See a dolphin swimming through the water and you’re not just looking at a sleek and playful marine creature, you’re also seeing an animal with culture. Indeed, dolphin culture has recently been spotted off the coast of Australia, says new research from a group of international marine biologists studying bottlenose dolphins. However, this dolphin culture isn’t fancy cocktail parties, visits to art galleries, or listening to contemporary jazz. It’s wearing sea sponges. This use of sea sponges is first description of potential culture—a skill or tradition that is passed down without the involvement of genetics—in a marine mammal and places…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By davidsecko
David Secko is a molecular biologist and a science writer, who is currently studying journalism at the University of British Columbia. He thinks Steven Wright was right when he asked: "ok, so what's the speed of dark?" His writing has appeared in The Scientist, The Tyee, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Science's Next Wave and UBC's Thunderbird Magazine.
THE CELL CYCLE: A UNIVERSAL CELLULAR DIVISION PROGRAM
(August 2003) In the 17th century, Robert Hooke peered through a microscope at a slice of cork and discovered that it was composed of cells1. Centuries later, Rudolf Virchow set forth the cell theory1, in which he proposed that the cell was the basic unit of all living organisms. We now know that this theory is true; cells make up all living things, whether they are plants, animals, or microorganisms. This realization produces a reflective concept on the continuity of life. There is only one way to make more cells—by the division of those that already exist. All animals come…
THANKS FOR ALL THE BLOOD
Blood donors around the world got a pat on the back last week, as the World Heath Organization (WHO) stamped June 14 “World Blood Day.” Everyday millions of people feel the jab of a donation needle, giving pints of blood that can help save lives, and last Tuesday was a chance to reflect on this generosity, said the WHO in their reasons for labeling the day. “Safe blood is a fundamental need for the health system of any country,” said Dr Lee Jong-wook, Director-General of the WHO in a press statement. “WHO’s 192 Member States have recently agreed that World…
DATING OILY ROCK
The giant oil sands of Alberta finally have a date. And it’s a lot older than anyone expected. David Selby and Robert Creaser, from the University of Alberta, recently put an age of 112 ± 5.3 million years ago for the migration and accumulation of oil in the Alberta oil sands – a date over 60 million years earlier than previously thought. Although, the date isn’t the first to be done on the sands, it’s the first in the world to be done with such accuracy. “This has only ever been done on a relative scale before with something like…
HUNGER IN THE MIDST OF HIV
New research suggests that British Columbians with HIV are more likely to be unsure of their next meal as compared to the rest of the Canadian population. This uncertainty is nearly 5 times higher than the general Canadian population, often leading to HIV- positive individuals not having access to adequate amounts of food. “We were not expecting this many people to be hungry,” says Lena Normén, from the Canadian HIV Trials Network at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, BC, and lead author of the new study. Wasting—loss of strength and weight in a person due to a chronic disease— from…
LEARNING BY PURE OBSERVATION.
Simply observing a person in the act of learning to move in a new environment is enough to help you unconsciously learn those movements, says new research by Canadian scientists. More specifically, Andrew Mattar and Paul Gribble, from the University of Western Ontario (UWO), recently found that individuals who watched a video of a person learning to move a robotic arm, performed this same task better than those who didn’t observe the learning process. This may not come as a surprise to anyone who has learned by watching a professional athlete or expert craftsman. However, what is unexpected is that…
WATCHING THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE: BOOK REVIEW: A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING By Bill Bryson. 544 pp. DoubleDay Canada $39.95 (Hardcover) I haven’t sat and watched this much television is years. But, it’s hard not to when the birth of the universe is on. And on my television, which gets only one channel with rabbit ears, it’s on every night. So, as Bill Bryson puts it in A Short History of Nearly Everything: “The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.” What Bryson is referring to, in such an illuminating and funny way,…
SCIENCE GETS ITS FIRST SUPERMODEL
New discoveries that show evolution in action are causing some scientists to say that the first scientific supermodel has arrived. Biology is normally carried out within isolated specializations. Ecologists study one organism, molecular biologists another, while evolutionary biologists look over hundreds without probing too deeply into any particular one. But one tiny little fish, the threespine stickleback, proves that a combination of genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology and population studies, can bring insight into the fundamental question of how evolution occurs in nature. “The sticklebacks are a shining example of what can happen when you put all of these fields…
IS MOST PUBLISHED SCIENCE FALSE?
Science is chasing truth, with an emphasis on the chase. Nevertheless, regardless of this pursuit, a common assumption is that when a scientific study is published, its results are true — and only on the rarest occasions, do false findings appear in print. But a new analysis of the probability that published research findings are true suggests that we all may be deceiving ourselves – most research papers are instead false. “We have to acknowledge that there is a problem,” says John Ioannidis, from the University of Ioannina in Greece, who recently undertook the analysis. Using a mathematical model that…