Drinking blood makes vampire spider sexier [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
In East Africa lives a species of spider that drinks mammalian blood. But fear not - Evarcha culicivora is an indirect vampire - it sates its thirst by preying on female mosquitoes that have previously fed on blood themselves.
Even though its habitat is full of non-biting midges called "lake flies", it can tell the difference between these insects and the blood-carrying mozzies it carries. Robert Jackson from the University of Canterbury discovered this behaviour a few years ago and one of his colleagues, Fiona Cross, has now found that the blood isn't just a meal for the spiders, it's an aphrodisiac too.
Photo of E.culicivora eating a mosquito, by R. Jackson.
Cross made spiders choose between two adults of the opposite sex, by wafting their smells down a tube on different days and seeing which drew the choosy spider's attention for the longest time. The contenders had been fed on one of four diets: blood-fed female mosquitoes, sugar-fed female mosquitoes, male mosquitoes, or lake flies.
She found that only a menu of blood-fed mosquitoes made spiders more attractive to the opposite sex, and both males and females shared this turn-on. If spiders were switched from a diet of lake flies to one of bloody mosquitoes, their scents became more attractive. Even a single meal of blood makes the spiders smell more attractive. Likewise, fasting, or moving from mozzies to lake flies even for just a day, curtails the sex appeal of an individual's odour.
So for E.culicivora to maintain its sensuous scent, it needs to continuously feed on blood. In this way, spiders that smell of blood are probably those that are best at catching mosquitoes, and potential partners may be using the odours as a way of sussing out the quality of their mates. Of course, that's just a hypothesis. Next, Cross plans to see if spiders on a blood diet actually mate more often, or produce more viable eggs and sperm.
The other alternative is that spiders are using the smell of blood to lure in potential mates, by tricking them into thinking that prey is near. But Cross thinks this is unlikely - spiders were only drawn to the smell of blood if it was given off by individuals of the opposite sex.
The importance of smell might come as a surprise, especially since E.culicivora is a jumping spider, a group that's better known for their keen eyesight. But when it comes to mating, previous studies show that smell plays an equally important role in identifying a partner. If the smell was simply making them hungry, the gender of its source wouldn't matter.
Perhaps the actual chemical lure is produced after blood is processed in the spider's body. Perhaps it's a combination of blood and a sex-specific chemical that piques a partner's interest. The only real way to find out is to work out the precise chemicals that E.culicivora finds so appealing, and that's next on Cross's to-do list.
In the mean time, there are probably many other examples in nature of animals to rely on the same smells in courtship rituals as in other aspects of their lives. For examples, noctuid moths use sex pheromones that mimic smelly chemicals given off by plants, the same chemicals that they track to find somewhere to lay their eggs. And the European starling adds aromatic plants into its nest to attract females.
Reference: PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.0904125106
More on spiders:
- Bagheera kiplingi - the mostly vegetarian spider
- Spider mimics ant to eat spiders and avoid being eaten by spiders
- Spiders gather in groups to impersonate ants
- Traumatic insemination - male spider pierces female's underside with needle-sharp penis
- Singaporean spiders spit venomous glue, work together, eat each other
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When critics disagree with me, I’m a Pharma Shill. When critics disagree with a woman, it gets sexual. [Terra Sigillata]
Case in point:
A few days ago, I sang the praises of last week's article in Wired magazine by Amy Wallace on pediatric infectious disease and immunology specialist, Dr Paul Offit, and the anti-vaccination movement in the US.
Wallace's article has been widely heralded by the scientific community but has evoked the wrath of several anti-vaccination groups and individual followers.
When the target is a man, their motives are questioned and their intellect maligned. But when the target is a woman, guess what happens? Here is a compiled thread from a series of tweets yesterday from Amy Wallace (@msamywallace)
I've been called stupid, greedy, a whore, a prostitute, and a "fking lib." I've been called the author of "heinous tripe."
