Afraid of Snakes? Your Pulvinar May Be to Blame

Seeing as it is Halloween, fear is a good subject to do a blog on.  Scientists have discovered that certain parts of your brain fear the legless reptile.  The snake based neurons may have threaded all the way back to our primate past.  Another thing is you have to look at location.  Many people who live in a city will have a great fear of snakes because of the fact that we, as humans, fear what we do not know.  Some scientists believe that the fear results from our pulvinar, the part of the brain that receives information from our eyes.  Humans have clusters of pulvinars and that truly results in our fear.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/science/afraid-of-snakes-your-pulvinar-may-be-to-blame.html?ref=science&_r=0

Bugs Are Not Gay

Reading the title of this just made me laugh. The fact that someone found this important enough to make into a story makes me laugh.  But looking at the bigger picture it does make sense.  What evolutionary purpose does a homosexual relationship serve in the life of an insect. Nothing. The only practical reasoning written down is that it is "practice" for when the real situation occurs.  Some seem to believe that those "homosexual" insects tend to be better competitors in nature.




http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131021131009.htm

In California a recent discovery had been made.  A sea serpent, also known as an Oarfish, has been found. The size of this serpent is about 18 ft long.  Professor Jasmine Santana discovered the creature dead towards the bottom of the water.  She attempted to drag the creature to the shore and examine it further.  They believe the creature died of natural causes and they will examine its body further once it decomposes.



http://news.sky.com/story/1155201/giant-oarfish-sea-serpent-found-off-california

Alternatives to our current Life Situation

Mars. We recently sent out Curiosity to land on Mars.  Since then we have discovered that Mars has had water on it and that it could possibly be Terra-formed in a few thousand years.  Now that is the most known alternative but here are some other alternatives.  There are many other planets outside of our solar system that could be habitable as well.  And as Mr. Gessler stated last week the basis of Drake's Equation means that there could be an infinite number of planets like this.  The one planet that we are most curious about is Gliese 581g.  It has an extremely close resemblance to earth and is one of the closest planets for us to travel to with the right technology.  Now the last alternative is something I had only learned about recently and it is called a Dyson Sphere.  Now this one is only theoretical.  The idea is that we enclose a star and this sphere and it could give us optimal conditions to live.  And it could increase our technological output for years to come.  Many people argue against it but we won't know unless we try.  All of these are just ideas no set plans just yet. 


http://www.space.com/16722-top-5-habitable-alien-planets.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/04/03/destroying-mercury-to-build-a-dyson-sphere-is-a-bad-idea/

Overfishing and it's impact

A team of scientists from Canada and Australia have partaken in a study of coral reefs.  And what they discovered was that the increase in commercial shark fishing has caused a decline in the health of coral reefs.  The only explanation for how this has happened is: Sharks (Tertiary consumer) would keep control of the mid-level consumer population, who took care of the herbivorous creatures that took care of the reef.  But as the shark population declined the mid-level consumer population increased and took out more of the herbivorous creatures.  Thus leaving a coral reef with nothing to keep it clean.  Scientists are hoping to block off coral reefs in hope that it will allow the shark population to recover and help the coral reef to recover from coral bleaching and large cyclones that have been occurring due to climate change.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130918180429.htm