the Ripley’s book that I was recently sent to review, you can believe most of it! The new Seeing is Believing book by Ripley’s Believe It or Not is a bright, colorful book with a rather creepy but intriguing eyeball on the cover.
Over the course of the last few weeks, my favorite magazines – BBC Focus, Scientific American and New Scientist – along with various other science books strewn around have been glanced at and quickly dismissed by friends and family who pop over (how cheeky!). Yet when they see the glossy Ripley’s cover, virtually all of them do what I might begin to now coin the Ripley’s Rxn, which involves a lingering look, followed by a gleeful exclamation of “Ooooh cool.”
What does this tell me?
No matter what age, people like weird stuff and they like simplicity. Ripley’s manages to do both and do it creatively in a way that speaks to young and old alike. My excited thirty-one-year-old friend enjoyed the book as did his nine-year-old son.
After all that pretending to read, Tiko awaits a liver treat for his hard work. I'll bet he's thinking that being an actor sure isn't easy!
Just how much of the new Ripley’s book is believable though? While the publishers do put a disclaimer that they aren’t responsible for the accuracy of the book, it’s still reasonably expected that the tidbits of information are true. Not so. I spotted a headline titled Glandular Fever. Of course, my UK readers will likely recognize this as the term for what we call infectious mononucleosis or mono here in North America. It’s caused by the Epstein Barr virus and because it can be transmitted through saliva, it’s often called the kissing disease as well.
Expecting to read about mono, I was surprised to read about a woman who had an imbalance of hormones that caused her to experience excessive hair growth all over her body. My sense is that Glandular Fever was meant to be a catchy title but nobody realized it was the term for another health condition.
Still, a minor inaccuracy or few doesn’t at all break the fantastic impact and enjoyment of this quirky book, but it’s perhaps a reminder to kids and adults that there is a lot more to science than meets the eye.
Find out more at the Ripley’s website.
A Weird Science Contest: Win The New Ripley’s Book!
I like contests. Do you? If so, I want to invite my readers to send an email telling me about the grossest or weirdest thing they’ve ever seen in science. It could be something from science class or maybe just a creepy picture of a bug. If you do send a picture, make sure you include a description of why you think it’s so weird! Anyone aged ten to sixteen can enter. The contest closes on the 15th of October, 2009.
Send your stories and pictures to mina@weirdscience.ca and I’ll share the winning entry in November on the blog here. Plus, I will also mail you the new Seeing is Believing book by Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Please include your:
- Name
- Age
Please also get permission from your parents before entering. Any entries from under 13s must be done through a parent’s email address and must also include a telephone contact number for the parent. If you’re a winner, either you or your parents will be contacted for a mailing address to receive your Ripley’s book.
Good luck!
del.icio.us digg reddit
Science And Art Make A Delicious Cookie August 31, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Easy As Pie, Human Body.Tags: art, cookies, gingerbread, science cartoons
add a comment
At first glance, I was actually a bit creeped out to see a favorite cookie of mine dissected to show the innards of a human! But this super cool image is the creation of an artist, illustrator and self-proclaimed “crazy person” named Jason Freeny.
What I like most of all when I see this kind of stuff is that it comes from an imaginative place. While science is full of theories and information, it takes a vivid, explorative imagination to bring this to visual life in a way that makes us stop and say “wow.” When I asked Jason about his interest in the human body and science, he replied:
The intricacy fascinates me.
Now, I only wish my high school textbooks had pictures like this way back when I was in school. Well, not that way back. I wonder if this particular gingerbread man has a few gray hairs hiding under his sugary, baked crust.
del.icio.us digg reddit
Evolution Gets Colorful August 24, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Environment, Evolution, Tough Stuff.Tags: autumn, ice age, trees
7 comments
Summer is still going strong but soon it will be fall – a time when we can enjoy the pretty autumn leaves. Or as I always like to do, throw leaves at my wee dog and race through the massive piles of foliage.
Unless you’ve traveled a bit and have a sharp eye for detail, you might not have noticed that autumn leaves are usually red in America but yellow in Europe. Seems strange, doesn’t it? If you’re wondering why, then you’re not the only one. Two professors thought about these differences too and they came up with a cool theory.
