Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science has more on those ant-mimicking spiders: Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the ant-spider's tale - it also uses its impersonation for attack as well as defence. It also feasts on the eggs and youngsters of the very same spiders that its ant-like form protects it from. It is, essentially, a spider that looks like an ant to avoid being eaten by spiders so that it itself can eat spiders.


• Ed also has bees that kill hornets: Rising temperatures and high carbon dioxide emissions are the means through which humans are inadvertently causing the decline of several species. But one animal actively uses both heat and carbon dioxide as murderous weapons - the unassuming honeybee. With their stings and numbers, bees already seem to be well-defended but they are completely outgunned by giant hornets (right). These two-inch long monsters are three times longer than several times heavier than tiny honeybees and raiding parties can decimate entire hives. European bees mount little in the way of an effective defence, but Japanese bees aren't so helpless. When their hives are invaded, they launch a mass counterattack.


• David Dobbs at Neuron Culture has a look at a study on predicting PTSD: What if you could predict which troops are most likely to get PTSD from combat exposure -- and takes steps to either bolster them mentally or keep them out of combat situations? A new study suggests we could make a start on that right now -- and cut combat PTSD rates in half by simply keeping the least mentally and physically fit soldiers away from combat zones. The study was part of the Millenium Study, huge, prospective study in which US Department of Defense researchers have been tracking the physical and mental health of nearly 100,000 service members since 2001. This is the largest, most thorough, robust, and sizable study of troop health being done -- though, for reasons I'll touch on in a minute, many of its results are going ignored by the larger research community and the press. Its great value is that it's big, and it began tracking the health of these servicemembers in peacetime, so it is in a prime position to track actual changes in health brought about by military service during wartime.


• Bee at Backreaction has a ... well, reaction to Bruce Charlton's "why are scientists so dull?" essay: Since, as you know, the failure of the academic system to select the most promising scientists is a pet topic of mine, this can't be left uncommented. First, the starting point of the whole article is unwarranted. Where is the evidence that something is wrong with modern science? How do you know that we have too few "revolutionary" scientists and too many "normal" scientists? This lacking basis, incidentally, is the same problem I have with Lee Smolin's call for more "risky" research. While I am sympathetic to the argument and personally tend to agree, it's not a scientific statement and anecdotes can't replace data. How do we know it's worse today than yesterday? Who determines whether we need more "revolutionary scientists?" Will somebody calculate a percentage? Who? Based on what? And wouldn't one expect that to depend on the field of research? And on the status of that field?


• And the eponymous Skulls in the Stars has a post about depression: it's more than just feeling bad: There’s been a healthy amount of discussion on the science blogs over the past few days about clinical depression, spurred on in large part by questions from aspiring academics concerning the best way to address the impact of their illness on their job and, just as important, their advisor’s perception of that job. Dr. Isis seems to have started the current ball rolling with a question from a postdoc, PalMD posted another reader’s experience as a grad student dealing with depression, and Mark Chu-Carroll updated an old post concerning his own struggles with depression. (If you search through the comments on the original post, you can read one of my very first blog comments, long before I had a blog of my own.) I feel I should throw my own personal experiences in here. I’ve been on antidepressants myself since graduate school. I make no secret of it to anyone anymore, though I haven’t talked about it that much on the blog, except in one early post about the unjustified stigma that antidepressant drugs have.
  

Enjoy!