J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine group that actress Jenny McCarthy helps promote, sent an essay title" "Paul Offit Rapes (intellectually) Amy Wallace and Wired Magazine." In it, he implied that Offit had slipped me a date rape drug. "The roofie cocktails at Paul Offit's house must be damn good," he wrote. Later, he sent a revised version that omitted rape and replaced it with the image of me drinking Offit's Kool-aid. That one was later posted at the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism. You can read that blog here
I've been told I'll think differently "if you live to grow up." I've been warned that "this article will haunt you for a long time." Just now, I got an email so sexually explicit that I can't paraphrase it here. Except to say it contained the c-word and a reference to dead fish.
Amy Wallace is a seasoned journalist with over 25 years of experience writing professionally for such publications as The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Condé Nast. She has covered the highly-contentious and often backstabbing culture of the entertainment industry, topics as polarizing as the death penalty, and charged profiles such as that of an emotionally-terrorized woman who murdered her husband. Yet, she notes that she has never before "experienced such an avalanche of letters and emails."
Well, Ms. Wallace, you have committed the sin of 1) being a female professional and 2) questioning a vocal and vitriolic pseudoscience demographic.
And like every other woman science blogger I know, without exception, you are now the target of the type of electronic criticism of the lowest common denominator.
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Graduate Student Shoots Himself in Professor’s Office [On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess]
About 20 minutes ago I was sitting in my office, having a discussion with our local undergraduate and graduate program advisor. She was probing me to see if I would be willing to accept new students into the laboratory. As we chatted, I glanced at my email and saw a link to this from MRU's administration:
ASU Graduate Student Shoots Himself in Professor's Office
I'm left pretty speechless.
I had a conversation with a mentor of mine last night over dinner where I shared with him that I feel like I have not yet figured out how to manage the laboratory "right." I seem completely unable to find the balance between giving people so much freedom that they don't have enough guidance to succeed and being so in their business that they feel micromanaged and overwhelmed. I hope to someday be the kind of person who inspires people to succeed independently -- to be like the people who inspired me.
Graduate school is hard. I think that graduate school should be hard, and I learned so many lessons because I had to struggle with things. Probably the most important lesson I learned as a student was to solve my own problems. I want my students to struggle with things and to learn to be self-sufficient. But I think this stuns me because it reminds me that I am learning these people management lessons potentially at the expense of others.
How will I know when my students feel hopeless, versus knowing that they are dealing with a healthy amount of discomfort?
I've got no answers right now and I'm not even sure that I am completely mentally processing this. All I can do, I suppose, is to keep all of the parties involved in my prayers and remember to tell the people in the lab tomorrow that I am proud of them.
How humans started a bacterial pandemic in chickens [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
The prospect of infections spreading from animals to humans has become all too real with the onset of the current swine flu pandemic, and the threat of a bird flu still looming. But infections can jump the other way too. Decades before the world's media were gripped with panic over bird flu, humans transferred a disease to chickens and it has since caused a poultry pandemic right under our noses.
The infection in question is a familiar one - Staphylococcus aureus, a common human bacterium that's behind everything from mild skin infections to life-threatening MRSA. It causes chicken diseases too, including septic arthritis and 'bumblefoot'. But in the 1970s, broiler chickens began developing a new type of S.aureus infection called 'bacterial chrondronecrosis with osteomyelitis' or, more simply, BCO. It's a bone infection and it's a major cause of lameness in broiler chickens.
This new disease had human origins. Bethan Lowder from the University of Edinburgh has shown that all of the bacteria behind BCO share a common ancestor, which jumped from humans to chickens in Poland, around 38 years ago. From that point on, the bacterium's travel itinerary was set. Just as air travel has facilitated the spread of swine flu among humans, a global distribution network for chickens made it easy for S.aureus to spread all over the world aboard its new feathery hosts.
Lowder traced the common ancestry of S.aureus in chickens by analysing the genes of 57 samples. Of these, 48 came from healthy and diseased chickens across eight countries and four continents, and 9 were taken from different species of wild and domesticated birds. Amazingly, she found that two-thirds of all the broiler chicken samples came from a single strain of the bacterium called ST5.
