Good night, Sloth

Scientist Niels Rattenborg of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, did an study with sluggish bears. He took some of this animals from their trees, so he could put a mini battery recorder for sloths in a lab.
The device allows monitoring of electrical impulses from the brain, but instead of keeping the animals in the lab, they put them outside, to know more about their lives.
What happened was that they sticked them in their hairs, and 3 days later they took the devices away and check all the results.
“I think this is the first to really do sleep in free-roaming animals — that’s what makes the paper interesting,” says evolutionary neuroscientist Paul Manger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The approach holds promise since miniaturization and data retrieval technologies are improving so rapidly, he adds.
This is something that is really interesting, because you can check animals in a lab and know results about them, but when they are in their natural environment things change, so you can actually know how animals act when there are predators near to them.
Even though this helps, animals can feel different when they have something stick in their heads, but the study says that at first the sloths were stressed out because of the device but later they went back to normal and that they didn't sleep a lot, they just sleep 20% of the day, and that is what humans normally sleep.
One interesting thing that was found out with this study, was that while this animals were sleeping it seemed like they were chewing something, so maybe they were dreaming about eating leaves.

From this article I have different opinions.
First I think that for understanding the behavior of animals it's something good to do, because we will have more information about the way they act with other animals of their kind and to see how similar or different their behavior can be with other animals and even humans.
But another opinion that I have is not that good, because I think that animals can feel different when they have something stick in their heads, because they are not used to it so it's not normal to them, their mood can change, they can act weird or rare because of the device, it might seem like it doesn't affect them, but they don't know what is going on, and maybe this particular device don't hurt them but later they can be some that would damage them and I don't think this is a good thing to do , because you are interfering with their natural way of living, and animals have feellings too.

Marcela Murillo Trujano

Earthquake in China, horrible disaster!

This article is informing us about the earthquake that occurred in China this Monday, and the consequences of it:
It was a 7.9 magnitude earthquake, that killed thousands of people, and thousand are still missing! This has been the country’s worst earthquake in three decades! So far, 11,921 people have died!
The worst part of this disaster is that this earthquake hit the hardest in remote areas of china (not in the cities), and there is millions of people in this area with desperate need of help but this areas remain inaccessible to rescuers, due to the remoteness and difficulty of the mountainous terrain, this is a huge problem that is causing more and more deaths!
This quake, that lasted several minutes, has collapsed buildings in cities and towns across the province as well as cracking buildings in the capital city, where thousands of people have been spending the night out of doors in fear of aftershocks the people are terrified and don’t know what to do.
More than 26,000 have been injured and at least 9,400 remain trapped in such levelled buildings.
Rescuers and troops worked without stopping and have been saving thousand of lives.
"It's a nightmare. It's a tragedy," said Zhao Mu, a student in university.

My opinion:
I am glad I read this article about this because I did not know about all this tragedy that is happening in China, I think this is so sad and it is terrible, I think that the worst part of it is that people in cities are receiving so much help, (and it is very good that they are receiving it), but the parts that need more help and have been destroyed the most are the ones where the rescuers cant get access to, and people there should be so desperate, I cant imagine how they must feel to be in such a disaster and now one being there with the necessary equipment to help them now! In the article it said that this is a natural disaster with a huge magnitude and that something like this had not been seen in so long, I really think that all this huge and horrible disasters that are happening in the world are due to global warming, there have been so many natural disasters lately and if the global warming situation does not get better, I think we are going to have natural disasters like this earthquake in China and other places often, and we are going to see the consequences and suffer so much! I am really glad I read this article because now I am more aware of what is happening in the world and more aware that we need to change our way of living or the consequences will be HUGE!
Maria Rubio.

Human Aging Gene Found In Flies

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human aging.
Scientists have discovered a gene in fruit flies that means flies can now be used to study the effects aging has on DNA. This is something really important because it can help find out solutions for things like aging at cellular.
Scientists also made an experiment, they were studying a disease that helps understand normal aging. What happens is if one gene changes, it means that then people will age quickly.
This can be test in flies, but there are still not results for developing this genes in human bodies, but if it works it can be very helpful to know more about human beings and a new way of discovered and preventing diseases, and changes with humans.
Dr Robert Saunders from The Open University added: "This work shows for the first time that we can use the short-lived fruit fly to investigate the function of an important human aging gene. We have opened up the exciting possibility of using this model system to analyse the way that such genes work in a whole organism, not just in single cells.”
This gene is known as WRN.

I think that it is really interesting to see how animals can be so similar to human beings, because I think this is not the first time that some kind of cells or genes are find in humans and animals, and with this, there are more chances to get to know why or how diseases can be cured, without experimenting with humans, it can be try in animals, even though sometimes I think that shouldn't be done either because animals are alive too and they can suffer as humans can, but in animals like flies, I think it's ok because there are a lot of them and they reproduce fast, and testing in them, can save lives, and help in science to make new discoveries.

Marcela Murillo Trujano

Spider named after canadian singer

wow...-_-


This must be one of the gobstopping thing I have seen this week. A spider...named after a canadien singer. This particular article is related to the study of insects and so this is why i am posting it. Other from the name of this creature, I was interested to see what kind of spider it was. The article I read was more mesmerized that it was named after a famous singer than that they actually found a new species of spider. The article did not mention anything about, if it is poisenous or any such information. The only thing they were interested in was the singer. I was disappointed.. but it is an interesting thing to read about. I would research this spider and tell you all the information, but all the articles say the same thing. It is not really information on the spider, it is a biography of the singer. I may be over reacting, and the only reason they don't say anything is beacuse there is no information, but from now on, when i read an article, I hope is sticks to the point (as I have not done) instead of sidetracking.

Platypus genome reveals links between reptiles, mammals

Scientist still don’t know what to do about the duck billed platypus it is a mammal that lyes eggs. They are saying that they are understanding this animal a bit better now after this genome. A time of scientist form the universities of Ornithorhynchus is comparing the platypus with other mammals so they mite find something. They are saying that the platypus appears as an animal looks. Francis Collins, the director of the U.S.-based National Human Genome Research Institute said comparing the platypus and other animals will help us understand our self’s better. They found out that the platypus contains about the same number of protein-coding genes like other mammals they approximately 18,500 protein-coding genes and it shares about 80% of its genes with other mammals. But the scientist where interested in the deferents. With matching the platypus genes with other mammals they found out that it was the crossroads between early mammal-like reptiles and of the other mammals we see today. They did a genetic analyzing and found out that it had slimmer portion milk genes that is just one of its many slimmer genes. They found out that males can give venom through the hind legs and it is slimmer to reptiles but independently. It was published form the newspaper company journal Nature and people on the time came from United States, Australia, England, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and Spain.

I like this project:

Because they found out that the platypus is one of the few animals that are between reptiles and mammals. So they can now find more about the genes of it and of us because if they find out enough of the genes they can find out more about us humans that would revolve to a new area of understanding us humans.