romunov’s blog et al

Another 23 for me!

Has anyone seen the last show from October 27th? Bill had on, among other guests, Andrew Sullivan, the conservative blogger. What Andrew managed to do in his last two appearances is morph, from a pro-Bush all red supporter (he vividly defended Bush and his actions about 2-3 years ago), into a “blue”, pro-logic anti-this administration thug. That’s a 180° turn righ there. Facts since then sure haven’t changed. What convinced him to turn the other way? Why is Bill letting him wash his hands on HIS show? He should point out the hypocracy he’s exhibiting. Frankly, I don’t know why Bill insists on bringing stupid republicans on his show.

And regarding Ford’s 10 commendmants on his card. He says it’s nice to be reminded of stuff like don’t kill, or don’t steal. No, nice is when you have that in your subconscience and work by it all the time. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, a history major or a religious person to know how smart it is to live á la “do onto others as you would have them do to you”.
And to paraphrase Chris Rock, every person has some conservative and some liberal thoughts. No one is only one thing.

You gotta love science news.

You may wonder, how do animals of the abyssal depth manage to survive those harsh conditions - the cold, high pressure and darkness? Unfortunately, studying large animals (metazoans) at these conditions is quite a task to undertake, so direct evidence showing these adaptations is scarce. Here is a list of educated guesses that may or may not be true.

• fish color is monotonous (silvery gray or black), and not counter-shaded as their epipelagic peers to hide them from predators high and low
• mezopelagic jellyfishes and crustaceans can be red! Some have suggested this feature protects them against predominately blue bioluminescent light produced by predators,
• deeper-water animals are usually translucent or white,
• mezopelagic fishes usually have, compared to their body size, bigger eyes than epipelagic species - and as we go deeper, the eyes become small, indicating they don’t need them as much as their above “friends” who are often capable of producing bioluminescent light. This line between huge and tiny (degenerate or lost) eyes is at about 2000 meters,
• tubular eyes! What an invention! Eyes are like little cylinders, sometimes with two retinas, overlapping to give deeper binocular vision which helps detecting flashes
• some squids have eyes of different sizes - how odd!
• a lot of deep sea organisms have large mouths - don’t want that tasty meal get away!
• angler fishes (Ceratoidea) have a fishing lure made from dorsal fin (illicium), and at the end, a bioluminescent organ (esca),
• many carnivorous fishes have their coeloms lined black, presumably to prevent their prey from signaling, through predator’s body
• a genus called Ceratias (angler fish) has large females and small, parasiti males, because finding a mate is literally “once in a life time chance”,

I’m sure there are more features, but I’ll stop here. Deep waters seem quite interesting. The sediment there isn’t like anything a regular person is used to “up here”. The sand is “soft ooze” and the animals in it are delicate, or have long appendages to help them stay on top of this sinking slime.

Why what IRS does, is illegal. Click.

Here’s a little quote from the book I mentioned a bit earlier. Reading this will give you a tiny bit of info on the importance of whales. Well, maybe.

Although both the public and the media have exhibited interest in the plight of the world’s whales and dolphins and in their past and future decimation by humans, there is little scientific information about their ecological importance in either pelagic or inshore ecosystems. As indicated earlier in this chapter, the importance of many, if not most nektonic organisms in the dynamics of the open ocean is hard to determine. Preliminary investigations, as reviewed by Katona and Whitehead (1988), suggest that, although the productivity of cetaceans is low, their biomass is large enough to be significant on an oceanwide basis. The significance of these animals can be appreciated by noting that Kanwisher and Ridgeway (1983) have suggested that cetaceans probably consume more prey than the entire world’s fisheries. If true, this remark suggests that the energy flow through the cetacean component of the open ocean food webs may be extremely important, particularly in such areas as the Antarctic seas, about which the two researchers estimated that the unexploited baleen whale populations there consumed 190 million metric tons of krill (Euphausia superba) per year, approximately two times the current world fisheries catch. Now that the numbers of these Antarctic whales have been severely reduced (by perhaps 90%) by hunting, evidence pointing up their importance has arisen from the results of this unparalleled overexploitation. Populations of Antarctic birds and pinnipeds tripled following the destruction of the whales. The reason for this population explosion, some say, is availability of krill not consumed by the whales.

