Mixalot, Mercury, McKenzie…

What do these names have in common? Well, they all like big bottoms, and today, according to the ABC, so do scientists.

The rather sensational headline “Scientists back big bottoms” isn’t quite the reality; rather they have discovered the reason why it is healthier to carry extra wait on the thighs, hips and buttocks than around the abdomen. That this is the case is old news – it’s why those diabetes ads talk about the measurement of your waistline, not your weight – but now Oxford scientists have determined that not all fat is equal.

There are big differences in the fat cells in different part of the body; for one thing, lower body fat is less metabolically active: it doesn’t quickly absorb fats from your diet or release them when needed for exercise. That’s the purpose of abdominal fat. But lower body fat instead produces the hormones leptin and adiponectin, which assist in the processing of fats and sugars – thus helping guard against diseases like diabetes. In sharper contrast, abdominal fat produces evil hormones that fight the leptin and adiponectin, causing an opposite effect, so having fat everywhere has a net negative effect (well, we already knew that, but now we know it chemically as well). If ever there was a time to misuse the phrase “the battle of the bulge”, this is it.

It’s an interesting reminder that so many of the terms we use are generalisations: fat isn’t just a homogeneous type of tissue which is bad in excess and good in the right amount, it has different types each with different roles to play. And the basic upshot of this news is that if you exercise you’ll be healthier than if you don’t, even if you’re still carrying some weight on your hips. And of course you should carry some weight there, because as the Man in the Lab Coat always says: they’re called pleasures of the flesh because flesh is required.

Now: I’m off to listen to Jonathan Coulton’s cover of Baby Got Back.

Russia: Defenders of the Earth

It’s true: the Russian government is going to save us all from Apophis. No, not the Egyptian demon more properly known as Apep – or the alien Goa’uld of the same name, which seems more likely given the space-based context – but the asteroid, which made headlines five years ago when it was thought likely to kill us all. Since then the probability of that has been greatly reduced by subsequent observations, though wise minds are keeping an eye on it. The Russian collegium, though, doesn’t agree with the lower probability, and are hatching a “secret plan” to save us all from the fate of the dinosaurs.

My favourite thing about the article, though, is that Dr Permiov, spokesperson for the Russian collegium (or “science-council” as he describes it, which seems delightfully steampunk) assured citizens that “there won’t be any nuclear explosions,” and then that “everything will be done according to the laws of physics.” Does he have the option of not doing things according to physics? What does the collegium know that we don’t?

Not about dinosaurs. Honest.

Because pterosaurs aren’t dinosaurs. What they have been, though, is a puzzle, at least in terms of how the later, classic pterodactyl form evolved from earlier long-tailed pterosaurs. There are so many differences between them – from the pterodactyl’s characteristic skull (and the number of openings in it) and much shorter tail, to differences in ribs and a second flight membrane between the legs – that it’s hard to tell what path that evolution took.

But once again, it’s Chinese fossils to the rescue, as a new species – another transitional form, Creationists! – has been discovered. As published this week by the Royal Society, Darwinopterus modularis (“Darwin-wing”…er…”modular”) is the kind of transition that makes things obvious – it has all the skull and neck characteristics of a pterodactyloid, but the rest of its body is old-school, long-tailed pterosaur. It’s as though a mid-Jurassic pterosaur had a new haircut and the new ‘do was such a big hit that it eventually changed it’s whole wardrobe to match…

The exciting thing is that this doesn’t just help explain how one form changed into another, but is also evidence of modular evolution. Normally we think of evolution in terms of an individual trait changing over generations – a tail getting longer, teeth getting sharper, colouration getting brighter. In modular evolution, though, sets of complementary features evolve together at the same time – in this case, D. modularis doesn’t just have a head closer to that of a pterodactyl; it’s evolved all the numerous head and neck features of pterodactyls, while the rest of its body retains the characteristics of an earlier pterosaur. It hasn’t just had a haircut, it’s gone in for some piercings and facial tatts as well, but it’s still wearing the stodgy old business suit.

