Biology In Science Fiction

Astronomy Science Fiction: Now with Biology!

2009-06-12T06:33:00.001-07:00

When the subject of science in science fiction comes up, it seems like many people immediately think of physics and astronomy and, of course, astrophysics. That's not particularly surprising - from its early beginnings SF has featured exploration of other planets, stars and the vast spaces between them.

The short story anthology Diamonds in the Sky is an excellent continuation of that tradition. Edited by science fiction writer and astronomer Mike Brotherton, and funded in part by the National Science Foundation, each story in the anthology features a particular aspect of astronomy and includes an afterword about the science. And, being biased towards my own science background, it's nifty that several of the stories have some biology in them too.

So here are links to those stories, with a wee bit about their relevance to bioscience.

The Moon is a Harsh Pig by Gerald M. Weinberg
Astronomy topics: Phases of the Moon, Misconceptions about Astronomy
Biology topic: Effect of the moon on behavior.
Additional reading: Pull of the Moon: Tales of the Moon's effects on animal behaviour are not just moonshine"

Jaiden's Weaver by Mary Robinette Kowal
Astronomy topic: Planetary Rings
Biology topic: life on a ringed planet

Squish by Daniel M. Hoyt
Astronomy topic: The Solar System
Biology topic: Uploading consciousness into new bodies.
Additional reading: my old post on Charlie Stross's short story "Lobsters" (which also has a bit of astronomy)

Approaching Perimelasma by Geoffrey A. Landis
Astronomy topic: Black Holes
Biology topic: Effect of black holes on the body
Additional information: Neil DeGrasse Tyson on "Death by Black Hole" (YouTube)

To read all the stories, download the Diamonds in the Sky anthology.

Image from Alexander Jamieson: 'A Celestial Atlas Comprising a Systematic Display of the Heavens in a Series of Thirty Maps' (via BibliOdyssey)

Genetics of Heroes

2009-06-09T07:44:00.001-07:00

Before I start my rant, I'd like to note that I enjoy watching Heroes. I'm a sucker for stories with seemingly ordinary-joe protagonists who have to both come to terms with their new abilities and are unexpectedly sucked into adventure and intrigue. I also think there should be more TV shows that feature sexy and intelligent geneticists. What annoys me about the show is the human genetics/evolution wrapper to the story.

First a bit of background. Chandra Suresh is arguably one of the most important characters in the series, even though he dies before the first episode. As a genetics professor in India, he studied people with extraordinary abilities and came up with a "crazy idea" to explain their origin. He published his hypothesis in a book called Activating Evolution. His obsession cost him his professorship, but he chose to move to New York and work as a cab driver to continue his research. He is killed as he is driving his taxi, and his son Mohinder, who also happens to be a geneticist, takes over his father's work. The first tie-in graphic novel, Monsters (pdf), tells the Suresh family's story.

When Mohinder comes to New York, he discovers his father had assembled a map showing where all the people with superpowers ("extraordinaries") live. The episode before last he explained to an FBI agent how it was assembled: the map shows individuals his father discovered have a "shared genetic marker" and they were "mapped and tracked by the human genome project". In the last episode, Mohinder gives a similar explanation to Nathan Petrelli: the people with special powers all "carry the same gene marker".

That's when I started shaking my fist at the screen (metaphorically) and exclaiming that the plot device makes no sense to me. Let me explain why.

1. All of the "extraordinaries" carry the same genetic marker with a different DNA sequence.
When the creators were asked about the "genetic marker", they confirmed that all of the people with superpowers carry a single unique stretch of DNA.

The show has mentioned a "genetic marker" several times. Is this something found in a person's DNA, is it a formula that takes into account other factors, or something else entirely?

As far as we know right now, there is an arrangement of start and stop codons that our people have that indicates their potential for having an ability. And so far everyone on the list seems to have that marker. But that may be just one piece of the puzzle.

First off, we need to figure out what is meant by a "genetic marker". In the simplest terms, a genetic marker is a segment of DNA whose inheritance can be tracked. Based on the what the creators have said, the superhero marker is a gene that encodes a protein, since it has a "start codon", which is a sequence of three bases that tells the protein-making machinery in the cell where code for the protein sequence begins, and a "stop codon" which tells the machinery where the code for the protein ends.

What we don't know is whether the gene is unique to the "extraodinaries" or if it's a variant of a gene even "normals" carry. However, in the last episode, Mohinder explains that Pete Petrelli can take on other's powers by "resequencing" of his DNA . So there is a common genetic marker, but the exact DNA sequence varies from individual to individual, and that DNA sequence is what gives our heroes supernatural powers. That suggests to me that the genetic marker is actually a new human gene, with a variety of alleles. The addition of new genes is a process termed horizontal gene transfer, and can be caused, for example, by the incorportation of genetic material from bacteria or viruses into humans (technical article: Belshaw et al. 2004) or by genetic engineering. I assume the series will eventually explain how this genetic marker appeared in unrelated people all over the world.

So what's my problem? I can suspend disbelief and accept that there is a gene that allows characters to defy the a law of physics - that's the premise of the story, after all. But it's harder to believe that there is a gene that gives people the ability to defy the laws of nature in different ways - one person can time travel, another can fly, another can heal any wound, and yet another can read minds. Young Micah appears to have inherited the gene, but his skill (controlling electronics) has nothing to do with the powers of his mother (split personality with superhuman strength) or his father (ability to pass through solid objects). If there is going to be a "scientific" explanation, why can't there be some logic to it?

2. The people who carry the genetic marker were found using the Human Genome Project.

When Mohinder claimed the Human Genome Project (HGP) was used to "map and track" the individuals carrying the unique "genetic marker", I think I actually cried out WTF!. The creators of the show apparently think everyone's DNA is freely available for analysis:

And when will we find out what factors are entered into the program that will generate a list like that? Did Mohinder's father have access to a huge DNA database?
Human Genome project. Genetic Migration databases. W.H.O. access points. These are all public databases for researches working in genetics.

Perhaps Heroes takes place in an alternative universe where the HGP actually has the genomic DNA sequence of every person in the world , but in the universe we live in that isn't even close to reality. The sequences released by the HGP are actually a composite of 24 different individuals, so analyzing that data alone wouldn't help you locate a genetic marker that is found in only a small number of people. Of course Chandra Suresh could have used data from the HGP as a starting point to map the superpower gene, but he would have had to collect samples and sequence the DNA from "extraordinaries" himself. Perhaps a maverick geneticist who is apparently a pariah at his university for his unorthodox scientific views would be able to convince strangers from all over the world that he should analyze their DNA, but I find it extremely unlikely.

OK, even if I buy the premise that a unique genetic marker that confers a variety of superpowers suddenly appears in people all over the world, and is discovered by a lone geneticist, it still leaves leaves the aspect of the Heroes "science" backstory that irritates me the most:

3. The superpower genetic marker has something to do with evolution.
This comment by producer/director Greg Beeman illustrates exactly what is wrong with Heroes' take on evolution:

What is your favorite part of the Heroes concept?

The exploration of human beings evolving 'of humanity going to the next level of evolution and the 'how, why, why now' questions that stirs up.

OK, here's the problem: there are no "levels" of evolution. Evolution has no direction. It's no wonder that Chandra Suresh's colleagues dismissed his ideas after he published the book Activating Evolution; his hypothesis that the superpower mutation has created an advanced "evolved human" demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of basic evolutionary biology.

That's not to say that humans have stopped evolving. Even now the human population is slowly changing. Here's the thing: unless the superheroes out-breed us "normals" (or kill us all off) their special genetic marker will never exist in more than a tiny fraction of the population.

I suspect our heroes are more likely an evolutionary dead end than the future of humanity. Nonetheless, I'll be watching when Monday rolls around.

For more on the similar topic, see the "Evolution and X-Men II" powerpoint presentation from "When Good Biology Goes Bad at the Movies.

Parasites That Control Behavior

2009-06-09T07:41:00.001-07:00

Sometimes real science is stranger than fiction. Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky describes a number of examples of parasites or infectious microbes that modify behavior in a Scientific American review article titled "Bugs in the Brain" (pdf)*. Some examples from the review and recent scientific literature:

• The rabies virus increases saliva production and makes the infected host aggressive. When a rabid animal bites a host the virus is spread via saliva in the wound.

• Toxiplasma gondii causes infected rodents to specifically lose their inborn aversion to cat pheromones. This behavior is beneficial to toxiplasma, because it sexually reproduces in cats that have eaten infected mice and rats (original article). Infected cats in turn spread toxiplasma through their droppings. People infected with toxiplasma also exhibit behavioral changes, particularly a decrease in "novelty seeking". It's been proposed that toxiplasma infection has actually changed human culture, since there is a correlation between countries with a high rate of toxiplasma infection and increased neuroticism, uncertainty avoidance, and "masculine" sex roles.

• Grasshoppers infected with the hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii become more likely to jump into water where the hair worm reproduces. The parasite essentially makes its host suicidal to further its own reproduction.

• Some trematodes that infect the brackish water crustacean, gammaridean anthropod cause changes in behavior that make the hosts more likely to move towards light and exhibit aberrant "suicidal" evasive behaviors. These behavioral changes make the infected crustacean more likely to be eaten by birds, which the trematode uses as a host for the next stage in its life cycle (pdf).

• Plasmodium, the cause of malaria, affects both its mosquito and animal hosts. Mosquitoes that drink plasmodium-infected blood initially become more cautious about finding another victim, giving plasmodium time to replicate. Once the plasmodium is infective, mosquitoes become more likely to bite more than one person in a night, and spend more time drinking blood. In turn, once a person is infected with plasmodium, he become more attractive to mosquitoes, continuing the life cycle of the parasite. (See "Malaria Parasite Makes You More Attractive (To Parasites)" New York Times, August 9, 2005). Plasmodium can also affect the nervous system. Infection of juvenile canaries with plasmodium affects the song control pathway in the brain, resulting in simpler songs as adults. (Pubmed).

Of course this research is fertile ground for science fiction. Parasites are often used as a crude form of brain control; the brain-controlling parasites in The Wrath of Khan or the brain slugs in Futurama, are examples of this.

Personally, I prefer microbes with more subtle and interesting behavioral effects. An example of such a story is David Brin's, "The Giving Plague", in which a virus that causes altruism infects the human population. You can read "The Giving Plague" on David Brin's web site.

