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
2 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!
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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…
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Science Rocks May 5, 2009
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Brain Power, Cool Experiments, Easy As Pie, Science in the Media.Tags: learning, science, Susan the Scientist
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Not everyone understands – or even likes – science. But, Susan the Scientist is on a mission to change the image of science. By using everyday objects around the house and in our lives, she hopes to show everyone that science is a lot cooler than they might think.
I’m always super happy to find out about people who share my passion for the interesting, wacky and fun subject of science. As Susan the Scientist likes to say: “Science rocks!“
I couldn’t agree more.
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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?
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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?
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The Bullying Brain December 3, 2008
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Human Body, Psychology and Behavior, Think About It.Tags: Bully, Conduct disorder, Victim
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It’s an important question for loads of scientists, parents, victims of bullies and even bullies themselves – what makes someone want to bully another person? A new imaging study in the United States sheds a bit of light on the subject. It found that in aggressive teenage boys, the parts of the brain linked to reward – the amygdala and ventral striatum – light up when the boy views a video of someone inflicting pain. We already know about the effects of bullying but finding out why it happens is super important too.
Wired Up For Bullying
Jean Decety, a researcher at the University of Chicago, used a functional MRI scan to look at the brain of each teenager who participated in the study. Researchers already knew that half of the participants had a ‘conduct’ disorder while the other half had no history of being aggressive. The teens who did have a conduct disorder had done stuff such as starting a fight or stealing from a victim.
To see what happened in the brain of a boy who had a conduct disorder, each teen was asked to look at a video where a person accidentally experienced pain. So, the video would show a person having their foot stepped on or something similar along those lines. What do you think might have happened in the brain of a person with a conduct disorder? If you guessed there was a difference from the participants with no aggressive history, you got it right!
A Fired Up Amygdala
The aggressive boys had a major, intense activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum when they looked at the video clips. Researchers think the results suggest that aggressive boys gain enjoyment from viewing pain.
On the other hand, the control group – teens who didn’t have a history of aggression – showed activation of different parts of the brain. The medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction may sound like complicated words, but they represent areas of our brain that are important in self-regulation.
Let’s Find Out More
While this research study can teach us more about how the brain works and how it is that a teen chooses to bully another person, it was still criticized for being too small. It only looked at sixteen boys between 16-18 years old. This means that we will have to wait and see what kind of results we get from a bigger study.
Also, some scientists are worried this type of study will mean that instead of finding ways to help a bully change his behavior, we will simply use medications to ‘fix’ them. The fear comes from the fact that a study like this shows bullying has a biological basis. It’s like saying that your brain makes you harm another person, so you can’t make the choice to be nicer.
Stop Bullying!
Lots of us have dealt with bullying in school and it can really make the victim’s life miserable. Finding out how and why people bully others will help us to learn better ways to prevent it from happening and it will let us deal with bullying when it strikes. Hyperactive amygdala and ventral striatum or not – bullying has to stop!
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The Bold Traveler October 19, 2008
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Environment, Microbes, Think About It.Tags: bacteria, bold traveler, darkness, discovery
6 comments
Imagine a world where you are all alone and surrounded by complete and total darkness. Now, take away all of your oxygen. Sound scary? Not necessarily. For the Desulforudis audaxviator – or bold traveler – this is the normal way of life. This bug relies on some important things for its survival: water, hydrogen and sulphate. It was recently discovered by a group of scientists led by Dr Dylan Chivian of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The results of the research were published in the journal Science.
Credit: Greg Wanger, J. Craig Venter Institute, and Gordon Southam, University of Western Ontario. This lonely baterium travels in complete darkness.
So, why should we care about this lonely bug that braves its world alone? Well, if we think about how this rod-shaped bacterium can survive without oxygen, we might be able to get some important clues about whether life exists on other planets. If we found life on other planets, we would maybe learn that those bugs and creatures are able to get by without oxygen while still obtaining energy from chemicals such as sulphate.
