A century ago, vast flocks of passenger pigeons covered the North american skies. Hundreds of millions, even billions, stretched across the horizon in every direction.
like a dragon going through the skies, Â says Harvard Medical school geneticist George Church. And then European settlers arrived.
the last known passenger pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo. But if Church has his way, this majestic sight could one day return to our skies.
he and other scientists are dreaming up ambitious plans to resurrect long-dead animals from pigeons to Tasmanian tigers and wooly mammoths.
 The same technologies could also prevent endangered species from going the way of the dodo oe or the passenger pigeon.
A key part of this grand ambition lies in the lines of test tubes frozen in liquid nitrogen in a Californian zoo.
In 1972, Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at the San diego Zoo, had the visionary idea of freezing skin samples from endangered animals in the hope they might help protect these species in the future.
Many captive animals suffer from genetic abnormalities and inbreeding, and Ryder imagined that his repository of animal cells could be used long after their donors died to help zoo veterinarians manage captive populations.
He never viewed his"Frozen Zoo  oe which now stores cells from 9 000 individual vertebrates belonging to more than 1, 000 different species oe as a way of producing new animals.
As far as he and other scientists knew,  only stem cells found in embryos had the ability to transform into the building blocks of  any part of the body,
whether a cell in the liver or the eye. Ryder's collection of skin cells were thought just that
it was implanted into the uterus of another animal, which carried the clone to birth.""Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell
From dogs to cows, scientists rushed to clone a menagerie of animals using Wilmut's technique, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT.
Many animals were born unhealthy and the cloning process was inefficient, with success rates of around 1%.Less charitable critics still call these efforts stunts,
"Producing the odd animal here and there, which may be sick, didn't seem a very sensible thing to do,
In 2007 Japanese scientists reported, first in mice and later in humans, that an adult cell could be reverted to an embryo-like stem cell.
Skin cells could be converted into sperm that could create an animal through in vitro fertilisation (IVF), or even transformed into whole animals.
Both feats have been accomplished in mice and they should be possible in other animals, scientists say.
As a first step, Ryder and a team of stem cell scientists have reprogrammed the skin cells from a northern white rhinoceroses named Fatu, one of seven still alive,
and from a drill, a monkey species that lives in tiny, dwindling pockets of west Africa.
And recently, scientists said they have created ips cells from a snow leopard. These cells are a long way from saving species,
but"it would be the only chance that I can think of that would prevent the extinction of the northern white rhino,
 Ryder says. Ryder shrugs off the suggestion that money devoted towards such ambitious cloning projects would be spent better on preventing habitat destruction and other, simpler conservation measures.
Fighting over the best way to save species instead of saving them will, to future generations, look like"fiddling
though he does not underestimate the effort required to bring the passenger pigeon back to the skies.
With extinct animals, scientists need to take more involved measures to recover the complete DNA sequence oe its genome.
Armed with this code, they then need to find a way of engineering a regular pigeon's stem cells into behaving like a passenger pigeon's stem cells by mutating the genome.
Church says the complete genome of the passenger pigeon from museum specimens will soon be published and researchers are beginning to alter the genetic make-up of a more familiar bird oe the chicken oe to practice their techniques."
"What you can do for chicken you should be able to do for pigeon, and that can include creating DNA that you haven't seen alive for a 100 years,
 he says. But even if Church has the passenger pigeon's full genetic code, which he expects to recreate within a decade,
Church admits that bringing it back to life requires a significant improvement in existing genome engineering technologies.
his team is using a similar approach to engineer mice with traits of naked mole rats. The odd-looking rodents live dozens of years instead of a handful like mice.
They are impervious to cancer and do not feel pain from acids. To endow ordinary lab mice with these traits Church will try to partially rewrite the genomes of mouse stem cells.
However, he admits that creating a passenger pigeon from the stem cells of an ordinary pigeon would involve a massive scale up of the same technologies.
Mammoth goalthe favourite candidate for resurrection, though, might lie in nature's version of Ryder's Frozen Zoo.
Flash-frozen remains of wooly mammoths have been found preserved under the Siberian permafrost, and scientists hope their bones could be a source of DNA-containing marrow cells for cloning.
Last year, Japanese and Russian scientists announced they had found just such a bone and predicted they would be able to clone a mammoth within 5 years.