What other influences might parasites and microbes have had on the human species? For speculation on the possible effects of retrovirus infection on human evolution, see Couturnix's musings on Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children, asking "Did a virus make you smart?".

The possibilities are really endless.

* For a more technical review, see Thomas et al. "Parasitic manipulation: where are we and where should we go?" Beav. Proc. 68: 185-199 (2005) (pdf)

(For cool photos, check out the CDC's parasite image library.)

Gregory Benford on our Dynamist Biological Century

2009-06-09T07:39:00.001-07:00

I was browsing through some of the reprinted (if that's the right word) articles and fiction on the Fantasy & Science Fiction web site, and came across an interesting article by SF author/astrophysicist Gregory Benford about SF and science futurism. It was originally published in the October/November 1999 issue of F&SF in anticipation of the dawning of the 21st century, and so looks at science futurism of both the past and the present.

One of the interesting concepts the contrast between "stasist" ideology of the past and "dynamist" future. The terminology was originally invented by Virginia Postrel in her 1998 book The Future and Its Enemies. As she has explained, the concept applies primarily to politics; particularly where it intersects with science, art, and innovation :

On one side of the new political landscape you have what I call "stasists." They view the future as a dangerous abyss. To avoid the abyss, some stasists want a return to some imagined, more stable past. These stasists would include such people as Pat Buchanan and Jeremy Rifkin, or the anti-technology activist Kirkpatrick Sale, who goes around smashing computers to illustrate his speeches. Other stasists want to build a safe "bridge" to the future. They want to control the future. You get a lot of that among politicians. In either case, stasists first decide the one best future for everyone and then they work to impose it.

On the other side of the new political landscape are what I call "dynamists." They see the future as an exciting process of experimentation and learning. That process has many different outcomes, for different people. There isn't "one best way." Dynamists celebrate such open-ended processes as scientific inquiry, market competition, artistic innovation, or technological invention. So they include people like Freeman Dyson, writing about science; or Tom Peters, looking at business innovation; or Stewart Brand, writing about How Buildings Learn; or the whole Wired crowd. Henry Petroski's book The Evolution of Useful Things has some great examples and ideas about the dynamics of invention. Dynamists tend to be less overtly political than stasists, because they aren't trying to grab government power to impose their ideas. But their vision—especially of the economy as a process—increasingly affects our politics.

Benford points out that rapidly advancing biotechnology and increasing computer power will be the driving force behind a dynamist 21st century.

Clearly the TwenCen has been the century of physics, just as the nineteenth was that of mechanics and chemistry. Grand physical measures still beckon. We could build a sea-level canal across Central America, explore Mars in person, use asteroidal resources to uplift the bulk of humanity. Siberia could be a fresh frontier, better run by American metaphors than the failed, top-down Russian ones. . (In fact, the U.S. is the only power that knows how to build and run a frontier. Siberia would be a natural for us.) Our world will continue to be shaped by new physics-based technologies.
But that won't be where the main action lies.
Biological analogies will probably shape much political thinking to come. Though the converging powers of computers and biology will give us much mastery, how such forces play out in an intensely cyber-quick world will be unknowable, arising from emergent properties, not stasist plans.
[. . . snip . . .]
I've argued before that the 21st century will be the Biological Century. We will gain control of our own reproduction, cloning and altering our children. Genetic modification is surely a dynamist agenda, for the many mingled effects of changed genes defy detailed prediction. Although the converging powers of computers and biology will give us much mastery, how such forces play out in an intensely cyber-quick world are unknowable, arising from emergent properties, not detailed plans.

Or as he put it more simply:

Sf sides with futures run not by Wellsian savant technocrats but by the masses, innovating from below and running their own lives, thank you very much.

Now, ten years later, biotech "innovations from the masses" are slow in coming, but groups like DIYbio and other amateur biohackers may make it a reality in the near future. The 21st century is still young, and advances tend to come in fits and starts.

For example: the essay is interspersed with science news snippets from the future. Most are of the purely science fictional variety ("Startup Biotech Firm Rolls Out Living Bath Mat"), but a decade after the essay's publication it's clear that science fact sometimes outpaces fiction. One science story snippet describes a consortium of labs that are rushing to complete the Honeybee Genome Project in 2020. The reality? The first draft of the honey bee genome sequence was actually released in 2003.

In another decade we will have decoded the sequences from a whole zoo's worth of different critters.

Who knows what the biohackers will have come up with by then?

Read "A Scientist's Notebook" by Gregory Benford

Growing Rapidly On The Fringe

2008-09-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

Fringe, JJ Abrams new series, is like an updated X-Files where every week a gory and mysterious event is investigated. Unlike the X-Files, however, there aren't alien bounty hunters or human-alien hybrids. Instead, it's science run amok ("The Pattern"), stemming from the decades old research of Dr. Walter Bishop and his colleagues. Bishop isn't the bad guy, though, since he's spent the past 17 years in a mental institution. His is old "lab partner" William Bell, is another story. He's the founder and CEO of Massive Dynamic, a giant corporation which is seemingly involved all aspects of cutting edge technology, from genetic engineering to artifical intelligence to rapid transportation. It also has suspiciously advanced R&D labs. Could Massive Dynamic be behind "The Pattern"?

To investigate these events, an unlikely team has been brought together: FBI Agent Olivia Dunham; brilliant Dr. Bishop, on furlough from the mental hospital; his estranged son Peter Bishop, a "jack of all trades" who is naturally brilliant at math and chemistry (and, it was hinted this week, of unnatural origin); and Homeland Security Agent Phillip Broyles, who seems to know more about The Pattern than he's telling.

This week's episode, "The Same Old Story", had a horrific beginning: a young man and woman are in a hotel room, when suddenly the woman starts to writhe in agony and we see something moving and growing in her abdomen. She dies just before giving birth in the hospital to a rapidly growing infant that dies of old age a mere four hours later. Dr. Bishop recognizes that this may have something to do with some of his Vietnam War era research that aimed to rapidly grow soldiers from eggs fertilized in vitro. While they were successful in using pituitary extracts to stimulate rapid growth, so that the lab-reared soldiers reached the physical age of 21 in a mere 3 years, the scientists on the project were unsuccessful in stopping the rapid aging at that point. Soldiers aren't too useful if they are only at their physical prime for only few months, so the project was abandoned. One of my pet peeves about the "clone an army" trope is that it's inefficient if you have to wait decades for replacements to develop, so it's fun to see that problem turned on its head. So is there anything to the science? Could a pituitary extract really rapidly advance aging? Almost certainly not.

The pituitary gland secretes a number of different hormones including growth hormone and thyroid-stimulating hormone. Growth hormone increases height in children and adolescents, stimulates the growth of internal organs, along with a number of other effects. Children with overactive pituitary glands that produce excess growth hormone can end up 7 or 8 feet tall, but they don't age any faster than usual. Thyroid-stimulating hormone does what the name suggests: it stimulates the release of thyroid hormones from the thyroid. Thyroid hormone regulates metabolism and works with growth hormone to promote growth in children (among other functions). Excess thyroid hormone production - hyperthyroidism - have an increased metabolism. Again, no effect on aging. But what if embryos, rather than children, were exposed to high levels of hormone? Overexpression of growth hormone in frog embryos causes the tadpoles to grow twice their normal size before metamorphosis, but they don't develop any faster than their untreated siblings. And while thyroid hormone is necessary for normal development of the brain and other organs, again there is no indication it affects the rate of development.

So is the science in this week's episode completely made up? At the beginning of the episode, Dr. Bishop mutters about cell cycle inhibitors.

"Disabling and reversing cell cycle inhibitors. Activating and turning CIP/KIP and INK4a/ARFs into catalysts."

It may sound like gibberish, but what he is talking about are proteins that normally cause cells to stop the cell division cycle by inhibiting the function of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs). It seems that Fringe's resident genius thinks that rapid aging is caused by excess cell division. The Dapper Alchemist explains why they aren't equivalent:

Dr. Bishop previously mentions that one can induce conditions, such as progeria [rapid aging], through pituitary gland modulation. Although the pituitary gland is affected in progeria², I’m not sure if it can be induced as such. Reduction of the CDK-inhibitor function of certain domains causes enhanced tissue growth, which manifests in animals with larger body size³ and leads to increased cell proliferation in the pituitary gland. It seems that JJ has muddled together enhanced tissue growth with rapid aging, the two don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand.

So stimulating division of cells can mean excess growth, but not rapid aging.

But the aging effects of the pituitary turn out to not be that important anyway. The bad guy on this week's show is a serial killer who removes the pituitary from his young female victims while they are still alive. That method that is apparently more satisfying than simply purchasing pituitary extract from Sigma (or maybe he couldn't get a purchase order). Anyway, it turns out he is the last remaining "rapid growth" test subject who must have fresh pituitary to keep him from aging. Growth hormone does have some anti-aging properties, so I suppose it's not too much of a leap to suggest that it stops aging all together.

My impression so far is that the science in Fringe ranges from sort-of-implausible to completely impossible. It's no worse that X-Files or Star Trek, though, and I have enjoyed watching it. I like the truly mad Dr. Bishop, who chooses a single cow as his experimental organism, and he keeps her in his basement lab where she gets to watch Spongebob with him. And evil corporations running secret experiments and possibly plotting to take over the world are plausible villains. I'll tune in again next week.

More about the science of Fringe:

Dr. Walter Bishop's lab notes
SE Kramer at Popular Mechanics explains the science problem with this weeks episode: no pituitary effect in progeria and you cannot "read" images from the optic nerve of a dead person
Science Not Fiction looks at the possibility of artificial wombs
Watch the Fringe Video Extra that shows how the scene in which the team accesses a victim's optic nerve was created.

Disney's Genetic Imagineers Reveal their Latest Line of Child Stars

2008-09-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder how all those adorable teens on the Disney channel perfected their pouts? The truth is been revealed in this visit to the Disney Genetic Imagineering labs:

Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line Of Genetically Engineered Child Stars

GenPets: Bioengineered Pets Perfect For You

2008-09-07T05:03:00.002-07:00

Have you ever wished you could get a pet with just a personality to match your own? Bio•Genica Genetic Engineering and Manufacturing company has developed several different types of "GenPets", so you can easily find the personality you are looking for:

Through extensive psychological testing done in the last century, certain behaviours and moods can be linked to specific colors and shades.We have taken the bioengineering of our Genpets one-step further, by altering and embedding certain personality characteristics into each type. Each personality type of the Genpets has been linked to its respective color, and that color is then used as a base for each package. For example, a child wanting a tougher, more aggressive Genpet™ would choose a red color coded one, rather than a more calm, green coded one.