Excited Scientists
Let me tell you, scientists were really excited when they discovered the bacterium. But, it wasn’t easy! They found it 1.74 miles (2.8 km) below the Earth’s surface near Mponeng mine, which is close to Johannesburg, South Africa. The bug was in total darkness and 60 C (140 F) heat. Now that’s hot! Scientists originally found the bacterium in DNA that was drawn from cracks in the mine – filled with water. Who would have thought that it would be a gold mine where scientists would discover the first ecosystem that only has one biological species? Sometimes, it seems that darkness can be full of special surprises and this is especially true in the case of our bold, lonely traveler.
A Day In The Life Of The Lonely Traveler
Since our isolated bacterium lives all alone, it has to get organic molecules without any help from other species. To do this, it builds what it needs to survive from water, inorganic carbon and nitrogen. These are all sourced from ammonia in the nearby rocks and fluid. But it sure does live deep in the Earth, doesn’t it? Thanks to evolution, our traveling friend can handle all sorts of tough situations and conditions. Over time, it has developed ways to handle stuff like fixing nitrogen straight from elemental nitrogen in the environment.
But wait, it can’t do everything. This smart bacterium can’t handle oxygen, which tells scientists that it has been without oxygen for a really long time. I guess that the lengthy journey into the Earth has toughened it up to lots of harsh conditions. However, without oxygen exposure, there was no need for it to develop any mechanism to resist it. Still, it continues to survive and hints to us that there could be a lot more bugs and creatures out there that manage to get by just fine without oxygen and many of the basic things we associate with life. Now that’s adaptation!
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Be Careful With Confidence July 2, 2008
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Human Body, Psychology and Behavior, Think About It.Tags: confidence, overconfidence, test
4 comments
We all know that confidence can feel amazing. It might give you that great energy where you believe you can accomplish anything at all. Confidence can encourage us to make certain decisions, meet people and take action. But what about overconfidence? Can that do more harm than good? Sometimes, it can. If a person is overconfident, they might miss some of the key details to watch out for when making a change. For example, being overconfident before a test might mean you don’t spend enough time studying. A business executive might assume an investment is a good idea without making an effort to really think the decision through.
Perhaps the important question involves how we would even go about measuring overconfidence. From a scientific standpoint, it’s not easy to assess overconfidence because this kind of study would rely on the participant to explain how they are overconfident. That’s really subjective and not a very reliable or accurate way to provide results.
Let’s Try Something New
But wait! According to Pascal Mamassian, a researcher at CNRS and Université Paris Descartes, France, overconfidence can indeed be accurately measured. Mamassian believes he has come up with a cool way to handle the problems associated with having participants assess their own overconfidence. How? With a very natural and objective visuo-motor task. If you want to get really geeky, you can check out the full version in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Bring On The Visuo-Motor Task
So, what did these participants in Mamassian’s study do? Well, they were asked to sit at a computer and press on a key in synchrony with a ‘blob’ that would pop up on the screen. If they pressed the key in synchrony, they were given points for their success. But if they pressed the key too early or late, they lost points. Mamassian decided to use a mathematical model to analyze the way participants manipulated a key tapping strategy, which would help participants gain the most points and reduce the points lost. Now, let’s see what Mamassian found out from the participants!
The Results Are In
Mamassian discovered that the participants regularly didn’t aim for the best time. Instead, they showed overconfidence in their actions. Mamassian explained:
They underestimated the magnitude of their uncertainty and the cost of their error. Overconfidence is not limited to the realm of subjective beliefs and cognitive judgments but appears instead to reflect a general characteristic of human decision making.
So, this means that overconfidence in their abilities led participants to be less careful in assessing their own uncertainty and the consequences of mistakes when completing the task. Because they were overconfident, they didn’t take the time to think of what they needed to do to ensure no mistakes were made. Since they were so confident, they perhaps figured they would just automatically do well. On top of that, they didn’t properly estimate the points they would lose from these mistakes because – well, their overconfidence might have meant that they didn’t expect to make mistakes in the first place!
