30Jan / 2016

Science Caturday: Nautical Naughty Cat

moveboat

Despite heavy competition, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen emerged as obnoxious billionaire of the week, amid reports that his 300-foot luxury yacht destroyed 14,000 square feet of protected coral reef near the Cayman Islands.

According to the Cayman News Service, the anchor chain of Allen’s yacht, the MV Tatoosh, caused “extensive damage” to the reef earlier this month. The incident comes just five months after Allen announced that he would provide funds for research to “stabilize and restore coral reefs” through his Seattle-based company, Vulcan.

A spokesman for Vulcan said Wednesday that the boat’s mooring position was “explicitly directed” by the local port authority and that Allen was not on board at the time. It added that Vulcan and the ship’s crew had immediately moved the ship from the affected area and were “actively and cooperatively working with local authorities to determine the details of what happened.”

Well, OK…but still, bad billionaire! Coral is precious. Fat Cats should be more careful.

Filed under: Science Caturday Tagged: Cayman Islands, Coral reefs, Paul Allen, science cat

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09Jan / 2016

Science Caturday:Buzzed Off

A report released this week by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed a link between a major class of pesticides and harm to honeybees, but only when used on certain types of crops. The report showed that pesticides known as neonicotinoids posed a significant risk to honeybees when used on cotton plants and citrus trees but not when used on other big crops like corn and tobacco.

Both the pesticide manufacturer and anti-pesticide advocates were unhappy with the report, which failed to make a clear case for either continued use of neonicotinoids or an outright ban.

Neonicotinoids, chemicals that work on insects’ central nervous systems, have been the subject of intense debate in Europe, where several countries have enacted full or partial bans on their use. Despite this, most scientific bee experts agree that neonicotinoids alone are not to blame for the problem of dwindling bee populations, although they may be a factor in some cases.

Entomologist May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois noted that the health of honeybees, agriculture’s top pollinator, is a complex puzzle that includes climate, food for bees, parasites, disease and the way different pesticides and fungicides interact. “People would like a nice simple story with a guy in a black hat as the bad guy, but it’s complicated.”

Our science kitteh, on the other hand, seems to have identified a villain. Oh, dear.

Filed under: Science Caturday, Uncategorized Tagged: bee cat, colony collapse disorder, entomology cat, neonicotinoids, science cat

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05Dec / 2015

Science Caturday: Editing Teh Hoomins

minoredits

Scientists, journalists and policy-makers gathered in Washington, DC this week for the International Summit on Human Gene Editing at the National Academies of Science. The meeting, which NAS co-hosted with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the U.K.’s Royal Society, was billed as a global discussion of “the scientific, ethical, and governance issues associated with human gene-editing research.” In particular, the summit focused on the implications of the emergence of CRISPR, a new gene-editing technique which is cheaper, more versatile and more precise than any currently in use.

This topic is a little complex for cats, so we’ll let the experts help out. Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, outlines the basics of the technique and what scientists are working on to make it even better, while Tina Saey writes in Science News about the significant safety and ethical issues and the guidelines in place for further development.

While scientists work on the fancy new stuff, cats will continue to use their traditional techniques for editing your jeans – shedding, clawing and nomming.

Filed under: Science Caturday, Uncategorized Tagged: CRISPR, gene editing, Genetics Cat, genetics kitteh, science cat

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21Nov / 2015

Science Caturday: Bigger Fish Faster? Yes, Please!

musttatste

This week, the US Food and Drug Administration approved its first genetically modified animal, the AquAdvantage salmon, as safe to eat. The FDA found that the GM salmon are “as safe to eat as any non-genetically engineered Atlantic salmon, and also as nutritious.” It will not require that stores label the salmon as genetically modified, although they may still do so.

The AquAdvantage salmon, created in 1989, is similar to the Atlantic salmon, but is modified so that it carries a growth hormone found in the Chinook salmon and a segment of DNA taken from the pout fish, which boost its growth. As a result, the AquAdvantage salmon grows much faster than normal Atlantic salmon, reaching a market-ready size in about half the time. Bigger fish faster? Our science cats give this genetic tweak two paws up.

Filed under: Science Caturday, Uncategorized Tagged: GMO fish, GMO salmon, science cat, science lolcat

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10Oct / 2015

Science Caturday: Like cats, neutrinos don’t interact with you when you want them to

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded this week to Arthur McDonald and Takaaki Kajita for their work with neutrinos.

The two were honored for their contributions to experiments demonstrating that subatomic particles called neutrinos change identities. The neutrinos transform themselves among three types: electron-type, muon-type and tau-type.

The transformation requires that neutrinos have mass, dispelling the long-held notion that they were massless. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobels, said the discovery “has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter.”

This is super impressive and, more importantly, gives us an excuse to re-run this awesome lolcat.