GenPets were developed using well-established genetic engineering technology.

We use a process called "Zygote Micro Injection" which is quickly becoming a favourable method to combine DNA, or to insert certain proteins from different species. Most notably it was used in 1997 to splice mice with bioluminescent jellyfish (link) and has since been used to create glowing rabbits, pigs, fish, and monkeys (link). Since then, human DNA has been injected into rabbits, chimpanzees, spider DNA into sheep, and now, Genpets have arrived!

And no matter which type you chose, it will be an excellent pet.

Genpets™ learn and adapt. They are fully living pets, but better, modified to be as reliable, dependable and efficient as any other 'technology' we use in our busy lives.

Each package even comes with it's own fresh strip, so you can be sure the GenPet you take off the shelf is not past its expiration date. Check out the reseller catalog (pdf) for all the details.

GenPets are unfortunately not yet available to the general public. However, you can purchase Bio•Genica and GenPet-related merchandise from Cafe Press.

Images: GenPets by Bio•Genica. The right side of the image at top shows a segment of rat chromosome 6. (Brown et al. Mammalian Genome 9(7):521-530 (1998))

Fantastic Contraption: The Interface Between Man and Machine

2008-09-07T05:03:00.001-07:00

Device, an art gallery in La Jolla, opens a new show tomorrow: the Fantastic Contraption Group Exhibition, which explores the interface between animals and machines.

The exhibited artists include Ashley Wood, Christopher Conte, D. Hwang, Eduard Anikonov, Eric Joyner, Greg Brotherton, HR Giger, Joey Vaiasuso, John U Abrahamson, Kazuhiko Nakamura, Mike Libby, Nemo Gould, Stephane Halleux, Theo Kamecke, Viktor Koen, Wayne Martin Belger, William B Hand and Zoran Milivojevic. Even if you won't be able to visit the exhibition, it's worth spending some time browsing through the artists' web sites for some truly beautiful - and sometimes disturbing - works. I especially like Mike Libby's "Insect Lab", in which he combines gears and other machine parts with insects.

There's also a companion book (shown at right).

The opening reception is Saturday, July 19 from 6-9pm and the show runs through September 2.

TruBlood and the All-American Vampire

2008-08-29T09:20:00.001-07:00

Imagine that you are a vampire, dependent on human blood for nourishment. What would happen if an artificial replacement were available? That's the premise of HBO's new series True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire mysteries:

Thanks to a Japanese scientist's invention of synthetic blood, vampires have progressed from legendary monsters to fellow citizens overnight. And while humans have been safely removed from the menu, many remain apprehensive about these creatures "coming out of the coffin." Religious leaders and government officials around the world have chosen their sides, but in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the jury is still out.

You can find out more about TruBlood, the "synthetic blood nourishment beverage" at TruBeverage.com, including which type is right for you. Apparently my beverage of choice would be Type A, a light and delicate brew "painstakingly imagined inducing an overall calmness." Yum!

Unfortunately the site doesn't reveal any secrets about TruBlood, other than that it contains "varied cellular content than actual blood", which isn't even grammatical. Fortunately, investigative site BloodCopy had a scientific analysis performed to determine its composition. It turns out to be a complex mixture of components that is consistent with actual blood.

True to the advertising, varied cell types were detectable once I had completed my staining protocol. All of the normally occurring formed elements were present excluding platelets. In addition, there were a few white blood cells that I couldn't easily identify leading me to think that these cells may be the product of incomplete blood formation from a lab grown tissue culture process. In experiments performed with laboratory tissue cultures, directed blood cell formation is frequently unable to produce the large cells called Megakaryocytes that break apart to form platelets. It may be that vampire healing mechanisms are so different from ours that clotting agents aren't required, allowing some easier to produce cell type that would fulfill the same nutritional niche to be substituted in place of the platelets.

The report concludes that "none of the contents of these samples comes directly from human or animal subjects", and suggests that the components are actually cultured cells and hormones and other substances secreted from genetically modified bacteria. Basically, it's blood that's been reconstituted from its component parts, rather than drained from an animal. I wonder if it will turn out to be real human blood, harvested from imprisoned blood donors (TruBlood is people!), or maybe I've just watched too much sci-fi horror.

Anyway, it's the added hormones that differentiate between the different flavors of TruBlood. The Type A formula that was recommended for me has high levels of melatonin and arginine, making me sleep better and improving my circulation, I suppose. Download the analysis (pdf)*

The in-depth report "Vampires in America" (below) has more. Watch it to learn more about TruBlood, vampire biology, sex, and organized anti-vampire organizations.

In Focus: Shedding The Light on Vampires in America (HBO)
by HBOclips

There is also a TrueBlood comic that gives the background for the series.
TrueBlood premieres on HBO on September 7.

* If you actually look at the report there is an odd figure that looks like a 3D representation of hemoglobin, with the protein subunits labeled "bacteria", "cow blood", "female vascular organ", and "HBOC" (hemoglobin based oxygen carrier). It doesn't make any sense at all. I suppose the artist saw those words in the report and thought "Ooh, sciency!"

(video via io9)

Did aliens build the pyramids?

2008-08-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

visit here to see more videos

The Great Pyramid is the only survivor out of all seven ancient wonders. Located in Ciaro, Egypt, the pyramid still amazes thousands of scientists and guest's each year.

The Great Pyramid is believed to have been built over a 20 year span. The pyramid is so huge and so perfect we wouldn't be able to construct something in this day and age that will compare. Each giant Stone ranges from 1 to 20 tons in weight, and the Great Pyramid consisted of well over 100,000 stones. But the Egyptians had no machinery, engines, or construction equipment. So the question still lurks, who built the great pyramids?

Theories suggest the Egyptians built these pyramids, but this asks us how Egyptians hauled 20 ton stones and placed them perfectly Hundreds Of Feet high (145.75 m, 481 ft high).. Some suggest they built a ramp with stones that went from the ground to the top.

The flaw in that theory is that It would take More Rocks to build the ramp than it would to build the Pyramid. When the Pyramid was done, where did these rocks go??? So that shoots down that theory...

Another question is How did they move these rocks.. Experts that insist Egyptians built the Pyramid suggest, Trees were cut down and smoothed off, and were used as giant rollers under these 20 ton rocks. If you would roll a 20 ton rock on 5 trees, The tree would be too worn down and awkward to haul another, so these logs would be replaced every Stone. Due to the fact there are over 100,000 stones that make up the pyramid, you would need an excess of a half million trees..

Problem with this theory is the lack of trees in that area. Egypt grows some Date Trees, that's about it. And they certainly wouldn't cut down all their date trees, for dates are one of the main foods in EGYPT!

Now the Great Pyramid was the biggest and tallest of all the Pyramids ever built. Since the Egyptians left us an entire detailed written summary of every event in Egypt imaginable, You would think the building of the greatest Pyramid would be discussed. But it Isn't. The Pyramid was referred to a few times in very early Hieroglyphics. Egyptian writing suggests the Great Pyramid Was Standing Before Egyptians Populated The Land. Ancient hieroglyphics have detailed writings of farming, giving birth, Pharaoh worship, Hunting, Building Structures, etc, BUT the Building Of The Great Pyramid Was Never Mentioned.

If it took 10,000 workers per month over a 20 year span to build the Pyramid like experts suggest, There wouldn't be enough people in a 500 mile radius to make this possible.

Actually ancient Egyptian writing often talk of beings from the sky, the sky opening and bright lights coming down to teach them technology and give them wisdom. Many pictures and symbols resemble ufo's and aliens. POSSIBLY aliens built the Great Pyramid. And these solid long lasting construction techniques were adopted by the Egyptians.

http://www.netscientia.com/egypt.html

http://www.outerworlds.com/likeness/aliens/aliens.html

Unwelcome Bodies

2008-08-28T05:57:00.001-07:00

"They call themselves 'body sculptors.' They take healthy people and turn them into monsters. Giancarla's a plastic surgeon too — one of the best, but not the best, and it sticks in that massive craw of hers. She only took me in to try to start a fad. 'Amputee chic.' It lasted about three months. Then she tried making burns fashionable." María Luisa rearranged her hair to try to cover more of her scar. "But will she fix me? No. She claims it's bad for business."
~ "The Last Stand of the Elephant Man"

There is something both marvelous and horrifying about the extremes to which the human body can be taken. Nebula Award-nominated author Jennifer Pelland explores those themes in her new short story anthology Unwelcome Bodies. As she described it to John Scalzi:

We already live in a time when plastic surgery and body modification are pushing the boundaries of what constitutes humanity. Right now, people are having surgery to change things as fundamental as their face or their gender. Are you the same person if you can’t recognize yourself in the mirror? If you have your labia and vagina turned into a penis? And what about the people who use extreme body modification to make themselves look deliberately inhuman, maybe by tattooing every inch of their skin, or by splitting their tongues, or having horns implanted in their scalps?

That’s happening now. What’s going to happen in the future as medical technology comes up with more effective ways to change our bodies? And on the other side of the equation, what about when things go terribly wrong with someone’s body? How does that change them in ways other than the obvious?

It's not just body modification that she explores. Her stories also touch on sex and disease and immortality - and the the sometimes terrible intersection of religious fanaticism and biology.

You can read several of the stories from Unwelcome Bodies online:

"Last Stand of the Elephant Man"
"Captive Girl" - on the 2007 Nebula ballot
"Immortal Sin"
"For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great"
And just for fun: "When Science Fiction Clichés Go Bad"
See Pelland's web site for links to more of her fiction.

Engineering a Higher IQ?

2008-08-28T05:49:00.001-07:00

Kosmo at Genes and Demons points out the 2007 thesis of María Florencia Gosso, "Common Genetic Variants Underlying Cognitive Ability" (pdf) as research to watch.

I've yet to read it in detail, but a quick scan reveals dozens of genes which have been shown to have small cumulative impacts on IQ (with average differences between various alleles being in the two to four point range). The most significant difference I saw was between the two versions of the ADRB2 gene. In humans there exists two non-synonymous coding SNP's (rs1042713 and rs1042714) for this gene. The 713 version conferred a whopping eight point increase in average verbal IQ.