ST5 infects humans all over the world and is one of the most successful strains of S.aureus to do so. But Lowder found that all of the chicken samples were more closely related to each other than they were to any of the human bacteria from the same strain. They all shared a common ancestor - a lineage of ST5 found only in Poland. Around 38 years ago, this pioneering bacterium made the leap from humans to chickens and its descendants have spread from Poland to countries as far as the US and Japan.
Since then, the ST5 strain has adapted to its new host. It has lost many of the genes it needs to cause disease in humans but it has picked up others that allow it to better infect chickens. A complete sequence of the bacterium's genome reveals that since its human days, it has picked up five new genes from other bird sources, none of which are found in humans or other mammals. In fact, Lowder thinks that the ST5 strain may be particularly good at picking up mobile genes from other sources. That might explain why both human and chicken versions are so successful, and why the human one often picks up genes that allow it to shrug off powerful antibiotics.
It's not clear how exactly these changes benefit the bacteria, but certainly, they're much better at resisting a chicken's immune system than their human predecessors. When faced with chicken heterophils - a type of white blood cell - the poultry strains were much more likely to survive than the human equivalents.
Lowder thinks that globalisation was the key to the new pandemic. In just the last fifty years, the broiler chicken industry has shifted from one dominated by small farms to a multi-billion dollar leviathan controlled by a small number of multinationals. These companies transport a relatively few breeding lines of chickens all over the world, and the low genetic diversity of these birds makes them vulnerable to infections as opportunistic as S.aureus.
She recommends that livestock are screened regularly so that emerging diseases can be picked up, and that stocks should often be cleansed of S.aureus, to nip potential new threats in the bud. Better regulations for international transport wouldn't go amiss either - it's no surprise that Australia, a country with stringent regulations on importing livestock, has no trace of the pandemic S.aureus strain.
Reference: PNAS: 10.1073/pnas.0909285106
More on bacteria:
- Space flight turns Salmonella into super-bug
- The bacterial zoo living on your skin
- MRSA in pigs and pig farmers
- Top Ten Bacteria
- An ecosystem of one in the depths of a gold mine
- When bacteria merge - two species are turning into one
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Republican Losers Have Lower Testosterone [The Primate Diaries]
In a new understanding of the term power grab, researchers have shown that the supporters of a political candidate literally have their power taken from them after they lose an election. In a new study by Steven J. Stanton and colleagues in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, researchers asked 163 Republican and Democratic voters (57 of whom were men) to provide saliva samples both before and after the 2008 election between John McCain and Barack Obama. What the researchers determined was that Republican men showed significant reductions in testosterone after they learned that their candidate had lost the election.
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Answers to your Chaiten questions from Dr. Jonathan Castro [Eruptions]
A few weeks ago I asked you to submit questions on the 2008-present Chaiten eruption in Chile to pose to Dr. Jonathan Castro. Dr. Castro recently had a paper on the ascent rates of Chaiten rhyolite published in Nature and he kindly volunteered to answer your questions. Here are the answers to selected questions ... enjoy!
Chaiten in Chile erupting in 2009. Image by Dr. Jonathan Castro.
Dr. Jonathan Castro
Biography:
B.S. from Humboldt State University
Ph.D. from University of Oregon*
Currently a Research Geologist at CNRS-Institut for Sciences de la Terre, Oreans, France
Soon moving on to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia
* = EK Note: We can't all be perfect.
Chaiten questions
(SHIRAKAWA Akira): As of today, approximately how much magma (in volume / km3) has been erupted from Chaiten Volcano since the start of its eruption in 2008?
JC: ALTHOUGH FIRM ESTIMATES ARE NOT YET AVAILABLE BECAUSE THE PROXIMAL (CLOSE-to-the-VENT) DEPOSITS HAVE NOT BEEN THOROUGHLY MAPPED, WATT ET AL. (2009) SUGGEST THE TEPHRA ACCUMULATION TO BE AT LEAST ~0.1 KM3, ALTHOUGH LARA (2009) NOTES THAT THE TOTAL COULD BE AS HIGH AS 4 KM3. WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL THE DEPOSITS ARE MAPPED TO GET A FIRM ESTIMATE. IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THE REGION MAY RECEIVE UP TO 5 M OF RAIN PER YEAR, WHICH WILL HAVE WASHED AWAY A LOT OF MATERIAL.