Whales also are important because their carcasses sink rapidly and provide a significant food resource for deep-sea benthic creatures. Gray whales disturb large areas of the subarctic Bering and Chukchi seas on a scale equivalent to large geological or meteorological forces. Finally, whales produce a considerable amount of the sound in the world’s oceans, and it is possible that such signals may be used as cues by other species. Clearly, although removing whales from the ocean ecosystem would probably have little effect on the primary productivity or the total biomass of organisms, it would certainly alter some systems, perhaps more than we realize. Certainly, the richness of our human lives would be much diminished.

It seems to me like some scientists and general population will throw in any piece of information they have that might help their case. A lot of assumptions in this text. We need to be carefuly and not to “over interpret” things.

And here are the two articles the text cites:
Katona, S., Whitehead, H. 1988. Are cetaceans ecologically important? Oceanog. mar. biol. ann. rev. 26:553-568
Kanwisher, J. W., Ridgway, S. H. 1983. The physiological ecology of whales and porpoises. Sci. Amer. 248(6):110-121

Would be neato if a fellow biology student would dig into this one and present whatever they might find, but that’s just wishful thinking on my part. Most of my fellow students are not that active on this sort of “extra scholae” work.

A few weeks ago, I commented in a lecture on vertebrates (animals living in nekton), on how marine animals (various fishes for example) may help keep their (near) buoyancy by exchanging heavier ions for lighter ones. I deduced this may be the case, as it was with plankton.

On page 108 of my reference (Nybakken, W. J., Bertness, D. M. 2005. Marine biology: An ecological approach. Pearson - Benjamin Cummings, San Francisco, CA) there is an interesting finding:

Another mechanism for ensuring neutral buoyancy is the replacement of the heavy chemical ions in the body fluids with lighter ones. We observed this mechanism in plankton as well.

And here comes the part where I was wrong.

The only nektonic animals in which the mechanism occurs are the squids, some of which have body cavities and tissues in which heavy sodium ions are replaced with lighter ammonium ions.

And here is the probably reason why:

Although common among plankton, this mechanism is rare among nekton because, for it to be effective, the amount of ammonium-dominated fluid must be large, and large fluid filled spaces give the animal a rotund appearance, markedly decreasing its ability to move rapidly.

I could perhaps note that large amounts of NH₄⁺ could be too toxic for given organism, however this could probably be disputed, since some animals retain high levels of urea and/or uric acid to regulate osmosis.

I updated my yahoo profile (some group admin wanted me to fill out some info) and I came across this:

Notice the “Married but looking”.

Is this a sign of moral decay of our society?

I have just received a page on Darwin’s work. The sheer volume should impress any biologist. Check it out here.

A proposed EU directive could extend broadcasting regulations to the internet, hitting popular video-sharing websites such as YouTube., reports the London Times. This would mean that websites and mobile phone services that feature video images would have to conform to standards laid down in Brussels.

Personal websites would have to be licensed as a “television-like service”. Once again the reasoning behind such legislation is said to be in order to set minimum standards on areas such as hate speech and the protection of children.

A retarded baby chimp could figure out that the “protect our children” bullcrap is just for show. Slowly but surely, they’re tightening the nooze and sooner or later, we’ll have to fall in line or face “hate speech” charges because someone doesn’t like what we’re saying, regardless of facts. If this bill passes through, I’m moving out of Europe because obviously, to me, these politicians are mentally challanged. And the best thing one can do to sway politics is to move their wallet somewhere else. Voting is for suckers.

link

But above all, Olmert sought in his current visit to inform the Russians that if the sanctions do not help and deter Iran from achieving its aims, Israel will not be able to reconcile with a nuclear Iran led by a president who declares the need to wipe Israel off the face of the map. In other words, the prime minister has sown the seeds of the possibility that Israel may be forced to carry out a preemptive strike against Iran if the international community does not succeed in its diplomatic efforts, and if no international force is used against Iran.

To be frank, Ahmadinejad never said he wants to wipe Israel off the map. He was talking about the government of Israel. See MEMRI’s lost in translation. Also, Bush promised to use US military (and bodies) to defend Israel in case Iran decides for counter measures.

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This is a lamprey (piškur for all slovene walking/talking lads) from a family called Petromyzontidae. Lateral side has been cut off to expose the breathing apparatus, which is of interest here. This animal has been in use for years, fixed in formaldehyde, so no new animal had to be killed for educational purpose.