ADRB2 is more commonly known as the beta-2 adrenergic receptor, which is activated by adrenalin and noradrenalin (also known as epinephrine and norepinephrine). Even though the primary role of the receptor is regulation of smooth muscle relaxation, the receptor is also expressed in the central nervous system, and some studies have suggested that it plays a role in memory and learning formation. Interestingly the rs1042713 allele is a human-specific variant differing by a single amino acid from the "ancestral" protein sequence.

But does that really mean we've cracked the code for the genetic basis of intelligence? Not exactly. While there was an 8 point verbal IQ difference between individuals that varied at this allele, the author cautions that there could be "possible inflation of the estimated genetic effect sizedue to the relatively small sample size." Also, because intelligence appears to be affected by many genes it is unknown whether variation of the beta-2 adrenergic receptor sequence would have the same effect in all genetic backgrounds. And, of course, the question of whether the sequence variation affects the receptor's function in smooth muscle tissue has not been addressed. But that's the nature of scientific research. No one study provides all the answers, and this particular study points to an interesting direction for follow-up research.

Someday we may look back and indeed acclaim Gosso's research as a turning point in human genetic research. Only time - and further experiments - will tell.

Note: I did a search of PubMed and this portion of Gosso's thesis does not appear to have been published yet.
Image: 3D representation of the beta2-adrenergic receptor (via Science).

"I Have Seen the Future and It's All in the Genes"

2008-08-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

The winner of the 2008 Science Writer Award (sponsored by The Daily Telegraph, Bayer, and The Royal Society) in the 20-28 year old category was Imperial College biochemistry graduate Erika Cule, for her near future tale of genetic sequencing.

Read her winning entry: "I have seen the future and it's all in the genes"

In an interview with the Imperial College news department, she says that she was trying to write something that would be interesting to those who don't do much reading about science.

I wanted to write an essay which was accessible and I was really pleased when friends of mine, who never normally read anything scientific, said they had read it and enjoyed it. Big influences on me include Craig Ventor’s biography and Nature Futures, the science-fiction writing forum.

She herself is involved in research that sounds pretty science fictional:

I am currently a member of Imperial College’s iGEM team, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which attracts teams from around the world to spend the summer working in the field of synthetic biology to design a functional biological machine.

Our team is engineering the bacterium Bacillus subtilis into a biological printer that will synthesise three dimensional objects.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear more about the Imperial College team after the iGEM Jamboree in November.

What Kills Everybody in The Happening?

2008-08-28T05:37:00.001-07:00

*** Spoilers ahoy. Stop reading now if you want M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening to be a complete surprise. ***

M. Night Shyamalan has been talking with reporters about The Happening, which opens in theaters on Friday the 13th. It turns out the rash of human suicides - and mysterious bee deaths - are due to neurotoxins produced by plants and algae. He told Shock Till You Drop:

Shock: I know "Scientific American"* grilled you earlier at the press conference earlier (see below) and the bees were something out there, but did you look into all the possibilities of this movie's scenario coming true?
Shyamalan: Definitely, yeah, we did and we got all kinds of research on similar events that happened in the water, plankton releasing toxins and things like that, which just happened again, there were some neurotoxins released in a lake in Bali or Thailand or something like that. Then there was interesting articles about things rising. One of the things that I guess was in the back of my mind was that one in six emergency room cases for the United States is asthma-related. I'm going, "What? When I was a kid, the kid who had asthma was that freak kid three schools down who had asthma." Now, it's like every other kid has asthma. Everybody's like wheezing and there's a line outside the nurse's office for an inhaler. What's that about? We're becoming allergic to what? There's peanut-free tables in every school right now. When was that (done)? We're all becoming really sensitive to something in the air.

Phytoplankton - microscopic single-celled algae - can "bloom" causing the phenomenon commonly known as a red tide. The plankton produce potent neurotoxins that become concentrated in shellfish, making them poisonous to eat. Other algae, such as the dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida, produce toxins that can cause memory loss, confusion, upper respiratory irritation and acute skin burning. I Googled a bit, but wasn't able to come up with any particular algal bloom at an Asian lake that Shyamalan might be talking about, though. There's no connection to asthma or peanut allergies. (Also, Shyamalan's perception of the prevalence of asthma is a bit skewed. While there was a significant increase in the percentage of kids with asthma between 1980 and 2005, that increase was from 3.6% to 8.9% - hardly a change from a few "freaks" to "every other kid".)

Shock: What do you find that science allows you to do that fantasy hasn't?
Shyamalan: When I came up with the idea, I said to the research people, "Give me every piece of information. I want to know 1 to 10 whether this idea is totally possible, probable or impossible, completely." When they came back with a stack of information about how the environment works and how plants work and how examples of anomalous things that have happened in the world. How a cotton plant can send out a signal to the other side of the field to tell them that this insect is coming and they send out poisons and they send out toxins and all these things happening in a smaller form, the exact kind of thing. It was really fun and then I talked to the University of Massachusetts and some other institutes about how the brain works, about toxins and how they affect each other. It was really fun to ground… [. . .]

Plant-to-plant communication is a relatively new area of study. It turns out that many plants that are pest-infested or damaged can send out a signal that stimulates neighboring plants to beef up their defenses. Discover Magazine ran a feature on "talking plants" in 2002:

[Marcel] Dicke and his colleagues have found that mere exposure to airborne emissions from mite-infested cotton and lima beans will prompt undamaged plants to release signals that summon an enemy of the infesting mite. Over the last 19 years, in various experiments, researchers say they've caught willow, poplar, alder, and birch trees listening to their own kind and barley seedlings listening to other barley seedlings. In each case, damaged plants, whether eaten by caterpillars, infected by fungus or powdery mildew, infested by spider mites, or even clipped mechanically, sent out chemicals that seemed to jump-start the defenses of undamaged plants nearby.

Presumably in The Happening plants have evolved to fight their biggest pest: humanity. That sounds like an interesting science fiction-horror premise. However, from what Shyamalan said in a recent press conference, the science is wrapped in New Agey spirituality.

The idea of plants having consciousness is kind of a non-western world view. Did you consider that as coming from your other influences. Could you guys talk about how your non-western experiences have influenced you? And could you talk about the spiritual side of the film?

Shyamalan: Definitely. It’s interesting because the Native American culture, that’s all it’s about. My middle name, Night, it’s an American Indian name. That is what I felt so attached to when I was a kid—from the American Indian culture—the relationship to nature, and worshipping the sky, the earth, the rock. That relationship felt correct then, as a kid, and it feels correct now, as an adult. It’s interesting how in all our religions, so little is said about how we should feel towards nature. It’s an interesting thing to kind of get the hierarchy back in line. We’re just one of many living creatures on the planet.

Apparently the movie ultimately turns away from science fiction, with a "spiritual message" and a conclusion that demonstrates that there are "limits of rational thought".

For more: check out the early reviews at Ain't It Cool News. The consensus seems to be disappointment.

ETA: In the less-than-glowing review in today's LA Times, reviewer Carina Chocano asked:

The mysterious airborne substance that's making people kill themselves is believed to be some kind of neurotoxin that blocks the self-preservation instinct in humans. But would simply removing the self-preservation instinct really cause people to instantly annihilate themselves? En masse? I'd have thought it would lead to slower, more indirect forms of self-destruction, like riding a bike without a helmet or drinking and driving or unsafe sex. This, sadly, is the question Shyamalan neglects to answer, which, in the wake of films like "28 Days Later," is a letdown.

Sounds like Shyamalan should stick to fantasy.

(via Abbie at ERV, who isn't at all pleased about the spirituality stuff)

* Scientific American hasn't published anything about the movie yet.

The Next 50 Years of Scientific Advancement

2008-08-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

New Scientist asked a number of prominent scients what they thought the biggest breakthroughs would be over the next 50 years. Here is a sampling of what the biological scientists had to say:

Sydney Brenner (winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for studies on organ development and cell death):

I think the most important advances will come in the understanding of the biology of the most interesting species - Homo sapiens. [. . .] However, if things do go on in the same way I predict that by about 2020 - the year of good vision - consciousness will have disappeared as a scientific problem much as embryonic determination has vanished today.

Lewis Wolpert (developmental biologist, member of the Royal Society and science popularizer):

In the next 50 years, as systems biology and computer models take over, the embryo will become fully "computable": given a fertilised egg, with the details of its genome and contents of its cytoplasm, it will be possible to predict the embryo's entire development.

Francis Collins (Director of the Human Genome Research Institute)

Genomic research will prove key to discovering how to reprogram the mechanisms that control the balance between the cell growth that causes cancer and the cell death that leads to ageing. It is possible that a half-century from now, the most urgent question facing our society will not be "How long can humans live?" but "How long do we want to live?"

Bruce Lahn (studies human brain evolution and stem cell biology.):

I anticipate that one exciting breakthrough in biomedicine will be the ability to produce unlimited supplies of transplantable human organs without the need for human donors.

Richard Miller (studies the mechanisms of aging)

In aging research, the key breakthrough will be the elucidation of the molecular pathways that render cells from long-lived animals - whales, people, bats, porcupines - resistant to many forms of injury.

Ellen Heber-Katz (studies the molecular basis of autoimmunity, wound healing and regeneration):

I believe that the day is not far off when we will be able to prescribe drugs that cause severed spinal cords to heal, hearts to regenerate and lost limbs to regrow.

Daniel Pauly (Director of the Fisheries Centre at UBC)

[. . .]I think the most important development for the oceans would be a device that could detect, amplify and transmit to us the emotions and fleeting, inarticulate "thoughts" of animals in such a form as to evoke analogous emotions and thoughts in human brains.

Elizabeth Loftus (expert on false memory syndrome)

Psychological scientists have learned so much about planting false memories that some say we almost have recipes for doing so. But we haven't seen anything yet. Over the next 50 years we will further master the ability to create false memories.

Carl Djerassi (helped developed the oral contraceptive pill, currently does policy research on human fertility control and writes "science-in-fiction")

The biggest breakthrough in my field will be the development of an efficient and convenient means of storing a young woman's ovarian tissue or eggs to be used years later.

See the comments of some of the other biological scientists (below) for predicted developments in understanding the brain, consciousness, evolution, cell biology, life on earth and (potentially) other planets and more.

This is what science fiction authors should be incorporating into their work today!

