10 Worst Evolutionary Designs

Taken directly from Wired Magazine.

Illustration: Roman Klonek

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around.

2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this "pseudopenis," which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit.

3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom's torso and into her pouch for a nipple.

4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby's entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack.

5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait — it can't!

6 Shark-fetus teeth. A few shark species have live births (instead of laying eggs). The Jaws juniors grow teeth in the womb. The first sibling or two to mature sometimes eat their siblings in utero. Mmm ... siblings.

7 Human stomach. People can digest a lot — except for cellulose, the primary component of plant matter. Why don't we have commensal bacteria in our guts to do it? They're busy helping termites.

8 Slug genitalia. Some hermaphroditic species breed by wrapping their sex organs around each other. If one of said members gets stuck, the slug simply chews it off. What. The. Hell?

9 Quadrupeds. Let's say you're a four-footed animal. Now let's say you get a wound on your back, or an itch, or a bug wandering up there. Tough luck, kid. You probably can't do much about it. Hope there's a low branch around.

10 Narwhal tusk. The unicorn-like protuberance on a male narwhal's head is actually a tooth that erupts through the front of the jaw and keeps on growing, up to 9 feet. Narwhal: "Doc, I have a toothache." Dentist: "Indeed."

Sound Surgery

Switzerland does more than Ikea.

Swiss scientists have performed ultrasonic surgery on 9 patients that h ave survived this procedure (so far).

In this case study, the different patients had severe debilitating pain and had surgery performed on the thalamus.

Ultrasound beams were directed at a specific part of the brain and then focused to an area "about the size of a rice grain." This rice grain-sized area is then zapped, through the intact skull and scalp, where it heats up brain tissue to ~130F, effectively killing the surrounding cells. Just to make sure they don't slice an entire hemisphere off, surgeons are armed with magnetic resonance scanners and thermal imagers of the brain.

As you can see, this newer technology allows more precision, accuracy and faster healing time. There is no physical surgery; only the targeted area is laser'd.

This is a huge improvement over the old type of surgery which was the jam a radio probe into the skull or with radiation treatments on the affected area. I think I prefer the lasers.

Nerdiest Swimsuits

You Might Look Like A Smurf, But At Least You Can Walk.

Aaaaw, he looks cold.

Want to know how they did it?

Scientists accidentally found out that Brilliant Blue G (BBG), a blue food dye, can be used to treat spinal cord injuries.

Spinal cord injuries occur when the spinal cord has been harmed in some way, causing swelling. The swelling blocks blood flow which leads to nerve cell death. Neurons also die from stress incurred by the sudden release of ATP (energy molecules) causing overstimulation. To prevent this, scientists figured they can simply block ATP receptors. However, there was no known compound that existed.

BBG is very similar to one type of ATP receptor. BBG is commonly used and FDA approved. A benefit is that it can cross blood-brain barrier, i.e. you don't have to riskily inject into the spine itself, you can simply go through the bloodstream.

Moving on to blue rats. Rats with spinal cord injuries given BBG infusion showed to recover much faster than control rats. BBG rats still had a limp, but were able to walk after 6wks of treatment, unlike control rats who never regained that ability. Also, they turned very blue.

As with any animal trials, more research needs to be done...the injured mice were treated 15 minutes after they were hurt, something unrealistic for people. Also, we don't know how blue (if any) they will turn. Maybe they will look tinged to the girl from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Or a smurf.

Next Time You Drink..

Is there anything Scotch Tape can't do? No.

[30 second exposure shows visible light given off from unpeeled tape]

Read it here!!

We all love scotch tape. It's semi-invisible, it wraps our gifts, and we can stick it to our faces when we get bored.

However, that roll of scotch tape can actually produce x-rays. In a vacuum. (That means you cannot sit there and try to make x-rays at your desk at work.)

The physical peeling of the tape releases electrons which in turn, "generated strong, short bursts of X-rays — each burst, about a billionth of a second long, contained about 300,000 X-ray photons." The analogy they use is a "microscopic lightening effect."

Apparently, the Scotch-tape-is-AWESOME concept is nothing new. Russian scientists had stated that there were strong enough currents for x-rays back in 1953, but no one believed them, because really, who trusts the Russians?

Like every discovery in science, this could lead to new technologies. And what I discovered from this article is that peeling tape gives off visible light because it is "an experiment anyone can conduct in a closet."

I know what I'm doing at work tomorrow.

[Sidenote: I know this goes against the rule by being about physics, but I mean scotch tape light!!]

Jupiter Got Bitch Slapped

Read the article here.


NASA has taken the sharpest picture of a scar on Jupiter left over from a collision on July 19th with the Hubble Space Telescope. The object is hypothesized to be either an asteroid or comet that broke up in the atmosphere.

The diameter of the object is guessed to be "the size of several football fields" and the force of explosion was thousands of times the strength of the Tunguska River Valley explosion of 1908.

