There’s Shrinkage

By: | November 3, 2017

I love it when research into other animals is totally applicable to humans. A recent report on the common shrew (Sorex araneus), by Max Planck Institute researcher Javier Lazaro et al., reveals that the animal’s head shrinks drastically in winter. That includes its brain mass. Running this discovery up the food chain, I think I finally have an explanation for why I become a pile of useless mush starting around November 19 and lasting until the daffodils bloom.

But first, the shrew: Native to Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and Scandinavia, S. araneus is a furry little bugger that might have been adorable had the Monty Burns nose, beady eyes, and rat tail evolved into more hamster-like parts. (It also has front teeth that appear to be dipped in blood.) It does get cuteness points for the velvety fur, though. And really, this animal’s head reduction in cold weather is mighty impressive. When winter comes and food is scarce, according to studies performed in Germany, the skull can shrink some 15 percent while the brain might lose 30 percent of its mass.

Meanwhile, the animal gets smaller in other ways, too, by way of a shortened spine and shrunken heart, lungs, and spleen.The dropping temps appear to spark this breakdown and absorption of the cast-off bone and tissue. A shrew’s whip-fast metabolism suggests the all-over shrinkage has adaptive value, reducing the food needed to support the animal and all its parts during lean times.

In Spring the reduced parts bulk up again, although not necessarily to full size. Life is short for shrews, though, usually not more than a year, so it probably doesn’t matter if they stay a little small and a little dumb. (For the record, the authors of this study haven’t actually reported on the cognitive ability of the shrunken-head shrews compared with big-headed shrews. Maybe they’re all equally dumb. The shrews, not the scientists.)

But back to me. While my metabolism is no longer speeding along even when the world outside is warm and fruitful, in winter I’d say it comes to a full stop. My natural behavior is to crawl under a blanket and, as my husband describes it, “get small.” I eat mostly cheese. I have little to offer in conversations about politics, history, science, or stain removal. If my work gets done, it’s barely suitable for public eyes. I take in little oxygen and provide little love unless you are a dog willing to be a pillow. So, the diminished-organ phenomenon might apply. Mostly, I rock and moan in the semi-dark until the days get long again.

I’ll bet if those researchers measured they’d discover a 30 percent loss of my brain mass by Christmas. That would explain my lack of activity and woeful contribution to humankind, not to mention the balled-up holiday lights in the corner and the stream of filthy comedic specials droning in the background, all day every day. Or maybe it’s the mulled wine making those choices. One or the other.

Back to shrews again: A few other shrew species appear to have similar physical reductions, and the scientists say that the phenomenon may be more common that we know, especially in animals with high metabolisms that don’t hibernate or migrate—when such resource savings makes the most sense. It’s pretty neat to consider the diverse ways animals adapt to changing environments to help ensure survival to the next breeding season. Me, I’m not sure how adaptive it is, but if you need me I’ll be here with own shriveled brain, hiding under this dog blanket gnawing on a hunk of cheddar. Please don’t ask me any questions.

X-ray image of common shrew by JAVIER LÁZARO [permission requested; apology at the ready]

Shrew: By Sjonge at English Wikipedia – Own work, originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3023495

Redux: Science Meets Bird, Bird Meets Science

By: | November 2, 2017

This week, news of the rediscovery of the Jackson’s climbing salamander in Guatemala has me thinking about all the species that lie just out of sight. Here’s one I first wrote about in 2013.

Late last year, during a reporting trip in Cambodia, I shared a car for a couple of days with Simon Mahood, a British ornithologist who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Phnom Penh. Mahood, a devoted birdwatcher since childhood, was full of stories about the rare birds and remote places of Southeast Asia. But there was one story he kept to himself.

