Scientists recently discovered that the veined octopus is a tool user. The tool? A coconut shell. The use? Shelter.

The researchers watched octopuses off the coasts of Northern Sulawesi and Bali dig for coconut shells in the mud, clean the shell, then lift the shell and run away with it. When the octopus is ready to hunker down, it flips the shell over and climbs underneath. If an octopus finds two halves of a coconut shell, it climbs into one half and then pulls the other half over itself.

Check out the video here.

Welcome to the Epic edition of Scientia Pro Publica (a.k.a. the edition that almost didn’t happen). What makes this edition epic? Well, we do—we said it would be epic so it’s epic—but more importantly, the awesomeness of the science bloggers in this edition has reached truly epic proportions. Due to a SNAFU with the automated submission form, we only had one submission going into the weekend. A one-post carnival just isn’t “epic” so we begged our fellow science bloggers to re-submit their posts over the weekend. As you can see, they came through with epic awesomeness…

Anthropology/Evolution/Raptors are cool

In Projectile weapons and carnivores, DeLene reports on a Duke University scientist’s theory that projectile weapons (and the ability to throw them) enabled modern humans to out-compete Neanderthals and kill off all of Europe’s large carnivores.

Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries writes that Ardipithecus is not a missing link! He says that referring to Ardipithecus as a “missing link” (as many media outlets have done) is “like referring to a medical breakthrough in the treatment of lung disease by using Galen’s view that it caused a “reduction of phlegmatic humours” in the chest.”

Did you know that most raptors kill their prey by constriction? This is just one of the cool things I learned from John Beetham’s post about how raptor talons fit their prey. Apparently, some raptors kill their prey by striking them at high speed and some merely hold their prey still (while the prey is alive) as they pluck and eat it. One more cool raptor fact: falcons have a tooth-like projection on their beaks.

Conservation and Management

Jeremy tells us how not to manage overfishing in Law of unintended consequences, coconut edition. To give fishermen an alternative source of income (and hopefully reduce pressure on the country’s reef fish), the government of Kiribati subsidized the coconut oil industry. It didn’t work out the way the government planned…

Mike introduces us to a new way to count birds in Counting Birds: will microphones replace nets? He reports that ecologists have developed a system that uses birdsong to estimate the size of bird populations.

Gunnar Engblom reports that DNA from Darwin’s expedition may help save the critically endangered Floreana Mockingbird in Floreana Mockingbird Restoration.

In A New Look, I wrote about our new doormat and how it’s (kinda) protecting North Atlantic right whales and (sorta) helping Maine lobstermen.

Marine Science

DeLene writes about a recent study that examined the effects of ocean acidification on shelled marine organisms in Acid ocean test looks to the past. Under the experimental conditions, some critters responded predictably (with thinner shells), while others perplexed researchers by growing thicker shells in the more acidic seawater.

In lighter marine science news, Christina takes us on a virtual aquarium tour (that includes dogfish sex) in Fishy Fridays and Heather describes the mysteries of hydrothermal vents.

Plants/Agriculture

GrrlScientist writes about the discovery of the world’s smallest orchid species—the petals of the teeny tiny flower are only one cell thick, making the flower transparent—while Jeremy, from Agricultural Biodiversity asks: Do farmers know how to save seeds?

Chemistry/Biochemistry

Using a picture of a duck and a picture of a cat, S. Gould explains how Fourier transformations can be used to determine structures in protein crystallography in Lab Rat guide to Fourier Transformations. In a completely unrelated post, Lab Rat writes about using microbes to make second generation biofuels.

Heather explains that processing DNA is more complicated than the CSI team makes it look in A (hopefully) comprehensible explanation of something complicated…or why DNA is hard to read.

Medicine Past and Present

Romeo Vitelli has a new toy—a vintage Davis & Kidder Patent Magneto-Electric Machine for Nervous Diseases. According to Dr. Vitelli, the machine was quite popular in its day. It was used for medical purposes (to treat asphyxia, asthma, angina, impotence, constipation, “critical periods or turn of life in females” and diabetes) and for fun (at “phosphene parties” a group of people joined hands in a circle while touching the machine). Learn more in Singing the body electric.