(For perspective, the Tuguska event is theorized to have been caused by a comet or asteroid that exploded several miles above the Earth causing a massive airburst. The explosion was guessed to be 1000x more powerful than the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Trees within 830 square miles were knocked completely down. )

Moral of the story: Something real mother truckin HUGE hit Jupiter. I think it was Pluto sending out a hit on all the planets. Look out Earth.

The Science Behind: Sea Pigs

This post is suggested by my brother, who really really wants a sea pig for an unknown reason.





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WTF is it?: A reject a pokemon. Bringer of nightmares. The sea pig is actually a sea cucumber and are related to starfish, sea urchins and sand dollars (phylum Echinoderms). They have 10 tentacles and tube feet.

Am I going to run into one?: No, unless you are a mermaid. Sea pigs live on the abyssal plains, which means thousands of meters deep ocean floor. Also, echinoderms seem to be very successful at severe ocean depths...ie, there are a crapload of sea pigs chillin down there.

What do they do?: Party with Spongebob and eat dirt. The ocean floor is incredibly rich in organic material that sprinkles down from the top. Sea cucumbers comb through the ocean floor sifting through the mud and sand, eating food that has settled in the past 100 days.

Mmmm, dirt.



What does this mean for me?: Really nothing. You are never going to see them and they eat sand. However, you may lie awake a night thinking there are hundreds, if not thousands of these little squishy pink things walking 6000meters deep in the ocean and that evolution could play a cruel trick, give em fins and lungs and in several thousand years they will crawl out of the ocean and eat your descendants brains.


Want to read more?:
Sea Cucumbers: Holothuroidea - Sea Pig (scotoplanes Globosa): Species Accounts
The Echinoblog: Because you demanded it!: The SEA PIG!!

Why Scrooge McDuck Is Never Sad-Money Reduces Pain

Why is Scrooge McDuck and Montgomery Burns never depressed? Because they are rich.

A study published in June 2009 Psychological Science tested the effects of money on physical and emotional pain from social rejection. Participants were unaware of the research's true focus.

Trial 1- Students count money then play a computer game in which they are intentionally snubbed but what they think are other human players. To test physical pain, students counted money then had their fingers dipped in 122F water. In both conditions, students with money had reported lower emotional and physical pain than the control group, who had counted blank paper.

How do you know the participants aren't just distracted by the sight of $800, the most money they will have in their hands during their entire college career??

Trial 2-Instead of counting money, students wrote down their expenses for last month (control group did weather). They then either were put down by the computer game or burned their fingers off. Results? Students who discussed their finances reported increased pain and social distress from the game.

The conclusion is money, either real or symbolic, is the key to our social interactions and therefore our emotional well-being (ie rich=popular). To explain the physical pain:

"The emerging hypothesis is that early in the evolution of social interactions, our brains took a shortcut to handle the new system: instead of laying down new biological hardware to process things like relationships and culture, human brains hacked their older hardware that deals with physical pain and gave it the double duty of handling social interactions."

This basically means our brains were lazy, didn't want to figure out social interactions, and was like f*ck it, we are going to make pain associated with other people.


...I don't know about you, but lack of money AND other people does cause me physical pain.

LED light bulb from Salmon DNA

Scientist's have made a LED light bulb from Salmon DNA. Check this article.

Calm down scientists. Is making a light bulb from fish DNA really necessary? Or are you just doing it because you can? This is similar to a hummer. Why, oh why, did anyone ever make a crazy inefficient car that normal people can waste their money on. The car companies knew it was excessive, but they know there are people out there compensating for their lack of life skills with an absurd car. The lab people at the University of Connecticut were like.. hey, we made DNA glow. I'm tired of people not understanding our research, LETS MAKE A LIGHT BULB!

Okay, it is kinda cool. You would have a light bulb with salmon DNA on it and it changes the intensity of LED light? Making DNA florescence has been happening for years. Here's how it works:

There is a protein in jelly fish named GFP, green florescent protein. Basically, when certain wavelengths of light hit these proteins (ex UV light) an emission of light is the product of the reaction (i think its something like when a reaction causes heat to be released). These protein sequences were isolated and now it is used in many ways. They developed a way to tag certain genes with this protein (if the gene creates proteins they then have the ability to glow under UV light once tagged). So to see if a gene is involved in a certain activity, they run an experiment under conditions causing an assumed reaction and see if the now glowing protein is made, and can compare intensities with a control. Basically, it's like in a factory if you put red paint on a roller so that the finished product would get hit with paint as it entered a bin.. you would be able to count the products that came from that roller. Not a perfect example, but it will do I hope.

More to the point these crazy people tagged a piece of DNA then spun it until it became fibrous and then wrapped LED lights in it to be able to change the light intensity based on the dye use. It seems like there should be an easier way to do this. Poor salmon didn't want them to make their DNA all glow-y then used to dim lights.