Prof. Simcha Lev-Yadun of the Department of Science Education at the University of Haifa-Oranim in Israel and Prof. Jarmo Holopainen of the University of Kuopio in Finland had their work published in New Phytologist.
Stepping Back In Time
Red leaves in America serve as a warning flag to ward off insects. But in Europe, none of these evolutionary 'tricks' are needed, which means leaves are yellow.
To find out more, we have to step back 35 million years to sort out the mystery. Up until that time, huge areas of the globe were rich in evergreen forests. Then, a bunch of ice ages and dry spells came into the picture. Lots of the tree species evolved to become deciduous – meaning they lose their leaves depending on the season. Some trees even started to produce red leaves to keep the pesky insects away. But, something else came into play and you might be surprised to learn just what it was!
Look To The Mountains
It’s true. We have to check out the orientation of the mountains to get the scoop on why the leaves evolved to be red in America but yellow in Europe. In North America, north-to-south mountain chains created a protected area, enabling the plants and animals to migrate south or north. Joining them were the insects. So, the leaves in America remained red to continue warding off these annoying bugs.
But in Europe, the mountains are oriented from east-to-west, leaving no protected areas as the ice and other environmental conditions came to visit. Loads of the tree species just couldn’t survive the extreme cold. When they died, so did those insects that needed the trees for their survival. By the time the ice ages were over, those trees that had managed to survive didn’t have to deal with the now-extinct insects. So, no need for red leaves to keep them away!
Curious Minds Want To Know
I asked Simcha Lev-Yadun how he ended up studying leaves. While my background is in the life sciences (medicine and nutrition), I always wonder how people end up in the many different, neat areas of science. He explained:
I wanted to be a biologist and archaeologist since I was ten years old. For me, science is a lifestyle, not a job. At the age of 57…I look backwards and see that I made the right decision.
He also shared his plans to meet up in Scandinavia with his colleague Jarmo Holopainen, where they hope to find out even more about why plants have such cool and different colors.
My Wishful Thinking
While my dog Tiko probably doesn’t care much about leaf color when he dashes through the crisp autumn leaves, I like to understand what makes one leaf a bright yellow and another a brilliant red. Now, if only leaves could somehow evolve to become fluorescent pink, my favorite color. Somehow though, I just don’t see it happening!
del.icio.us digg reddit
A Clever Condom August 13, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Diseases, Human Body, Think About It.Tags: birth control, condom, HIV, sexually transmitted diseases
5 comments
Most teens today are probably familiar with how condoms work. If you’re sexually active, you already know that condoms can help to protect you from sexually transmitted diseases and also reduce the likelihood of an unwanted pregnancy.
But, researchers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, United States, are trying to create a new gel that acts like a condom. Sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? Yet if all goes well, this new gel could be a surprisingly clever weapon against semen and any bacteria or viruses contained within it! This includes viruses such as HIV.
Creating A Trap
Standard condoms protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. But in developing countries, women need cheaper options that give them control over their sexual health.
When you picture a condom, you likely picture something more solid, while a gel would be softer, wouldn’t it? Not always so. This particular gel is a liquid when it’s in contact with the vagina – a highly acidic environment. Once alkaline semen makes its way in there though, the gel turns solid. In fact, any particles that are bigger than 50 nanometres are trapped. This includes semen, HIV and even viruses such as the herpes virus.
Getting It Right
This research team isn’t the first to try making a gel to combat HIV. Unfortunately, other teams haven’t been successful at creating an effective gel to protect women against HIV. In fact, one study found that the gel actually increased the rate of HIV infection. You can see that it’s a tough task to get it right.
It’s Not For You
Why isn’t this condom for you? It’s not that you shouldn’t be using one, of course. Researchers are working on this new condom mostly for women in countries where HIV is common. They also want this condom to be a low-cost alternative for women to get protection if their partner won’t wear a condom. In this way, women can take control of their sexual health.