Citation: Watt, S. F. L., D. M. Pyle, T. A. Mather, R. S. Martin, and N. E. Matthews (2009), Fallout and distribution of volcanic ash over Argentina following the May 2008 explosive eruption of Chaitén, Chile, J. Geophys. Res., 114, B04207, doi:10.1029/2008JB006219.
Citation: Lara, L.E. (2009) The 2008 eruption of the Chaiten volcano, Chile: a preliminary report, Andean Geology, vol. 36: 125-129.
(Lockwood DeWitt): Would seismic investigations allow volcanologists to identify magma chambers that might erupt in this manner? If seismic is impractical, are there any other techniques that might allow identification of such magma bodies?
JC: AS FAR AS I KNOW, SEISMIC STUDIES CAN TELL YOU THE APPROXIMATE POSITION OF A MAGMA BODY, BUT NOT THE COMPOSITION OR HOW IT IS GOING TO ERUPT.
(Barry Abel): The National Geographic article on the Chaiten finding is titled "Worst Volcanoes Even More Dangerous Than Feared". It implies that Dr. Castro's study means that large rhyolitic volcanoes such as Yellowstone can erupt with little warning. Until now, volcanologists have been saying that Yellowstone would give plenty of warning. Is the article ignoring the differences between calderas such as Yellowstone and mountains such as Chaiten, or are rhyolitic calderas really in danger of erupting with little warning?
JC: THE CASTRO AND DINGWELL ARTICLE DOES NOT ADDRESS THE BEHAVIOR OF BIG CALDERAS, WHICH MAY BE DIFFERENT DUE TO THE MASSIVE VOLUMES OF MATERIAL CAPABLE OF BEING PRODUCED IN CALDERA-FORMING ERUPTIONS. BUT BIG CALDERAS MAY ALSO PRODUCE MEDIUM OR SMALL SIZED ERUPTIONS, SO THAT MAKES OUR STUDY RELEVANT TO THE BEHAVIOR OF THESE SYSTEMS. THE FORMAT OF NATURE MAGAZINE PLACES STRICT LIMITS ON SPACE AND THEREFORE THE NUMBER OF IDEAS (JUST ONE) THAT CAN BE CONVEYED.
(Dr. Aldo Piombino): Certenly it could be interesting drawing some characteristic of the Chaiten lava vs. the lavas of other ryolithic domes for understanding whether Chaiten dome is the very rule or is an exception.
And what about the situation of the underlying magma chamber? Is this the product of a crustal anatexis due to a deeper basaltic magma rise or not?
JC: "RULES" ARE HARD TO DEFINE WHEN DEALING WITH VOLCANOES, AS EACH HAS ITS OWN UNIQUE HISTORY, DICTATED BY THE PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY OF THE MAGMA SYSTEM (NOT TO MENTION THE OVERLYING CRUSTAL STRUCTURE). THERE ARE STILL SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SYSTEMS, LIKE THE WAY ACTIVITY DURING ONE EPISODE MAY CHANGE WITH TIME (COMMONLY STARTING EXPLOSIVE THEN GOING EFFUSIVE). WE CAN LEARN A LOT BY "WATCHING" VOLCANOES ERUPT, BUT, IN THE CASE OF EXPLOSIVELY ERUPTING RHYOLITES, WE HAVE JUST 1 INSTANCE WHERE THIS WAS POSSIBLE. THERE'S NO EVIDENCE OF A BASALTIC INPUT OR TRIGGER TO THE ERUPTION. BUT THE CRYSTALS WE STUDIED SHOW SOME EVIDENCE THAT THEY WERE CHEMICALLY AND/OR THERMALLY PERTURBED BEFORE THE ERUPTION.