They hope to insert nuclei from the mammoth cells into egg cells from its closest living relative, the elephant,
and carry the mammoth embryo in an elephant's womb. However, some scientists have cast doubt about
whether this is possible. Hendrik Poinar, a palaeo-geneticist at Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and his team have uncovered similarly well-preserved mammoth bones and never found viable cells or nuclei."
"The likelihood of finding an intact cell that can be rejigged to life oe it's not that it's an impossibility oe
 Poinar says that genome engineering offers a more realistic shot at resurrecting woolly mammoths and other long-extinct species. Ten thousand-year-old cells and their nuclei may be degraded too to be used in cloning,
but they still contain the animal's genetic code. This genome is shredded into short fragments,
and more ancient animal genomes are on the way, such as the Tasmanian tiger. These genomes exist in the form of computerised data,
but they could serve as a blueprint for altering the DNA of a cell from a closely related species. For instance,
the code of a woolly mammoth's genome differs from an African elephant's by roughly 240,000 DNA letters out of a total of 4 billion,
An elephant ips cell engineered to contain those mutations would theoretically be capable of producing woolly mammoth sperm.
the woolly mammoth stem cells could be implanted besides an elephant embryo early in development, producing a chimera animal with some tissues made from elephant cells and others from mammoths.
In some individuals the mammoth cells would contribute to sperm or eggs, and these cells be used to create a genuine mammoth through IVF.
In the absence of a living mammoth, scientists are reconstructing some of its most vital components from DNA fragments to discover how it adapted to life at subzero temperatures.
Scientists could go one step further and test woolly mammoth red blood cells made from ips cells, Poinar says.
Reality check If the idea of mammoths roaming the Earth still sounds a bit farfetched, it should.
Resurrecting a mammoth or indeed any extinct species would require a dizzying list of technological leaps in genome engineering, reproductive biology,
What is more, the technologies that scientists are hoping to use have mostly been developed for use in laboratory animals and valuable livestock only.
Basic genetic principles may carry over to more exotic animals but many steps will not, particularly those involving reproduction and development.
For instance, a recent study found that making a chimeric rhesus monkey oe a process needed to resurrect a monkey species from frozen cells oe is much trickier than a mouse."
humans resurrect an extinct animal. A wealthy American investor approached him several years ago and asked Poinar to quit his academic job and work full time on bringing back woolly mammoths.
Poinar declined, but he expects someone will eventually take on a similar project.""The technology clearly moves at lighting speed
 Harvard's Church says his goal is not necessarily to fill the planet with mammoths
There could even be an upside for other animals on the brink of extinction.""If there's enough people enthusiastic about bringing an extinct species like a mammoth or passenger pigeon,
 says Church, "maybe there will be interest in maintaining the species we still have.  Ewen Callaway writes about biology
a disintegration that is assisted by microorganisms, insects and lichen. This organic matter decays, feeding more organisms, including, in time, plants.
and pest incursion, produces marketable oil and is also useful for animal feed. Essential minerals, such as nitrates, that crops suck up from the soil take a particularly long time to be replaced naturally.
and animals use to develop proteins. Animal faeces contain many of these chemicals, and recycling essential nitrates from biomatter is the easiest and cheapest way of replenishing the soil.
and attracts microorganisms, worms and insects, which help maintain soil fertility and provide ecosystem services.
I only have to do it once to drill and sow. Considering that it costs him 9. 9 gallons (45 litres) of fuel an hour for 14-hour days over 2 weeks
"Previously we just raised food for humans and animals. In 2011 more corn went to biofuel than to feed for the first time in the US.
and if we were to weigh all of Earth's land vertebrates, 90%of the total would be made up of humans
and the animals we have domesticated, according to Prof Vaclav Smil in his book The Earth's Biosphere:
#15 Most Bizarre Brain Experiments If the brain is a supercomputer these would be its hacks.
known as the Caltech team, can attach electrodes to your brain that lets you move a mouse cursor with your thoughts.
As this elk of mind-signal reading technology evolves, the day will come when even your dreams arent safe from spying eyes. http://foreign. peacefmonline. com/tech/201010/98495. php 2. Hyperscanning Brain Experiment:
of singing birds Every season, song birds lose some of their brain cells. The cells that allow the birds to learn songs commit suicide only to be replaced by newly grown cells.
