KRVX

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/bizarre-6-inch-skeleton-shown-to.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/bugs-eye-camera/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wiredscience+%28Wired%3A+Blog+-+Wired+Science%29

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6132/603.full

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Today we talked about fossils and statistics! We talked about trilobites, ancient marine arthropods, and a recent study in Scientific Reports that examines the structure of the eyes of several species and places them in the context of eye evolution. By using high tech microscopy and taking advantage of the fact that a bacteria-laid mineral layer preserved the soft tissues of the trilobites' eyes, researchers found that phacopid trilobites had eyes similar to those of horseshoe crabs. We also discussed the discovery of a bed of embryonic dinosaur fossils in the Yunan Province of China.  These fossils belonged to sauropods, a clade of dinosaurs that also includes apatosaurus and diplodocus. The researchers noted that some bones came from different developmental stages, and the wealth of fossils allowed them to make some inferences about the embryonic development of these very large dinosaurs. The highly vascularized bones indicate rapid growth inside the egg, and the asymmetric thickness of bone walls in limbs imply that the dinosaurs moved around while still in the egg to build a strong skeleton.  Lastly, we discussed a Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper that raises concern about the stastical power of studies in neuroscience. We talked about some reasons for this problem, including small sample size and the difficulty of working with human subjects.

Sources:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/visualscience/?p=3294&utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverMag+(Discover+Magazine)#.UWxMCit4Y98

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/brain-stats/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wiredscience+(Wired%3A+Blog+-+Wired+Science)

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130314/srep01429/full/srep01429.html

http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-dinosaur-embryo-fossils-discovered-in-china-1.12779

Today we talked about the intersection of science and politics.  First, we talked about a controversial stem cell treatment that's been approved by Italy's health minister as a last ditch treatment for terminally ill patients.  Patient advocacy groups have been protesting to make the treatment available despite the fact that no published, reviewed studies have shown its efficacy, and the company, Stamina Foundation, responsible for the treatment has not been forthcoming with the details and protocol of treatment. Next, we discussed the BRAIN initiative that Obama recently introduced, tracing how the proposal moved from a big-budget (3 billion dollars) plan with goals primarily in understanding model systems to a smaller budget (110 million in government funds, plus private funding) plan with goals more directed at human medicine and technology development.  Lastly, we talked about the recent emergence of H7N9, an avian flu from China.  Several people have died from the flu, which appears to have evolved from several previous avian flu strands but does not cause serious disease in birds. This lower virulence may be cause for worry, as it could allow the virus to spread within bird populations without killing them, thereby increasing the potential for transmission to humans.

Sources:

http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cell-ruling-riles-researchers-1.12678

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/as-white-house-embraces-brain-in.html?ref=hp

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/02/brain-project-draws-presidential.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/new-flu-news/

http://www.nature.com/news/novel-bird-flu-kills-two-in-china-1.12728

http://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/faq_H7N9/en/

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1209502/three-new-cases-bring-chinas-h7n9-tally-21-6-dead

We interviewed Dr. Andrew Ellington, this week's Hot Science, Cool Talks speaker.  He's a professor of biochemistry here at UT-Austin, and he'll be talking about the future of personalized medicine and self-diagnostic tools in his presentation this Thursday. He talked with us about how technological advances will democratize healthcare, making it more accessible and more interactive to both resource poor areas and those who already have access to healthcare. We talked about how this will change the role of doctors and how regulations and accountability standards might play into the development of self-diagnostic tools--that is, who would be accountable for improper diagnoses that result from home diagnostic tools?  Additionally, Dr. Ellington talked about his blog and his interest in biodefense.

Dr. Ellington will speak at the Student Activity Center at 2201 Speedway on the UT Campus. The event is free and open to the public

http://www.esi.utexas.edu/k-12-a-the-community/hot-science-cool-talks/diagnosing-ourselves-biotechnology-in-your-back-pocket

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/health/dna-analysis-more-accessible-than-ever-opens-new-doors.html?_r=0

