On seeking newness

I did something new recently. When I found a blog I liked, instead of adding it to my Favorites folder, I clicked on “Follow” so that I would get new posts by email. At least I thought that was the way it would work – I didn’t get my first update until day before yesterday, a couple of weeks after I had found and followed it.

The post is about neophilia, which is itself a relatively new word (at first glance I thought it said necrophilia, which is something quite different). According to Merriam-Webster the word was first used in 1932, but I don’t recall having seen it before. Now that the New York Times has published an article about a recent book on our need for newness and change, however, I imagine we’ll be seeing more of it.

I have to agree with the blogger Ugotitwrong that the support given for calling novelty-seeking “the quintessential human survival skill” is weak. The pace of change throughout most of human history has been very slow, compared to recent decades. Obviously innovation took place, but it’s pure conjecture to say that the people with the strongest desire for novelty moved it forward, while more cautious people kept change from happening too fast.

I can as easily imagine a “neophiliac” eagerly trying a new type of berry or mushroom and getting poisoned, while the more cautious “neophobe” observed and learned what not to eat. Without knowing what genes influence this behavior, and what other behaviors or traits they affect, we can’t do more than guess how novelty-seeking affected survival.

The color of cerumen

This post is about earwax. If you have no interest in earwax, or find the idea of a post about earwax repellant, you may wish to stop reading now.

I happen to enjoy learning new things, and what I learned about earwax today was certainly new. To begin with, the medical term for earwax is cerumen. It is a mix that includes shed layers of skin, keratin (the same stuff our hair and nails are made of), fatty acids, alcohols, an organic compound I never heard of before called squalene, and cholesterol. And whatever dirt happens to get in the ear and get trapped by the earwax (that is one of its protective functions).

What got me interested in earwax today was its color. I had used a Q-tip, as usual, to dry my ears after taking a shower. I know, you’re not supposed to put Q-tips in your ears, but I can’t stand the feeling of water in my ears. The Q-tip does a great job of drying them, and if it happens to remove some bits of earwax that’s just fine with me. But what looked so strange this morning was the dark gray on the Q-tip, along with the usual yellowish and brownish residue.

What in the world was in my right ear that produced that gray stuff? I tried another Q-tip – more gray, though by the time I had used the other end of it, either the gray was gone or my ear was too dry for anything to stick to the Q-tip. I figured it was probably nothing, but I was curious enough to do a search on the internet.

I found nothing much about finding gray on your Q-tip when you clean your ears, but I did find out more about earwax. Such as the fact that some people have “wet” earwax and some have “dry” earwax. The dry earwax is often a darker color, and some people do have a mix of the two, but I’m pretty sure I don’t, since I never saw anything like that before today.

However, it also turns out that, unlike many physical traits, the type of earwax can be easily traced to a single gene, which has a dominant and recessive form. The dominant form produces wet earwax, the recessive produces dry earwax. You can learn all about the genetics of it here.

So I still don’t know why my Q-tip is gray. But I know a bit more about cerumen now. And so do you.

Books: Nature Via Nurture

Several weeks ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal, about how children deprived of the opportunity to learn to speak when they are young are unable to acquire the skill later in life. I had long known that learning a second language is much easier prior to about age twelve, but I had never thought about the significance of that time period for learning one’s first language. Near the end of the article, there is a suggestion that the difficulty that autistic children have with language development may also be related to the “window” for such learning opening too early or too late.

Curious to read more by this author, I googled Matt Ridley and found that he not only writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal but that he has also written several books. Of these, Nature Via Nurture:Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human seemed particularly interesting, and I was pleased to find it available through the local library. It is written as popular science, not a textbook, so someone interested in learning in depth about how genes work would probably be disappointed. But for someone like me with an interest but little previous knowledge on the topic, it is a fascinating book.

