For example, roundworms, such as earthworms, have developed hemoglobin to help them carry oxygen around their bodies. It’s just floating in their blood: they haven’t developed blood cells. But it’s there. Six hundred million years separate us, but we have hemoglobin, too, slightly different but recognizably a related molecule doing the same job, with random changes in the non-functional parts. Isn’t knowledge wonderful?

You can read more about roundworms here. Or you can read about out last common ancestor (European Molecular Biology Laboratory (2010, February 1). Last ancestor humans shared with worms had sophisticated brain, microRNAs show. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 21, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/02/100201101905.htm).

However, science has been marching on, and the province now offers free vaccines against chickenpox, meningitis, whooping cough, rotavirus, invasive pneumococcal disease, hepatitis B, and human papilloma virus for girls. Yet none of these health benefits are not included in the list of vaccinations needed for school. The city’s medical office of health is asking for an evaluation and recommendations based on facts about disease prevention and dangers.

Is it time for Toronto to provide the push that protects children against those diseases? Any of them can be fatal. I say that they should at least be considered and at least some of them added to the mandatory list.

Skeleton of Floreana island tortoise

The Galapagos Islands are a group famous for having different species on each island due to evolutionary processes, including several species of Galapagos tortoise. Four of the fifteen (or ten or eleven) known species (or subspecies) have gone extinct.

The  species native to the island of Floreana was believed to be extinct for 160 years, since the early 1840s. Now, scientists have found evidence that a remnant population may have survived in an isolated part of the larger island of Isabela. The tortoise native to Floreana was Chelonoidis elophantopus,* recognized by the saddleback shape of its shell. The tortoise of Isabela is Chelonoidis becki, with a dome-shaped shell.

Three years ago, a team from Yale University found tortoises around the Wolf Volcano on Isabela that appeared to be hybrids, giving them the hope that they could breed back to a tortoise that looked like the extinct species (Extinct tortoise ‘could live again’). However, further exploration has turned up more than eighty that seem to have a C. elophantopus as one of their parents—and some of them are only fifteen years old. That suggests that a few purebred elophantopus tortoises survive. The scientists’ calculations suggest that there are about 38 of them, including both males and females. See “‘Extinct’ Galapagos tortoise may still exist.”

The tortoises may have been moved by whaling ships that picked up the tortoises on Floreana, then stopped at the north end of Isabela and lost a few tortoises in their stopover. It’s hard to see the tortoises in the brush growing over the rugged and arid country. The group took samples of 1,600 tortoises to find their 84 hybrids–half of one percent of the population. They will now discuss with the government whether to keep on surveying and whether they can set up a breeding program to recreate the tortoise of Floreana.

What’s the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? Ha! What I grew up calling a “turtle” is more properly called a “terrapin.” And Galapagos is spelled “Galápagos.”

*Now renamed Chelonoidis nigra nigra

Christopher Hitchens in Central Park

Remembering Christopher Hitchens, who died of complications from esophageal cancer:

• The New Yorker. “Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011″ by Christopher Buckley.
  When we made a date for a meal over the phone, he’d say, “It will be a feast of reason and a flow of soul.” I never doubted that this rococo phraseology was an original coinage, until I chanced on it, one day, in the pages of P. G. Wodehouse, the writer Christopher perhaps esteemed above all others. Wodehouse was the Master. When we met for another lunch, one that lasted only five hours, he was all a-grin with pride as he handed me a newly minted paperback reissue of Wodehouse with “Introduction by Christopher Hitchens.” “Doesn’t get much better than that,” he said, and who could not agree?
  …Christopher’s inner circle, Martin [Amis], Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, Julian Barnes, comprise more or less the greatest writers in the English language. That’s some posse.
• Salon.com. “Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths,” by Glenn Greenwald.
  Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker‘s John Cook, who — in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary – detailed Hitchens’ vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected (he denounced the Dixie Chicks as being “sluts” and “fucking fat slags” for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief). As Cook put it: “it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong”; indeed: “People make mistakes. What’s horrible about Hitchens’ ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.” …Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens’ glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life. …There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America’s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill “mistake” — hey, we all make them, so we shouldn’t hold it against Hitch – rather than what it is: the generation’s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud.
  The blood on his hands — and on the hands of those who played an even greater, more direct role in all of this totally unjustified killing of innocents — is supposed to be ignored because he was an accomplished member in good standing of our media and political class. It’s a way the political and media class protects and celebrates itself: our elite members are to be heralded and their victims forgotten.

