Duck Goes Moo!

An extreme case of sexual conflict has been unearthed in the little fire ant Wasmannia Auropunctata. Queens produce sterile workers by sexual reproduction, but all new queens are produced clonally. This potentially reduces male reproductive success to zero but in an apparent response, males thwart queens by eliminating the female genome during brood development. Sons therefore have nuclear genomes identical to those of their father: they too are clonally produced. This remarkable reproductive system effectively results in a complete separation of the male and female gene pools.

Men, having trouble finding a ballroom dancing partner or fear actual human contact? Then Tokhuro University has the answer for you: the Partner Ballroom Dance Robot, or PBDR fpr short. She is designed to perfectly follow the movements of a real dance partner and comes in hot pink and pastel blue.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/06/07/robots.ballroom/index.html

Medical Scientists in Britain have discovered a way to help a patient with advanced liver failure survive without transplantation of a donor’s liver. They have taken stem cells found in the patients bone marrow and used them to help the liver regrow into a healthy one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/841932.stm

This makes me wonder if perhaps the body sometimes creates and releases stem cells naturally. Maybe this has something to do with the placebo effect.

http://skepdic.com/placebo.html

Through the use of advanced imaging technologies, scientists have no been able to reveal the writing on ancient papyrus scrolls orginally believed to be irretrievable. Now a whole new view of our ancient history has become available to us. Plays by Sophocles and Euripides, poems by Parthenios, details of the events leading to the Trojan War by Homer, and possibly even lost gospels.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165

From the 05/09/1999 “They Saved Lisa’s Brain” episode of “The Simpsons”:

LISA: “Principal Skinner, how’s your transportation project coming?”

SKINNER: “Oh excellent, not only are the trains now running on time, they’re running on metric time. Remember this time people, 80 past 2 on April 47th, it’s the dawn of a new enlightenment.”

As funny as this scene was, I actually rather like the idea:

http://zapatopi.net/metrictime.html

I think going on metric time would be a great, though of course the adjustment would be difficult. If it were ever to happen it would take quite some convincing of the majority of the human populace. Perhaps the E.U. would be the first to adopt it, or maybe Iceland.

The land of Bjork is rather progressive. Iceland is trying to become completely fossil fuel independant by 2050, an admirable goal for any nation, though perhaps easier for a smaller sized nation unlike the United States.

Still, I hope we do start pressing harder for non-fossil fuels in this nation soon, though with the current administration that might not be so probable (can you guess I’m a liberal?).

I must note that I do have some concerns about these supposidely “clean” energy sources. Hydrogen production and distribution on a massive scale might lend to more and more hydrogen being released into the atmosphere, potentially being worse in the end than the current air pollution. Also, harnessing the power of the wind or the sun takes energy out of the ecosystem, perhaps altering climates and causing harm in other ways.

Not that I am against non-fossil fuels, just thinking that there’s no such thing as a completely clean source of energy, but solar and air power are most likely far better for the world than burning dead dinosaurs.

One last post before I go to sleep. Here is a really interesting article in Wired magazine that talks about how attributes we normally assign to living organisms are showing up in modern technologies:

http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/machines.html

There is also this article about micro-machines that have a metal skeleton but real organic material which grew over it to form living robots:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4181197.stm

And, finally, scientists have successfully isolated Gene Simmons:

(note: joke stolen from “The Onion”)