In honor of Celiac Awareness Month (October), Eric R. Olson shares a profile of celiac disease. Many celiac patients choose to forgo formal testing for the condition…which brings us to Bora Zivkovic’s post about the importance of storytelling in medicine. In Lisa Sanders at UNC, we learn that physicians who interview a new patient correctly diagnose them after just an interview 75-80% of the time.

Reviews

It’s hard to stay up-to-date on the latest books about science and the environment. My co-blogger, Peter, recently reviewed Cradle to Cradle, a book that’s been out since 2002. His verdict: read it or stuff it in your favorite scientist’s stocking.

That’s it for the epic edition. The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica will be hosted by Bob O’Hara (assisted by GrrlScientist) at the hibernating blog, Deep Thoughts and Silliness on December 21. We’ll keep you posted on the status of the automatic submission form, but email submissions are always welcome (ScientiaBlogCarnival@gmail.com).

Attention Science Bloggers: We’re having issues with the automated blog carnival submission form. So…instead of using that “handy submission form,” please send an email with the link(s), your name and a brief summary of your post to ScientiaBlogCarnival@gmail.com. And if you submitted something using the automated form, please re-submit it via email. Thank you!

Cradle to Cradle (by William McDonough and Michael Braungart) came out in 2002. Cool people read it and then tossed around words like “downcycle” and “technical nutrients*.” I figured that since I wanted to be cool, I should read the book too so I could learn what those terms actually meant. So I did. (Kelsey knew what they meant already, even though she hadn’t read the book. But that’s beside the point.)

The main principle behind Cradle to Cradle is that we should design products in order to eliminate waste, not just reduce it. To explain this concept, the authors ask readers to “consider the cherry tree:

…thousands of blossoms create fruit for birds, humans and other animals, in order that one put might eventually fall onto the ground, take root and grow. Who would look at the ground littered with cherry blossoms and complain, ‘How inefficient and wasteful!’ The tree makes copious blossoms and fruits without depleting its environment. Once they fall on to the ground their materials decompose and break down into nutrients that nourish microorganisms, insects, plants, animals and soil. Although the tree actually makes more of its “product” than it needs for its own success in an ecosystem, this abundance has evolved (through millions of years of success and failure or, in business terms, R&D), to serve rich and varied purposes. In fact, the tree’s fecundity nourishes just about everything around it.”

In other words, economic growth and productivity don’t have to be at odds with environmental health and proper stewardship—just look at the cherry tree. We can celebrate our ability to make lots and lots of stuff, so long as we rethink how we make them. If the products we make actually improve the environment when we throw them away, then consumerism can be a positive force for our planet.

To prove their point, McDonough and Braungart describe a project they led back in the early 1990s to create a wheelchair seat cover that was safe enough to eat.

To accomplish this dubious feat (actually the aim was to make it 100% compostable), the authors refrained from using 8,000 harmful chemicals and materials that are known to cause all sorts of problems yet are commonly used in the textile business. Instead, they chose alternatives from a list of natural fibers that provided cushioning, insulation and moisture-wicking properties. Eliminating certain dyes (including the popular dyes that were part of those 8,000 chemicals) also eliminated the need for caustic chemicals that kept those dyes inert (colorfast). McDonough and Braungart eventually chose 38 ingredients that had positive properties—although the authors don’t go into detail, I assume they meant that the ingredients would be good for a compost pile.

The new fabric actually solved multiple problems at once. Since the mill that made the fabric was no longer using hazardous chemicals, they could stop filling out regulatory paperwork for the hazardous chemicals, stop setting aside space to store the hazardous materials, stop requiring workers to wear masks and gloves for protection against caustic chemicals, and stop disposing of its fabric trimmings as if they were hazardous waste—hazardous waste that we are allowed to sit on and have in our home, by the way. Not only was the new fabric biodegradable, it was ultimately cheaper to make than the old fabric. (An official case study unrelated to the book discusses this here.)

As an added bonus, because nothing hazardous went into the textiles, nothing hazardous came out of the mill. When regulators checked the mill’s discharge pipes, the water coming out was as clean as the water coming into the plant in the first place. (Actually, it was potentially cleaner since there were some elements present in the inflow that were no longer present in the outflow.)

