Squid sperm to the rescue

Posted on January 12, 2013 by

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

340px-Dried_squid_3

A dried squid. Magnificent.

I’m in research mode today. I was reading The Disappearing Spoon last week (it’s a fun book, I recommend it), and the author mentioned that Rosalind Franklin used squid sperm in her DNA studies. The author didn’t dwell on the reason for squid sperm. In fact, most texts skip over the detail.

But squid sperm ain’t a footnote! As a person obsessed with squid, I refuse to stand for that. We owe our knowledge of DNA to squid (and scientists, I suppose). So my question today is: Of all creatures, why did Franklin pick squid?

According to a 1951 paper by A.E. Mirsky and Hans Ris in the Journal of General Physiology, squid sperm is special because of its ratio of DNA to sperm. Continue reading →

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Why did pregnant women need rabbits?

Posted on November 22, 2012 by

“The Rabbit Test” was also a movie in which Billy Crystal starred as a pregnant man. It was directed by Joan Rivers. Apparently it was hilarious

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

Here’s a confession: I’ve never used a typewriter. I’ve also never dialed on a rotary phone or played a eight-track tape. I was a deprived child of the 1990s.

One technology I don’t have a hipster-like nostalgia for? The rabbit test.

If this sounds familiar (to youngsters like me), it might be from the scene in season four of “Mad Men” when Roger asks the pregnant Joan, “Did you get the rabbit test?”

The “rabbit test,” also called the Aschheim-Zondek test, was a way of detecting pregnancy through the presence of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). The hormone hCG is sometimes called “the pregnancy hormone” because levels increase when a fertilized egg attaches to the uterine wall. 

In the 1920s, scientists discovered that hCG was present in the urine of pregnant women. Continue reading →

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From “Shark Lady” to shark soup

Posted on September 12, 2012 by

I pose as very scientifically inaccurate shark

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

Shark news update! While beachgoers in Florida worry about a shark attack off St. Augustine, shark behavior research goes strong.

First — A shameless plug.

I had to investigate when I ran into a reference to Dr. Eugenie Clark, aka “The Shark Lady.” Clark agreed to speak with me for an article for the Scientific American Blog Network, and SciAm ran the story today. Clark is a fascinating scientist, and I was glad to share her work in “How to Catch a Shark.”

Second — Experiments at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas indicate that lemon sharks may learn new behaviors by watching other sharks. Continue reading →

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How cicadas became immortal

Posted on August 5, 2012 by
cicada

A moulted cicada shell left on my neighbor’s fence

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

It’s cicada season here in Illinois. Hidden in the trees, they start buzzing every evening around dinnertime. During the day I spot their empty skins clinging to fences and mailboxes.

Cicadas are harmless, but the way they screech unseen and then disappear the rest of the year makes them sort of creepy, like ghost bugs. Of courses, the same individuals don’t some come out every year (or two to 17 years, depending on the species). The whole reason they emerge is to call to mates and produce the next generation.

But through the years, human saw this behavior and decided maybe cicadas have some supernatural power. Continue reading →

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Winston Churchill’s platypus obsession

Posted on July 29, 2012 by

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

“Duck Billed Platypus Schnabeltier” by Heinrich Harder (now in public domain)

Who knew that sex between two platypi could mean hope for the British Empire? In 1943, as bombs fell on London and German submarines lurked in the Atlantic, Churchill sent the Australian prime minister an odd request: bring me six platypi.

I’m not joking. As Cambridge University scholar Natalie Lawrence writes, “The timing of Churchill’s request and the symbolic nature of the platypus had political importance, and played a part in mending the broken relations between Australia and Britain.”  Continue reading →

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The story of a worm

Posted on July 22, 2012 by

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

Here’s how I know I’m weird: my ears perk up when I hear the word “nematode.” See, I worked in a nematology lab for most of college, and my time with this group of roundworms has left me ruined for normal society.

For example, I saw this lovely, abstract art vase at Pier One Imports:

Photo credit: Me

And I immediately thought of how female nematodes curl up:

Photo credit: University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Back in freshman year of college, my mom was a little worried about me working with worms. Would they infect me? But the nematodes in our lab were harmless to humans. The tiny roundworms infected either insect larvae or plant roots. Fascinated with our little research subjects, I forgot about their dangerous cousins. Continue reading →

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Behind the scenes with condors!

Posted on May 5, 2012 by

By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

In March, I wrote a post about why researchers and conservationists want to protect the California condor. My friend Corinne Ross, an intern with the Fish and Wildlife Service Condor Recovery Program, explained the odd process of condor sex.

But in that post, I didn’t really go into how conservationists keep the condor population going. Turns out their conservation methods are as strange as the bulgy-headed condors themselves.

Condors eat carrion, and that’s a problem in some areas because some carrion is left by hunters using lead ammunition. If condors eat lead, it can damage their bodies and hurt their chicks.

So the Fish and Wildlife Service gives condor a safer option: dead calves. Ross and her colleagues make regular trips to dairy farms where they can pick up stillborn calves. The calves are already dead, but Ross still has to do some food-prep.     Continue reading →

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