My previous knowledge of genes was not much more than what I learned in tenth grade biology. I knew that genes are responsible for physical features such as hair and eye color, as well as a number of other traits that are not as easily defined or traced. I knew about dominant and recessive genes, which explain why I had red hair even though no one else in my immediate family did. I knew that genes are only part of the story, as even identical twins are not identical in every regard. And I knew that there was a great deal of research going on into the genetic basis for a number of physical and mental disorders.

I realized, however, early in the book, that I had no clear idea exactly what a gene was. (Much later in the book I found out that is in part because the word has been used in at least five different ways in the past century.) I asked my husband Jon, since his first career was in molecular biology, and he explained that a gene is the coding to produce a specific protein. That puzzled me even more – what does producing a protein have to do with having red hair or blue eyes? Jon did point out that genes are so small that scientists usually can only trace specific traits to part of a particular chromosome, not down to the level of a particular gene.

Thank a parasite

I considered giving my post a longer title. “Thank a parasite for the existence of sex.” But aside from my dislike of long titles, I didn’t want to give in the temptation to write a title including a word that would probably drive up the hits on my blog considerably, at least for a day or two. I certainly welcome new readers, but I figured the shorter title you see is more likely to get the sort of readers who would appreciate my blog than the longer one I was considering.

In either the short or long form, that line is a direct quote from an article I just read. I first came across the topic in an article by Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal. I’m currently reading a book by Matt Ridley, whose writing I became interested in after reading a previous article by him in the WSJ. Naturally I was interested in reading more by him – especially when the article’s title began with the words “Why sex?”

So what do parasites have to do with sex? Well, there are apparently ways that parasites can be passed from one sexual partner to another (I’ll let you Google the topic if you want details), but that’s not what these articles are about. This is about why so many creatures create the next generation through sexual reproduction, rather than by cloning, which is asexual. As cloning is far more efficient in terms of the numbers produced, and evolution assumes that all current life forms descended from those that reproduced by cloning, the question arises as to how life forms producing sexually could have produced the numbers required to win against the asexual competitors in their ecological niches.

Even if you don’t believe evolution is a plausible explanation for the development of species, it is still an interesting question why some species reproduce sexually, some asexually, and some can do it either way, depending on conditions. The two competing theories for why sexual reproduction developed, I learned from Ridley’s article, are both based on the fact that genes are remixed with each new generation of sexual reproduction, whereas the genome remains the same with cloning.

The one that Ridley favors, called the Red Queen Theory, says that the genome needs to keep changing to stay ahead of parasites, which also keep adapting to take advantage of weaknesses in the host. An alternate theory says that the mixing of genes is to get rid of damaging mutations. New research, while not conclusive, strongly supports the Red Queen Theory. This article gives further details on the research.

As one of the researchers explained when asked how he got interested in this topic, “As for being interested in the topic of sex, who isn’t?”

 

Books: Next

Usually I do not enjoy books in which there is not a likeable protagonist, but Michael Crichton’s Next is an exception. I picked it up at a yard sale some time ago but only picked it up to read this week – spurred in part by my older son having been reading several of Crichton’s books for a freshman English class in college (though I don’t know if he read this one).

I took a break from it for a couple days, first to read Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens, the fourth and apparently final book in Brandon Sanderson’s hilarious (and sometimes thoughtful) series about Alcatraz Smedry, then to work on puzzles in my new National Observer crossword book (WalMart was out of the Herald Tribune crossword books I usually buy). I was somewhat reluctant to pick up Crichton’s novel again, not having yet found any very likable characters in it.

But I noticed, with some surprise, that I had already read more than halfway through the book, largely without stopping (mandatory time off work gives me lots of time to read). I must have found it pretty engrossing. So I picked it up again, intending to read for half an hour or so, so that it would be late enough to take my Synthroid before I went to bed (among my reading this week was an article about a study showing that Synthroid was more effective on an empty stomach at bedtime).