These animals are neat because they provide a few interesting concepts characteristic for more primitive chordates and probably their (and our) ancestors.

What isn’t visible on this picture is the similarity between Amphioxus (Branchiostoma) and lamprey’s larva. I will point one one of the differences when animal metamorphoses, visible on this picture.
Skin has been cut away and folded back to expose the gills and pockets around them (the white membranous tissue with round holes). To the outside, they open through pores visible on the lower picture (http://www.ilikethings.net/lamprey.jpg). In this species, there are 7 such pores, and you can see 6 of them on the above picture. Compared to the mentioned Amphiooxus, their respiratory and digestive paths are seperate (combined in larval stages) which enables them to breathe when sucking their host (a fish). A bunch of other structures are visible, but they’re not nearly as interesting.

Reading Marine Biology, I realised I had been errornous for the most part of my subadult life. I had always thought (what I had been taught) that oceans, due to their large size, contribute most to the primary production on the planet.

I now believe this is not the case. While oceans may be vast, compared to minute earth patches, there are some short falls. First, photosynthetic organisms in water are not as dense on land (meaning chl is not spread over 100% (or more) of the available surface). This means that they use about 7% of PAR (photosynthetically available radiation), compared to 31% on land. Moving on the the next point, a fairly reach upper meter of agricultural soil has about 0,5% nitrogen. This is sufficient to grow about 50kg of dry organic matter. As a second point, ocean waters are, compared to land, fairly poor in nitrogen (as NH₄⁺, NO₃ or NO₂) - about 0,00005%/m³, which is enough to grow about 5 g of dry organic matter. While oceans are deep, there are limitations light penetrating wise. Not all light passes down to the ocean floor. There is a term used compensation depth where just enough light is available to put photosynthesis and respiration into an equillibrium. This of course varies from organism to organism, and is effected by numerous other factors, such as turbidity, season, atmospheric conditions, water mixing… Due to all these factors, mass photosynthesis is confined within about 3,5 m from surface.

Bringing out final numbers, plants on land produce about 56,5 × 10¹⁵ grams, while oceans produce about 48,5 × 10¹⁵ of carbon. As we can see, numbers are, despite vast difference in land/water ratio, very close. I don’t know what has been included in the model and what not (such as deserts and poor non-agricultural land). The answer probably lies in two pages of references at the end of the chapter. An article in Nature from 1998, volumne 281 on pages 237-240, Primary production of the biosphere: Integrating terrestrial and oceanic components.

While searching for viable reference on this at the bibliography section at the end of Chapter two, I came across a duplicated reference. I noticed this because I read about bacterial rhodopsin (protorhodopsin) and subsequently did a few searches online. As I was reading through the references, I noticed that the same article was attributed to two authors. Here are the two references:

Spudich, J. et. al. 2000. Bacterial rhodopsin: Evidence for a new type of phototrophy in the sea. Science 289: 1902-1906

and

Beja, O. et. al. 2000. Bacterial rhodopsin: Evidence for a new type of phototrophy in the sea. Science 289: 1902-1906

I’ll email the editor and see what’s up with this.

Ok, someone lost it. Looks like they’re very serious with this island thing.

They will be digging a tunnel between Koper and Izola, which will leave enogh “waste” to do a 30 square meter island 3 m in height. Some genious thought that we could build an island off of Slovenian coast - for tourism. The project will cost about 100 million euros. 30 million from local precincts and govt budget, 60 million from EU funds and 10 million from private investors.

Let me tell you what I think this thing will look like. It will have a huuuge golf course, two max star hotels with one giant crem de la crem marina. It will be, for the most part, “off limits” for us average folk.

I can only imagine what this will do to the sea floor. Most people don’t care for the mud, but I think rather high of it. Just because it doesn’t house a brazillion fishes and shiny crabs, doesn’t mean that nothing interesting is in there. And that’s just my anthropocentric side talking. Sediments are really really important in nutrient cycling, and who knows what will this do to the currents and sedimentation. I just hope Italians smack their asses up, in return for our bitching against the gas terminal they’re trying to build.

Here is another topic dear to my heart, depleted uranium. Since the US “intervention” in the Gulf region, cancer has jumped conciderably. For example, see here:

Iraqi doctors are making renewed efforts to bring to the world’s attention the growth in birth deformities and cancer rates among the country’s children. The medical crisis is being directly blamed on the widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the US and British forces in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the even greater use of DU during the 2003 invasion.