This is interesting because brain cells arent supposed to be regenerative, and these so-called precursory cells are native to the bird brain.
The entire process exists only so the birds can learn new songs. http://www. news. harvard. edu/gazette/1998/04. 16/Experimentsrais. html 4. Using immature cells from the brains of mammals to replace dead
or dying human adult cells This is related to the oesong bird secret, except applied to the human brain.
We dont need to regenerate brain cells to learn new songs, but we do need a cure for Alzheimers disease and Parkinsons disease.
Recent experiments show that dead brain cells in mice (which are mammalian like us) can be regenerated with immature brain cells.
The implications are exciting, one day we might even be able to rebuild the entire brain from scratch. http://www. news. harvard. edu/gazette/1998/04. 16/Experimentsrais. html 5. The Suda Experiment:
ECG Recording Using Perfused Cat Brains and Glycerol Professor Isamu Suda, of Kobe University in Japan, is renowned for devising a cryonics methodology right out of Tales from the Crypt.
Basically, the Suda technique involves deep freezing a live cat brain and then thawing it back out.
Whats interesting for cryobiologists is that, using the Suda technique, electrical brain waves can be detected (via EEG).
scientists ran an experiment b y giving the C. elegans worm small doses of alcohol to track the affects of withdrawal.
They learned no surprise here hat giving the worms more alcohol eased withdrawal symptoms. They also learned with a much bigger surprise that theres an actual oehangover molecule that can be quantified in the recovering brain http://www. stumbleupon. com/su/2k89pc/www. livescience. com/culture/hangover
/Alcohols-Effects-in-the-Brain&id=1319880 7. Scientists create Mice with Human brain Cells Fred Gage
Gages team has injected successfully mice which are genetic twins to humans, having a 97.5%similarity with human brain cells.
Gages breed of man/mice lab creations are known as chimeras, not unlike the geep (half-goat, half-sheep) or mule (half-ass, half-horse.
citing issue with the resulting creature being oetoo human. http://www. msnbc. msn. com/id/10441350/ns/health-cloning and stem cells 8. Robot powered by rats brain in bizarre British experiment
On the other hand, robots controlled by rat brains now thats an abomination if Ive ever heard of one.
which consist of attaching a chunk of rat brain to a robot to see if it moves The creepy part is that it does move.
as if it was an animal being trained. http://www. dailymail. co. uk/sciencetech/article-1044909/Robot-powered-rats-brain-bizarre-British-experiment. html#ixzz16mpvastz 9. Brain
Dissecting and Cementing Marmosets Brains Scientists crack open the marmosets scull, vacuum out swaths of brain tissue to cause visual blind spots,
The marmoset is strapped to an EEG machine to track brain activity, before being brought in the back
since human brains and marmoset brains are completely different. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Cambridge university primates http://www. humanecharities. org. au/experiments/marmosets. html 11.
Brain Experiment Using Salamanders: The Spemann-Mangold Experiments German scientist Hans Spemann and Ph d candidate Hilde Mangold take the proverbial cake for strange brain experiments.
In their momentous study, the brain of a live salamander was extracted and divided into sections.
The remainder as dropped back into the still-living salamander body and the salamander would jump up
Spemann and Mangold would also conduct studies involving splitting salamander embryos in two and injecting parts of one half into the other just to see what would happen. http://ts-si. org/biology/3305-brain-before-body-the-spemann-mangold-experiments 12.
#Angry Birds Unlikely Pop-Culture Craze Goes From Cellphone Screen to Mainstream Fans celebrate Angry Birds Day It may sound like a tough sell:
a game that involves catapulting birds at elaborate fortresses constructed by evil pigs. But Angry Birds, a hit game by Rovio, a small Finnish company, is one of the unlikeliest pop-culture crazes of the year
and perhaps the first to make the leap from cellphone screens to the mainstream. Angry Birds, in which the birds seek revenge on the egg-stealing pigs,
is meant to be played easily in the checkout line and during other short windows of downtime but some players have trouble stopping.
Put another way, that is 16 human-years of bird-throwing every hour. The game has inspired parodies, homages and fervent testimonials.