I finished the novel and headed to bed nearly three hours later, having stayed up almost (but not quite) late enough to see the new year in. My mind was full of the thought-provoking scenarios Crichton had included in his novel, and the recommendations he makes in an Author’s Note regarding the legal environment for genetic research.

Books: The Coral Thief

I enjoy historical fiction, and a book about a young medical student in Paris in the summer of 1815 sounded interesting. Despite having studied French for five years, I never learned much of the history of France between the French Revolution and World War II. But it was the state of medicine - and science in general – during that period that interested me more.

I would have liked it if more of the book had focused on those aspects, though the background on political and social changes in the wake of the defeat of Napoleon were also fairly interesting. For a while, though, I wasn’t sure I liked the book at all. So much of it is taken up with the narrator’s passion for a woman twice his age. I think I mentioned in a previous book review that I don’t care for books told from the point of view of a naive young man, as it’s difficult to find much to admire in him.

His lover, the coral thief of the novel‘s title, is an unusual character. The book takes frustratingly long to get to telling her story, but as it emerges it explores the opportunities and the limitations of a woman in France at the end of the eighteenth century. Lucienne witnessed the horrors of the French Revolution (and narrowly escaped the guillotine herself), then (disguised as a man if I understood correctly) travelled as part of an expedition collecting specimens for anatomical study, and somewhere along the way became a skilled thief. She is also now a devoted (single) mother.

Daniel admires her for her curiosity and knowledge of natural history, as she opens his mind to new ideas that his conservative family and teachers back home would have condemned as heresy. (But even more he is very much smitten with her as a woman, and makes what he himself admits were foolish decisions, which - for good or ill -changed the course of his life.) This is the period when transformism, an idea that would later become known as evolution, was beginning to spread, especially in an intellectual center like Paris, from there to spread as foreign students took these radical ideas home with them.

Naturalists at the time were sharply divided on the issue, and Daniel works for the distinguished Georges Cuvier who dismisses the ideas of Lamarck as poetry and nonsense. (Lamarck was in fact mistaken in thinking that acquired traits could be passed on to one’s progeny.) Daniel’s fellow students, on the other hand, not only take transformism as scientific fact but attempt to turn it into an argument for social reform also.

Having myself visited Paris, I took an interest in the descriptions of the city. Of course it was vastly different in 1815 from the city I saw in 1983, but I can at least visualize some of the prominent landmarks (Notre Dame, the Louvre). I was surprised, however, to learn about the vast subterranean quarries that run beneath the city. As it is forbidden to explore them, however (presumably for safety reasons), I suppose it is not so surprising that I heard nothing of them during my visit.

One other interesting side-note is about the chief of police, Jagot, to whom Daniel reports the theft of his corals and other valuable items at the start of the novel. As Daniel comes to know and then trust the thief and even to help her in a daring heist, Jagot of course becomes a threat to him also. While Jagot is fictional, he is based on a real man, Eugène François Vidocq, a criminal turned director of the Sûreté Nationale (today the French National Police).

While listening to the book, I did not recognize the story of Vidocq in the fictional Jagot. But the author’s afterword gives the name Vidocq, and I remembered reading about him in The Science of Sherlock Holmes. As a matter of fact he was mentioned in several chapters, so significant a figure was he in the history of making a science of police work.

Fear knot

Now that my husband is under contract as a part-time pastor, we all attend (a Presbyterian) church together on Sunday mornings. But some Saturday evenings I still volunteer in KidZone at the Baptist church I attended most of the five years we’ve lived here. Yesterday evening started the summer KidZone program, which this year is called “Fear Knot.”

I tried to think about what fears tie me up in knots. The ones that the lessons deal with, that are common fears in children, don’t generally trouble me. Snakes, darkness, heights, drowning, scary movies, spiders, bullies and strangers – I may not be eager to deal with them but they don’t create panic in me.

There was a time when I found it very difficult to travel alone to an unfamiliar place. I hated it when my parents would put me on a Greyhound bus to go somewhere, even when I knew there would be a familiar face to meet me upon my arrival. What if I got there and the other person wasn’t?