With such cool examples sprinkled throughout the book, one could easily forget that the book’s primary take home message is that we’ll be in a whole lotta trouble if we continue to buy stuff that we just throw away. That may be why the authors made sure to start things off on a bleak note—the first chapter is a depressing catalogue of all the stuff in our homes that will likely kill us.

Nevertheless, the authors avoid playing the blame game. They let us (the readers) off the hook by saying that it’s really not our fault that we do things the way we do. They explain that the evolution of how we design and build stuff (dating back to the industrial revolution) has been a logical series of steps designed to improve our lives. It’s just unfortunate that those steps have led us to such an illogical and unfortunate place. They do follow up by saying that since we now know there’s another way, it IS our fault if we don’t do anything to change. (Ok, so maybe they’re not entirely free from finger-pointing.)

The book is well worth the read, and the authors present a compelling case of how we can choose something other than a monastic existence if we want to do right by our environment. Even if you’re already hip, reading Cradle to Cradle will make you cooler.

* “Downcycle” is the term used when products are “recycled” but are used to make products of lower quality or value—e.g. when cars are melted down as a whole and reused as lower grade steel instead of first separating the various components from one another and reusing the high-grade steel as high-grade steel. “Technical nutrients” are the materials we use to make things, such as metal, plastics, chemicals and other non-biodegradable stuff (as opposed to biological nutrients such as leather, wool and cotton). Technical nutrients are lost forever when a product is tossed into a landfill since they won’t biodegrade. McDonough and Braungart recommend that designers make products so that these technical nutrients can be pulled out of a product and reused in future products.

We’ve got a new look—and a new doormat. You’re looking at the new Mauka to Makai layout right now*. Hopefully, you like it. Now, let’s talk about our doormat.

It’s a pretty cool doormat. It (kinda) protects North Atlantic right whales and (sorta) helps Maine lobstermen. What does your doormat do?

Our doormat is made of floating groundlines that lobstermen used to use to connect their lobster traps. Because they didn’t snag on the rocky ocean floor, these lines made lobstering easier and safer for lobsterman. That’s a good thing. But the floating lines made the ocean more dangerous for right whales because, well, right whales aren’t the brightest crayons in the box. They’re slow and not particularly adept at avoiding dangerous objects. They are, however, quite adept at getting run over by ships and getting themselves entangled in fishing gear.

To try to keep right whales out of trouble—and alive—the federal government mandated that lobstermen use sinking groundlines to connect their traps. Sinking groundlines make it harder for right whales to wrap themselves up in gear, but switching gear is a pain in the ass for lobstermen. It’s also expensive—it costs an average of $5,500 for a fulltime lobsterman to rig his gear with floating groundline and switching to sinking groundline increases that cost by almost 60%.

To help defray the costs of switching to sinking groundlines, the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation started the Bottom Line Project. The program allows lobstermen to exchange their floating groundlines for a voucher (worth $1.40/pound of floating line) to be used for the purchase of sinking groundline. By the middle of August 2009, 1,210 lobstermen had turned in 1,320,196 pounds of floating line.

Where do all those lines go? Into kick-ass whale-protecting, lobsterman-supporting doormats of course.

*unless you’re an email subscriber. If that’s the case, please make your way over to our website and let us know what you think.

We’re hosting the 17^th edition of the Scientia Pro Publica Blog Carnival on December 7. That means you have until 5pm EST Sunday, December 6 to submit your latest, greatest, funniest AND most interesting science posts. We, umm, made a promise that this carnival would be “epic” so please spread the word!

For more about Scientia Pro Publica, click here.

To see Scientia Pro Publica 6, click here.

To SUBMIT your post to the next Scientia Pro Publica carnival, please email the link, your name and a brief description of your post to ScientiaBlogCarniva@gmail.com.

Bunnies, bunnies, bunnies…without them, the Swedes would be cold, nuclear waste would be a little more contained and men in need of penile replacement parts would be outta luck.

Yes, we’re serious. We’re always serious. Now, let’s discuss the little bunny’s who who.

Researchers from Wake Forest University’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine recently announced that they have successfully created working penis parts—for rabbits. The scientists surgically removed the corpora cavernosas (the columns of tissue that fill with blood during an erection) from 12 rabbits and then replaced them with new corpora cavernosas made from a collagen scaffold and rabbit cells. One month later, the phallically-rejuvenated bunnies were good to go. They were introduced to some lady-bunnies and, within 60 seconds, all 12 of the randy rabbits were doing what rabbits do best. During their first roll in the hay (err, shavings?) with their new equipment, eight of the males succeeded in ejaculating and four became fathers.

