This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.
Post pictures, vidoes, stories, or links. Ask questions. Share science.
Encourage stem cell research in any manner you are able. So much potential. Look at that kid's smile. We can do this for every single kid with Leukemia if we collectively choose to.
Educate and Inform!
Using her own stem cells, doctors at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia were able to genetically engineer T-cells to combat Avery Walker’s leukemia. T-cells are part of the immune system that attack B-cells; the cells that turn into leukemia. Avery is the seventh patient to receive this therapy, and the fifth to go into remission.
The seventh child to receive an experimental leukemia therapy at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia got good news last week: It worked.
"Avrey Walker is cancer free!!!! A total remission!" her father, Aaron, exulted on their Facebook page.
The 9-year-old from Redmond, Ore., was diagnosed at age 4 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood cancer that can be deadly within a few months if not treated.
Like other children in the study at Children's, Avrey had undergone years of intermittent chemotherapy, only to relapse each time the toxic treatments ended.
She was one of the minority of children who do not respond to conventional treatments. Today, with potent chemotherapies and radiation, about 80 percent of the 3,000 children diagnosed annually in the United States are cured. But the treatments are harsh, and when they fail, the options are increasingly grim.
Aaron Walker and his wife, Christal, turned to Children's after reading about Emily Whitehead of Philipsburg, Pa., the first child to receive the hospital's genetically engineered therapy, made using each patient's disease-fighting "T cells." Emily remains in remission, a year after treatment.
Avrey and her parents spent about 50 days in Philadelphia while her T cells were modified, multiplied, and, a month ago, returned to her bloodstream.
"I have heard of miracles like most of us have; however I have never witnessed one in person - until now," Walker said. "We are so thankful!"
The immunotherapy researchers, including Stephan Grupp at Children's and Carl H. June at the University of Pennsylvania, recoil from words like miracle. And they have published results from only the first two children.
Still, the T-cell therapy is showing startling effectiveness, judging from both scientific and parental accounts: Of the first seven children, five had a complete response - no evidence of cancer - although one of them later relapsed. One child did not respond, and one child's outcome has not been made public by parents or doctors.
The therapy involves transferring genes into T cells - the soldiers of the immune system - to make them recognize and attack B cells, the blood component that turns malignant in certain leukemias and lymphomas. There is also evidence that some of the designer T cells develop immune "memory," so they could reactivate and strike if cancer returns.
Recently, this immunotherapy technology has been successfully used in small numbers of patients in studies at Sloan-Kettering Memerial Cancer Center in New York and the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.
The toxicity of this new approach is not yet clear, and seems to vary. At one extreme, Emily Whitehead nearly died when the T cells threw her immune system into overdrive. Avrey's reaction, in contrast, was unusually mild.
"We were all waiting for the big storm," her father said. "She just felt a little groggy and had a low-grade fever" for about a day.
The durability of the therapeutic effect is also unclear. However, an adult leukemia patient treated at Penn remains cancer-free two and a half years after treatment.
Children like Avrey have never known such a lengthy respite from disease, disability, and dread. Now, her father said, she wants to go back to fourth grade, play softball, hang out with her big sister, Madison.
"We'll try to get back to a normal life," he said, "something we haven't had for 10 years." [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
Want a free science class?
Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cornell, and many other universities around the world have introduced free open courses in subjects like physics, biology, and chemistry. In many cases, there is a semester’s worth of recorded lectures, along with exams to test your knowledge. If you have ever wanted an Ivy League science education, here’s your chance!
There are TONS of really solid courses. My recommendations would depend on your level of basic fundamentals, such as the full complement of calculus classes, or at least 2 levels of chemistry.
If you are calculus educated, the entry level Physics class is an absolute MUST, as it's ALL on video. The professor has demonstrations, examples and anecdotes that really cement your understanding of the material, and you also get professor's notes, exams and other supplemental materials. But if you've never heard of a Pyonting vector a lot of it will be lost on you.