Commenting scientists with a biological bent:
Edward O. Wilson, Paul Nurse , Frans de Waal, Niles Eldredge , Igor Aleksander, Bernard Wood, Michael Benton, Andrew Knoll, Geoffrey Miller, Stephen Pinker, Simon Baron-Cohen, Antonio Damasio, Dan Dennett, Jane Goodall, Monica Grady, Susan Greenfield, Piet Hut, Carolyn Porco, Charles Nemeroff, Alan Walker, Beverly Whipple

Check out the whole list.

Diseases of the future

2008-08-28T05:33:00.002-07:00

A recent issue of the Public Library of Medicine published an article speculating on what directions disease will take in the future. They compare three different scenarios: a baseline, and optimistic model and a pessimistic model. Their primary conclusion:

The three leading causes of burden of disease in 2030 are projected to include HIV/AIDS, unipolar depressive disorders, and ischaemic heart disease in the baseline and pessimistic scenarios. Road traffic accidents are the fourth leading cause in the baseline scenario, and the third leading cause ahead of ischaemic heart disease in the optimistic scenario. Under the baseline scenario, HIV/AIDS becomes the leading cause of burden of disease in middle- and low-income countries by 2015. [see the full comparison of causes of death 2002-2030]

Projected life expectancy at birth increases in all regions, but there are still huge discrepancies based on income and other factors - for example women in high-income countries may expect to live to age 85, while men in Sub-Saharan Africa will have a life expectancy of less than 55.

The details:

• "The proportion of deaths due to noncommunicable disease is projected to rise from 59% in 2002 to 69% in 2030." That doesn't seem to be a very big change to me, so in 2030 we may have a similar rate of heart disease and cancer.
• "Global HIV/AIDS deaths are projected to rise from 2.8 million in 2002 to 6.5 million in 2030 under the baseline scenario, which assumes coverage with antiretroviral drugs reaches 80% by 2012." This is a great increase, particularly in parts of the globe already hard-hit by the diesase.

• "Total tobacco-attributable deaths are projected to rise from 5.4 million in 2005 to 6.4 million in 2015 and 8.3 million in 2030 under our baseline scenario. Tobacco is projected to kill 50% more people in 2015 than HIV/AIDS, and to be responsible for 10% of all deaths globally." So there is the big killer, unless human behavior changes appreciably (and future scenarios in which people don't take drugs of some sort seem implausible to me) or some way to counteract tobacco's effects.

Of course, unpredictable events are hard to factor into the projections. Will there be an infectious agent from space, alá The Andromeda Strain? Or perhaps an improvement as simple (yet with profound consequences) as sanitation*? That's where fiction comes in!

Paper Citation: Mathers CD, Loncar D (2006) Projections of Global Mortality and Burden of Disease from 2002 to 2030. PLoS Med 3(11): e442

* BBC article: Sanitation 'best medical advance', based on a survey by the British Medical Journal

(via Science to Life)

David Brin on the science of the future

2008-08-28T05:33:00.001-07:00

Wired Science asked science fiction author David Brin "What area or application of science do you feel holds the most potential for the future?" Brin's response focused on the development of better methods and technology for problem solving. He doesn't believe that artificially enhanced intelligence in individual humans is going to do the trick.

Seriously, we’re pretty smart and wise, for jumped-up cavemen. But we need to get smarter. And a whole lot wiser.

Some hope to advance average human intelligence by helping _individuals to boost their own, separate abilities, both at thinking and using advanced tools. Picture an IQ boost like Poul Anderson described in BRAIN WAVE. I wish these efforts luck, but I also have doubts that very much will be achieved by fiddling with our natural hardware. Biology is a very, very complex can of worms and we meddle at some risk.

The real potential may be in striving for better collective intelligence, in much the same way that we’ve managed to make societies smarter, for hundreds of years. For example, through mass education, free speech, and improved methods of positive-sum discourse. Taking this much farther will call for tools-of-discourse that are vastly better than, say, the screeching drivel that passes for “discussion” on today’s websites and blogs.

Ouch on that last bit.

Read the whole interview.

Babies in Bottles?

2008-08-28T05:32:00.001-07:00

Just in time for the 75th Anniversary of Brave New World, Carl Djerassi, a Stanford chemistry professor whose work help lead to the first oral contraceptive ("The Pill") and "science in fiction" novelist (Cantor's Dilemma: A Novel, NO ), has been speculating about the future of human reproduction. He told the Daily Mail that children without sex may become routine in the coming decades.

"It is my own prediction that within the next 30 to 50 years in the Western world, many women, when young, will bank their eggs or ovarian tissue, have them frozen, and use them when they feel the time is right for them to have a child," he says. "It will become commonplace.

The Daily Mail seems horrified of the thought of "women corrupting nature for the sake of their careers," but Djerassi sees it as a boon.

"This would be a way of helping to reduce the number of unwanted children. Every child born to a woman who has taken a conscious decision to have a child at that time would be wanted and loved and properly cared for.
"Is there not something to be said for wisdom, affection and maturity? Why shouldn’t a woman have a child when she is older if the science is there to help her? Nowadays it is not thought peculiar if a man in his 50s or 60s has a child. So should it be different for a woman?"

With all due respect to Professor Djerassi, men who have children in their 50s and 60s typically have much younger wives who are expected to be the primary care givers. Personally, I'm not sure such delayed offspring will become routine until cures for the common complaints of aging have been found. Heck, I'm only 40 and I don't have nearly the energy I did at 25. I can't imagine running after a toddler at the age of 60*.

* I realize that there are many 60+ primary caregivers out there, typically grandparents. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that there are also advantages to having children in the flush of youth.

Life After People

2008-08-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

The History Channel has a web site to complement their special, Life After People. It asks a simple question: what would happen if all humans disappeared from the Earth?

You can watch video that explores whether a plague could kill us all, and what would happen to the (non-human) animals, our buildings, and the rest of the Earth, if it did. There's even a Survival Guide that should come in handy if you are the lone survivor. Even better, print it out now, in case the power fails . . .

Image: the documentary shows that Stephen Colbert's worst fears may come true.

Made in EUReKA

2008-08-28T05:29:00.001-07:00

If you've ever wanted nanobot-based shampoo or a contact lens video camera, check out the Made in Eureka web site. They've even got infomercials just like you see on late night TV, with the oohing and ahing audience and perky hosts. My favorite is the CryoKennel (only three easy payments of $49.99!) which freezes your dog for easy transport too and from home. Easy!

If you haven't guessed already, this is a promotional site for the SciFi series EUReKA, which has it's second season premier on July 10.

Genetic Engineering Mumbo Jumbo

2008-08-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

In the Futurama episode "Mechanical House" Fry shares his dorm room at Mars University with a talking monkey named Guenther, the result of one of the Professor's experiments. Fry is curious how Guenther can talk.

Fry: "Is he genetically engineered?"

Professor: "Oh please, that's preposterous science fiction mumbo jumbo. Guenther's intelligence actually lies in his electronium hat, which harnesses the power of sunspots to produce cognitive radiation."

All disguised as an adorable miniature bowler. Now that's hard science fiction!

Cartoon Anatomy

2008-08-28T05:22:00.000-07:00

Just for fun: From September 2 - October 8, Arario Gallery in Seoul had an exhibition titled "Animatus", by artist Hyungkoo Lee. Lee's show is focused on the (hypothetical) anatomy of Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Roadrunner, and other cartoon characters. The exhibition is made up of realistic looking skeletons and sketches.

Spiderman vs. Spiders

2008-08-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

LiveScience takes a look at How Spider-Man Compares to the Real Thing. It turns out that

Spider silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight, is stronger than bullet-proof Kevlar and more elastic than nylon, biologists say.

There are also species of spiders that spin silk from their feet, rather than their abdomen.

No word on whether real spiders can woo attractive redheads, though.

Image: Garden Spider @ U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The Silver Surfer and the Sandman

2008-08-28T05:18:00.001-07:00

The current Lab Notes column at SciFi.com talks about the science of the Silver Surfer. If you haven't seen the promos, the chrome-plated Silver Surfer hangs ten through the vacuum of space to appear in the new Fantastic Four movie. As fantastic as he might seem, Will McCarthy cobbles together a plausible explanation. SS taps into the zero point energy of the universe to power his board. He (if that's the right term) must be far from human:

Also, what if his skin isn't made of atoms and molecules at all, but is actually some sort of perfectly reflective spacetime barrier, akin to the edge of the screen in an old-fashioned game of Pong? If the Surfer's body is essentially a programming glitch in the information fabric of the universe, it might well be impossible to destroy, at least with the sorts of weapons human beings—and mutants—can bring to bear. Also, if it could reflect gravitational energy as well as photons, that would explain why he's so light on his feet, and it even suggests an explanation for his talent of sliding through buildings without damaging them. I.e., he isn't a solid object at all.

That sounds at least as plausible as a naked man surfing through space.

As a comic book-based movie bonus, check out Pharyngula commenter PaulC's speculation as to how the brain of Spiderman 3 villain the Sandman might work.

X-ray Vision

2008-08-28T05:17:00.001-07:00

Corie Ralston takes a look at the science of x-ray vision in the May 21 edition of Strange Horizons. She points out that there are some good reasons not to scan your loved ones with x-rays.

First, x-rays happen to be at just the right frequency to a) get through your skin, and b) break the oxygen-hydrogen bonds in water and produce radicals in your body. Radicals in turn wreak havoc on your DNA. The result? Cell growth out of control (i.e. cancer). Sorry, Superman! Maybe using x-rays to see through the clothing of your beloved isn't such a great idea. The x-rays used at the dentist and doctor's office are used very sparingly, and even so it still isn't a good idea to get too much exposure. There's a good reason they drape that lead apron over you and then leave the room while you are being irradiated.

There are also technical problems: since x-rays tend to pass through, rather than bounce off of, solid objects it's not clear how the x-rays emitted by Superman get back to his eyes. Ralston speculates that Superman could possibly use the Compton effect to detect x-ray scattering, but even that isn't very plausible. Read the entire article for her nice explanation of what you can and cannot do with x-rays.

Y: The Last Man and Blue Moon Butterflies

2008-08-28T05:11:00.001-07:00

A paper in today's issue of Science by Sylvain Charlat and colleagues looks at the evolution of a population of Blue Moon butterflies that was infected with the Wolbachia bacterium, which selectively kills male embryos. The result was a population of butterflies with a female to male ratio of 100:1. When individuals in the population that were resistant to Wolbachia appeared, presumably due to a nuclear mutation, the resistance rapidly spread through the population and within 10 generations the sex ratio was back to 1:1.

