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What's New -- Friday, December 29, 2006 Bob Park
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn122906.html
1. VIRGINS AND DRAGONS: DO YOU THINK WE MAKE THIS STUFF UP?
Your letters are important to us, but this week we fell behind in
answering the mail, for which we apologize. Since most of the mail this
week was about the Komodo virgin, I propose to respond collectively.
Half the e-mails assumed that I don't know squat about Ineffabilis
Deus, issued by Pope Pius IX in 1854. That's not so; it's Latin for
"Ineffable God," I just don't know what "ineffable" means. Anyway,
Ineffabilis Deus propounds the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,
which gives the Blessed Virgin Mary a pass on original sin. It doesn't
say anything about Komodo Dragon moms, but I don't think they've ever
been accused of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Other mail
politely pointed out that the offspring of parthenogenesis must be
female, otherwise where would they get a Y chromosome? But that's not
so either. Komodo Dragons aren't on the XY system. They're on the WZ
system, in which WZ is female, ZZ is male, and WW is inviable.
Parthenogenic Komodos are either male or they don't make it.
2. HOLIDAY STORY: THE CONTRIBUTION OF GUT BACTERIA TO OBESITY.
According to the cover story in this week's issue of Nature, there's an
association between the bacteria that inhabit our gut and the
regulation of body weight. Jeffrey Gordon and his colleagues at
Washington University in St. Louis found that some intestinal microbes
are more efficient at producing simple sugars and fatty acids for the
gut to absorb. This is timely news. An earlier report in the New
England Journal of Medicine found the average weight gain over a six
week period from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day to be 0.9 pounds.
If retained, that would just about account for the average weight gain
through adulthood.
3. EARTHQUACKS: SCIENTISTS IN CHINA OBSERVED BEHAVING STRANGELY.
On Tuesday, an earthquake that shook southern Taiwan damaged undersea
cables and disrupted communications across Asia. It's not clear just
what scientists at the earthquake bureau in nearby Nanning in southern
China saw, but two days AFTER the quake they told The China Daily that
snakes can sense a quake up to five days before it happens. How do they
know this? The reptiles "behave erratically." To observe this behavior
they installed cameras at a local snake farm to monitor the snakes
24/7. The director of the bureau said snakes can sense a quake up to
five days before it happens. "Of all the creatures on the earth," the
director said, "snakes are the most sensitive to earthquakes." To test
this claim I've started monitoring the erratic behavior of
Washingtonians from my office window. My initial assessment is that
there are far more earthquakes than anyone realizes.
4. BEST WISHES FOR 2007: WE PREDICT IT WILL BE AN IMPROVEMENT.
In any case, What'S New will be back to take a look.
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