BLOG

Using umbilical cord blood stem cells--not embryonic ones--scientists in Korea have restored a measure of feeling and mobility to a woman who has been paraplegic for nineteen years.  Here are the unbelievable results:

• Within seven days of the stem cell infusion, doctors noticed motor activity.
• At 13 days, the patient could sit upright.
• At 15 days, the patient had sensation in her hips and could move them, and could elevate both legs by about a centimeter.
  
• By day 25 her feet responded to stimulation.
• 41 days and doctors noticed a beginning regeneration of the injured area of the patient's spinal cord.

After years of search, direct evidence--and many would say proof--of a hypothetical Maya city called Site Q has been found.  Several decades back carved monuments of Mayan origin began appearing in antiquities markets, and though no one was sure where they were from, they bore certain  similarities that tied them all together.  In result scholars began to search for the carvings' source--which they temporarily termed Site Q.

Now a team of scientists has found, in the northern Peten region of Guatemala, a hieroglyph panel composed of two carved blocks of stone that seems to match the other monuments in "style, size, subject matter, and historical chronology."  The historical chronology part is significant because the hieroglyphs appear to fill in a 30-year gap in classic Maya history.

The royal complex in which the panel was discovered is called La Corona, and the team will return there later this year to continue their study, and we hope, discovery.

Always on top of the latest space scandals, Slashdot delightfully reports on NASA administrator Mike Griffin's remarks in a recent interview that the space shuttle program of the last three decades (and last $150 billion tax dollars) was "extremely aggressive and just barely possible."  Griffin has also called the shuttle "deeply flawed".  He may view the new shuttle design as a way of getting back on track.  There he may have competition:  The European Space Agency has just announced a deal with Russia to develop a space shuttle nicknamed the Clipper, most likely named after the clipper ships of many decades back that could transport trade goods around Cape Horn--from Atlantic to Pacific--at then-remarkable speeds.  The Clipper will be designed to hold six people and will be capable of reaching lunar orbit, though apparently not of a lunar landing.

How does Mr. Griffin feel about the International Space Station, another expensive item on the NASA budget?  Says Griffin:

Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.

Maybe we should take the "International" out of space, when it comes to expensive programs that we end up footing.  What do they do up in that thing anyway?

If you agree that NASA needs better program and budget planning, maybe you should join the first debate over at SpaceNow, a just-launched website dedicated to exploring the controversies surrounding human spaceflight.  The question:  "Will NASA's new plan truly open space to humankind?"

That word "truly" looks awful wishy-washy. 

For the first time ever, a giant squid has been photographed alive and in the wild (the underwater wild, I mean), near Chichijima Island in the North Pacific Ocean.  Using crushed shrimp as a lure, Japanese scientists baited a line and sunk it deep--2,950 feet (over half a mile!)--armed with a light and a camera.  Soon they found what they were looking for.

Architeuthis, or the giant squid, is the largest known invertebrate ("without a backbone") in the world.  More than 500 giant squid carcasses have washed up on shores over the last 400 years, inspiring fears and speculations of ship-eating sea monsters.  Well, the Japanese researchers didn't get eaten, but they did discover a monster.  An aggressive one.

Once the squid discovered the bait, it enveloped the meaty package like a snake with its two long tentacles (it also has eight shorter arms) and struggled for four hours to capture the tasty prize.  Meanwhile, the underwater camera was clicking away, taking over 500 photos of the event.  When the squid made a hasty retreat, one of its tentacles severed and remained on the line.  The researchers brought it aboard and found it to be 18 feet long.  The tentacle was lined on the underside with barbed suckers that still gripped whatever touched them.  Assuming the tentacle was severed at the base, that would make this squid about 26 feet long.  The longest (dead) giant squid ever documented was 59 feet long.

Emory Kristof, a National Geographic photographer who has made similar attempts to document a giant squid in the wild, seemed genuinely happy for the Japanese researchers who beat him to it.  "It's always been presumptuous to say you're hunting the giant squid when we know so little. It's great that they got it."  Part of the key to success was lowering the bait deeper.

The researchers chose the area near Chichijima Island because of the deep-water rock crevices--presumed to make a nice habitat for the squid--and because of the sperm whales that routinely gather there in the fall.  Sperm whales are known to eat giant squid.

Yet we still know terribly little about these creepy cephalopods.  How do they find prey?  Where do they live and how far do they travel?  How do they reproduce?  Another amazing thought is how long it took us to find this thing. Other weird carcasses have washed up on shores before.  Couldn't there be another huge species in the deep ocean just waiting to be found?  Emory Kristof thinks so:  "I'm convinced there are even bigger animals than the giant squid down there. There are monster sharks, for example, being born, breeding, and dying deep in the ocean, and we know next to nothing about them."  After all, the giant squid is the largest invertebrate in the world, and it took us until 2004 to find live evidence.

