Estrogen Turns Male Snakes into Same-Sex Charmers

Estrogen is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction. After one year of estrogen supplements, male snakes started secreting a pheromone that seemed to cause other males to swarm to them. The finding has implications for the possible effects of some chemicals and pesticides that mimic the effects of estrogen.

Give a male garter snake a taste of estrogen and watch out, as the hormone turns these lads into the sexiest thing on the block, attracting dozens of other males eager to mate.

The finding, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, has implications for understanding the environmental impact of compounds that mimic the effect of estrogen, found in some chemicals and pesticides.

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Estrogen, the researchers found, is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction.

Here's how it works: For the red-sided garter snake, picking up a mate takes but a second and a flick of the tongue. When a male detects a possible mate nearby, he licks the female with a quick flick of his tongue. The chemical cues, called pheromones, exuded by the females are so strong it takes but an instant, the researchers say, for the male to determine the other snake's species, sex, population, reproduction condition, size and age. In fact, the males are totally dependent on these pheromones for snake reproduction.

Every spring, tens of thousands of these garter snakes emerge from their limestone caves north of Manitoba, Canada, for mating. Intense competition ensues, as males swarm (and tongue) female snakes in an effort to be the first to mate with her. The frenzy appears as twisting balls of snakes called mating balls.

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The males tend to choose the larger, more mature gals, because these females can produce more babies; they also have a slightly different chemical signature in their pheromones. While young, small females do get action, they aren't the preferred mates.

Once they mate, the females emit a different pheromone, confirming "no more sex," causing other males to lose interest and leave the area.

In the new study, the researchers implanted male garter snakes in their natural environment, each with a capsule that raised their estrogen levels to approximately match those of female snakes. After one year of these estrogen supplements, the male snakes started secreting a pheromone that seemed to cause other males to swarm to them, forming clumps of writhing snakes tangled together. Apparently, the estrogen caused the males to secrete "female" pheromones.

"We thought this might work, but we were surprised the results were so compelling," study researcher Robert Mason, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, said in a statement. "The amount of estrogen the male snakes received was nothing unusual, just about what a normal female would produce."

The other males, in fact, preferred the male snakes with boosted estrogen levels to the small female snakes, the researchers found.

When the researchers stopped giving the males estrogen, they reverted back to their normal behaviors.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Video Service Streams Live Reports From Syria

We've seen how new technology has helped reporters get stories out of the Middle East before – Alex Crawford was able to set up a mobile satellite unit with a laptop and the power from a car's cigarette lighter.

Now the same thing is happening in Syria, though in this case it's many ordinary people uploading cell phone video.

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Ustream, a video sharing site, has a channel called the Occupy Network (which also has its own site here). It isn't clear if it has any relation to the Occupy Movement that took over Zucotti Park in New York for two months (though that movement also has made use of mobile technologies and social networks). The channel has a number of videos from Syria, showing in one case, what looks like a street in Homs, Syria and a scene of injured people being carried away after an attack by the military.

Syria is in the middle of what amounts to a low-level civil war, with the military attacking protesters in several cities, and facing a "Free Syrian Army." The government has mounted military attacks in several cities around the country over the last several months, including Homs and Hama, and there have been bombings in other cities such as Aleppo.  

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Unlike Youtube, Ustream focuses on live content – much of it is streaming in real time, though that can vary according to the way users set up their channels.

The videos from Syria look like they might be from a smartphone or small camera. The videos' captions say they are from Homs, but it isn't clear from the images.

Suzanne Tran, head of marketing, confirmed that much of the video from Syria is coming from mobile devices, and that it is possible for the technical staff to confirm where they are coming from by their IP addresses, though they had not done so yet. That said, one of the things that Ustream has is an easy interface for uploading video quickly, and that makes it a natural home for people who want to get images out as fast as possible – and in places where it is important to bypass local governments.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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Challenger Deep Bridges and New Depth Record

The deepest place on Earth is the next holy grail for the deep-sea exploration community. Only two humans have ever been down to the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean off the coast of Guam, and that was well over 50 years ago.