We interviewed Dr. Jason Kilarai, Deputy Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. He talked about the process of designing and building the telescope and how it's meant to be the successor to the Hubble Telescope.  He also talked with us about the full-scale model of the James Webb Telescope he helped display at SXSW and the importance of science outreach.  Afterwards,  DJs Ganglion and R-Nought talked about some new results from the Planck satellite that use readings of cosmic microwave background--relic radiation left over from the big bag--to lend support to the theory of cosmic inflation. This theory proposes a brief burst of hyperaccelerated expansion followed a fraction of a second after the big bang. This inflation created ripples in the cosmic microwave background, and these variations are thought to be the seeds of what would later become galaxies. The findings also come up with slightly different numbers than what was previously known for the contributions of normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy to total mass/energy density of the universe.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/21/age_of_the_universe_planck_results_show_universe_is_13_82_billion_years.html

Today we talked about genome sequencing and animal (de)extinction. We started off talking about a recent paper from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelburg, published in G3. Investigators, led by Lars Steinmetz, sequenced the genome of HeLa cells, a human cervical cancer cell line that has been used in tens of thousands of research papers and in the development of the polio vaccine.  While it's important to note that researchers have long been aware of the large number of mutations in this and other cancer cell lines, the EMBL team came up with some interesting findings, including that relatively few genes in HeLa cells have the normal two copies, with some having up to five. Additionally, genes for proliferation and DNA repair are overexpressed.  The cells also exhibit chromothripsis, or the shattering and rearrangement of chromosomes.  Next, we talked about a study from PLoS Genetics that proposes that brown bears of the ABC Islands of Alaska descended from female polar bears that mated with male brown bears from the Alakasan mainland. Investigators made this conclusion from sequencing the X chromosomes of bears from the ABC Islands and finding that polar bear DNA was overrepresented in the X chromosome vs. the rest of the ABC bears' genomes. Finally, we discussed the TedX DeExtinction conference, specifically Mike Archer, of the University of New South Wales, and his desire to bring back the gastric brooding frog, which went extinct in 1983. By transplanting the cell nucleus from preserved gastric brooding frog embryos into the cells of another frog species, Archer and colleagues were able to get a frog embryo to live for several days.  We concluded that while this is a scientifically interesting result and a worth following up on, from a conservation standpoint, bringing species back from extinction shouldn't be preferable to preventing them from going extinct in the first place.

Today, we talked about advances in neuroengineering and HIV treatment.  We covered a story in Scientific Reports from Duke University that describes the first brain-to-brain interface between two rats; we described the study, in which one rat was subjected to several behavioral tests and wired to transmit motor and tacticle corticle information to another rat, who then was able to perform the same behavioral test at slightly better than random success rates with no external stimulus. We also discussed advances from Brown University, where researchers developed the first wireless, implanted brain-computer interface (BCI)  and have tested it in a monkey. The BCI can read information from the monkey's brain and wirelessly transmit it to researcher's computers for data collection; the wireless nature of the device enables the monkey to move around much more, thereby enabling the researchers to record much more complex behaviors than if the monkey were tethered by a wired BCI.  Finally, we discussed the story of an infant in Mississippi functionally cured of HIV, not as a result of of any new advancements in drug treatment, but rather because she was treated very early and with a cocktail of existing drugs.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130228/srep01319/full/srep01319.html#/f1

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149879-brown-university-creates-first-wireless-implanted-brain-computer-interface

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/03/health/hiv-toddler-cured/index.html

tonight we'll have guest Joe Hanson talk a bit about his new PBS Youtube Channel. We'll also talk about how bees sense the electrical fields of flowers, how dolphins may call each other by name, and how a glowing shark scares off predators with its "lightsabers." If we have time, we'll also talk about horse meat in British beef and fake tuna in Austin sushi restaurants. Tune in at 91.7 FM or 
www.kvrx.org 8:30PM-9PM (central). Scott Amerman also joins the discussion. 

We have guests Joe Hanson and Scott Amerman on to talk about Joe's PBS Youtube channel. We also talk about some science news stories: bees sense electric fields, dolphins may call each other by name, lots of tuna mislabeled in the US, British beef adulterated by horse, and a glowing shark. 

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/05/stereo-mole-noses/

http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v14/n3/full/nrg3427.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23022484

Tonight we interviewed Rayna Harris, a PhD student in the Hoffmann lab at UT Austin and a speaker at this week's Darwin Day event.  Darwin Day takes place on Sunday, Februar 10 from 1:00 to 4:45 pm at the Texas Natural Science Center on the UT campus; it's free and open to the public and includes activities for people of all ages, from accessible lectures to a fossil pit for your own archeological expeditions. Rayna studies two species of cichlids in Texas, one of which is parental and monogamous, the other of which is nonparental and haremic. She is studying the hormonal and neurological bases for diversity in these two species by drawing blood from them to measure hormone levels and dissecting their brains to extract mRNA (the intermediate product between DNA and protein) and reconstruct the gene networks that lead to these differences in behavior. She also gave us a preview of her Darwin Day talk in which she will discuss brain evolution.