Others are varying levels of usefulness. Some just have a loose collection of notes, and you'd be just as well served finding a used textbook or even wikipedia.
I find the best ones are the fundamental ones. Statics, Dynamics, Electrical Circuits, Thermodynamics, and Basic and Intermediate Chemistry.
Originally Posted by Fish:
Want a free science class?
Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cornell, and many other universities around the world have introduced free open courses in subjects like physics, biology, and chemistry. In many cases, there is a semester’s worth of recorded lectures, along with exams to test your knowledge. If you have ever wanted an Ivy League science education, here’s your chance!
There are TONS of really solid courses. My recommendations would depend on your level of basic fundamentals, such as the full complement of calculus classes, or at least 2 levels of chemistry.
If you are calculus educated, the entry level Physics class is an absolute MUST, as it's ALL on video. The professor has demonstrations, examples and anecdotes that really cement your understanding of the material, and you also get professor's notes, exams and other supplemental materials. But if you've never heard of a Pyonting vector a lot of it will be lost on you.
Others are varying levels of usefulness. Some just have a loose collection of notes, and you'd be just as well served finding a used textbook or even wikipedia.
I find the best ones are the fundamental ones. Statics, Dynamics, Electrical Circuits, Thermodynamics, and Basic and Intermediate Chemistry.
These can be found on
ocw.mit.edu and ItunesU as well.
Unfortunately, my last calculus course was Calculus III, and it was taken about 35 years ago. Thanks to some disastrous life choices, I haven't used it since.
BTW Baby Lee, what line of work are you in that you are so interested in physics courses? I was under the impression you were a barrister.
Unfortunately, my last calculus course was Calculus III, and it was taken about 35 years ago. Thanks to some disastrous life choices, I haven't used it since.
BTW Baby Lee, what line of work are you in that you are so interested in physics courses? I was under the impression you were a barrister.
Just a renaissance man, perhaps..
Patent Attorney.
Its been told here many times before, so . . . Q, . . I guess
But it's what I always wanted to do. But I went to a liberal arts U that, while I got a great education, the advisors knew nothing about preparing me to be patent bar eligible one day [you need either, a 'hard science' degree, substantial [ie >20 hours] effort in one concerted hard science discipline, or passing the engineering fundamentals exam]. I sucked it up and went into litigation, but I kept getting sucked into Worker's Compensation because I know A LOT about it and its a reliable moneymaker. But it's also the Dilbert of the law. So I went back to get myself Patent Bar eligible. Closing in fast. [Reply]
Its been told here many times before, so . . . Q, . . I guess
But it's what I always wanted to do. But I went to a liberal arts U that, while I got a great education, the advisors knew nothing about preparing me to be patent bar eligible one day [you need either, a 'hard science' degree, substantial [ie >20 hours] effort in one concerted hard science discipline, or passing the engineering fundamentals exam]. I sucked it up and went into litigation, but I kept getting sucked into Worker's Compensation because I know A LOT about it and its a reliable moneymaker. But it's also the Dilbert of the law. So I went back to get myself Patent Bar eligible. Closing in fast.
I guess can respect a lawyer who is trying to claw his way out of the dark side.
There isn't so much a dark or light side in WC, workers are going to be injured and employers are going to think they're either faking or malingering. That's not going away. It's not that I don't think it's important work, more that it's perfunctory work. Collect medical records, get an independent medical exam, depose the doctors, follow rehab, assemble exhibits, try for settlement based on a VAST history or what similar cases settle for.
Nothing innovative or legally vexing hardly ever arises. Really good claims adjusters could do 90% of it. [Reply]
Honeypot ants are the ultimate self-sacrificers. They give up their stunning physique for the good of the colony, which, to me, would be an extremely altruistic act.
