Mutualism.... Or just really cute?

Had a friend send this to me... Looks like both species are benefiting from this relationship :)


http://5thworld.com/Paradigm/Postings/!Wisdom/OrangutanAndHound.html

Sea Otters: Cute lil critters or sex crazed maniacs?

Claudia showed some cute sea otter pictures but sea otters always look cute - they probably look cute even when they are practicing necrophilia or trying to rape baby harbor seals.

Without even trying too hard sea otters can reach almost lethal levels of cuteness. Anyone remember this viral video from a few years back (check out the number of hits - almost 14 million!). At about 1:20 into this video the cuteness level gets dangerously high.

Population Prospects

Here's an interesting statistic that I ran across recently that is related to the last class.

Which is the only country in the world where mandatory contraceptive courses are required for both men and women before a marriage license can be obtained?

No, it isn't China.
Highlight the answer if you are curious--> Iran

For the most up to date information on population trends the 2008 revision of the UN's World Population Prospects is available here. The Population division website has links to lots more data.

REU opportunity in Bermuda

The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences has received National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) funding to support 8 fellowships for undergraduate student research at BIOS during the 2010 fall semester (DATES: arrive on September 1, 2010 - depart on November 24, 2010). Students will design and conduct independent projects under faculty supervision within several research areas including:

• Biology, chemistry and physics of the open ocean
• Biology, physiology and biochemistry of reef building corals and reef ecosystems
• Aspects of the molecular biology of marine organisms
• Environmental chemistry of Bermuda's atmosphere and inshore waters
• Effects and consequences of global environmental change

See their website for further details

Initial selection begins May 30 which is the unofficial deadline for applications. Students who have completed at least two years of undergraduate study and will still be undergraduates in the fall of 2010 are eligible to apply.

Study finds sexism rampant in nature

One of the millions of lionesses trapped in an abusive relationship.

How come nobody posted this? If I read the Onion more than you do then something is very, very wrong in the world. From a few weeks ago: Study Finds Sexism Rampant In Nature.

"The sexist attitude that child-rearing is 'women's work' is prevalent throughout nature and has been for generations, probably since reptiles first developed mammalian characteristics in the Triassic period," Tannen said. "Sadly, most creatures never pause to challenge these woefully outdated gender roles."

Antibiotic-resistant Gram-Negative Bacteria

You’ve probably never even heard of Acinetobacter baumannii or Enterobacter aerogenes. But these and other little-known gram-negative bacteria are killing tens of thousands of hospitalized patients every year, according to some estimates.

Gram-negative bacteria (so-called because of the way they are stained during the Gram staining protocol) have a cell wall structure that makes them more difficult to kill with antibiotics in the first place. But some strains of these bacteria are now resistant to every modern antibiotic we have.

In an ironic twist, two antibiotics (colistin and polymyxin B) that are somewhat effective against these resistant bacteria are still effective only because they were essentially abandoned decades ago, when it was learned that they can cause nerve and kidney damage. Now it’s become an unpleasant trade-off at times; risk death from the bacteria, or risk possible nerve and kidney damage from the antibiotics.

New antibiotics are needed, but so far there do not appear to be any “magic bullet”-type antibiotics on the horizon. This is a battle we’re slowly losing.

Anaerobic metazoan

Sandwiched between 'Earliest known Led Zeppelin recording' and 'Evolutionary Psychology Bingo' on BoingBoing is A multicellular organism that lives without oxygen.

This is based on a paper in BMC Biology entitled The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions.

This is the first evidence of a metazoan life cycle that is spent entirely in permanently anoxic sediments. Our findings allow us also to conclude that these metazoans live under anoxic conditions through an obligate anaerobic metabolism that is similar to that demonstrated so far only for unicellular eukaryotes. The discovery of these life forms opens new perspectives for the study of metazoan life in habitats lacking molecular oxygen.