THE ORIGIN OF RHYOLITE MAGMA REMAINS AN ACTIVE AREA OF RESEARCH. COMPETING IDEAS INCLUDE THE "ANATEXIS" (PARTIAL MELTING) MODEL YOU MENTION, AND ALSO EXTENSIVE CHEMICAL DIFFERENTIATION OF MORE PRIMITIVE MAGMAS. IN THE CASE OF CHAITEN WE DO NOT KNOW WHICH APPLIES. MAYBE ERIK CAN CHIME IN?
Erik (chiming in): The generation of rhyolite is definitely going to vary based on the specific location of the volcano - mostly controlled by the heat source/flux, the density of the overlying crust (allowing for stalling) and the previous magmatism in the area. However, even though Yellowstone and Chaiten might be very different in their setting, the overall generation of rhyolite liquid could be similar in the basic sense. I also want to mention that a third possible source for rhyolite beyond crustal melting and differentiation might be crystal cumulate reactivation (melting), which is sort of a hybrid of the two JC mentioned.
(Bruce Stout): Why is Chaiten so close to the coast (and presumably the plate margin)? Presuming there is a magma chamber at 5 km depth, how big do you expect it to be? If the magma was erupted rapidly from a depth of 5 km, how long do you think it spent at that depth before erupting? Do you suspect a deeper source that is feeding the chamber at 5 km depth? Is the magma from Chaiten high or low in volatiles? What do you think the likely scenario is for the future of Chaiten?
JC: CHAITEN IS IN A "NORMAL" POSITION WITHIN A VOLCANIC ARC, MEANING THAT IT IS LOCATED AMONGST MANY OTHER VOLCANOES THAT DEFINE THE SOUTHERN CHILE VOLCANIC ZONE. THE "TRENCH" OR PLATE BOUNDARY IS ACTUALLY QUITE FAR TO THE WEST OF CHAITEN (>200 KM). THIS SUBDUCTION ZONE ARC IS THE PRODUCT OF MELTING PROCESSES TAKING PLACE SOME 60-170 KM BENEATH THE CURRENT ARC POSITION (SEE ALSO GROVE ET AL 2009).
CITATION: T. L. Grove, C. B. Till, E. Lev, N. Chatterjee, E. Médard (2009) Kinematic variables and water transport control the formation and location of arc volcanoes, Nature 460, 1044-1044 (20 August 2009) doi:10.1038/nature08312
WE DON'T KNOW, NOR CAN WE PREDICT THE SIZE OF THE MAGMA CHAMBER UNDER CHAITEN. MAYBE A SEISMIC TOMOGRAPHY STUDY COULD ELUCIDATE THIS.
WE DON'T KNOW HOW LONG THE MAGMA SAT IN THE CHAMBER BEFORE ERUPTING. ERIK KLEMETTI IS THE "GURU" AT THIS SORT OF WORK (EK note: Well, I wouldn't say that) AND WE HAVE BEGUN DISCUSSING THIS AS A TOPIC OF FUTURE WORK. IT IS CLEAR THAT THE MAGMA WAS NOT IN A "STEADY STATE" BEFORE ERUPTING BECAUSE MANY OF THE FELDSPAR CRYSTALS APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN UNSTABLE IN THE MAGMA CHAMBER.
DEEPER SOURCE, YES IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE. OUR RESULTS GIVE A UPPER BOUND OR THE SHALLOWEST POSITION OF THE CHAMBER.
THE MAGMA AT CHAITEN IS H2O-RICH, LIKE MANY OTHER SILICIC MAGMAS IN ARCS.
RHYOLITE LAVA DOMES CAN GROW TO VERY LARGE SIZE (SEVERAL KM3). I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF THIS CURRENTLY GROWING DOME(S) CONTINUE THAT WAY FOR A LONG TIME.
(R. Fitzpatrick): What do you think is the cause of the magma moving faster? Has it gotten thicker/thinner, become more or less viscous, is it under greater pressure? Has the vent gotten larger or straighter?