This procedure isn’t quite ready for humans, but the bunny research offers hope for men with penile injuries, congenital abnormalities and penile cancer. Of course, human phallic rejuvenation would use human cells, not rabbit cells.

Next up: Radioactive rabbit poop.

Between World War II and the 1980s, scientists at the Hanford nuclear reservation produced two-thirds of the plutonium for the United States’ nuclear weapons arsenal. Making plutonium isn’t exactly a clean (or safe) process. It produces a lot of contaminants, some of them salt-based. Bunnies like salt. Bunnies eat what they like. And so the bunnies on the Hanford reservation ate the salt and then hopped out of the immediate bomb-making area, carrying little bits of radioactivity in their digestive systems. Just like everything else in the bunnies’ digestive systems, those little bits of radioactivity had to come out—and they did, in the form of radioactive rabbit poop.

Years later, that poop is considered low-level radioactive waste and must be removed as part of the Hanford cleanup (the country’s largest environmental cleanup). How does one find radioactive rabbit poop? Easy. Last month, a radioactive rabbit turd-mapping crew used a Geiger counter-equipped helicopter flying 50 feet above the desert vegetation to find radioactive feces in the area surrounding the nuclear reservation.

And finally, burning bunnies:

Stockholm had a bunny problem. Too many Swedes were setting their pet rabbits “free” in the city parks. The bunnies had everything they needed in the parks—plenty of green space to explore, loads of vegetation to eat and lots of other bunnies to play with. That was the problem. The bunnies “played” and, at a stereotypical rabbit reproductive pace, the bunny population exploded.

Before their city (and its ecosystems) was completely overrun with bunnies, animal control stepped in to cull the rabbits, killing 6,000 rabbits last year. Of course, they didn’t just dump the bunny bodies. (The Swedes are too creative—and cold—for that.) They burned ‘em. Just as the Dutch used their overabundance of chicken sh*t to produce electricity for 90,000 homes, the Swedes used their overabundance of bunnies to produce heat for homes in central Sweden.

And that, dear readers, is the latest on the bunny front. For old bunny news, check out “Bunnies on the Brink.”

The 15^th edition of Scientia Pro Publica is now up at Observations of a Nerd. It’s loaded with good stuff, including our post on Marine Mucilage. Here are some of our favorites:

-A hilarious post about a vegetarian spider at Save Your Breath for Running Ponies

-A look at why the predatory eurypterids, a 2.5 meter-long giant sea scorpion, got so freaking big at Greg Laden’s Blog

-And, from New Voices for Research, a look at the impact of football on the brain

Enjoy—and then get to work. We’re hosting the December 7^th edition of Scientia Pro Publica and (even though we think the word is totally overused) it’s gonna be EPIC.

If it’s not a pinecone…or an artichoke…

…or a komodo dragon…or an anteater…

…then it must be a pangolin!

Disclaimer: Unlike our other Cool Critters, pangolins don’t DO anything especially cool. They do exist, though, and the mere existence of an animal that looks like the love child of an artichoke and an anteater is pretty freaking cool.

Pangolins are long-tongued, long-clawed, toothless, scaly, noxious fume-releasing mammals. In short, they’re weird-ass critters.

Pangolins do their pangolin thing (a.k.a. eat and hide) in the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. There, they scour the ground for anthills and termite mounds and use their long front claws* to tear open the nests. Once the ants are exposed, the pangolin closes its eyes, ears and nostrils (to keep the ants out, of course) and uses its wicked long tongue to collect the little buggers. That “wicked long tongue” attaches to the animal’s pelvis and, when the pangolin sticks it out, is between 10 and 16 inches long**. It (the “wicked long tongue”) is also covered in gobs of sticky saliva that the pangolin uses to pick up small stones, sand and live ants. The pangolin swallows everything as is—remember, it’s toothless—and sends the mess of bugs and grit to its stomach where the grit grinds up the bugs.