Homemade Angry Birds costumes were big hits on Halloween. Conan OBRIEN demonstrated the game in a Youtube video promoting his new show,
and a sketch from an Israeli TV SHOW about a birds-and-pigs peace treaty was popular online.
Justin Bieber and other celebrities have professed their love of Angry Birds on social networks. Games like Angry Birds are reaching a wide audience of players who might never consider buying an Xbox or Playstation,
but are now carrying sophisticated game machines in their pockets smartphones. Software developers eager to become the next Rovio,
The trajectory of Angry Birds also suggests a larger shift in entertainment and in the kinds of brands that can win wide popularity.
And unlike many of the best-known console video games like the classic Super Mario Bros. from Nintendo or the latest in the Call of Duty series, from Activision cellphone games like Angry Birds
got swept up in the Angry Birds craze when her 8-year-old son, Roenick, asked for a birthday cake based on the game.
but he kept most of the bird figures. A photo of the cake ricocheted around the Web. oerequests from people who want one have been pouring in on Twitter and via e-mail
and his boyfriend were such big fans of the game that they decided to create full-body bird costumes for Halloween. oeit was crazy,
Fans of the game took to the streets on Saturday for Angry Birds Day, celebrating its first anniversary.
Rovio says it will create Angry Birds levels for the top 10 cities that celebrate Angry Birds Day.
none have come close to the success of Angry Birds, which cost about $100, 000 to make
when a Rovio designer sketched a rough outline of a bright red bird with a furious expression. oewe didnt know what the game concept would be loved,
but we the birds, he said. oethe entire game and storyline was built around the birds.
Mr. Vesterbacka said the company took notice of the intricate storylines in Pixar films and the popularity of Mario and Luigi
from Super Mario Bros. The stars of Angry Birds do not express themselves much apart from squawks and grunts,
and is working on versions of Angry Birds for gaming consoles and PCS, along with a line of stuffed birds and pigs.
It also hopes to spin the franchise into a movie or childrens TV SHOW. Rovio made a smart choice in making the birds angry
said Jesse Schell, a professor at Carnegie mellon who studies game design and entertainment technology. oeyou can smash them into things and its O k.,
if they were cute little birds. It might be kind of funny on some level, but most people would probably be repulsed a little.
Chris Forcandanonymous helped catch an internet child predator by reporting information to the police in 2007.
oewhat do you call dog and tiger? oei call them dog and tiger. oepencil and brush?
oeoh, theres a word for that. oeairplane and train? oei feel embarrassed I dont know. oeyou have a lot of loss of memory,
#How the Most Symbolic American Bird Got the Name Turkey Turkey For a species of bird found only in the forests of North america and so symbolic of a U s. holiday,
Well, it turns out that the origins of how this jowly bird arrived at its strikingly Turkish title reflect the history of its international popularity.
has yet to be corrected making turkeys one of the most curiously named birds on the planet.
To pin down an answer to why one of North americas most celebrated birds came to be named after a distant nation all one has to do is look at the history of global commerce.
In turn, one popular type of bird shipped from Africa, called a Guinea fowl, became known as oeturkey cock throughout England.
And, when British settlers arrived in the New world and encountered a large woodland bird that looked a bit like the Guinea fowl fowl theyd grown fond of eating back in England perhaps out of confusion that the two were the same species,
or maybe in longing for something familiar so far from home they ended up referring to this bird as a oeturkey cock too.
Later it was shortened to simply turkey. Another factor that helped perpetuate this unusual choice of names occurred
when these new North american birds became a popular commodity throughout the world sure enough, mostly by way of Turkish merchants.
But it turns out that English speakers werent the only ones to name these birds based on a bit of misinformation.
Sixteenth century importers in Portugal were apparently under the impression that that was where the birds originated from.
The Turks, better than anyone, knew the birds werent from their homeland, but may have thought originally they came from India thanks to a little miscalculation by Columbus. In the end,
for the birds themselves it matters little by what moniker we refer to them though I suspect they would prefer to be called anything but dinner.
The study also found that Wi-fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs. The researchers urged that further studies were needed to confirm the current results
#Plants and Animals Fending Off Diseases! This is a plant nothing touches! Contrary to long-held beliefs, plants and animals have developed remarkably similar mechanisms for detecting microbial invasions.