We interviewed two members of Dan Bolnick's lab: Jesse Weber, PhD, and Hollis Woodard, PhD.  Both study the genetics of behavior. Jesse studied burrowing behavior in mice before coming to UT; he crossed two different species of mice who made different kinds of burrows and mapped where in the genome the genes responsible for the behavior are likely to be.  This approach finds large regions of the genome containing many genes which may be responsible for burrowing behavior, allowing researchers to hone in on and test these genes.  Jesse and his colleagues found that some genes known to be involved in addiction may explain differences in burrowing behavior. Hollis studied eusocial behavior in bees using genomics and transcriptomics--the latter method looks at expression of mRNA (the actual genes that are being expressed at any given time and place, rather than everything in the genome).  Now, they are both working on host-parasite interactions between stickleback fish and tapeworms. They talked with us about the advantages of working with a well-characterized model like stickleback fish and how research into the genetics of behavior is beginning to show the scientific community that behavior isn't all that different, genetically speaking, from morphological traits.

Tuberculosis!

just music today

Tonight we interviewed this week's Science Under the Stars Speaker, Michael Gully-Santiago. Michael is a fifth-year PhD student here at UT in the department of astronomy.  He studies brown dwarfs, gas formations that aren't quite massive enough to be considered stars (between 1-8% of the mass of the sun). These brown dwarfs likely form much like stars in that they are the result of collapsing gas cloud, they are simply smaller.  He finds brown dwarfs at the Magellan telescope in Chile by looking into space through different filters; because brown dwarfs emit light mostly outside of the visual spectrum--infrared light-- these filters are necessary.  He makes immersion diffraction gratings as part of his research, and these gratings spread out light into its different component wavelengths.  The lines created by these gratings help identify different types of celestial bodies, including the brown dwarfs he studies. Science Under the Stars takes place this Thursday at 7:30 at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory and is open to the public.

http://scienceunderthestars.org/

Today we played an interview DJ Chrysalis recorded last week with Dr. Mark Clanton, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society. In addition to being a medical doctor, he's very interested in health and science policy. He told us about his talk on the history of the war on cancer and how our understanding of cancer has changed with time and the increasing sophistication of biological research, from thinking of cancer as one disease to our modern understanding that cancer takes on many forms and has many different origins. He talked about different methods of therapy, from immune therapy to nanotechnology.  DJ Chrysalis asked him about the problem of targeting specifically cancer cells without destroying the body's healthy cells, and he talked about gold nanoparticles.  Finally, he emphasized the importance of translational science, or bridging basic research to medical technique, and how improving the relationship between scientific progress and the public's knowledge of science can help translational science.

In addition to the interview, we talked about a recent study from the journal science that shows brain tumors (glioblastomas) can be experimentally induced in mice from differentiated cells, including astrocytes in neurons. In short, this means that not only stem cells, but also differentiated cells that under normal conditions are no longer dividing, can become tumorigenic. While it's important to remember that tumors originating from dedifferentiated brain cells have only be experimentally induced and haven't been shown to exist in humans, these tumors do resemble ones that exist in humans.

References for brain tumor discussion:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32899/title/Stem-Cells-Not-Needed-for-Cancer/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6110/1035.full

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6110/1080.full

Interview with Chintan Modi.

October 29, 2012

Today we talked about the upcoming elections and their potential effects on science policy and funding in the US. We also played Science and the Sea and Medical Discovery News bits. We focused on a series of articles from this week's Science magazine that discussed various potential outcomes for science policy depending on the US election results.  We talked about the impending across-the-board government cuts due to Congress's inability to come up with a budget and how that would hit organizitions like the Natioinal Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation very hard.  We touched human embryonic stem cell research (Obama supports government funding, Romney and Johnson oppose) and the lack of focus on climate change and the environment in this electoral cycle.  We also talked about state and local issues, including the debate around Prop 37 for labeling GMO-containing foods in California and the Texas State Board of Education elections, which have an effect on textbooks nationwide because of the purchasing power of a large state like Texas.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/456

Tonight we interviewed local engineer Scott Amerman about 3D printing. He's building a 3D printer at home with plans of starting a business.  He explained the additive process of 3D printing and how it differs from traditional manufacturing--building up rather than chipping away starting materials. We talked about potential applications for 3D printing, from commercial applications, like clothing and eyewear, to medicine and drug manufacturing.  The discussion shifted to a current case from Austin in which a UT Law student had his lease of a 3D printer terminated by the leasing company because he planned to design and distribute gun schematics; this led to a discussion of digital rights management as well as limitations on the technology. We discussed the limit of resolution for constructing materials, and how this and other limitations will need to be overcome for applications such as medicine and prosthetics.

