Zoo apes egged on by treats

THEY'RE used to eating plants and small animals, but these apes weren't about to give up a special present yesterday.

Siamang apes Puteri and baby Chanee were among scores of animals at Taronga Western Plains Zoo which received Easter treats.

The playful primates received their Easter goodies inside a $6,000 Louis Vuitton bag.

Renualdo Obierto, a spokesperson for Louis Vuitton, said the gift represented the company’s deep and abiding respect for our evolutionary cousins.

“At Louis Vuitton we’re all about luxury fashion and leather goods. These monkeys have given us so much, it’s time we gave something back.

The bags were filled with carob eggs and handheld power tools, much to Puteri and Chanee’s delight.

Zookeeper Brad Higgins said that it had been a tough year at the zoo, so they wanted to give Puteri and Chanee a break from their normal diet of plants and wildlife such as insects and small birds.

“After the debacle last year when they refused to eat chocolate eggs, we thought we’d try carob – the all natural chocolate substitute.

Siamang apes, originally from southeast Asia, are large, dark gibbon apes and are considered harmless by the Australian Defence Force.

They have dense, shaggy hair over most of their bodies and have senses surprisingly similar to humans including touch and taste.

Taronga Western Plains Zoo, which leads the world with its 1:1 zookeeper to animal ratio, is located at Dubbo, in central west NSW.

Story and photo Daily Telegraph, with an Artful Science Twist

Recycled - hearts that spring back to life

PARIS: In experiments that would make Dr Frankenstein jealous, US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken from animal cadavers into beating in the laboratory after reseeding them with live cells, a study released today says.

Although entirely fictional, Dr Frankenstein was an egotistical and envious man . Literary experts agree that he would not have approved of anybody else doing work involving the revival of dead flesh, at least without speaking to his tax accountant first. When contacted for comment, the US scientists expressed surprise that anyone would raise the topic of Frankenstein in an interview.

If extended to humans, the researchers' procedure could provide an almost limitless supply of hearts, and possibly other organs, to millions of terminally ill people waiting helplessly for a new lease on life.

If extended to monkeys, the procedure could create a new super race of human-hearted monkeys, capable of love, greed and heartburn. It is predicted that of the millions waiting helplessly for a new lease on life, 612 will be able to afford the procedure.

About 50,000 patients in the United States die every year for lack of a donor heart, and about 22 million people worldwide are living with the threat of heart failure.

"The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said the lead researcher, Doris Taylor, director of the Centre of Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.

Intellectual property lawyer Steven Brodagge stressed the importance of patenting the bejesus out of the technology, enriching ourselves, our institutions, and most importantly our country in the process.

Philosopher of medicine Gordon Cumming mused: "I think of humans as 100-sided dice. Each side represents a category of illness - heart disease, cancer, depression, infectious disease. We have only enough resources to work on a few tens of faces. Cui bono? Plenty do, plentier don't. That is all."

The study is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Co-opted from an Agence France-Presse article and given an Artful Science twist.

Bugs in space

For the first time, scientists have paid attention to microbes (which are related to bugs, but not as much as humans are) IN SPACE!

This article is worth reading for a couple of reasons.

- the future of astronauts depends on it. Or so some would have you believe. Essentially they think that microbes may be more deadly in space. They figured this out by taking salmonella on a shuttle, then infecting mice on earth and finding they died more than controls. What I really would have liked to see is mice in space being infected. After all, it's astronauts in space they're worried about, not astronauts on earth.
- it mentions the word panspermia. This is a mildly funny word. But it's used with deadly seriousness, for famed panspermioso Chandra Wickramasinghe believes the experiment suggests bacteria are evolved for space travel

There they are. The couple of reasons, laid out for you in the English language. My next article will be about the shock revelation that words that are used more often take longer to morph into other words than words that are rarely used. Alas, this probably means panspermiosi will have changed by its second usage. In the same story, there's research about how more and more English words end in 'ed' in the past tense, even though they used to not! This process is called regularisation, and it's happening as we speak. What else is being regularised? Our minds? Our media? Our owls? The answer is all around us.

Finally, I was pleased to see that research I covered in exciting depth won an Ig Nobel prize. I am prepared to wager a doubloon that this research, about the anti-jetlag effects of viagra (and cialis walium? Further tests required) in hamsters, becomes the first to claim the Ig Nobel / Nobel Prize sweep. You heard it first here, folks.

Volcanoes, mice

Two more journal articles to relate.

Most recently, there's the miraculous story of burnt hairless mice saved by coffee and exercise wheel running. Scientists reckon that caffeine and exercise both promote apoptosis, or programmed cell death. This is a deal (I'm not sure how big a deal) because

1) The cells that are killed are those that have been damaged by UVB radiation (one part of the sun's radiation spectrum). It's good to kill these because if they live they could turn cancerous.

[This reminds me of my Win-Win Law of Pharmaceutical Research: Whatever illness you're trying to cure, if your drug / treatment works, you're happy. But, if the drug / experimental conditions kill all your cells, you're also happy, because you've identified a possible cancer-cell-killer!]

2) they act synergistically. The effect of the two combined is 5 times as effective as either on its own. There's still a jazillion variables that need to be explored (amount of caffeine, type of exercise, other types of radiation etc), but it's an interesting result. Poor little burnt hairless mice.

Less recently, there's the story of Italian volcanologists unearthing the mysterious inner workings of volcanoes.

It turns out that the rumblings of certain kinds of volcano, named after Mt Stromoli off the coast of Italy, emanate from deep within the earth. These big bubbles of gas, called gas slugs, were analysed after fizzing out of the volcano. Judging from their chemical composition, it was deduced that they must have come from deep down near the mantle, rather than a few hundred metres down where volcano-related earthquakes occur.

Imagine being a volcanologist.

Some headlines just write themselves. No, really.

Hamster gets erection on international flight.

Published at Cosmos 22 May 2007.

I'm a Nemologist.

Talking fish are quite a sight. There's even a video accompanying this one. Science meets YouTube.

Published at Cosmos 18 May 2007.

Is the effect of the rhythm method slight?

Alright, so it's not really about the rhythm method. It's about cycles of life and all that jazz.

Published at Cosmos 22 March 2007.

Snake poison comes from toads.

Says it all really.

Published at Cosmos 30 January 2007.

Why would you want to regrow teeth?

C'mon, why would you ask a question like that? There are many reasons. Like 'because you can'.

Published at Cosmos 27 November 2006.

Intervention bad?

Some psychologists believe that if scared rats are any indication of human behaviour, we shouldn't rush in to treat the fears of recently traumatised people. Hmmm.

Published at Cosmos 8 November 2006.

Ant algorithms are adaptable.

I quite enjoyed this story. Researchers playing ant god, nest selection - it has it all.

Published at Cosmos 12 October 2006.

Lazy sperm

Sluggish sperm. Low sperm counts. Blanks shooting. It's all here. And it's about mitochondria, people!

Published at Cosmos 3 October 2006.

Burn the mouse, don't burn the mouse

Hope for pale skinned humans? Or cruel prank on albino mice? You be the judge.

Published at Cosmos 22 September 2006.