However, the Iraqis are not the only targets. DU is not selective, and Coalition forces are under its spell as well. Veterans have been reporting various illnesses, which Pentagon and the govt try to supress.
From the first link:

In August 2004, the VA reported that over 518,739 Persian Gulf veterans were on medical disability since 1991.

If my memory serves me right, since the first Gulf war, about 10k young Gulf veterans died.

Government just passed an order which will make media (CDs, DVDs, memory cards, HDs…) a bit more expensive. According to Brumec, a cake of DVDs will cost slightly less than 4 euros. As mentioned, other “innocent” media will go up as well, including cell phones.

Now, this seems to me like even people who have everything legal, are being punished for something they didn’t do. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or history major to figure out, that this isn’t logical. I invite everyone to read the Geneva convention, article 87 that says collective punishment is FORBIDDEN. If even in WAR collective punishment is forbidden, why should it be in peace time?

If you think the western world lives in a “democracy”, you’re probably wrong. I know of two cancelled shows, namely a Conspiracy of silence that talks about the cover-up and supression of the Franklin child abuse scandal, and the second is an Italian docu about drug taking MPs. I also saw this story on Slovenian TV, and an interesting response from MPs was that they were tested without their consent. As far as I know, they didn’t deny the allegations. Something like this can be solved really really quickly.

Who has the power? Who is governing you?

I finally got some time to read Marine biology. I’d like to introduce a few concept probably very foreign to most. In chapter two, Nybakken and Bertness discuss plankton.
Plankton is a very broad (sensu lato, in broader sense) term, describing practically immobile floating organisms that inhabit open ocean or coastal waters. Due to their small size, their attempt at overcoming long dinstances is almost futile. What they can do is try to keep positive buoyancy, for phytoplankton (photosynthetic organisms) to stay near the surface to harvest light and zooplankton to keep up, because that is their primary food source, either phytoplankton or other animals. Plankton is usually microscopic and constitute primary production and second link in the food chain.

On the other hand, highly mobile nekton (by now you must have already noticed the use of “k” instead of “plancton”?) can overcome currents and move freely in all three dimensions. For instance a yellow-fin tuna would be a nice example.

One might wonder how researchers find these and other organisms? They use different nets with a characteristic mesh size for every plankton size. There are 6 categories of plankton - virioplankton (virii), bacterioplankton (bacteria), mycoplankton (planktonic fungi), protozooplankton (like your classical Paramecium and a wide array of other protozoans) and metazooplankton (for instance copepods, other crustacians and various other phyla). They are arranged according to size from femtoplankton which is about 20 - 200 nm up to megaplankton that spans from 20-200 cm. Nano is 1 billionth of a meter ( 1× 10^-9). As some might guess, you really can’t filter out femto-, pico- and nanoplankton. You concentrate a water sample and count under, usually, electron microscope. It depends what you’re looking for. A wide range of dyes is also available which make light microscopy pretty useful.

Another classification for plankton is holoplankton and meroplankton. Former organisms spend their entire lives in plankton and the latter usually just the larval stage.

I finally received the rest of my book order. I gave “Fluvial forms and processes” to my gf and I kept “Marine biology”. From the first glance I think this one is going to come quite handy for my marine ecology class. I recall similar topics being discussed in last year’s lectures (I visited some lectures for classes one year ahead). Next book “for me” will probably be Marine chemical ecology. When I find some time I’ll go into some detail on some useful subject from the former book I got. I have some school and society work to do. Time is tight and I still have to learn one program because I’m not sure Open Office will be able to cope with this project.

We also had a social event at our faculty. Biologists won the first prize, not thanks to me, but still. Kudos to the rest of the players.

Professor for Animal physiology continued last hour’s theme of animal experimentation, moral setbacks, law… I haven’t learned anything new to me, but I did notice that when the professor seems to be “asking” us various obvious or not questions, he’s not expecting an answer. I tried participating, which is kind of hard to do for me due to my bitter experience from high school, but he seemed to ignore me, and some others. I can come up with two hypotheses. He either can’t hear us or doesn’t want our answer.

It would seem there’s some documents that show the Bayer employees knew a medicine for hemophiliacs had HIV virus in it. The cover-up of course followed, and Congress stood cleuless.