Science Etcetera, Saturnday 20090613

Posted in Science Etcetera on June 13th, 2009

The echidna is a living evolutionary link from birds and reptiles to mammals that lays eggs but feeds its offspring with milk.

Young Echidna, Coles Bay
Credit: ausemade

A bacteria in the genus Streptomyces has been discovered that produces an antibiotic to kill competitors but without killing itself, and it does so with an enzyme that breaks carbon-carbon bonds using just oxygen in a single step, something no other enzyme is known to do.

Summertime brings outdoor and in the water sex for adventurous couples, but there are health concerns to consider before boinking on the beach.

Arden Bement Jr, director of the NSF, discusses how the agency will spend the $3 billion in stimulus funds, like clearing out the backlog of research proposals.

Discover has a beautiful gallery of pathogens worth browsing.

Streptococcus pyogenes
Credit: NAS

Despite sharing 98 percent of our genes with them, chimpanzees have a much lower incidence of cancer, leading to an hypothesis that bigger brains require producing more neurons, which requires reduced apoptosis, the programmed cell death that terminates rogue cells, which would result in higher incidence of cancer.

Endeavor’s launch today will bring the number of astronauts on the ISS to lucky 13, the most people on the platform at once in its history.

New York will begin euthanizing 2,000 geese in city parks to prevent their future interference with airplanes, as the geese did when US Airways Flight 1549 emergency-landed in the Hudson River.

Inflatable Bag Monsters

7 comments to “Science Etcetera, Saturnday 20090613”

The article about the migrating geese kind of sickens me on several levels and makes me sad for humans. I thought the geese that brought flight 1549 were migrating geese, not local geese. But let’s kill them all.

The other thing that bothers me, and yes, I am a carnivore, and would quite likely eat a goose given the opportunity, is that the euthanized geese will not be made available for human consumption. At least if they’re given to food banks like they were in the past, their death would serve a purpose. But this is just senseless killing. Let’s kill them and not feed them to people just to be PC.
by chriggy June 13th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Meant to say local geese, not migrating geese in the first sentence.
by chriggy June 13th, 2009 at 1:30 am
I agree.. it’s simple pragmatism that when killing meat, you should feed it to people who are starving. Tho it’s probably not practical to ship it to Africa :)

anyway — I didn’t know about the echidna. So that’s TWO animals that you can make a bacon omelet solely out of — the platypus, and the echidna. Use their eggs, cheese made from their milk, and bacon made from their flesh :)
by ClintJCL June 13th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
There is probably only one famous Echidna in pop culture history, but unfortunately no one ever knows he is one. That is of course Knuckles, from the sonic games.

Didn’t you know that Echidna could glide?
by DJ Nicko June 14th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Knuckles is an Echidna? I did not know that. His nose should be longer.

by ideonexus June 14th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Exactly! No one knows that.
by DJ Nicko June 15th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Who are you? Where do you stand?
by Pat Zondler June 22nd, 2009 at 4:00 pm