PZ Myers compares the Wolbachia-infected Blue Moon butterfly population to the situation in the graphic novel Y: The Last Man, in which all male mammals are killed by a mysterious disease - except the hero Yorick and his monkey.

Substantial parts of it are biologically nearly impossible: the wide cross-species susceptibility, the near instantaneous lethality, and the simultaneity of its effect everywhere (there are also all kinds of weird correlations with other sort of magical putative causes, which may be red herrings).

A disease that infects only males is clearly plausible, but Yorick doesn't follow the example of his butterfly brethren, as PZ points out.

Now here's one thing that bugs me about Y: The Last Man. For this rapid dispersal of resistance to spread, resistant males should be procreating profligately. In the book, Yorick seems to be obstinately abstinent! (Some of the women, at least, understand the principle, and there are plots with attempts to capture the last man for breeding stock for their group.) I can understand how the author might want to resist turning the story into a boring male fantasy of having the only penis among teeming millions of fertile females, but come on, biological reality has to intrude at some point. The future of the human race demands it!

I suppose you have to read the series to find out if Yorick indeed does his part to save humanity.

The Disney Version of Life on Mars

2008-08-28T05:10:00.001-07:00

Nearly 50 years ago the Disneyland TV show broadcast the episode, "Mars And Beyond." The clip below takes a fantastic animated look at possible Martian life.

(via Metafilter)

Prehistoric Pulp

2008-08-28T05:09:00.001-07:00

The Prehistoric Pulp blog focuses on dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters in novels, comics, and the occasional game and television show. There have been a couple of recent posts of particular interest to paleo-SF fans:

A list of free paleo-stories on the web, with links to tales by a wide range of 20th and 21st century authors, including: Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert J. Sawyer, Clark Ashton Smith, Howard Waldrop, and many others. (via SF Signal)
There is also an interesting post about novels featuring extinct animals. Some let you see prehistoric times through the animals' eyes (e.g., Evolution by Stephen Baxter), others resurrect the animals in the present (e.g., Henry Adam Knight's Carnosaur or cast dinosaurs as aliens (e.g., Catherine Wells' Beyond the Gates), or present alternate timelines where the dinosaurs never went extinct (e.g. Harry Harrison's West of Eden (Eden Trilogy)). Read the full post for a number of examples in all of these categories - and more! (via Robert J. Sawyer)

Image: Ornithopods, by John Conway for Wikipedia.

How is Superman like a beetle?

2008-08-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

One of the most powerful aliens in fiction is Kal-El of Krypton AKA Superman. But what kind of anatomy and physiology would be required to be faster than a speeding bullet? Perhaps a protective hard chitinous shell? Find out more in this clip from a TV show about the science of Superman. (The section on super-physiology starts at 3:09.)

The Center for Ethical Bionics

2008-08-28T05:02:00.001-07:00

The fall television season is rapidly approaching and the web sites for the new shows are starting to appear. SciFi Chick links to a tie-in to NBC's Bionic Woman: the web site for the Center for Ethical Bionics. The Center's mission:

Founded in 1992 in San Francisco, California, The Center for Ethical Bionics was created in response to unrestrained, unchecked growth reported within the rapidly expanding field of bionics. Deeply concerned about the possibility of biomechanical clones, DNA alteration, and the creation of biomechanical humans, many in the scientific community feared these experiments could result in irrevocable damage to humankind. Rumors of the creation of a top-secret, biomachine only heightened the need for immediate action.

There are four Founders:

Dr. Steven Caldwell, Chairman and "prodigy in the field of molecular biology," who has a M.D. and Ph.D. in computer science.

Dr. Michelle Scanlon, who has a Ph.D. in genetics in Duke is the Senior Geneticist.

Dr. Scanlon currently spends her time in the research and development lab at The Center's San Francisco headquarters. She has recently begun focusing her talents on bionic gene therapy, a process where Computerized Nucleic Acid (or CNA) is inserted into an abnormal, disease-causing gene. The CNA then acts as a carrier, genetically altering the diseased cells and delivering therapeutic materials to healthy ones.

Taryn McCarthy, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy is the Chief Ethicist.

Upon graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a degree in philosophy, Dr. McCarthy became interested in the impact of science fiction television on human acceptance of bionics. She resumed her studies at the renowned Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where she received her doctorate and went on to shape genetic policy decisions through her work at the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

She is also the inventor of the phrase "bio-morals."

Finally Dr. Samuel Baker, the Senior Bionic Researcher, has a background in mathematics and computer science and worked for military intelligence.

Take a closer look at the case study in bionics and sign up for their mailing list for more information. I suspect there will be additional web sites as we get closer to air time.

The Depiction of Cloning in the Movies

2008-08-28T04:59:00.001-07:00

PodBlack Blog made an interesting post about science in the movies that points to a 2006 study at Biotechnology Australia that focused on cloning in the movies (report PDF). Their concern is that one of the major sources of information on human cloning is the movies, and the way that the science and scientists are portrayed can have a significant influence on public opinion.

They looked at 33 different movies and divided them into five categories:

"Contemporary Social Realism": set in the present or near future, presented as realistic
Example: The Boys from Brazil, Jurassic Park
"Future Social Realism": set in the future, presented as realistic
Example: The Island
"Science Fiction/Fantasy": set in the far future or a distant galaxy
Examples: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Star Trek:Nemesis
Comedy
Examples: Sleeper, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
"Gone and Forgotten": Movies that tanked at the box office or are rarely seen
Examples: The Clones of Bruce Lee, Replikator: Cloned to Kill

The movies were rated for scientific accuracy and their "key message" - whether the science or scientists are evil and the social implications of the cloning. Not surprisingly, they found that the most common message in the movies is that "corporations or scientists operate in their own interests and outside of regulation, and are willing to kill to cover up what they've done." Cloning is portrayed as unnatural, with the moral "mess with nature and it will mess with you."

The best of the bunch science-wise:

	Boys from Brazil (1978), staring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Levin, and based on the novel by Ira Levin. Type: Contemporary Social Realism
	Cloned (1997), starring Elizabeth Perkins and Bradley Whitford. This movie is "one of the few films that has a fairly accurate portrayal of he science of cloning." Type: Contemporary Social Realism
	Blueprint (2002). This German film is more focused on the ethical and social issues of cloning, rather than the science. Type: Contemporary Social Realism
	Clone High (2002), an MTV animated series. Type: Comedy
	Anna To the Infinite Power (1982), based on a novel by Mildred Ames Type: Gone and Forgotten
	Creator (1985), starring Peter O'Toole. Type: Gone and Forgotten
	The Cloning of Joanna May (1991), a British Granada Television program, based on the Fay Weldon novel. Type: Gone and Forgotten
	The Third Twin (1997), based on a Ken Follett thriller. Type: Gone and Forgotten

I don't think that it's particularly surprising that the most scientifically-realistic movies are those set in the near future, and have few science-fictional elements other than human cloning (does that make them mundane SF?). Scientific accuracy isn't what makes a box office hit, though. Blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones end up influencing popular culture simply because so many people have seen them. That's which is why their science is worth discussing, even if it has little basis in real life.

Biotechnology Australia followed up with a second report, "Biotechnology at the Movies", which looks at a wider range of movies, from The Andromeda Strain (1971) to Children of Men (2006). Their conclusion:

"The study concluded that the science was, for the most part, seriously flawed, and that while the films may raise awareness, the quality of public debate on biotechnology is not generally enhanced by its depiction in films."

I'm doubt that will change any time soon, since stories with scientists oblivious to the ethical implications and potentially dangerous consequences of their experiments sell movie tickets.

Aeon Flux is Biological Science Fiction

2008-08-28T04:57:00.001-07:00

Nina Munteanu has a nice review of the live-action movie version of Aeon Flux:

Twitchfilm.net aptly called the motion picture “biological science fiction”. Says Oren, Trevor’s treacherous brother who betrays him: “We’ve beaten death. We’ve beaten nature.” The film’s clean organic high-tech look faithfully captures the “sense of biotech gone wild” of the TV series by exploring several paradigms inherent in a society that lives deliberately in the absense of nature’s chaos. Indeed, the lack of connectivity resonates throughout the motion picture in its exploration of friendship, family, loyalty, and purpose.

Both her description of the movie and the animated series that inspired it make them sound worth watching - something I didn't get from the trailer when the movie was released. Go read the whole review.

If you like Aeon Flux, you might be interested in the interactive comic. There is no way for me to link to it directly (curse you flash-only web sites), but you can go to the official Aeon Flux site, click on "Features" in the left menu, then select "Interactive Comic Book."

DiY Biotech and the Creation of New Life

2008-08-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

Last February, Craig Venter gave a talk at TED about how we are "on the verge of creating synthetic life." He compares the building of an organism to building a computer systems: "digitizing the genome", "software builds its own hardware" and "booting up the new cell."

But how apt is the analogy? Dave at The Quantum Pontiff asks whether there will be influential hobbyists who would be the equivalent of a biotechnological Bill Gates. He points to DIYbio, an organization for "citizen scientists" and "DIY biological engineers" that may end up being the Homebrew Computer Club for biotechnology. They had a meetup on May 1 in Cambridge, MA that sounds pretty interesting:

Mac flipped through slides indicating that "backyard biology" is alive and well. One illustrated guide found online describes how to isolate DNA using chemicals found in every kitchen cupboard. Need more DNA? A $10 PCR device assembled from basic parts might do the trick. And a recipe from the pages of MAKE magazine provides the know-how for armchair anthropologists to combine a few legos, a source of current, and a cheap enzyme kit to generate DNA fingerprints.

While backyard biology promises to be an avenue for individuals to flex their intellectual muscles and explore the molecular world around them, Jason Bobe argued that the possible impacts of a DIY world go well beyond that. Amateurs and hobbyists are making significant contributions to engineering, environmental sensing, and even medical devices.

The group gathers online at the DIYbio Google Group, and they've started to share links on del.icio.us (tagged DIYbio). Those are potentially great resources for the at-home biohacker.

