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General Weirdness
May. 22nd, 2012 02:27 pmToday is the forty-fifth day of the Omer, which is six weeks and three days into the Omer. Cheesecake holiday begins Saturday night :D
A conversation I had.
Brett and I: [talking]
Me: [notices] Oh, my aglet is gone.
Brett: [ . . . ] Your what?
Me: The little plastic part at the end of shoelaces.
Brett: I only believe this is a word because it is you telling me.
Me: As it should be. [continued conversation as I begin digging through my backpack]
Brett: [disturbed] What are you looking for?
Me: Ah-hah! [hauls out a couple of shoelaces I'd put in one of the many, many backpack-pockets] I thought I had some shoelaces in here somewhere!
Brett: [ . . . ] Yes, along with your can opener.
I do, in fact, carry around a can opener. This has proven useful in the past.
A different ting was last week's Thursday Seminar, which was about a bacteria called Wolbachia (Wob). Wob is symbiotic with insects, but in a weird way: if a female has Wob symbionts, they will be in her eggs and her babies will also have Wob, but a male will not have Wob in his sperm. From the point of view of a Wob, it is a good thing to make sure your female hosts have wide, egg-bearing thoraxes, but your male hosts you don't care about. So Wob actively helps females, whereas in males it only doesn't hurt them.
Wob helps by killing any harmful bacteria living in the insect host, and also some viruses. (For reasons not discussed here, viruses that infect bacteria are Very Different from viruses that infect insects, and therefore the Wob are not in danger from the viruses they are killing.) What this means in practical terms is that if a mosquito that is carrying, say, dengue fever, becomes infected with Wob, it is no longer a carrier of dengue. This does not work for blood-born worms, like malaria, but there is a trial in Australia going with Wob mosquitoes and mosquitoes with a bacteria that is the surrogate "disease" and they are tracking the "disease" mosquito die-off.
So, in summary: more bacteria, fewer deadly disease. Weird how Science! works out, isn't it?
A conversation I had.
Brett and I: [talking]
Me: [notices] Oh, my aglet is gone.
Brett: [ . . . ] Your what?
Me: The little plastic part at the end of shoelaces.
Brett: I only believe this is a word because it is you telling me.
Me: As it should be. [continued conversation as I begin digging through my backpack]
Brett: [disturbed] What are you looking for?
Me: Ah-hah! [hauls out a couple of shoelaces I'd put in one of the many, many backpack-pockets] I thought I had some shoelaces in here somewhere!
Brett: [ . . . ] Yes, along with your can opener.
I do, in fact, carry around a can opener. This has proven useful in the past.
A different ting was last week's Thursday Seminar, which was about a bacteria called Wolbachia (Wob). Wob is symbiotic with insects, but in a weird way: if a female has Wob symbionts, they will be in her eggs and her babies will also have Wob, but a male will not have Wob in his sperm. From the point of view of a Wob, it is a good thing to make sure your female hosts have wide, egg-bearing thoraxes, but your male hosts you don't care about. So Wob actively helps females, whereas in males it only doesn't hurt them.
Wob helps by killing any harmful bacteria living in the insect host, and also some viruses. (For reasons not discussed here, viruses that infect bacteria are Very Different from viruses that infect insects, and therefore the Wob are not in danger from the viruses they are killing.) What this means in practical terms is that if a mosquito that is carrying, say, dengue fever, becomes infected with Wob, it is no longer a carrier of dengue. This does not work for blood-born worms, like malaria, but there is a trial in Australia going with Wob mosquitoes and mosquitoes with a bacteria that is the surrogate "disease" and they are tracking the "disease" mosquito die-off.
So, in summary: more bacteria, fewer deadly disease. Weird how Science! works out, isn't it?
