age
dr. dolittle | July 10, 2017 Photo of an African Green Monkey by Sharp Photography, via Wikimedia Commons
Humans are not the only primates that spontaneously develop hypertension. A new study published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, examined the development of spontaneous hypertension in African Green Monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops sabaeus; aka: vervets). The team measured blood pressure in 424 adult monkeys and found that 37% had high blood pressure (SBP: 172.0±2.2 mmHg) and an additional 18% had borderline hypertension. Like humans, the prevalence of…
dr. dolittle | March 13, 2016 Image of ruby-throated hummingbird by Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
In a new study published in The Auk, scientists report that well-fueled older tiny Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) might be capable of non-stop flights of over 4,000 kilometers, wind conditions permitting. They made this remarkable observation while studying birds from 2010-2014 as the animals made stopovers at a wildlife refuge during their annual migration to South America.
In general, older birds not only…
dr. dolittle | March 16, 2014 Figure 1 showing RAGE (aka: Ager) expression only in mammals from Sessa et al., PLOS ONE. 9(1): e86903, 2014.
RAGE stands for "receptor for advanced glycation end-products", also known as "AGER", and new research shows that it first appeared in mammals (Sessa et al., 2014). Despite the name, the receptor also binds other signaling molecules such as HMGB1, S100 proteins, beta-amyloid, phosphatidylserine, among others (Xie et al., 2013). RAGE is reportedly involved in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, osteoarthritis, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, as well as liver and renal…
dr. dolittle | January 10, 2014 Image from www.clker.com. Woodridge, IL, USA --- Great White Shark Opening Mouth --- Image by © Denis Scott/Corbis
Scientists have discovered that great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) actually live longer than previously thought (up to 23 years or so). Using radiocarbon age estimates, Dr. Hamady and colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution determined the animals can live to the ripe-old-age of 70+ years. These findings mean that great white sharks, like humans, may take longer to mature. It also means that overfishing may pose more of a threat to them than previously…
esiegel | October 2, 2013"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -Charles Darwin
There are problems with science today, no doubt. With all the knowledge we've accumulated about the Universe, from the smallest subatomic scales to the farthest recesses of deep space, there are still realms and regimes where our best theories fail, where the predictions and the data don't match, and where no known explanation is sufficient for the phenomena that shows up…
dr. dolittle | September 5, 2013 Image of bonobos from www.freewallpaperspot.com
Photographer Graham McGeorge has captured remarkable images of bonobos, our closest living relative that share 98.7% of human DNA. The photos depict bonobos engaging in similar behaviors as humans, like the image above from another photographer of bonobos embracing each other. McGeorge also captured images of bonobos caring for their young as well as a bonobo who lost his hair with advancing age. Truly a must-see!
Click here to view images from this touching display.
esiegel | March 1, 2013"The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size." -Oliver Wendell Holmes
When General Relativity supplanted Newton's work as our theory of how gravity works in the Universe, it didn't just change how we view how masses attract, it gave us a new understanding of what the questions where and when actually mean. It gave us the very fabric of spacetime.
Image credit: Christopher Vitale of http://networkologies.wordpress.com/.
What this meant is that no longer could we view objects like matter and radiation as existing in some fixed, grid-like…
esiegel | December 7, 2012"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe." -Carl Sagan
The Universe is a lot like an extremely intricate cake. We view it today as a snapshot in time, now that it's complete.
Image credit: Blogger user Hilly of http://makesbakesfakes.blogspot.com/.
We can view the whole thing from one point of view, determined by where we happened to be located. But we can also look intricately inside certain sections of it, so long as we have the right tools.
Image credit: Blogger user Hilly of http://makesbakesfakes.blogspot.com/.
But if we truly want to…
cwilcox | April 19, 2009Many accused of statutory rape claim two things - 1) that the girl consented and 2) that they thought she was older. The first is unimportant - if the girl is underage, it's still rape. But in the US, there is a special defense clause which allows defendents leiniency if there is reasonable evidence they "mistook" a younger girl for one of consenting age. Many times lawyers claim that a girl's makeup or guy's consumption of alcohol impaired the offender's judgement of her age. As an excuse, it's pretty common among men charged with all varieties of sex with a minor. Well, researchers wanted…
esiegel | April 1, 2008There's a graduate student that I'm sort-of mentoring/working with at Arizona, named Xiaoying Xu (hi Xiao!). She's bright and curious, and she asks some very good questions. She asked me one yesterday that's pretty tough to wrap your head around:
How do I explain to someone why light doesn't age?
Well, here on Earth, time progresses at a certain speed. That is, if I measure how many seconds tick by as the Earth revolves once around the Sun, I'll get 31,556,926 seconds. (31,558,150 if I'm measuring a sidereal year.)
But let's say in the course of that year, I put you on a rocket ship, and…