Which brings us to another weird thing about this story.  The Japanese researchers taped this squid in September of last year.  Now, it doesn't take months to get a message from the North Pacific to New York nowadays.  What took them so long to report it?  Were they waiting to publish a paper?  Constructing their theories first?  I'm not sure if I like this trend of discovering things, and waiting months and months before mentioning it to anyone, simply because you want to create the right climatic "moment."  (Remember the "Santa" planet discovery, which went unreported for more than a year before internet hackers allegedly threatened to release the information to the public themselves?)  After all, other scientists are spending tax dollars conducting their own research in good faith that they have the latest evidence.  If a discovery is kept secret, it could cause other scientists to build theories and conduct research based on false premises--such as, "Giant squid bait should be kept near the surface in order to be effective."  Isn't science and discovery supposed to be altruistic?

The Feast of the Hunters' Moon is an annual festival and reenactment in Lafayette, Indiana, near the historic site of Fort Ouiatenon, an 18th-century traders' post.  Every year French traders and Native Americans would gather at the fort to exchange goods, and today's festival commemorates that relationship by inviting hundreds of reenactors from across the States to participate--playing music, selling custom 18th-century goods, and firing authentic weapons.  Oh, and did I mention the food? 

The two-day event is always packed with people, and is reminiscent of Williamsburg, Virginia as marching bands parade through the streets.  I camped in the Lafayette area and attended the Feast on Saturday, which was a blessing because it rained most of Sunday.  Here are some photos.

(The flag-raising ceremony.)

The arriving of the canoes on the Wabash River.


 

 These outfits, made by the lady in the photo, are called hobbies, and begat our use of the word hobby.  A hobby was originally a small, light horse, and a hobbyhorse in the 16th century came to mean a toy horse (or specifically a dancer's horse costume).  Today it refers to any pursuit engaged in merely for pleasure.  If I remember right, the names of these hobbies are Tippy the Horse and Dreadful Boar.

These unique dolls are made with apples.  The heads are carved out of a whole apple, then dried and fitted accordingly.  Some of the most difficult parts, said the couple at this booth, are the hands.

This is a local dulcimer group that has been at the Feast for several years.  You can stop in to listen, and if you look especially interested, chances are you'll get some quick music lessons.

I met a variety of reenacting kids as well . . .

This Native American boy was joining in what looked like a game of lacrosse.

These "reenactresses" had dimples in all the right places, and were sweet enough to let me take their portrait near the river.

Hey Everyone:

Sorry about the lag in posting.  I've been helping out with a church project aimed at aiding hurricane-displaced families on a family-to-family level.  It's a great idea, and hopefully the whole thing will benefit both the people at our church as they reach out and the "evacuees" as they try to get their lives back to normal and ask themselves Why?

I'll be gone this weekend, at Lafayette, Indiana's "Feast of the Hunters' Moon."   If I take any good pics I'll post them.

Have to scram--in a few minutes all SquareSpace blogs (including this one) will be offline for a statistics tracking upgrade.  The new package is supposed to help me out a lot when it comes to finding out who's been on my site, and what pages are visited the most.  I'm pretty excited about it.

Later, 

NASA has unveiled their long-term plan to introduce a new ship into spaceflight and, if all goes well, establish a base on the moon.  The organization will be retiring the current space shuttle fleet in favor of a new "Crew Exploration Vehicle," shaped like the old Apollo capsule (how uncool is that?) but three times larger.  Ready for routine missions to the International Space Station by 2010 or so, the CEV will be launched with an external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters much larger than the ones that launched the Discovery.  In case of a launch emergency an "escape rocket"--an ejection seat of sorts, can jettison the crew away from the rocket.  In all the new spaceship system will be composed of four parts:  1} The heavy-lift rocket system; 2}  The CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle), a reusable ship which will carry the astronauts to and from the moon; 3} The "departure stage" rocket, responsible for the propelling the CEV out of earth orbit and towards the moon, and 4}  a disposable lunar lander.  After landing on the moon and completing their exploration work (which looks vague at this point), the astronauts would reenter the lunar lander, a portion of which would blast back up into moon orbit, and dock with the orbiting CEV.  Then the CEV would return to earth and parachute either on land or water.

Neat, huh?  Do you think everything will work the first time?  (Hey, NASA should go open-source with this space mission business and let some high school math whiz geeks help them out with their figures.  And I'm sure there are some engineers out there who'd donate their time to checking potential sensor issues. . .)

Who ever heard of cats doing circus tricks?  Yet that's exactly what Russian performer Yuri Kuklachev has taught his 120 cats to do.  Trained as a clown, Mr. Kuklachev adopted a stray cat in 1971 that was begging for food by doing somersaults, wondering if could teach it a routine for his clown act at the Moscow State Circus.  Soon after, amazing "Strelka" was performing "The Cat in the Pot" routine, in which no matter how often her master took her out of the pot, she would jump back in.

 Today Yuri Kuklachev travels around the world with his Cats Theater (about $200 per ticket), where his cats do headstands on his palm, balance balls on their noses, rock on rocking chairs, and pull off their own version of tightrope walking.  The cats are treated very liberally and are trained by words and touch, not treats.  Says Mr. Kuklachev, "A cat is not a dog;  if a cat doesn't want to do something, he will not do it."

The best thing I've ever got my cat to do is to spin around in circles.  And that was with a laser.