Could the different rims that grow at different pressures act like blood platelets and affect the "coagulation" of the magma?
JC: WELL, WHEN A MAGMA IS RICH IN WATER, ITS VISCOSITY WILL BE REDUCED BY SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, TRANSLATING TO AN EASIER ABILITY TO FLOW. ANOTHER THING THAT FOSTERS THE RAPID FLOW IS THE LACK OF CRYSTALS IN THE MELT, WHICH WOULD INCREASE THE VISCOSITY GREATLY. IT IS INTERESTING THAT THIS ERUPTION OCCUPIED THE SAME VENT AS THE PREVIOUS ONE. MANY RHYOLITE SYSTEMS OF SIMILAR SIZE FORM CHAINS OF DOMES (LIKE AT S. SISTER VOCLANO OR THE INYO DOMES) RATHER THAN A POINT. COULD THIS HAPPEN AT CHAITEN?
(Thomas Donlon): Have any recent analysis been done on Chaiten ash / eruptive material - and if so - does this indicate any change possible for the Chaiten eruption?
JC: AS FAR AS I KNOW, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF A CHANGE IN MAGMA COMPOSITION FROM LATER ERUPTED ASH.
(Guillermo Ebensperger): In the case of Chaitén (or the rhyolite volcanoes in general, if it is the case), why, if the magma is too viscous, they are continuinally erupting for a very long time? Is because of the magma' speed or there is a relationship with the magma chamber size?
JC: MAGMA MAY ERUPT FOR A LONG TIME IF THE FORCES DRIVING THE MAGMA UP AND OUT OF THE CHAMBER (OVERPRESSURE AND BOUYANCY) PERSIST AND IF THERE IS A BIG SUPPLY OF FRESH MAGMA.
(Erik): Are there any other volcanoes/volcanic eruptions that you know of that are similar to Chaitén in its style and nature? Are there any particular systems that might not be on everyone's radar that you might be concerned about in terms of potential activity?
JC: ONE THING THAT IS CLEAR FROM THE OLDER DEPOSITS IS THAT THEY TOO STARTED OFF EXPLOSIVELY AND THEN TRANSITIONED TO LAVA DOME/FLOW ACTIVITY. CHAITEN APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN A PARTICULARLY ENERGETIC ERUPTION COMPARED TO THE OTHER MEDIUM/SMALL SIZED RHYOLITE DEPOSITS I'VE WORKED ON (MEDICINE LAKE AND NEWBERRY). FOR EXAMPLE, THE TEPHRA DEPOSITS AT CHAITEN ARE VERY FINE GRAINED (LOTS OF ASH), EVEN CLOSE TO THE VENT, WHICH MEANS THE FRAGMENTATION MECHANISM WAS VERY EFFICIENT AND LIKELY DRIVEN BY VIGOROUS DEGASSING AT THE FRAGMENTATION LEVEL. THIS EXPLOSIVE DEGASSING, IN TURN, MAY HAVE BEEN PROMOTED BY FAST MAGMA RISE (NO TIME FOR THE MAGMA TO LOSE ITS GAS UNTIL VERY SHALLOW LEVELS). AT OTHER HOLOCENE OBSIDIAN SYSTEMS, THE PROXIMAL DEPOSITS ARE MUCH COARSER, WHICH MIGHT IMPLY A LESS EFFICIENT AND ENERGETIC FRAGMENTATION MECHAMISM.
GOOD QUESTION ABOUT OTHER SYSTEMS THAT MAY BE OFF THE RADAR! I BETTER TURN MINE ON! I HAVEN'T TRAVELLED THE WORLD IN SEARCH OF ALL THE OTHER POSSIBLY ACTIVE RHYOLITE SYSTEMS, UNFORTUNATELY.
Thanks again to Dr. Castro for fielding these questions! Chaiten looks like it will keep us captivated for years to come.
Why is the swine flu vaccine so late? Who are you to ask such a question? [Neuron Culture]
In a disturbing post at ScienceInsider, Jon Cohen and Martin Enserink explain why the swine flu vaccine is running so late. Or at least they try to explain why it's so late. For while all the suppliers are running into problems, we're not allowed to know what they are.