Tonight we interviewed Dr. Mark Skidmore, a visiting professor from Montana State University. He studies extremophiles--organisms that can live in extreme environmental conditions--in Mark's case, Antarctica.  His background is in glacial sciences, but he did some post-doctoral work in molecular biology. He talked to us about studying what's in the lakes beneath the ice in Antarctica.  These lakes exist because the temperature becomes progressively warmer deeper in the ice. He explained two main projects to us--NSF's Project WISSARD, where researchers drill below an ice stream and investigate what's in the lake and sediments below it, and NASA's project SIMPLE, where the aim is to drill below ice shelves and discover what's living at the interface of the ice and the ocean beneath it.  We asked him about the adaptations of organisms who live in cold environments--for example, they have different protein compositions in their cell membranes to make them more flexible at colder temperatures. He told us about how these projects make good test runs for the search for life on other planets: there's not a lot of oxygen around deep in the lakes of Antarctica, and Mark and his colleagues are looking for anaerobes--organisms that can use iron, sulfur, etc. for energy.

Tonight we talked with Patrick Stinson, a graduate student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior department here at UT-Austin. He will be this Thursday's Science Under the Stars speaker. His talk will be on human-influenced adaptation and evolution, focusing both on famous examples throughout history as well as his own research. We discussed more famous, generally negative and unintentional examples, such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria, but also some directed evolution, such as the Russian silver fox domestication experiments. He gave us a synopsis of the talk, and we interviewed him about his work on frog calls and how they change in response to noise pollution (e.g. traffic).  There are disavantages and advantages tomaking lower-pitched calls, which are more attractive to females, and higher calls, which can be heard more easily heard over traffic but are not as attractive. He talked some about his research methodology, which includes recording frog calls under normal conditions and with artificial traffic noise.  Science Under the Stars takes place at Brackenridge Field Lab Thursday at 7:30.

We interviewed Gail Gutowski, a second year graduate student in the Jackson School of Geosciences who studies climate science. She talked to us about the famous "hockey stick graph" and the controversy over climate change.  We touched on how she interacts with the public and the duty of the scientific community to engage the pubilc. She helped explain the kinds of data scientists use to reconstruct temperature history ("proxy data"--things like tree rings and corals) and how to determine that proxy data are reliable. We discussed her research and her planned field expedition to Antarctica to study ice cores. She also works with global climate models and incorporating atmospheric, land, and ice core models.

09/17/2012

Tonight we interviewed Stavana Strutz, PhD student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behvaior program at UT and a recurring guest on the show. She spoke about West Nile last Thursday at Science Under the Stars and shared some details from her presentation with us. We talked about the factors that make Texas such a hotspot for West Nile Virus--the recent drought has killed off many of the mosquito's natural predators, while this year's hotter and wetter summer has meant both more mosquitoes and more virus replication. She gave a brief history of the virus, from its discovery in the 1930s to its introduction to the US in 1999 and to the present.  She gave listeners a few practical tips on avoiding potential West Nile exposure--avoiding outside activity and dusk and dawn (when mosquitoes are most active), using DEET, and wearing protective clothing.  Additionally, we talked a bit about other vector-borne diseases in Texas, including Dengue Fever, which has recently been found in four counties along the Texas border, and Leishmaniasis, a protozoan parasite that Stavana studies for her PhD research.

09/10/2012
Tonight we interviewed Jamin Greenbaum, a PhD student in the Jackson School of Geosciences here at UT Austin.  We talked about his research, which takes place in Antarctica and involves studying ancient ice formations in East Antarctica.  Using radar and other remote sensing technologies, the research team he is a part of recently showed that the ice formations in Ancient East Antarctica were much more dynamic than previously thought, which is significant because previous predictions of sea level change have been based on the assumption that West Antarctica was much more dynamic than the East.  We also talked about how this would affect estimates of the severity of climate change.  Finally, we touched on space exploration, as Jamin previously worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and his current research in Antarctica has relevance for future space exploration--the expeditions to Antarctica function in part as proxies for travel to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, because the environments are somewhat similar.