Pick and Choose
With most of my readers being in the United States, Canada and Britain, you can pick and choose from a number of birth control options and condoms. For many of you, these will be provided without cost through your school or sexual health clinics. We’re lucky here to have access to all of these choices. We also live in a society where you can say “no” to sex without a condom and generally, our culture is one where your choice is respected.
So, shouldn’t women all around the world have choices too?
del.icio.us digg reddit
A Disappearing Fingerprint June 10, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Diseases, Drugs, Easy As Pie, Human Body.Tags: cancer, fingerprint, travel
3 comments
Most of us probably don’t give much thought to our fingerprints. Generally, you won’t need to be fingerprinted unless you’ve committed a crime (I hope none of my readers are in that group!) or you’re having it taken for data purposes when you travel into a country such as the United States.
Where Did My Fingerprint Go?
But what happens if you’re all packed up to travel, you get to the border and you simply don’t have a fingerprint. It’s…gone! For people who have certain kinds of cancer, a side effect of a drug they may be taking can mean that they suffer from severe inflammation on their fingers. This leads to peeling, blistering and bleeding. Ouch! The ultimate result is they don’t have fingerprints.
Let Me Enter – I’m Harmless!
If that isn’t troublesome enough, the lack of a fingerprint can make traveling across country borders a tough task when fingerprinting is a requirement. In fact, when one man recently tried to enter the US, he was delayed for four hours because officials were really confused about why he didn’t have any fingerprints. Fortunately, once they figured out that he didn’t pose a threat, he was allowed to pass through.
Prescription Drugs Are Powerful
The drug that triggers this unusual side effect is called capecitabine. It’s a common anti-cancer drug and is used to treat head and neck cancer as well as breast, colorectal and stomach cancers. So, what should these patients do if they need to travel? It’s usually advised that they bring a letter from their doctor, which explains their cancer treatment and the lack of fingerprints.
It just goes to show how powerful side effects can be when it comes to prescription drugs. And, how a medicine can have such an unexpected effect on something like travel. While the case of the missing fingerprint sounds like something out of a forensics novel, we at least know that the culprit here is the drug capecitabine!
del.icio.us digg reddit
The Recipe For A Perfectly Sticky Web May 31, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Animals, Brain Power, Evolution, Insects, Tough Stuff.Tags: evolve, spider, web
2 comments
Have you ever tried to bake a cake, only to find out that when it came out of the oven, it was dry and hard? Maybe you realized that you’d put in too much sugar. Or, maybe you cooked it for too long. Would you believe that spiders have a similar challenge when it comes to spinning their webs? Too much of a good thing can actually leave a web that’s far from perfect.
For this web to catch its prey, it needs to have just the right amount of stickiness and strength. If all goes well for the spider, dinner will soon be served!
For a spider to catch its prey, the web needs to be sticky but still remain strong. If the balance isn’t right, the web won’t catch a bug and it’ll be one hungry and grumpy spider!
A Killer Web Evolves
If you’re a spider, you’ve got your work cut out for you! To catch your prey, you want a web sticky enough that the bug gets caught inside but strong enough that the web doesn’t break from its struggles. With such a fine balance needed, spiders have evolved to get it just right.
Let the Construction Work Begin
To build those impressive webs we see, spiders start by putting down lines of dry silk. Then, they weave spirals of sticky silk to nab their prey. But, spiders of yesteryear didn’t build their webs in quite the same way.
Millions of years ago, spiders would lay down a coating of dry adhesive on these spirals. Rather than stick to the web, a bug would be entangled by these dry spirals. As a cool fact you can throw out at your friends, there are still some spiders today that weave their webs with this dry adhesive – we call them deinopoid spiders.
Yet things began to change, with orb weaving spiders evolving to make webs that were more effective at catching prey. Rather than continue to use this dry adhesive, spiders started to go the sticky route by using wet drops of a glue-like substance. When you think of glue, it seems that the sticker the glue, the better. Not for spiders though!
Curious Scientists Start Investigating
Some scientists started to wonder about these sticky webs – is stickier always better? To find out, Ingi Agnarsson of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan and Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron in Ohio went on a mission to check out a lot of different spiders. They observed 17 species of orb weaving spiders. You’d have to like spiders quite a bit to watch so many different kinds! The full study results are in the Journal of Zoology.