As cool as the pangolin’s “wicked long tongue” is, the animal’s real claim to fame is its ability to roll up. In fact, the name pangolin comes from the Malay word “pengguling” which has a few possible meanings. We like “something that rolls up” best. Anyway, when a pangolin feels threatened, it takes advantage of the sharp keratin scales that cover everything but its face by tucking its face under its tail and rolling up. Any predator would surely think it had come across an artichoke, or at the very least an animal that totally wasn’t worth the effort.

Alas, there’s one predator that isn’t deterred by a rolled up pangolin—or by the putrid acid a startled pangolin emits from its anal glands—and that predator, of course, is us. There are eight species of pangolin and all of them are declining. Pangolins are plagued by the usual problems like deforestation and poaching, but the main threat to these funny-looking animals is the growth in illegal pangolin trafficking. The growth in trafficking follows a growth in demand from China where pangolin meat is considered a delicacy and pangolin scales are believed to cure all sorts of ailments. A recent bust found 5 tons of pangolin meat, which officials estimated came from 1,481 pangolins. That’s a lot for a species that only gives birth to one young at a time.

*Because their front claws are so long, they often walk on four legs with their forepaws curled under or on their hind legs, using their tails for balance.

**Pangolins range in size from 12 to 39 inches.

What’s grosser than gross? How ‘bout a 100-mile long wad of E. Coli-infested mucus?

(Oh, sorry, did that make you gag? We said it was grosser than gross…)

Mucus wads—also known as mucilages—have been reported in the Mediterranean Sea since at least 1729, but recent research found that the loogies are getting bigger, lasting longer and harboring a whole lot of viruses and bacteria.

Mucilages are made up* of marine snow, a quaint term for little things (“snowflakes”) that fall to the ocean floor. These snowflakes include poop, dead or dying plankton, sand, soot and mucusy waste products from bacteria and plankton. In the coastal waters of the Mediterranean, where the sea is warm, shallow and relatively still, snowflakes glom together to form massive snotty blobs. As the mucilages grow they become heavier and heavier, eventually sinking to the bottom and smothering the ocean floor and all the critters that live there.

Suffocation by snot blanket is a miserable way to go, but this disgusting death is only the beginning of the mess caused by sinking mucilages. The sunken snot kills groundfish, an important, typically slow-growing part of the marine ecosystem. Groundfish are also an important fishery, but demand for snot-smothered fish isn’t particularly high.

All of this is thoroughly repulsive, but it gets grosser. Scientists recently discovered that mucilages are loaded with bacteria (including coliforms and E. coli**) and viruses. They found significantly more bacteria and viruses in a mucilage than in the seawater surrounding the mucilage. That means two things: 1.)  Mucilages trap bacteria and viruses and 2.) Mucilages travel and they bring bacteria and viruses with them. In other words, a mucilage isn’t just a sinking blob of snot. It’s a roaming bacteria- and virus-infested snot ball—one that can kill or infect things that swim through it, fish and wetsuit-less humans, alike.

Ick.

Danovaro, Umani and Pusceddu (the scientists who reported that mucilage is teeming with bacteria and viruses) also examined the relationship between mucilage and environmental conditions. They found that mucilages tend to form in areas that people have been overfishing and polluting for years. They also found that mucilages were larger, more widespread and longer lasting when the water was warmer. Mucilages used to be a summer thing, appearing in May or June and vanishing by September. In the last decade, however, the Mediterranean has gotten snottier. Massive mucilages have appeared in November, December and January and lasted through the warm months. In March of 2007 (during a winter that was 2-3° C warmer than the normal average), mucilages stretched along more than 1,500 miles*** of the Italian coast.

Here’s the bottom line: marine mucilage is absolutely disgusting and destructive and, thanks to climate change, we could be seeing a lot more of it.

*The authors write: “Mucilage is made of exopolymeric compounds with highly colloidal properties that are released by marine organisms through different processes, including phytoplankton exudation of photosynthetically-derived carbohydrates produced under stressful conditions.” Aren’t you glad we translate this stuff for you?

**These bacteria are typically associated with the intestines of mammals…In other words, they’re usually found in poop.

***FYI: That’s greater than the distance between New York City and Dallas.

Danovaro, R., Fonda Umani, S., & Pusceddu, A. (2009). Climate Change and the Potential Spreading of Marine Mucilage and Microbial Pathogens in the Mediterranean Sea PLoS ONE, 4 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007006