The delays are substantial and critical. They leave us naked as the flu spreads through the country. The flu has now killed 1000 people, over 100 of them children. Even as this happens, the delivery dates keep moving back and the delivery amounts keep shrinking. As recently as a month ago, the CDC was telling us that we'd have 40 million doses by the end of this month. Last week, they were saying 30 million doses. Now they're saying 16 million doses and not making any promises beyond that.
The U.S. contracted with five companies to supply vaccine. Only one, MedImmune -- the company supplying the adjuvanted FluMist product -- has come close to its promised delivery schedule. But because we're so leery of adjuvanted product, we ordered only 12.8 million doses from MedImmune. The other four companies, meanwhile, are all running badly behind. Why? When ScienceInsider pressed Nicole Lurie, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, for answers, she essentially she couldn't say.
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Apple’s Ad-Based OS Patent Application: Not Evil. [The Questionable Authority]
A number of people (including another blogger here at ScienceBlogs) have weighed in on the recent revelation of a patent application that describes a way to integrate advertising into computer operating systems. The patent application covers both traditional personal computer operating systems and a wide range of portable devices, including mobile phones. The system proposed in the patent application incorporates methods that ensure that the users will have to pay attention to the ads, and includes an option that would lock the operating system if advertisements are not locked. The patent was applied for by Apple, and the first-listed inventor on the application is Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs.
I've read through a few of the (predictable) objections to Apple's plan. I was bemused both by the overwrought nature of some of the complaints ("evil", "burn in hell"), and by the fact that virtually all of the complaints about the possibility of an ad-based operating system appear on websites that are either directly or indirectly supported through ad sales. That aside, most of the objections seem to miss something very important - the potential that Apple's innovation has as a way of reducing the digital divide both within the USA and globally.
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The Public Option … OMG … Holy crap. From now on we’re doing it this way, no kidding… [Greg Laden's Blog]
You must watch this. You. Simply. Must. Watch. This.
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Amy Wallace in Wired on Dr Paul Offit and the Anti-Vaccination Movement: Superb, Engaging Science Journalism [Terra Sigillata]
One of the most engaging and clearly-written pieces of science journalism over the last year or so was published in Wired magazine last week. Amy Wallace's, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," is part interview with rotavirus vaccine developer, pediatric infectious disease physician, Dr Paul Offit, and description of the anti-vaccination movement in the United States.
Wallace's work is the centerpiece a collection of smaller articles providing science-based information about vaccination that also refutes common anti-vaccination myths including "How To Win An Argument About Vaccines" and "The Misinformants: Prominent Voices in the Anti-Vaccine Crusade".
Wired's follow-up discussion of the issue includes, "A Short History of Vaccine Panic," for those of us who "have a day job" and not enough time to read Paul Offit's 2008 book, "Autism's False Prophets."
I have to admit that it wasn't until I began blogging four years ago that I realized just how vocal the anti-vaccination movement was in the United States. I come from a time (just on the tail end of the Baby Boom) where I still have relatives who were afflicted with polio and other now-preventable infectious diseases. The devastation of these childhood illnesses makes the risks (yes, I agree there are some risks) of vaccination itself inconsequential.
Vaccination is a risk-benefit proposition but one where someone else's view affects us all. Lack of vaccination compromises "herd immunity" that keeps us all safe, for example, from diseases like smallpox that have been eliminated from the face of the earth. For example, I wrote most recently about a whooping cough outbreak in southwestern Colorado and prior calls in Durango for vaccination as a socially responsible act, much like cutting brush on one's property to protect a neighbor's house in a wildfire.
Others, such as my colleague, Orac, have commented on Wallace's article for its scientific and medical accuracy. However, I wanted to focus on the effectiveness of the writing as a scientific communication tool because much of the article gives the reader a concise view of issues and psychology that often take typical bloggers thousands of words to express (and still less effectively!).
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