Moral of the story: shit's wak.

Science Jokes

Babies: The Trendiest Nite Lite

Read the original article here.

Is there anything the Japanese can't figure out? Answer: Probably not.

It's been previously shown that the human body does emit light albeit it is too weak to be seen with the naked eye. Until now.

Using extremely sensitive cameras, Japanese scientists have captured images of the human glow, by strapping down 20-something men down and taking pictures. The things we do in the name of science...

Moreover, they have also discovered that the amount of light emitted is dependent on the time of day, with the peak at 4pm and lowest at 10am. It is hypothesized that this is related to metabolic cycles.

Well, whatever it's related to..metabolism, hormones, radiation poisoning...we glow.

Glowing humans-->glowing babies--> nite lites. I'm just going to put that idea out there.

Why America Is Fat.

So reading the title I am sure some will think.. Oh, that's because Americans are lazy, over indulgent fools that don't understand eating greasy, fatty foods everyday and not exercising makes you obese. True, but what makes people crave these foods? And what happens in your body when you eat these delicious things?
Disclaimer: I love food and can't get enough of it.

If you think about it, it doesn't make sense that our bodies should crave these foods that hurt our bodies thinking about humans as animals in a evolutionary sense. You would think our brains would adapt to not enjoy the taste of fatty foods if it ends up shortening your life.. simply because our aim in life is to survive, procreate, etc. This never happened because there was never a situation in the wild where sugary, fatty foods were so abundant. If cavemen saw how easy it is to get food, I think they would be pretty bitter about their longs lives of foraging.

You need some fat to survive. First of all, they serve as energy storage. The word calorie now has this connotation of some bad monster that people seem to be obsessed with 'counting', but I think people don't know that the word calorie is a unit of energy. 1 gram of fat gives 9 calories of energy. Energy is certainly necessary and fat molecules allow you to have back up energy to keep living. Second, the mass of fat protects organs and keeps us nice and warm. I could get into more reasons like it helps your body absorb nutrients and produces hormones, but as the first blog post.. I will try and stay focused on the topic at hand.

(Side note: How much fat do you need? http://www.myfatstranslator.com/)

Okay, so you need fats and we have all heard to always avoid the feared transfat monster. There are Four major types but let's simplify it to saturated (includes trans) and unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are the 'good' fats and are usually liquid at room temperature (ex. veg oil) and saturated fats are the 'bad' fats more solid at room temperature (ex. butter). The 'bad' basically refers to the way the molecules pack.. saturated fats end up being harder to break down/ make it harder to lose weight. Tran fats are even worse because they are basically man-made saturated fats put in food to increase shelf life of foods. Negative effect? It changes reactions during metabolism to increase the release of the bad LDL cholesterol into the blood stream, which then gets deposited into blood vessel walls. This can cause a whole mess of problems including, but not limited to, clogging arteries leading to heart disease. (This is already getting lengthy so I'm leaving out information on cholesterol)

Okay, so more information than you ever needed to know on fats, but I hope you are still reading. Getting back to the point why would we ever over eat? Why do we see a cookie and even if we are full we have to have it? People, myself included, seem to blame some mythical force saying things like "I can't help it." I have eaten an entire pizza by myself and I didn't want more then two slices!! Eating is fun, why?

A study was done titled "Deconstructing the Milkshake" where they tried to identify if fat, vanilla flavoring, cornstarch or sugar was the flavor that drives us to want to consume a vanilla milkshake. Sugar was found to be the driving ingredient when alone, but when fat and sugar are combined the drive increases like crazy. (This was done by giving rats each ingredient alone or paired and they would press a lever and essentially they would work harder pressing it more often when they loved the ingredient). So what does sugar do to our brains? It releases Dopamine a neurotransmitter released involved in focusing attention. This is important in times like if you were swimming and saw a shark. The instant you saw the shark Dopamine would be released to focus your attention on the shark.. this is different then adrenaline. So when you eat sugar, dopamine is released focusing you on the pleasing flavor and interestingly enough when sugar and fat are eaten together even more uncharacterized brain activity occurs with the dopamine release.

So when we see foods we crave, we get cravings based on a 'muscle memory' of your brain. Your brain sees the cookie that once caused a pleasing brain stimulation and dopamine is released focusing your attention on getting the food. The same way that your fingers get used to moving when playing say.. guitar hero.. and sometimes your hand seems to be able to do it on it's own from repetition. A cue like seeing food or seeing a location will cause the dopamine release and you crave the brain stimulation.

Dopamine is also released but stays elevated when taking drugs like cocaine or amphetamines. Food normally just causes one 'spike' of activity, but when food is more complex (really loaded ice cream Sundae) the activity mirrors the dopamine activity as seen with drug use. You can feel the same way about food desire as a crack head feels about needing a 'fix'. Crazy right?

Anyway, I hope that was interesting.. I think it is. Science blog ftw.