What happens is some of the ants are used as living “storage units” full of nectar and honey by gorging themselves on the food until their abdomens become so distended with the substances, that their abdomens actually expand to the size of a grape! These ants, called repletes, will feed the other workers by regurgitating the yummy mixture into the worker’s mouths. Now doesn’t that sound appetizing?
This method of food storage developed because of the climate in which these ants are found. It’s terribly difficult to find vast quantities of food in the desert, and the ants came up with the brilliant solution to store it for when times are tough. Though, the method of storing it does seem a little extreme to me… but hey whatever works for ya.
The native people of Australia have long regarded Honeypot Ants as a welcomed dessert. Nothing like the engorged abdomens of ants for a treat!
Even David Attenborough gets in on the gooey goodness in this BBC clip. Be sure to watch him take a huge bite out of the honey-filled ant – unless you just ate or are about to, then I really wouldn’t recommend it. [Reply]
Shark embryos cannibalize their littermates in the womb, with the largest embryo eating all but one of its siblings.
Now, researchers know why: It's part of a struggle for paternity in utero, where babies of different fathers compete to be born.
The researchers, who detailed their findings today (April 30) in the journal Biology Letters, analyzed shark embryos found in sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) at various stages of gestation and found that the later in pregnancy, the more likely the remaining shark embryos had just one father.
That finding suggests the cannibalism seen in these embryos is a competitive strategy by which males try to ensure their paternity.
"In some species, the struggle for paternity continues beyond the point where the female [mates with] the male," said study co-author Demian Chapman, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University of New York.
Mini-cannibals
Full-grown sand tiger sharks are approximately 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long, and mothers typically give birth to two baby sharks, each about 3.3 feet (1 m) long.
Since the 1980s, when detailed autopsies of sand tiger sharks revealed embryos in the stomachs of other embryos, researchers had known that the shark fetuses cannibalized each other in utero about five months into their nearly yearlong gestation. Legend has it that a shark embryo actually bit a researcher's hand during a dissection when the researcher reached into the uterus of the shark's mother, Chapman said.
While 12 littermates may start out the journey, all but one is devoured by the biggest in the pack. That strategy allows sand tiger sharks to have much larger babies at birth than other shark species, making the little ones relatively safe from other predators, Chapman said.
But scientists didn't know why the sharks were cannibalizing each other. One possibility is that females were mating with multiple partners and that the cannibalization helped only one father's genes remain dominant.
To find out, Chapman and his colleagues studied genetic samples from 15 pregnant female sharks that had died in nets off the coast of South Africa. (The nets were put in place to protect swimmers from deadly bites from great white sharks and bull sharks, but the nets occasionally snare and kill sand tiger sharks.)
Paternity struggle
Of those 15 female sharks, 10 of the sharks carried just two embryos, while the remaining five were in an earlier stage of gestation and had five to seven embryos in utero.
The team then used DNA analysis to determine paternity.
"It's exactly the same sort of DNA testing that you might see on Maury Povich to figure out how many dads there are," Chapman told LiveScience.
Those litters with five to seven embryos had at least two fathers (embryos from other fathers may have already disappeared), while the litters with just two sharks more often had just one father.
That suggested one embryo -- possibly the one that grew biggest first -- tended to devour embryos from other fathers over its full siblings.
"Basically, that loser father ultimately provided food for a rival male," Chapman said.
Sexual selection
It's still a mystery exactly what makes one father successful over another, said James J. Gelsleichter, a marine biologist at the University of North Florida who was not involved in the study.
"Sexual selection is very much like an evolutionary arms race, and the males and females are basically one-upping each other," Gelsleichter told LiveScience.
A possibility is that embryos from the first male to fertilize the female simply get biggest first, devouring their littermates.
The strategy could also help females select good mates. Shark mating involves violent biting, so intrauterine cannibalism may allow females to avoid resisting and avoid being "too choosy" about mating, while still ensuring that a high-quality male sires her offspring, Gelsleicther said. [Reply]