On the floodplains around Phnom Penh, within sight of the new skyscrapers in the city center, Mahood and his colleagues had seen a bird they couldn’t identify. They knew it was a tailorbird, a wrenlike bird that stitches a cradle for its nests out of leaves and spider silk. But this bird didn’t look or sound quite like the tailorbirds they were familiar with. Maybe it was just an odd individual, they thought. Over several weeks and several early-morning trips, they saw another of the unusual birds, and then another.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Reaffirming Reason in Chattanooga

By: | November 1, 2017

Almost exactly a year ago, as I drove across one of the bridges that span the Tennessee River near my home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a bumper sticker “Proud of everything a liberal hates” flashed before me on the back of a white pickup truck. My stomach clenched. Even now, every time I think about that moment, the bile rises.

In Chattanooga, a purple island in a deep red state, I’m hardly surprised when my politics don’t align with those of my neighbors. But as a science writer during a time when both the scientific method and free speech are constantly, mercilessly, under attack, slogans like those on the back of the pickup truck aren’t just political but personal, and they can make me feel wildly alone.

But I’ve found a refuge from that loneliness: I started a science café. We met for the first time last November, the night after the presidential election. Continue reading →

Redux: Stranger in a Foreign Land

By: | October 31, 2017

This story has little do with science. Unless you consider the science of empathy. We often think of empathy as a form of pity but in ethology that’s not what it is at all. It’s about seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. And nothing has help me more with that than living in Mexico.  
shutterstock_325992425 (1)I know this guy. He’s a good guy – hard working, wants to do right by his wife and kid – but somehow he’s found himself in an unusual position in the debate over US/Mexico immigration.

This fellow adores his home country but also has a healthy sense of wanderlust. Yes he loves his countrymen and his family but also wants to see the world and take on new challenges. So a few years ago he crossed the US/Mexico border in a less-than-legal way.

He could have stayed home, he made enough money to support a meager existence there, but he sensed there were more opportunities if he crossed the border. A better life – more money, better living conditions – and adventure to boot! Imagine the things he would see and the stories he could tell when he got home. He’d be a man of the world.

So he did it. He didn’t have paperwork but he had a plan and he managed to pull it off. And he was right. This new country was everything he’d hoped for – work, adventure, opportunity. Finally he could afford to raise his family and live the life he wanted. He worked hard while socking money away with an eye towards buying a house back home someday – all the while trying desperately to not insult the people around him. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | October 28, 2017

October 23 – 27, 2017

Guest Rebecca Boyle takes issue with Cassie’s attitude about neutron star mergers.  Argument sounds a little abstruse but it ends in humane charm: “I’ll stay on Team Neutron Star, and you can watch from the sidelines, and we’ll still be friends.”

Craig finds a woman attractive, reflects that not all #MeToo’s happen to women — I can’t sum this up, you’ll just need to read it. Knives are involved.

Sarah’s out in the outback, hiking with her friends, feeling blissful.  An older woman meeting them says, “It’s so nice to see such healthy young women, enjoying themselves.”  Oh yes.

Christie’s original post that made the Finkbeiner Test — what not to say in a profile of a woman scientist — famous across the entire galaxy was written for a site now dead.  She remedies that.

In light of those merging neutron stars, I remember some lovely gossip about two of the physicists’ heroes who helped think up the neutron stars and black holes both.  They didn’t like each other.

Redux: Johnny and Oppie

By: | October 27, 2017

So.  Everybody got excited about gravitational waves coming from the mergers of neutron stars and black holes.  My Facebook feed which is full of scientists and science writers got further excited about a newish phrase everybody used, “multimessenger astronomy.”  My Facebook feed agreed that “multimessenger astronomy” is an all-around dreadful phrase.  Not only does it sound corporate and canned but even astronomy writers don’t immediately know what it means.  It means astronomy done not only with the usual messengers, that is, all the wavelengths of light; but also with elementary particles called neutrinos and cosmic rays and of course, with the disturbances in space/time called gravitational waves.  If explaining a name takes a sentence that long and complicated, the name is not good.