Now, I think that a little – or sometimes even a lot – of confidence can go a long way in creating good feelings of self-esteem and accomplishment. At the same time, Mamassian’s experimental model is a new and interesting way to judge if someone is overconfident. For now though, it’s not exactly a practical reality for most of us, which means we can’t just access this test to check whether we’re overconfident. A more cautious approach might be to take those confident leaps, but look where you are going. Ultimately, be confident knowing that you can reach your goals, but don’t be overconfident so that you are blinded by all the challenges along the way!
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Particle Plushies June 30, 2008
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Easy As Pie, Physical and Chemical Reactions, Physics, Weird Gadgets.Tags: matter, novelty, particles, toys
3 comments
I’ve always been a fan of toys and I don’t think I’ll ever grow too old for this kind of neat novelty stuff. The toys in the picture above are called Particle Plushies and were created by Julie Peasley with the help of science consultant and physicist Derek van Westrum.
According to Julie:
I have had a lifelong interest in cosmology, the quantum world and theoretical physics. The Particle Plushies idea came about after attending a physics lecture at UCLA by Dr. Lawrence Krauss entitled ‘The Beginning and End of Time.’ A couple of difficult physics books later (including Lisa Randall’s Warped Passages), I realized that the individual particles seemed to have various ‘personalities’ that could be ‘felted out’ with relative ease.
The toys aren’t meant for really young children but they’re a fun item to have hanging around the house. Better still, these plushies combine art and science to provide education and understanding.
As for the weird science blog, these cute, smiling toys are hereby approved for coolness!
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Getting Tough With Sunbeds June 23, 2008
Posted by Miss Weird Scientist in Easy As Pie, Human Body.Tags: sun, sunbed, tan
2 comments
It’s summertime and as you get into your shorts and t-shirt, you might be thinking to yourself that your skin is whiter than Casper the friendly ghost. While some people seek their tan by sprawling under the hot sun at the beach, others head to the tanning salon. Tans are something that many people see as attractive but the path to getting that tan can not only be an ugly one, but it can get a lot uglier with time.
Setting Rules
New rules are now in place for sunbed use in Scotland. The rules are meant to highlight the dangers of sunbeds. In fact, one study found that 4 out of 5 tanning salons did not meet the current safety guidelines. The ultraviolet rays went beyond the maximum standards in Britain. The new regulations are thought to put Scotland ahead of the rest of the United Kingdom.
Getting Tough
So, what happens if salons don’t abide by these new rules? Well, they can say hello to fines. If a salon allows someone under the age of eighteen to use a sunbed, they will be charged £100 (approximately $200 Canadian). Salons are generally not happy about the new rules. Responses have included comments citing that children are more at risk of skin cancer from sun exposure during a foreign holiday or that there isn’t really any evidence to show that sunbeds are being abused.
A Better Tan
If you really do want that tanned look, however, the general consensus is that fake cream or spray tans – most using a chemical called dihydroxyacetone (DHA) – are non-toxic and safe for use on the skin. DHA is a colorless chemical, which undergoes a reaction with the amino acids in your dead skin cells. The result is a brown color – a tan. One safety aspect you should note, however, is that sunscreen is even more important if you are using a topical tanning product. So, be sure to slather your skin up with a quality sunscreen!
As for me, I used to find tans attractive during my own teen years. I disliked being naturally pale and felt that I needed to have that brown glow to look good. Ironically, most of the compliments I receive now are on my “porcelain skin,” which has taught me that we all have a pretty, natural color, whether that’s light or dark. I’d rather keep my sun exposure to a minimum by wearing sunscreen, avoiding tanning salons and letting any lines I develop be laughter ones – not wrinkles from sun exposure.
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