Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness, just a tiny bit late:

• At Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed tells us about his rhino encounter: The white rhinoceros - the planet's second largest land mammal. Even though it's the most common of the five existing speceis of rhino, there are still just over 17,000 left in the wild. For comparison, more than five times as many humans pack into Wembley Arena when there's a match on. With that in mind, we felt lucky and priveleged to see these magnificent animals, not just once but on four separate occasions.


• At Laelaps, Brian talks about baboons and why they throw underarm: Thanks to more recent studies of the same South African caves, however, we now know that the australopithecines that lived there between 2 and 3 million years ago were not "mighty hunters." Instead they often fell prey to leopards and other carnivores, just as the baboons did. The caves were not stashes of australopithecine leftovers but accumulations of bones that has been collected by predators or washed into the caves from outside, and these factors caused the damage that Dart had seen. Nor is there any evidence that the australopithecines attempted to stone baboons, but, strangely enough, some living baboons throw stones at humans.


• At Effect Measure, Revere looks at the epidemiology of swine flu: So far this looks pretty much like a standard influenza A virus -- except for the epidemiology. Since I'm an epidemiologist, you might expect me to think this is important, and I do. Epidemiology is the public health science that studies the patterns of illness in populations. One kind of pattern we study is who is getting sick. And it is a change in this pattern that is one of the big differences between a pandemic strain and a seasonal strain. Pandemic strains have a greater tendency to infect and make sicker much younger victims. In seasonal influenza it is the over 65 age group that contributes most of the serious illness and deaths, but with pandemic strains (not just the current one), lack of immunity in the population makes those under age 65 a bigger target and they sicken and die proportionately more than in a non-pandemic season. And that's exactly what we are seeing this year.


• At Zenobia: Empress of the East, Judith looks at the new movie about Hypatia: A history pic telling the story of Hypatia is scheduled to be released to theatres. The film is by Academy Award Winner Alejandro Amenábar (The Others, 2001, The Sea Inside 2004). After its showing at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, it is now scheduled to be released on December 18. From what I've seen, Amenábar is way out of his depth.
  


• And at Save Your Breath For Running, Ponies, bec blogs on the evocatively named phenomenon of whale fall: In her recently-published dissertation for the University of Gothenburg, Swedish doctoral researcher, Helena Wiklund, identifies nine new species from two families of polychaete worms (Ophryotrocha and Vigtorniella) found on whale remains in Scandinavian and Californian waters. Polychaetes, a common type of marine annelid (or segmented worm), are found extensively across the ocean floor, and can be free-living grazers or attached to other organisms. All but one of the particular species Wiklund has concentrated on are free-living grazer worms who are adapted to the very specific habitat of a whale-fall, feeding off the bacteria that form filamentous mats over the surface of decomposing whale bones.

Enjoy!