V-ATPase proton pump and evolutionary pathway

A proton pump is a ring of proteins embedded in a cell wall, which moves molecules, atoms, or ions through the wall in a preferred direction. Research into the V-ATPase proton pump in eukaryotes has a ring of  six linked protein molecules in the membrane wall and a ring of eight inside the cell. As its name implies, it moves hydrogen ions (protons), through the cell wall. Research into its history shows that greater complexity can evolve without a change in function. The “V” indicates a plant vacuolar pump. They are found not in the external cell wall but in the walls of vacuoles, or liquid-filled spaces, within the cell.

…the complexity of an essential molecular machine—the hexameric transmembrane ring of the eukaryotic V-ATPase proton pump—increased hundreds of millions of years ago. We show that the ring of Fungi, which is composed of three paralogous proteins, evolved from a more ancient two-paralogue complex because of a gene duplication that was followed by loss in each daughter copy of specific interfaces by which it interacts with other ring proteins. These losses were complementary, so both copies became obligate components with restricted spatial roles in the complex. Reintroducing a single historical mutation from each paralogue lineage into the resurrected ancestral proteins is sufficient to recapitulate their asymmetric degeneration and trigger the requirement for the more elaborate three-component ring. Our experiments show that increased complexity in an essential molecular machine evolved because of simple, high-probability evolutionary processes, without the apparent evolution of novel functions. They point to a plausible mechanism for the evolution of complexity in other multi-paralogue protein complexes.

“Evolution of increased complexity in a molecular machine,” Gregory C. Finnigan, Victor Hanson-Smith, Tom H. Stevens & Joseph W. Thornton. Nature (2012). doi:10.1038/nature10724.

I won’t be able to give a detailed explanation until the description comes out from behind a paywall. There’s an explanation at Nature blog and one at  Kurzweil.

Look here for a diagram of V-ATPase. This diagram shows the ancestral molecule, in green, and its more specialized descendents, which need their increased complexity to properly assemble and function. The ancestor is on the left.

Evolution of V-ATPase protein chains

Furthermore, same-sex marriages are no worse for children than mixed-sex marriages. From the paper by the American Academy of Pediatrics comes a virtual roll call of America’s psychiatric associations endorsing gay adoption, gay civil unions, and gay marriage:

• A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual. —American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, 2002
• Children who are born to or adopted by 1 member of a same-sex couple deserve the security of 2 legally recognized parents. —American Academy of Pediatrics, 2002
• The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) “encourages the adoption of laws that recognize inheritance, insurance, same-sex marriage, child custody, property, and other relationship rights for lesbians, gay, and bisexual people. NASW supports the adoption of local, state, federal and international policies/legislation that protect the rights and well-being of the children of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.” (2005)
• The American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates overwhelmingly endorsed a policy that calls on the AMA to “support legislation and other efforts to allow adoption of a child by the same-sex partner or an opposite-sex non-married partner who functions as a second parent or co-parent to that child.” (2005)
• The American Psychological Association (APA) adopted resolutions stating that “the APA believes that it is unfair and discriminatory to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage and to all its attendant benefits, rights, and privileges … and shall take a leadership role in opposing all discrimination in legal benefits, rights, and privileges against same-sex couples.” (2005)
• The American Academy of Family Physicians’ Congress of Delegates agreed to “establish policy and be supportive of legislation which promotes a safe and nurturing environment, including psychological and legal security, for all children, including those of adoptive parents, regardless of the parents’ sexual orientation.” (2006)
• The American Psychoanalytic Association position states, “Accumulated evidence suggests the best interest of the child requires attachment to committed, nurturing and competent parents. Evaluation of an individual or couple for these parental qualities should be determined without prejudice regarding sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian individuals and couples are capable of meeting the best interest of the child and should be afforded the same rights and should accept the same responsibilities as heterosexual parents.” (2006)
• There is no evidence to suggest or support that parents with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual orientation are per se different from or deficient in parenting skills, child-centered concerns and parent-child attachments, when compared with parents with a heterosexual orientation. It has long been established that a homosexual orientation is not related to psychopathology, and there is no basis on which to assume that a parental homosexual orientation will increase likelihood of or induce a homosexual orientation in the child. Outcome studies of children raised by parents with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, when compared with heterosexual parents, show no greater degree of instability in the parental relationship or developmental dysfunction in children. The AACAP opposes any discrimination based on sexual orientation against individuals in regard to their rights as custodial or adoptive parents.” —American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP)

A record number of more than 3,500 cases were reported last year, more than double the 2010 total. Four babies have died from the infection in as many years and the Health Department is urging parents to be prepared for more cases.