Penguin in a black shirt

I’ve heard of albinism since I was young, and knew that common examples were white mice and white rabbits, with their characteristic red eyes. But it wasn’t until today that I read about the opposite condition, called melanism.

I’ve seen black panthers in zoos, similar to these at the Philadelphia Zoo. (I haven’t seen the ones pictured here, since they came to that zoo since I moved out of the Philadelphia area, but a zoo near where I live now has one also.) Like many people, I always thought of them as a separate species, but in fact they simply have a particular gene that makes their fur dark. They are usually either jaguars or leopards, and their spotted pattern is still visible in the right light.

I was also surprised to learn that the distinctive appearance of Siamese cats is due to partial albinism. Moreover, it is a temperature-sensitive sort of albinism, where the melanin is produced normally in parts of the body which are coolest – the legs and feet, tail, and face (the face is cooled by air going through the sinuses). That is what gives Siamese their unusual pattern of light and dark fur.

The photo that got my attention, though, is one of an all-black penguin. Partial melanism is rare enough in penguins – about four out of a million. But an all-black penguin is “one in a zillion” according to an ornithologist at the University of Toronto.

The taste of fizz

I read an article today that begins, at least, to answer a question I have long wondered about: Why do carbonated beverages taste the way they do?

Growing up, the only flavors of soda we normally bought were ginger ale and root beer. (Sometimes we bought Wink, which was my favorite. I haven’t seen it in years, but I think Fresca tastes similar, and these days I only drink diet pop anyway.) I never gave much thought to what made them taste the way they did, but I’m sure I attributed the taste to the flavorings and not the carbonation.

Then when I was a student in Spain, I discovered the difference between “agua con gas” and “agua sin gas.” Unlike restaurants in the U.S., that brought glasses of water to the table as a matter of course, restaurants in Spain generally served water only in bottles that had to be purchased. I normally ordered “sin gas” (without gas), as ordinary water seemed much more thirst-quenching. (Perhaps it was just that I could drink more of it.) But occasionally I would end up with “con gas” because I wasn’t careful in placing my order.

There were no flavorings added, so the only difference was clearly from the carbonation. It puzzled me that adding carbon dioxide gas – which I knew was in the air all around me and so far as I could tell had no taste – could change the taste of water that way.

Now scientists have figured out the it is the taste buds that sense sourness that taste fizz. (Also fascinating is the process by which they figured it out, which I would guess is a good example of how scientists go about learning much of what we know about genes and how they control physiology.) But as fizz doesn’t taste sour, there is still plenty more for researchers to figure out.

Faith, science, and BioLogos

One of the regulars over at worldmagblog emailed me today about a website he thought I would find interesting, after I had mentioned my difficulty finding good materials to evaluate the conflicting claims of creationism and evolution. I had heard of Francis Collins before – mostly from posts at worldmagblog – but I knew little about him except that he is a highly respected scientist who is also a Christian, and who sees his faith and his science as compatible rather than contradictory.

He set up The BioLogos Foundation “to address the escalating culture war between science and faith in the United States.” Through a variety of resources, it “addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life.”

I’ve just started exploring the BioLogos website, but I certainly like what I see so far. There are answers to Frequently Asked Questions about faith and science, such as:

• What is the proper relationship between science and religion?
• Can scientific and scriptural truth be reconciled?
• Does thermodynamics disprove evolution?
• How are the ages of the Earth and universe calculated? How accurate are those figures?
• How does the Fall fit into evolutionary history? Were Adam and Eve historical figures?
• How should we interpret the Genesis flood account?

Some of the “Coming soon” questions are:

• Can evolution explain morality?
• How does the harshness of evolution align with the idea of a loving God?
• How can evolution account for the complexity of life on earth today?

There are also articles, discussion groups, resources for teachers, and more. If you have an interest in this area, it’s well worth checking out.