Filed under: Science Caturday Tagged: neurtino cat, Nobel prize cat, physcis cat, science cat, science lolcat

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03Oct / 2015

Science Caturday: Water on Mars Confirmed

Scientists this week announced the strongest evidence yet that there may be liquid water on Mars. A paper published in Nature Geoscience described observations made by researchers over the past three years that indicate that water – most likely in the form of a salty brine – appears seasonally on Mars, forming dark lines as it trickles down steep slopes. Although scientists have known for years that Mars once had water, the new evidence provides hope that one day humans may discover life on the red planet. The latest announcement was based on the study of photographs of the surface of Mars. However, we can reveal here exclusively that a super-sekrit kitteh mission led by Commander Kibbles flew up to have a look and can confirm the findings. Yes, there is water, and yes, it is yucky.

Filed under: Science Caturday Tagged: mars cat, science cat, science lolcat, Space Cat, water on mars

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29Aug / 2015

Science Caturday: Let’s Try That Again

This week, psychologist Brian Nosek and his colleagues from the Center for Open Science released the results of four years of work on a unique project. Since 2011, he and 270 other scientists in The Reproducibility Project have been attempting to replicate 100 previously published psychology studies. The results, published this week in Science, were worse than expected – just 36% of the replicated studies produced as strong a result as the original research.

That sounds pretty bad! But this article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic goes systematically through the issues around study design, publication and replicability and concludes that “failed replications don’t discredit the original studies, any more than successful ones enshrine them as truth.”

Most scientists agree that more efforts like the Reproducibility Project are essential to leading scientific research toward practices that produce more robust results. Luckily, research cats are generally amenable to repeating experiments over and over again, particularly if they involve can openers or pushing objects off tables.

Filed under: Science Caturday Tagged: Center for Open Science, Cog Sci Cat, Reproducibility Project, science cat, science lolcat

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15Aug / 2015

Science Caturday: Kitteh Quake Time!

It’s almost time for football season! What has that to do with either science or cats, you ask? Bear with us. We’ll get there.

A few weeks ago, Kathryn Schulz published a widely-noticed article in The New Yorker about “The Really Big One,” that is, on the likelihood of a huge earthquake in the Pacific Northwest of the US. The piece pointed out the dense population and poor earthquake-readiness of the area around the Cascadia subduction zone, which includes the city of Seattle, Washington.

However, at least some scientists in Seattle are preparing for earthquakes, and they’re using their local NFL fans to help them do it. The Seattle Seahawks’ fans are famously rowdy and noisy. After Marshawn Lynch’s “Beast Quake” touchdown in the 2011 NFL playoffs, the crowd’s roars not only shook the Seattle stadium, but also the surrounding ground.

We know this because scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle had placed a sensor just across the street from the stadium. Seismologist John Vidale noticed a clear signal post-touchdown. Vidale realized that the energy of 70,000 fans jumping around for a minute could come close to the energy released by a small earthquake and that athletic events might be a good venue for testing seismic instruments. Football games have the added benefit of being scheduled in advance, unlike earthquakes.

Vidale and his colleagues installed three portable sensors inside the Seahawks’ stadium just before the January 2015 NFL playoff games in Seattle. Somewhat surprisingly, the strongest signal didn’t show up during a game-changing play, but during the halftime show, as the crowd jumped and danced with the music. In addition to testing sensors, the researchers were able to develop software, called QuickShake, to display the seismic recordings on the scoreboard with a delay of just a few seconds. All of this work will help them better measure and analyze seismic activity, and potentially assist in improving building design and earthquake preparedness.

You can learn more about the scientists’ work with the Seahawks here. So that’s the science. Where, you ask, are the cats?

Told you we’d get there.

Filed under: Science Caturday Tagged: earthquake cat, Marshawn Lynch, science cat, science lolcat, Seattle Seahawks

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08Aug / 2015

Science Caturday: Playing Hard to Pet

Why do cats always head straight for that one person who hates or fears them, while avoiding the person who desperately wants to cuddle? According to this article in Slate, the answer is actually slightly more complex than “because fuck you.”

According to Diane Meriwether, “all aggression in the feline world starts with staring,” and people who love cats will tend to look straight at a kitty, while those who don’t will avoid catching the cat’s eye. Furthermore, “When humans don’t like cats, they try not to pet them. If the cat comes over, the person might instinctively pet it once, then he withdraws his hand and hopes the cat will go away. Of course, playing hard-to-get with a cat is one of the best ways to make friends.”

So basically, cats love it when you act like a jerk at a bar, giving them a tiny bit of attention while pretending you’re not really interested, and then backing off. Sigh. If you really can’t bring yourself to act like this, you can always try filling your pockets with catnip.

Filed under: Science Caturday Tagged: cat behavior, science cat, science lolcat

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01Aug / 2015

Science Caturday: That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

A researcher at a British museum recently discovered perfectly preserved kitteh paw prints on a roof tile dating from Roman times. An archaeologist at Gloucester City Museum who was examining thousands of fragments of Roman roof tile came across the uniquely-marked fragment, which was excavated in Gloucester in 1969. Archaeologists believe a cat walked across some wet tiles which were drying in the sun in about AD 100.

Lise Noakes of Gloucester City Council noted that “dog paw prints, people’s boot prints and even a piglet’s trotter print have all been found on tiles from Roman Gloucester, but cat prints are very rare.” Most cats, of course, prefer to keep their paws clean and dry. But now that they know their prints are rare and valuable, some enterprising kittehs are sure to jump into the field of custom paint and cement work.