Phenomena

I'm fascinated by this. It took 60 million years after trees evolved for microbes to evolve that could digest them[1]. The resulting strata of undigested tree are now most of our coal. Now of course, if a tree dies and is left where it fell, it is usually digested entirely in a number of years by microbial life. What would happen if a microbe evolved that could feed itself from plastic? And what if it got out of the lab? Imagine all the plastic items in the World suddenly as susceptible to rot as wood. It would fundamentally change almost every aspect our existence, in a very short amount of time. [1]: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/07/the-fantastically-s…

The best eyes/most complex eyes in the world goes to the mantis shrimp. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/03/natures-most-amazin… A few snippets: a compound eye, made of thousands of small units that each detects light independently 12 to 16 different photoreceptors in its midband has six photoreceptors dedicated to...UV incredibly sophisticated UV detectors

That's amazing resolving power, even if it's been done (maybe not in the exact same way) for quite a while now. Hopefully newer telescopes like the James Webb Telescope will be able to resolve even the _planets_ around other stars, which we are already able to do with the biggest of exoplanets today (good example -> [1]). [1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/1RSX_J160929.1-2…

There's tremendous political problems with just "not using them" - we've done shelving before, usually with drugs that have unfavorable characteristics. Colistin is one example, it was shelved because it's fairly nephrotoxic, and today it's one of the last-resort antibiotics. The problem is China loves to pump their livestock full of it to boost production, and now we're starting to see bacteria strains that are resistant to it. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/21/mcr-gene-colistin/ The WHO simply do not have any teeth to enforce shelving, and it's probably going to take a major health crisis before it's even on the table.

> > It's already preventable -- we came with a sufficient supply of antimalarial pills, but they're so expensive it's obviously not a solution. > There's just one problem with that one — aside from costs for third-world regions: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/25/can-we-beat-drug-re… Good point -- the expense is serious, but also widely using low levels of drugs that are effective treatments as antimalarials means giving the parasite lots more great opportunities to evolve resistance (which is already happening, and is a serious upcoming problem). > At the social level it is debilitating... Yup, I agreed with Gates' conclusions; I was trying to share some direct experience.

> But lots of animals commit suicide. You don't need to talk about lemmings. We have to talk about lemmings when we are talking about conscious human-like suicide because lemmings are the only animals that purportedly had conscious intentional suicides like human being. After all, the philosophical debate was "the difference between humans and animals". I actually brought up honey bees committing suicide ( once they sting, they die ). But the professor rejected it ( rightly so ) because it wasn't conscious and intentional suicide. For example, a parent storming a burning building to save their child and dying in the process isn't suicide in the human sense. A female octopus giving birth and dying isn't suicide. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/30/octopus-cares-for-h… A soldier going to war and dying isn't suicide. A mother bison trying to save her calf from predators and dying in the process isn't suicide. There is a difference between sacrifice and intentional conscious suicide where no one benefits. > And your discussion sounds with your professor sounds really stupid It wasn't. It was one of my favorite classes in college and hence why I decided to double major in philosophy. It was the first time I can say I really thought about something. If the class was "really stupid" it wouldn't have left such an indelible mark on me. > he literally claimed to be the ultimate authority on lemmings? Yes. He believed it was a fact…

I'm seeing the usual comments about life expectancy and IQ here, so I had better respond to both issues. First of all, and I encourage readers to follow the links for more details, today we have longer life expectancies at birth, at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages than ever before.[1] Whatever it is that we are eating these days, so far our diets aren't undermining the steady long-term trend of increasing life expectancy at ALL ages all over the developed world. An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[2] tells the story of the steady improvements in prevention and treatment that have reduced all-cause mortality and morbidity for Americans and for most people in the developed countries. I have been stunned to realize I now have several aunts and uncles who are past the age of 90 and still living independently and in reasonably good health. A couple years ago I was shopping for a birthday present for my own mother, now more than 80 years old, and I found multiple birthday cards for 80th and 90th birthday cards for sale at the bookstore where I was shopping. Lots of people are living a long time now. But don't just take my anecdotes as evidence. Check what professional demographers write about the issue in peer-reviewed journal articles and say about the issue in press interviews. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely…

As usual, Ed Yong has a good overview on NERS: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/19/why-naked-mole-rats… edit: I see the NYT article is by Carl Zimmer, so I can only recommend though I've yet to read it. Although > Hyaluronan probably isn’t the only way to fight off cancer. Blind mole rats (which, despite their name, are not close relatives of naked mole rats) rarely get cancer either. But the research Dr. Gorbunova and Dr. Seluanov have conducted on those rodents suggests that they fight cancer by sending a different signal to fast-growing cells, causing them to commit suicide. Dan Engber's wonderful 2011 Slate piece[0], linked by Yong, notes naked mole rats have perfectly functioning apoptosis processes: > A naked mole rat cell, they argued, is hypersensitive to crowds: The minute one of its cytoplasmic arms brushes up against a stranger, it stops dividing. A cell could be induced to overcome its shyness with the help of some cancer-causing proteins, and so emboldened it would grow out of control, like a tumor. But even then, a second line of defense would be activated: The cell would apoptose, or self-destruct. it's not clear whether Zimmer is talking about somehow extra-active apoptosis in blind mole rats, does anybody have precisions? [0] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/1…