During the Facebook conversation, somebody suggested putting the astronomers good at naming things — like, for instance, “dark energy” — in charge of naming everything.  Then somebody else said that John Wheeler had been excellent at it, naming among other things, “black holes.”  At that point I got all pedantic and as any discussion does in the face of pedantry, the Facebook discussion turned in another direction.

Anyway, since black holes are famous again, I thought you’d like to know some gossip about who thought them up in the first place and who named them.  It was a couple of physicists’ heroes who happened also to have thought up the nuclear bomb, Johnny and Oppie.†  They didn’t like each other. Continue reading →

The Finkbeiner Test: A Tool for Writing About Women in their Professions

By: | October 26, 2017

This post was originally published on March 5, 2013 at Double X Science, a now defunct website about women in science. Since then, it’s gotten quite a bit of attention, including a story in the Columbia Journalism Review, a mention in the New York Times, and even its own Wikipedia page. The Finkbeiner Test also has been the subject of a master’s thesis and it’s been used in a European art project. Although it was originally designed as a test for detecting gender bias in profiles of female scientists, it can be applied to any profile of a woman in her profession. Since we published the test, people have asked a lot of questions, and Ann answered some of them recently here. Because the Double X Science website has gone dark, I’m republishing the post here. I’ll be discussing the Finkbeiner Test at the World Conference of Science Journalists in San Francisco today. 

 

Men dominate most fields of science. This is not news, and countless projects have sprung up to address the disparity. There are associations, fellowships, conferences, and clubs for women in science, and with these, efforts to highlight women who are making it in these fields.

Campaigns to recognize outstanding female scientists have led to a recognizable genre of media coverage. Let’s call it “A lady who…” genre. You’ve seen these profiles, of course you have, because they’re everywhere. The hallmark of “A lady who…” profile is that it treats its subject’s sex as her most defining detail. She’s not just a great scientist, she’s a woman! And if she’s also a wife and a mother, those roles get emphasized too.

For instance, in a profile of biologist Jill Bargonetti, The New York Times quotes one of Bargonetti’s colleagues saying that, “Jill makes a fantastic role model…because she is married, has two children and has been able to keep up with her research.” It’s hard to imagine anyone saying this about a scientist named Bill. The story’s subtitle piles on, reinforcing the stereotype that women are nurturing and selfless with “A Biologist’s Choice Gives Priority to Students.”

The headline on this recent profile of neuropsychologist Brenda Milner in The Globe and Mail reads, “A scientific pioneer and a reluctant role model.” The piece explains that “Dr. Milner was determined to compete with the best scientists, male or female” and that “Her resistance to being recognized as an outstanding woman seems to stem from her desire to be a great scientist in general.” Yet the article fixates on Milner’s sex as if it’s the most remarkable thing about her. The occasion for the piece, Milter’s induction into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, warrants only a few sentences.

Ann Finkbeiner, my colleague at Last Word On Nothing, has had enough. As she explained here, she plans to write about an impressive astronomer and “not once mention that she’s a woman.” It’s not that Finkbeiner objects to drawing attention to successful female scientists. She’s produced many of these stories herself. The issue, she says, is that when you emphasize a woman’s sex, you inevitably end up dismissing her science. Continue reading →

Hike your pants

By: | October 25, 2017

A couple of weeks ago, I set out through sun-shot low clouds to the North Cascades with my friends Devon and Kate. My truck is a 1998 with an exhaust leak under the cab, so we may or may not have been a little stoned on fumes when we piled out into the overflowing parking lot with two dogs, three bulky packs, and enough snacks to put a hyperphagic grizzly into a coma.

Are you camping up there? people asked a little enviously, as they shuffled by us to their cars.

It was a reasonable question. It was Sunday, after all. It was already 2 p.m. The ground was soupy with new snow. Devon forgot her fleece pants. I forgot my gloves. But the jagged peaks gleamed, and the larches sparked gold along their ridges.

Of course we were camping. We grinned like idiots and housed a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Continue reading →