This story is also interesting in the way that some news outlets have done better with it than others. The Independent did quite well, but fell into a common misconception: “Carbon dating has shown that the fossils fall in the middle of the age range from 220 million to 65 million years ago”. The erroneous word here is “Carbon”; Carbon dating is useless for anything more than around 60,000 years old, and palaeontologists – certainly those working with dinosaurs – use other methods to determine the age of their finds. To the author and paper’s credit, this little error and several others have now been cleaned up; to even greater credit, they added a comment in the story to let readers know! (Probably because bloggers with quicker trigger fingers than mine had already been pointing to it…)

On the other hand, The Australian were much worse; they ran with a headline about “Flying Dinosaurs” – pterosaurs are flying reptiles, not dinosaurs – but then go one better by reporting that the fossil was “baptised” with its scientific name. Baptised? Really? I mean, christened, sure; that has currency as a synonym for “named”. But “baptised”? I expected the article to conclude with a social item inviting the reader to Darwinopterus‘ confirmation… The article lists Agence France-Presse as the source, but somehow I’m not sure this translation is entirely their fault…

A million million slimy things…

I promised a follow up on the [intlink id=”464″ type=”post”]Lebbeus shrimp[/intlink], but so far I’ve had no luck in locating the name of the beast. Next stop: contacting the discoverer, who I think may be a friend of a friend. (Scientific circles are about as small in Melbourne as artistic ones, it seems.)

While I’ve no name yet, I do have some other stuff to update you on, thanks to another dear friend, who sent me an email full of helpful insights. I was talking about the diversity of creatures in Australia and how we are lacking in enough taxonomists to name them all; turns out there’s been a recent report, “Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World“, which shows it’s a bigger issue than I thought. Most of our mammals and reptiles aren’t found anywhere else, which means no-one else is going to find them; and we still have around 75% of our species to discover. That’s after three years in which we’ve already been finding new ones at around 18,000 new species a year!

How to share the data about all these new species is another problem entirely, but one that the Atlas of Living Australia has been set up to solve. A government project under the banner of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, the Atlas boasts an impressive line-up of supporters, including most of Australia’s prominent universities and museums. Eventually it will form an authoritative, freely accessible central database of Australian species, allowing anyone who’s interested to find out, well, pretty much anything about any kind of Australian flora or fauna. (Or protists, fungi and prokaryotes, come to that.) It’s also intended to be distributed and federated, meaning it won’t be reliant on a central database or technology, and on this score it’s already making use of open source and/or free software (its news site runs on WordPress – as does benmckenzie.com.au – and the page discussing other possible software tools is hosted by free wiki host pbwiki). Mind you, it’s described as a five-year project on its front page, and it still seems to be in an early stage; if we’re going to get those tens of thousands of species in there, we’d better get a move on before they’re all gone!

We might find out that they’re on the way out through users of ClimateWatch, a new initiative of the thirty year old EarthWatch Institute. Anyone – yes, that means you or I or even first user Julia Gillard, when she isn’t busy defending Australian racism while in the US – can create an account and start posting their observations of the wildlife in their area. Noticed the magpies arriving in your neighbourhood, heard frogs calling, or been observing an increase in cicada noises? Now you can put those bits of data somewhere they’ll do some good. It’s a very simple sign-up process, and even if you only contribute one bit of data, it’s bound to be of use to someone somewhere. (If you’re a birdwatcher, get yourself on there now!)

So, plenty of colour and movement in Australian taxonomy – and plenty of room for you to get involved!

Elizabeth Blackburn = Hugh Jackman?

I'm still pretty excited about Dr Elizabeth Blackburn's Nobel Prize - she's one of only a dozen or so Australians to receive one - but looking at the list, it seems our scientists must seek success in the same way as our actors and fashion designers: on foreign soil. Here's a run down of our Nobel history.

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