And now for some links to random science stories that caught my attention.
First, there’s the involved saga of a dietary neurotoxin linked to Alzheimer’s: The toxin, BMAA, is generated by blue-green algae, absorbed by cycads, concentrated in the bodies of flying foxes that feed on these Cycads, and poisons the natives of Guam, who eat the bats (and the cycads) . But it gets trickier: in the humans, the toxin actually gets incorporated into proteins, so that it can be steadily released years after they left the island, inducing a neural disease similar to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer…
Early fish hit land to be better predators – basically, the idea is that early tetrapod fish were overclocking their metabolism by basking in the Sun, so they could be faster when hunt other fish.
Strong mums more likely to bear sons is a study done in Ethiopia; there’s also evidence from Animal studies, which I can’t find the link to right now. The claim is that bearing daughters is a better reproductive strategy when times are hard, because they are much more likely to produce some grandchildren, while bearing sons is a more high-risk, high-reward strategy (they have to compete more, so reproduction isn’t guaranteed, but males can potentially have many more offspring than females). Apparently, the female reproductive system adapts to conditions, so that male children are likelier if the mother is healthy and well-nourished. But as a follow-up, this study shows that even psychological factors can skew the sex-ratio, claiming that women who believe that they will live longer are more likely to bear sons.
Apparently, people are pretty good at estimating their life-expectancy.
Finally, John G. Cramer science column for Analog, The Alternate View described an experiment by Shariar S. Afshar which apparently manages to test (and disprove!) the cannonical interpretations of what exactly happens in Quantum Mechanics, both the classic Copenhagen Interpretation and the currently fashionable
Many Worlds Interpretation (link via Kathryn Cramer).