This holds promise for the future treatment of infectious diseases in humans. It may have been 1 billion years
since plants and animals branched apart on the evolutionary tree but down through the ages they have developed strikingly similar mechanisms for detecting microbial invasions
This revelation was arrived at over a period of 15 years by teams of researchers from seemingly disparate fields who have used classical genetic studies to unravel the mysteries of disease resistance in plants and animals
and Bruce Beutler, an immunologist and mammalian geneticist at The Scripps Research Institute, describes how researchers have used common approaches to tease apart the secrets of immunity in species ranging from fruit flies to rice.
signaling the plant or animal in which the receptor resides to mount an immune response and fend off microbial infection and disease.
Beutler identified the gene for the first immune receptor in mammals a mouse gene known as TLR4.
Their overview in Science includes illustrated descriptions of the disease-resistance or immunity pathways in the mouse, Drosophila fruit fly,
These represent the immune defense systems of vertebrates, insects, monocotyledons (grasslike plants) and dicotyledons (plants like beans that have seed two leaves.)
#Sharks and Wolves: Prey Interactions Similar On land and in Oceans major predators help control the populations of their prey
(but not people) There may be many similarities between the importance of large predators in marine and terrestrial environments,
researchers concluded in a recent study, which examined the interactions between wolves and elk in the United states,
as well as sharks and dugongs in Australia. In each case, the major predators help control the populations of their prey,
scientists said. But through whats been called the oeecology of fear they also affect the behavior of the prey,
with ripple impacts on other aspects of the ecosystem and an ecological significance that goes far beyond these species. The study was done by scientists from Oregon State university and the University of Washington,
and an international expert in the study of large predators such as wolves and cougars. oewere now finding that there are many more similarities between marine and terrestrial ecosystems than weve realized,
what has been learned about wolf and elk interaction in Yellowstone national park in the U s. to the interplay of tiger sharks and dugongs in Shark Bay, Australia.
Dugongs are large marine mammals, similar to manatees, that feed primarily on seagrasses and are a common prey of sharks.
In studies with elk, scientists have found that the presence of wolves alters their behavior almost constantly,
The elk graze less in sensitive habitats, which in Yellowstone is helping streamside shrubs and aspen trees to recover,
along with other positive impacts on beaver dams and wildlife. Conceptually similar activities are taking place between sharks and dugongs, the researchers found.
When sharks are abundant, dugongs graze less in shallow water where they are most vulnerable to sharks,
and sacrifice food they might otherwise consume. This allows the seagrass meadows to thrive, along with the range of other plant and marine animal species that depend on them.
Related marine interactions have been observed in the North Atlantic ocean Ripple said. As shark populations were diminished by overfishing, the number of rays increased,
In Shark Bay, green sea turtles are more willing to face risks from sharks and seek the best grazing areas when their body condition is strong.
In like fashion, the common wildebeest on the African Serengeti are less vulnerable to attack by lions
or hyenas when their physical condition is good. A more frequent information exchange between terrestrial and marine ecologists could provide additional insights into ecosystem function
such as a virus, perhaps with the help of a sap-sucking insect, says Professor Bengtsson.
to be able to fit all your ingredients (make sure the lid has an airtight seal).
The researchers uncovered extensive molecular differences in the brains of worker bees and queen bees which develop along very different paths when put on different diets.
and queens to produce their extraordinarily different behaviors. This finding is not only crucial, but far reaching,
more than 550 genes are marked differentially between the brain of the queen and the brain of the worker,
According to the study, producing food from animals, such as meat and dairy products, causes the greatest impact.
including DEEP FRIED TARANTULAS¢Deep Fried Tarantulas In Cambodia, for 50 cents or less, protein is available in the form of ping (Cambodian for tarantula).
The custom of eating these lovelies started during a time of widespread food shortage back in the 1970s,
¢Birds Nest The Chinese make soup out of this, and one bowl costs anywhere from$30 to $100!
because the nests can only be harvested a few times per year.¢¢Rooster Testicles In Taiwan, rooster testicles are considered a good source of protein
A sacred animal in India, urine from the cow is distilled before it is blended with traditional Indian herbs and medicinal plants.
¢Deep Fried Insects Topping off the list of specialty foods is this protein-rich delicacy from Thailand,
locusts, grasshoppers, cockroaches, ants and maggots, just to name a few. As for me, please pass the barf bag.
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