For anyone struggling to get into an exercise routine, I've ran into a potential solution because it doesn't require lots of time and effort. Exercise 10 minutes daily (or at least 3-5x a week) as soon as you wake up and before you hit the shower. Do intervals. Out of the 10 minutes, two have to be all out and intense. You can do a treadmill, elliptical, or as I often do at home: jumping jacks and running in place (no, seriously). Also, listen to your favorite, upbeat music. Benefits: * exercise is generally good for the frontal cortex, what helps you focus and get things done [1] * exercising in the morning will put you in a more positive mood, helping to reduce stress; by reducing stress, you feel more energetic, you feel less hungry and crave less crappy food, therefore you prevent the systematic downward spiral that comes with it and you lose weight. * because you exercise in the morning, you burn more fat [2] * adding music is great for your dopamine levels: [3] * intensity (anaerobic exercise) is more important than duration and frequency [4] I ran into this routine because I always have a hard time waking up in the morning (not so much anymore) and was always late to work. But knowing from previous experience that working out intensely in the morning helped with my energy level and focus, I did 10-15 minutes and found that it's all that I needed. In a bit over a month I've lost like 9lbs, I eat better, get less tired at work and can focus for longer periods of…

I was under the impression this wasn’t really believed anymore. The only discussion I can find for it is here though: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/27/the-myth-of-the-kom…

There is also a window of time between when a tick attaches and when it can transmit disease. The ticks don't transmit disease until they have spent some time feeding so if you catch the tick within the first 24hrs or so you should be fine. EDIT: Fixed some incorrect information after I did some more reading on the specifics. Here's a full break down of it: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/what-to-do-after-a-tick-bite-to-prev… And here's the process of a tick attaching: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/30/heres-what-happens-…

The lignin/rot delayed evolution hypothesis is just wrong. There were molds that could digest lignin in that period. Furthermore, most of the plant mass didn't depend on lignin. See http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/06/getting-to-the-root…

Here is a source: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-people-are…

The false conviction rate is estimated to be >4%. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-people-are…

How about a crackdown on misuse of (new and old) antibiotics in places like the USA? http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/14/you-cant-buy-antibi… This is not a discussion of Indian or Chinese laws on "intellectual" "property".

Turns out the idea of Komodo dragons having extra bacteria in their mouths is a myth. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/27/the-myth-of-the-kom…

> Given our experience with actual simulators, the fact is that simulating a world populated with intelligent beings capable of simulating another world, going into a recursive loop, requires infinite processing capacity. This reminds me of old-timers talking about "You'll never use 640 kB of RAM!" It is rather odd when thinking about "infinity" though, but there are a couple things that I would note: 1) It's hard not to accept the concept of infinity. It's used quite a bit. 2) In order for one infinity to exist, all infinities must exist. 3) http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/24/when-hubble-stared-… Those are galaxies...in a tiny patch of "empty space". Space is big. Really big...

If you're talking about when all the coal was buried, that was about 350 million years ago in the Carboniferous Period (so named because that's when the plant matter that became our coal was laid down). And yeah, it does appear the Sun was about 2-3% less intense, corresponding to roughly 2-3 degrees Celsius in the case of a blackbody at equilibrium in space. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/01/sun-graph.jpg

No nukes were fired. Only by some divine Providence. Or this guy: Vasili Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-… You (and Almost Everyone You Know) Owe Your Life to This Man. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/25/you-and-almost-ever…

Don't forget about the dog that decided to become cancer: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/18/contagious-dog-canc…

> There is no vaccine for Guinea worm, because the parasite induces no immune response. So, eradicating it might lead to the loss of some knowledge, on how it doesn't trigger some immune response. Specially because if you pull the worm, it retracts and causes infection, so the mechanism might not be that simple. Even more: few years ago (2013) [1], it was expected that soon it would have been eliminated, because dogs had their own species of guinea worm and wouldn't substitute human beings as the necessarily step in the worm life cycle. [1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/24/the-guinea-worm

Another reason this will accomplish more in comparison to Arecibo is that the National Science Foundation just ordered the environmental survey of how a full shutdown will affect the local environment. It is believed in the astronomical community that the NSF wants to defund Arecibo and is just starting the process. [1] [2] [1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/04/uncertain-future-fo… [2] I've spent the last year about 20km from Arecibo and go to meetups and bars that some of the staff and scientists go to in order to talk shop.

There's evidence on experiments with mice that they inherit their parent's fears epigenetically. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/15/mice-inherit-the-fe…

Did they not find the source of the signal last year? http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/10/rogue-microwave-ove…

Then I have another one for you: When mating, the male spider Nephilengys malabarensis snaps off his penis and leaves it inside the female. That way he can fend off other males and also is better able to defend himself against the female that tries to eat him: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/12/male-spider-castrat… Nature is absolutely fascinating (and makes me happy I'm a human).

Does anyone know what is being displayed in the background of the picture of Seaborg in the article? See [1]. It looks like variations of the periodic table but arranged along something other than atomic weight. I suppose if they were still discovering/creating elements, they would align their table differently than one where there have been no changes in years. [1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/11/GettyImages-5086…

Anybody know if there's any progress with ADEP4? http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/13/killing-sleeper-cel…

There has been a backlash against attempts at replication in psychology: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/.../failed.../ http://andrewgelman.com/2013/12/17/replication-backlash/ and even a backlash to the backlash: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/.../failed.../

Hm, I don't think there is such a moment. From the moment we acquire some sort of consciousness and sleep becomes a requirement for the body and mind to work properly, you at least some sort of experience. Newborns can't see properly, they see only shadows and perceive mainly by sound and contact. But even them, have nightmares or good dreams :-) A better question might be: "What kind of dreams does a human blind from birth dream?" Nature Magazine featured an article on the topic[1]. [1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-blind-dream…

You seem to be asking whether epigenetic traits are inheritable. It will take a while for the scientific community to fully accept this since it smells of Lamarckism, but if we do not accept transgenerational epigenetic transmission it gets really hard to explain things like this: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/01/mice-inherit-specif…