But it's important to keep in mind there may be a serious legal risk - growing bacteria at home may not only be illegal in your area, but could put you in the bad graces of the feds. See, for example, the case of SUNY Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz, whose home was raided by the FBI four years ago. They confiscated lab equipment, bacterial cultures and other supplies he was using for an art project. He was only cleared of charges in April. In an interview in this week's Nature, Kurtz talked about the current climate for at-home scientists:

We're talking about the government pressure on doing activities that are perfectly legal. We're talking about activities that at one time in this country were considered a great idea, like amateur science. Say someone wants to have a laboratory in their house. I guess not a lot of people have that any more, so that's weird. And because it's weird, it's suspicious. And because it's suspicious, we have to think it's probably terrorism.

So if you do plan to do some biohacking, you might just have to build yourself a secret laboratory.

Image: An early version of a homemade photosynthetic bioreactor "biocoil", created by advanced biology students at Cascade High School in Cascade, Idaho.

The "Mimic" Trilogy

2008-08-28T04:53:00.000-07:00

At PopPolitics.com Tim Mitchell takes an in-depth look at the Mimic trilogy (Mimic, Mimic 2: Hardshell, and Mimic 3: Sentinel) in the context of other movies about "big bugs".

It’s tempting to dismiss the “Mimic” films as just updated versions of the Big Bug genre that was popular several decades before, with “genetic tampering” replacing “atomic radiation” as the public phobia du jour.^[2] However, a significant difference between the “Mimic” films and their predecessors and counterparts is the location of the monsters’ origin. Where most Big Bug movies feature the monsters originating in some remote location (a desert, a cave, even the arctic) and then later posing a threat to a large human population, the “Mimic” monsters are purely creatures of the city: it is where they were created, evolved and reside.
[. . .]
In fact, the cockroach-spread Strickler’s Disease in the “Mimic” movies is sort of an exaggerated nightmare of research findings that indicate how cockroach allergens contribute to the increase in asthma cases in urban areas. The internalization of ecological concerns into urban settings is symbolized in the Judas Breed’s appearance. Most other Big Bugs are just a species of insect or arachnid made large, either the size of a car or bigger; once these monsters are found by the protagonists, they are hard to miss. In contrast, the Judas Breed can walk among us unnoticed — in dark subway stations, alleys, and slums — due to their human-mimicking ability.

The monstrous Judas Breed - a sort of giant cockroach - reflects modern wariness of biotechnology, including genetic modification, environmental politics, anti-vaccination paranoia and displacement of wildlife in urbanized areas.

While the “Mimic” movies are very inaccurate in their portrayal of how scientific research actually works and what insects are capable of doing in terms of their biology, they nevertheless provide opportunities to examine the larger implications on humanity’s relationship with corrupted scientific research and its results.

Go read the whole article.

Stephen Nottingham: Screening DNA

2008-08-28T04:52:00.001-07:00

In 2000, agricultural biologist and writer Stephen Nottingham published a book about genetic engineering technology in the movies, Screening DNA: Exploring the Cinema-Genetics Interface. While print copies aren't available in the US*, he has kindly provided the full text on his web site. With chapters on cloning, resurrecting dinosaurs, designer babies, alien DNA, scientist biopics he takes a look a wide range of films with genetic themes. He concludes that, while biotechnology is often portrayed negatively (and inaccurately) in the movies, he believes that they have little influence on the politics surrounding use of genetic engineering, cloning and other technology.

The power of genetic engineers to radically modify organisms is usually exaggerated, while misconceptions about scientists' ability to regenerate life from DNA abound. The benefits of genetic engineering are often acknowledged, particularly advances toward curing diseases such as Alzheimer's. (55 ) However, whatever the benefits, the risks always tend to outweigh them, because narrative conventions require a crisis. The potential threats posed by genetically modified ("alien") organisms are consistently exaggerated. Misconceptions about cloning are everywhere in the movies. Clones have often been portrayed as exact instant copies of adults, whereas clones arise from embryos. In the movies, clones are derived from originals, who have precedence, unlike real clones who are equals. Clones are also either erroneously seen as inferior copies, or as the child rather than twin of a cell donor. No cloning movie can be said to further advance the public understanding of science. Meanwhile, human genetic enhancement is represented as a highly predictive science, which overemphasises the role of genes in determining complex human behaviours. Movies therefore reiterate a key, but politically-loaded, assumption of the genetic determinism. Artificially assisted reproduction technology, from artificial insemination, through IVF, ICSI, PGD, to the uses of human cell cloning, continues to be branded with the label "unnatural practice" in the movies. The nature of the scientific method and the motives of scientists, corporations and governments are typically misconstrued. To cap it all, genes have been given a mythic or spiritual aura, a genetic essentialism that conveys the impression that DNA is somehow in god's realm and not something for man to meddle with. Despite all this though, movies have tended to reflect society's anxiety about biotechnology, rather than creating that anxiety.

In the long-run, it will not be movies that stop technological progress by influencing public attitudes, but well-informed considerations of the benefits and risks of the technology. An important debate is now taking place, with the messages of multinational corporations, politicians, environment and consumer groups, and the media reaching a large proportion of the population. If human cloning, transgenic crops, or any other application of biotechnology is stopped, then it will not have been movies that were responsible, but a concerned citizenry worried about the type of world their children will grow up in. Important technological developments that affect everyone within a democracy, for example, those that affect the food supply, should not proceed without a popular consensus approving them. It is up to politicians, scientists and corporate biotechnologists to put the case for each application of biotechnology to the public. If the public do not buy it, then so be it.

I have to disagree with his final conclusion. The debate surrounding the use of biotechnology is driven not only by "concerned citizenry" but by politicians, and religious and corporate groups that have their own agendas. There is a ton of misinformation (and outright lies) promoted by lobbyists for those groups, and, not surprisingly, members of the public who are largely informed on scientific topics by popular culture are likely to have opinions about biotechnology that are based on emotional appeals and its sensationalist depiction in the movies than on careful analysis of the facts. I hate to think that our public policy is being set by the special interest groups that are best able to spin an entertaining tale.

In addition to Screening DNA, Nottingham's web site includes his "Biologist at the Cinema" series of essays and reviews that look at some popular science fiction films from a biologist's perspective:

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (intelligence and consciousness)
Blade Runner (clones, DNA and memory)
Jurassic Park 3 (genetic engineering and ecology)
Planet of the Apes (animal experimentation and evolution)
The 6th Day (clones)
Solaris (clones)

SF Stories that Inspire and Hinder Real Science

2008-08-28T04:49:00.000-07:00

Many kids who read science fiction in their youth and teen years were inspired to pursue a career in science. But apparently some SF can have the opposite effect, scaring people away from the sciences. For example, MIT synthetic biologist Drew Endy told io9's Annalee Newitz that "his area of research has also suffered because so much science fiction portrays bio-hacking as horrific (think Frankenstein) or silly (think South Park's "four-assed monkey")." Newitz has rounded up a list of SF stories that either are "inspiring" or "hindering" science.

The inspiring stories show science as part of the progress of human society. Her list includes Ian M. Banks' Look to Windward ("synthetic biology is simply a logical way that humans extend their capabilities, but it does not turn them into monsters or make them authoritarian overlords"), China Mieville's The Scar ("human-animal hybrids are often less disturbing than so-called normal humans.") and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time ("potential world of eco-friendly, multicultural feminists is founded on many complex technologies including artificial wombs, green mass transit, a rapid internet-like communications system, and complicated bio-engineering and waste-recycling tech").

The hindering stories, on the other hand are tales of science run amok, with serious negative impact on society. She includes the movie Gattaca, Greg Bear's Blood Music, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.

I'd add to her list of hinderers most of Michael Crichton's science fiction output, which usually features scientists who cause great destruction by a combination of their arrogance and ignorance. That would include The Andromeda Strain (lethal strain of bacteria is brought to earth by a satellite trying to find microbes to create bioweapons), Jurassic Park and its sequels (scientists recreate lethal and clever dinosaurs that are unexpectedly able to reproduce), Prey (swarms of bacterially-produced predatory nanobots that escape the lab and run amok), and Next (unethical genetic engineering of humans and animals). It's harder to come up with stories that portray biotechnology positively. Brin's stories that take place in his Uplift universe (genetic engineering is used for the "uplift" of dolphins and chimpanzees) could be on that list.

I wonder, though how much of an effect the "hindering" stories really have on the study of science. Sure, they negatively portray science and scientists, but from Newitz's list it's pretty clear that that kind of mad science story isn't anything new. In fact, Frankenstein was published almost 200 years ago. It seems to me that while SF certainly can affect the perception of science by the general public, I'm not sure that it has that much of an effect on those who are interested in the science enough to read up on the facts behind the fiction. Or maybe it's because readers with a science bent tend to read widely, becoming exposed to stories that both "hinder" and "inspire".

In any case, the issue of public perception of science and scientists is an important one, if only because that public perception influences politics and funding. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that the anti-science stories actually ring true to many people who have a deep distrust (and dislike) of corporations, the government, and anyone who is an "expert". It can be satisfying to see arrogant establishment types who believe themselves to be very clever shown up as bumbling and foolish, even if it does mean death and disaster as a result. Hell, I often enjoy those kind of stories, and I like science.

So what's the solution? More positive SF? That certainly couldn't hurt. But there's no guarantee that any particular novel or movie will become popular enough to really make a difference in public perception. I suspect that education is really the key. Part of what feeds people's fear of scientific progress is that they don't understand it. I'm not sure how we can go about that, though, beyond ensuring kids get a thorough science education in school. Public lectures are a possibility, as are entertaining exhibitions at science museums, and maybe blogs too. I'd like to think that anyway.

FREE FICTION: The Color of a Brontosaurus

2008-08-28T04:47:00.001-07:00

If you are looking for some free fiction to listen to this weekend, check out Escape Pod's podcast of Paul Martens' The Color of a Brontosaurus.

There was no doubt that the femur was that of a modern human. Not a proto-human, or some previously unknown dinosaur. Joel and Renee had arrived at the same answer. It was demonstrable, provable. When they finally did release news of the discovery, people might argue about it, but they’d be unable to refute it.
But how did they answer the next question? How did the bone come to be embedded in solid rock millions and millions of years before such a bone could have existed?

It had to be a time traveler. There was no other answer. Or was that just what he wanted to believe?

Image: "Taking own the skeleton of a dinosaur" at what is now Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.