It’s All About Force
The researchers tested the strength of the strands and the stickiness of them too. How’d they do that? Well, they stuck a piece of sandpaper in the web and then measured how much force was required to remove it.
To break a strand on the web, a specific amount of force is needed. When the researchers put the web to the test, they found that by using anywhere from 20% to 70% of this force needed to break the web, the sandpaper was released.
So, a stickier web might hold the insect but as it continues to struggle, the force would ultimately break strands of the web, causing the insect to be released. Yet, with the glue being a bit less sticky, the insect could pull away from a single strand, but it would get caught by the next one. Since the strands don’t break, they can continue to stick to the bug, making its fight a much harder one.
Spiders Are Impressive
It’s actually really impressive and cool when you think about the work that goes into creating a web with just the right balance of stickiness and strength. As for me, I’ll leave the bug-catching to those smart spiders. I think I’ll just stick to making cakes instead. Pun fully intended! Now if only there was a recipe for making good jokes…
del.icio.us digg reddit
Delaying Death February 8, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Diseases, Human Body, Science and Politics, Think About It.Tags: death, euthanasia, life, science cartoons
5 comments
Cartoon credit: Nick Kim.
We all want to live a long, healthy life. But, this cartoon left me wondering if perhaps, we sometimes go too far in our quest to preserve life. Are there situations where a person’s life is simply so poor in quality due to their health condition – that keeping them alive represents an unfair fight with death?
del.icio.us digg reddit
The Report Card Blues January 17, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Easy As Pie, Human Body, Psychology and Behavior.Tags: depression, report card, school, teen suicide
4 comments
It turns out that how you handle first grade doesn’t just affect your report card in future years, but it also affects how you feel about yourself. In turn, it could link up to feelings of depression way down the line in seventh grade.
Making The Grade
Researchers at the University of Missouri kept track of 474 girls and boys from first grade right up to seventh grade. For my UK readers who may not be familiar with the North American grade system, kids in grade 1 are usually six years old while kids in grade 7 tend to be around the age of twelve.
A lead researcher – Keith Herman, an associate professor at the university – found that the kids who had a hard time with the core subjects such as reading and math were more likely to show some of the risk factors for negative thinking and depression once they hit sixth or seventh grade. Herman thinks that differences in how kids learn will still be an issue, even if a child gets help with the difficult subjects at school.
What Can We Do About It?
So, if Herman’s theory proves true and kids are experiencing depressive thoughts due to their continued struggles with school learning, then what can we all do about it? One suggested solution is to acknowledge skills and positive growth in other areas, such as sports or singing. Herman shared his thoughts on the study and explained:
Children’s individual differences will always exist in basic academic skills, so it is necessary to explore and emphasize other assets in students, especially those with lower academic skill relative to their peers. Along with reading and math, teachers and parents should honor skills in other areas, such as interpersonal skills, non-core academic areas, athletics and music.
Researchers also found that girls responded differently to boys when it comes to self-perception. How a girl performed academically had a far more significant effect on how she viewed herself.
It meant that girls who didn’t really do as well academically saw themselves as not being in control of other parts of their lives. That feeling of not having control over important decisions in your life is considered a risk factor for depression symptoms.
A Little Backtrack
I posted about teen depression and suicide back in January of 2008 – a year ago. You can read the post here. I talked about ways in which teens can get support for depression. Afterwards, I received intense, emotional responses from a range of people – teens and adults.
But one thing that struck me is how responses seemed to bring up the aspect of a person not feeling valued or appreciated – not feeling like they have a special place in this world. There was a real sense of isolation for teens who felt depressed.
Feeling Good About Yourself
When I look at this new study, it seems as though the academic focus can maybe become so overwhelming, that we as adults forget about all the other amazing and cool abilities that teens have in life. The scary thing is that if we don’t acknowledge and share our enthusiasm, respect and admiration for these abilities, how can we expect teens to experience and acknowledge those same feelings?
del.icio.us digg reddit