The department’s Paul Armstrong says whooping cough in the community seems to be rising. “In 2011 we had the highest number of cases reported to us of whooping cough, we know that whooping cough epidemics happen every three to four years, and we’re well overdue in WA for a whooping cough epidemic,” Mr Armstrong said.

Health Minister Kim Hames says parents must take responsibility for the vaccination of their children. “Whatever you hear of the risks of vaccination – of a whole range of different things – are totally outweighed by the risk of the disease itself,” he said. “Measles kills, whooping cough kills. All of those diseases that you can now get a vaccination to stop, can kill children.

Brain, showing hypothalamus from "Gray's Anatomy"

(from Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s the article: “Could obesity change the brain?” Inflammation is seen after one high-fat meal. It does down after a week or so, but then a month later it comes back and persists for many months—a long time in the two-year life span of a mouse. Does it change the mice’s appetites? I’m not sure. Michael Schwartz, a professor and director of the Diabetes and Obesity Center of Excellence at the University of Washington, says “This might reflect fundamental biological changes in how the brain works that help explain why it’s so hard to keep weight off.” The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (J Clin Invest. 2012;122(1):153–162. doi:10.1172/JCI59660).

It’s also possible that obesity, a longer-term exposure to fat in the bloodstream, causes persistent inflammation, as found in earlier studies of obese lab animals. Exactly what does this mean? The researchers are now looking at NMRI scans of obese humans and finding have inflammation of the hypothalamus.

Inflammation in the human hypothalamus: A, normal weight; B, obese.

(from JCI article)

It’s suggestive that some of the best diets reduce the amount of fat eaten and gradually reduce the craving for fats.

Further research is definitely needed into diet, brain reactions, and appetite.

Piles of pale, hairy crabs

The food base for all vents are chemoautotrophic bacteria–meaning they can extract energy from the chemicals in their superheated water. Many of them oxydize molecules of hydrogen sulphide. Because of the pressure, the water can’t boil and is as hot as 380° C or 720° F. These vents are called “black smokers” because precipitating minerals darken the water as it cools.

The crabs are a new species, but not quite unique–other species of hairy crabs have been found at vents in warmer oceans.

An unidentified pale octopus

These deep-sea vents are explored only by remotely operated [submarine] vehicles (ROVs) with lights, video cameras, and sampling arms. The white octopus seemed to be attracted to their light and might not be a vent creature.

• “Yeti crabs and ghost octopus! Unique life around first Antarctic hydrothermal vents” by Stephanie Pappas
• “Hairy crabs and pale octopuses“
• “Antarctic seafloor geyser found“
• PLoS Biology research paper: “The Discovery of New Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Communities in the Southern Ocean and Implications for Biogeography“

UPDATE: “There’s a crab in a vent in a hole in the bottom of the sea!”

Endurance sports are increasing in popularity and athletes at all levels are looking for ways to optimize their performance by training and nutrition. For endurance exercise lasting 30 min or more, the most likely contributors to fatigue are dehydration and carbohydrate depletion, whereas gastrointestinal problems, hyperthermia, and hyponatraemia can reduce endurance exercise performance and are potentially health threatening, especially in longer events (>4 h). Although high muscle glycogen concentrations at the start may be beneficial for endurance exercise, this does not necessarily have to be achieved by the traditional supercompensation protocol. An individualized nutritional strategy can be developed that aims to deliver carbohydrate to the working muscle at a rate that is dependent on the absolute exercise intensity as well as the duration of the event. Endurance athletes should attempt to minimize dehydration and limit body mass losses through sweating to 2-3% of body mass. Gastrointestinal problems occur frequently, especially in long-distance races. Problems seem to be highly individual and perhaps genetically determined but may also be related to the intake of highly concentrated carbohydrate solutions, hyperosmotic drinks, as well as the intake of fibre, fat, and protein. Hyponatraemia has occasionally been reported, especially among slower competitors with very high intakes of water or other low sodium drinks. Here I provide a comprehensive overview of recent research findings and suggest several new guidelines for the endurance athlete on the basis of this. These guidelines are more detailed and allow a more individualized approach.

PMID: 21916794 [PubMed - in process]

Cosmology from the Big Bang onwards

I must find the source of this picture! It was published recently and shows the expansion of the universe though various stages.