Pat Murphy: Going through the changes

2008-08-28T04:46:00.001-07:00

The Starship Sofa podcast has a reading of Pat Murphy's short, "Going Through the Changes" (mp3).

It's a tale of how the power of the mind can transform the world . . .

Scott Sigler's Infected

2008-08-28T04:44:00.001-07:00

The problem with saving up my blog reading is that sometimes I miss out on cool offers. Scott Sigler's Infected is coming out in hard cover today, and as part of the pre-publication promotion, a pdf of the novel could be downloaded for free. That offer ended a few hours ago, unfortunately.

The story is a mixture of science fiction, horror and thriller, with lots of biology. Sigler was interviewed as part of John Scalzi's "Big Idea" series, which gives a synopsis of the story:

Animals are basically biological machines, capable of growth, self-repair and design modification based on changing environmental stresses. All of the processes used for those things should be able to be controlled in the human body, if we had the technology. For Infected, that technology is there, but humans are not the ones using it. The story is taking the concept of a virus, hijacking the human body’s natural processes to make copies of a simple organism, and extending that to building highly complex organisms, organisms with a pre-programed purpose and an evil, evil plan. We are a walking planet to the bacteria and arachnids that cover our body in the billions — and if we can modify our planet, why can’t they modify us?

According to Sigler, he basis his stories on hard science..

There are no magic wands, no random wormholes, no ghostly teleportation and no history-altering time travel — my stories are the same world you live in every day, which means characters and monsters will obey the laws of physics (for the most part, anyway). And if you read up on pop science or you remember your biology classes, you’re bound to run into things in my books that you already know. Again, there is something about incorporating knowledge that’s already around us that grips the reader, and helps build up the illusion of reality within the story.

For me the plausibility of the science makes the horror elements that much more horrifying. There's no escaping the many many microbes that are an integral part of our bodies. In Infected, the victims are infected by the genetically engineered "Triangles", that feed off their host's nutrients and thoughts. Once they have grown strong enough, they hatch from the host's weakened body. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

The good news is that even if you didn't download the free pdf, you can listen to the whole story in Scott Sigler's podcast: prologue and Chapter 1, Chapters 2-4, Chapters 5-9, Chapter 10.

Little Fuzzy: Audiobook and Free Text

2008-08-28T04:42:00.000-07:00

At BoingBoing Cory Doctorow reviews the Audio Realms audiobook version of H. Beam Piper's 1962 novel Little Fuzzy.

Little Fuzzy is Piper's masterpiece, a tight, neat science fiction story that epitomizes the golden age of sf. It concerns a prospector on a distant world who discovers a potentially sentient aboriginal race (the "Fuzzies), and his ensuing fight -- fists, lawyers and even guns -- to get them recognized as sentient beings. Along the way, Piper explores the nature of colonial economies, the deepest questions of consciousness and intelligence, paternalism and self-determination, and the nature of the rule of law. All in a package that a nine-year-old will find riveting and delightful.

Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, so you can read (and listen) to it for free!

I want to be a Virgle pioneer!

2008-08-28T04:27:00.001-07:00

Google's latest collaboration has a science fiction lover squarely in mind. They've teamed up with Virgin to establish a pioneer settlement on a terraformed Mars. The so-called Virgle project has a 100 Year Plan, and has clearly planed for every eventuality, including the possibility of finding Martian life.

Do you think you'll find life there?

Maybe. We know that in the past, the surface of Mars was covered with water, had a thicker atmosphere and volcanic activity, and was much warmer than it is today -- all conditions in which life could have developed. Scientists have also observed, on one Martian meteorite collected in the Antarctic, strange features that might, or might not, be organic in origin.

If life does exist on Mars today, it's almost certain to be primitive, i.e. bacterial, and it's almost certain not to exist on the planet surface, which is currently baked in UV radiation. However, since ice and perhaps water could exist a few meters below the surface, it's possible that life exists there today in these spots. Also, new data suggest the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Since atmospheric methane is destroyed by solar radiation, it isn't clear where all this new methane would be coming from.

Project Virgle's primary concern, though, is not the search for life on Mars, but the creation of a self-sufficient human colony there. Our outpost, however, will naturally be a great place for geologists and egzobiologists to study the question.

Even if life is discovered, how do we know it's not from Earth?

Good question. Life on Mars could indeed be from Earth. "Planetary transfer" theory suggests that early in both planets' histories, material from the frequent meteorite strikes could have been ejected from Earth and sent towards Mars. So yes, Earth could have theoretically seeded life on Mars (or vice versa; we could all be "Martians" in that sense).

What is of greater concern to the Virgle team is to develop the Mars settlement observing the so-called PP (planetary protection) protocols, which call for special attention to, and protection of, areas of Mars where life is most likely to exist today, or have existed in the past. We take this responsibility seriously and will consistently act so as to protect any possible sites and to research them as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

You can apply online today to be a Virgle pioneer. Maybe I'll see you on the way to Mars!

Freeman Dyson on Do-It-Yourself Biotech and Extraterrestrial Life

2008-08-28T04:21:00.000-07:00

Physicist Freeman Dyson gave a TED talk where he suggests that in the future there will be do-it-yourself biotechnology kits for the home geneticist, and that this is a necessary for the future acceptance of biotech by the general population.

“We should follow the model that has been so successful with the electronic industry.” Dyson said. “What really turned computers into a great success in the world as a whole was toys. As soon as computers became toys, when the kids could come home and play with them, then the industry took off. That has to happen with biotech.”

He does acknowledge that he doesn't really know that much about biotechnology, and so it's understandable that he misses an important point: biotech "toys" involve the manipulation of living and (often) breathing life forms. Accidentally creating an genetically engineered dog that is in constant pain is fundamentally different than mis-soldering a capacitor to a motherboard. And the release of genetically engineered animals, plants and microbes has the potential to cause significant environmental damage. Messing with biology just isn't the same as toying with electronics.

The rest of Dyson's talk mostly focuses about the search for extraterrestrial life on Europa by shining a bright light on the surface, which is kind of a nifty if unlikely to be successful idea. "Look for what is detectable, not for what is probable" is his philosophy.
Hopefully, if we do end up finding life on Europa it goes a bit better than Clarke predicted in 2010: Odyssey Two, where humans are ordered to stay away from that moon so as not to disturb the life there.

The last bit of Dyson's talk is about possible life in the Kuiper belt, which - if it exists at all - he believes will be quite widespread. Such life would be adapted to living in the extremely cold vacuum of space. This is not a new idea from him. In a talk he gave in 2000, he not only talked about the possibility that life that already exists among the asteroids, but that Earth life might be adapted to live under those conditions too:
The jump from breathing air to living in a vacuum is no greater than the jump from breathing water to breathing air. Plants and animals will need some genetic engineering to be at home in a vacuum. Plants will need new organs of photosynthesis that produce liquid or solid peroxides instead of oxygen gas. Animals will need new organs of respiration to take in oxygen in the form of peroxides instead of from air. Instead of lungs, animals would have an organ like a liver that dissociates peroxides slowly into molecular oxygen and feeds the oxygen into the blood.

Both plants and animals will need stronger skin to hold internal pressure and prevent their blood from boiling. The vapor pressure of water at blood temperature is quite small, so the skin will not need to be thick to hold it. In cold places far from the sun, animals will need thicker layers of fur and plants will need thicker layers of bark to provide thermal insulation. This will be a challenge for plant and animal breeders, but with a mastery of the techniques of genetic engineering they should be able to do it.

While that sounds fairly far-fetched, perhaps children that grow up playing with bioengineering kits will be able to solve any technical problems for developing life adapted to space.

(Dyson lecture via Tomorrow's Table)

How Aliens Work

2008-08-28T04:18:00.000-07:00

At How Stuff Works Craig Freudenrich has put together a primer on "How Aliens Work". He lays out the ground rules for alien physiology:

"Alien life would be governed by laws of physics and chemistry."
"Alien life would be based on some type of chemistry (eliminating the sci-fi concept of pure-energy beings)." What type of chemistry will be determined by the environment, including the available solvent (such as water or methane), temperature, pressure, available energy sources, and the presence of complex molecules, especially an "informational molecule" like DNA.
Aliens larger than microbes would have some equivalent of cells. "We would not expect to find a light-years wide, single-celled organism like that portrayed in the original Star Trek episode "The Immunity Syndrome.""
"Organ systems would be adapted to environmental conditions such as temperature, moisture and gravity"
"Alien organisms would probably have similar ecological structures to life on Earth."

And the most important take home message?

As you can see, life of any kind is intimately tied to its environment, so the characteristics of the planet would be extremely important in determining the characteristics of the life form.

Read the full article for all the details.

(via The World in the Satin Bag)

Image: Creatures like the gargantuan Space Amoeba from the Star Trek ToS Episode "The Immunity Syndrome" probably don't exist.

Highbrow Horror: The Fly The Opera

2008-08-28T03:30:00.001-07:00

I imagine there are some closeted science fiction fans out there who are embarrassed to be seen holding a novel with a lurid cover or telling their coworkers about attending a horror film festival. If you are in the Los Angeles area, you can now have your B-movie-style entertainment and still tell your friends you spent Saturday night at the theater. All you have to do is buy tickets to The Fly The Opera, which will run at the LA Opera

This is a major production, with music composed by Howard Shore, who scored September 7-27.Lord of the Rings, libretto by David Henry Hwang, who won a Tony for his play M. Butterfly, conducted by Plácido Domingo, and directed by David Cronenberg, director of the 1986 movie version of The Fly. The opera retains the classic horror story of the original movie: a scientist decides to test a teleportation device on himself, but a fly is inadvertently trapped in the machine with him. The result is a monster created from the fusion of man and fly.

The opera premiered at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in July, to mixed reviews:

Eric Dahan of Libération said Mr. Shore had “perhaps overestimated his ability to write a lyric work,” while Christian Merlin wrote in Le Figaro that the production “confirmed that cinema and theater, above all opera, are two very different arts.”
In Le Monde, while praising the soloists, Renaud Machart described Mr. Shore’s score as that of “a moderately gifted pupil of Arnold Schoenberg.” He also lamented, somewhat oddly, that the movie’s gory close-ups of decomposing flesh could not be reproduced on stage.

Even if it doesn't live up to the best of theater or cinema, this "engrossing exploration of the physical and psychological transformation" would make for an interesting night at the opera.

Watch the show's podcast to learn more about the sound and look of the program.