The main focus of our show today was antibiotics, from resistant bacteria to links to body fat.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/08/22/genome-detectives-unravel-spread-of-stealthy-bacteria-in-a-hospital/

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/molecules-to-medicine/2012/08/24/the-nih-superbug-storya-missing-piece/

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/osu-vbm082212.php

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11400.html

http://the-scientist.com/2012/08/26/learning-during-sleep/

mice weighed the same, but had more body fat (except with vancomycin)

lower bacteriodetes/firmicutes ratio (except with vanco)

more short chain fatty acids/enzymes involved in synthesizing them

qpcr--gene expression. increase in fat-generating genes

rock music is not science, except when it is

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/07/30/you-can-thank-wasps-for-your-bread-beer-and-wine/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NotRocketScience+%28Not+Exactly+Rocket+Science%29

http://www.nature.com/news/hunter-gatherer-genomes-a-trove-of-genetic-diversity-1.11076

http://www.nature.com/news/artificial-jellyfish-built-from-rat-cells-1.11046

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/science/in-a-first-an-entire-organism-is-simulated-by-software.html?_r=2

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001356

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0531556512001258

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/07/11/bee-brain-plasticity-turning-back-the-clock-on-aging/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6082/721.long

Present Your PhD Thesis to a 12 Year Old

Today we talked about brains! The research we talked about was cross-disciplinary, ranging from evolutionary biology to radiology.  We discussed a project from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to map every connection in the mouse brain; in a progressive move for open access, all the data has been made available online to the public prior to being published in a scientific journal.  Additionally, we talked about research from the Hans Hofmann lab at UT on evolutionary conservation of neural circuitry involved in social behavior.  Finally, we talked about an diffusion MRI-based study that mapped brain pathways in an attempt to reconcile the morphological complexity of the brain with its origins in embryonic development.  The study found that, despite the intimidating size, complexity, and number of connections in the brain, its component parts demonstrate surprisingly grid-like and geometrical patterns.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6076/1628.full

http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120604/10153/brain-pathways-imaging.htm

http://scienceblog.com/54768/neuroscientists-reach-major-milestone-in-whole-brain-circuit-mapping-project/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6085/1154.full?sid=557e9ever6cd-ae87-4022-a364-71cb5a6e1ccc

http://web5.cns.utexas.edu/news/2012/05/ancient-neural-circuitry/

We interviewed Michelle Brown, this Thursday's Science Under the Stars speaker and a middle school teacher at O. Henry Middle School here in Austin. She spent the past winter in Antarctica with PolarTREC, a group that pairs teachers with science researchers. We talked with her about her participation in several studies, including one that monitors soil trends in Antarctica and the effects of pollution on soil, as well as her living conditions when she was in Antarctica.  We asked her about how she became involved with PolarTREC, as well as how she made the transition from a student frustrated with science to a middle school science teacher. Finally, we talked some about the outreach side of her involvement with PolarTREC, such as her upcoming Science Under the Stars talk, as well as how she communicated her work with her students both when she was in Antarctica (she kept a journal and had several Skype calls with her students) and when she returned.

Today, DJs Ganglion, Anticodon, and Chrysalis each contributed a topic to our news discussion. We talked about a paper from Biology Direct in which researchers from Portland State University describe a virus  that is likely a genetic chimera of DNA and RNA viruses, the first of its kind.  Next, DJ Anticodon led a discussion of a PNAS paper examining the effects of social rank on the immune system in rhesus macaques. Changes in rank correlated with changes in immune-related gene regulation and even with epigenetic markers, and higher-ranked macaques had more cytotoxic T cells. Finally, we discussed a Science paper from University of Virginia School of Medicine that describes a new kind of DNA, microDNA, that is extrachromosomal and results from deletions in the genome.  The authors remain speculative about what purpose the microDNA might serve, and whether it can account for various kinds of genetic variation among individuals, such as the germline deletions found in the Thousand Genomes project. We played a Medical Discovery News segment on "chicken pox parties."

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/04/hot-spring-yields-hybrid-genome.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6077/82

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/17/6490.full