Now a recent University of New Hampshire survey of the area shows that Challenger Deep, the deepest point on the planet, is actually even deeper than was previously thought. Earlier measurements had marked Challenger Deep between 10,902 and 10,916 meters (about 35,767 to 35,813 feet). The new depth reading shows Challenger Deep to be closer to 10,994 meters (36,069 feet), plus or minus 40 meters (131 feet).

Four bridge-like features spanning the massive trench were also discovered, each rising more than 8,000 feet above the seafloor. These bridges were likely formed from seamounts compacted when the older Pacific crust got pushed below the Philippine tectonic plate.

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UNH marine geologist James Gardner told the Daily Mail that there might even be life on these bridges that's adapted to the harsh, cold, and high-pressure environment.

The UNH team used multibeam echo sounders mounted underneath a hydrographic U.S. Navy ship, the USNS Sumner. The instruments send out sound waves and record depth based on the echo bounced off the seafloor, the university reported. The mission was led by Gardner and affiliate ocean engineering professor Andrew Armstrong at UNH’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/UNH-NOAA Joint Hydrographic Center.

In a process oceanographers call "mowing the lawn," the ship made overlapping passes over the trench while the instruments sent out their dolphin-like signals to map the seafloor. The topographic perspective built with the multibeam echo sounders provided a 3-D model of the trench's terrain at one pixel for every 100 meters -- a far higher resolution than systems used in the past.

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The UNH team used thousands of readings to correct for the way the water column can alter echo sounding signals.

Meanwhile, several teams worldwide are still developing underwater vessels in a bid to return to the depths of the Mariana Trench. Now the pressure is even greater to reach this goal.

Submarine Tech Reaches for Ocean Record

Image: A new map of the Mariana Trench with an arrow showing the deepest echo sounding there in meters. Credit: University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping Joint Hydrographic Center.

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January 2012 Physics Books

Every month, I get physics books from all over the place. I only get an opportunity to review a fraction of these books, though I feel bad about each one that I have to pass up. Plus, it's kind of hard to remember which books came out in a given year when I'm working on my "Best of the year" posts in December.

To help streamline things, I will now offer a monthly post that lists the upcoming physics books I feel are the most relevant to readers of this blog. I've posted my first one, collecting a list of the major physics books for January 2012. Don't worry, reviews will still come ... but this post will include books that I know won't get a full review but are still worth getting out there.

Leave a comment if you know of any upcoming books that I've missed!

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More Big Bang Theory Science!

First, I have posted an article about the most recent season 5 episode, "The Speckerman Recurrence," which features Sheldon watching the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics awards streaming live online. This episode, therefore, took place on December 10, 2011.

Also, I've posted three more "classics" from season one into our episode archives:

It's definitely fun to catch up on some of these earlier episodes. While the dynamic has certainly changed over the years, specifically with the integration of Amy & Bernadette as regular female characters, the show's done a very good job of maintaining itself. Here's hoping that there are many more seasons of science-filled mirth in store for us!

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Think Marriage Will Make You Happier? Maybe Not

Planning to pop the marriage question on Valentine's Day? A study in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family may make you reconsider.

While married couples enjoy some health advantages (likely because of shared health care plans), the study found that unmarried couples who live together are generally happier and have better self-esteem.

Overall, the authors were struck most with the similarities between marriage and cohabitation: both improved psychological well-being but reduced contact with parents and friends.

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“We found that differences between marriage and cohabitation tend to be small and dissipate after a honeymoon period," said study coauthor Kelly Musick, associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. "For some, cohabitation may come with fewer unwanted obligations than marriage and allow for more flexibility, autonomy and personal growth.”

The researchers looked at data from 2,737 single men and women, 896 of whom married or moved in with a partner over the course of six years, focusing on happiness, levels of depression, health and social ties. It's believed to be the first study that compares partners as they either get married or move in together, and the differences that persist in their lives afterward.

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“In recent decades western societies have experienced increases in cohabitation, before or instead of marriage, and increases in children born outside of marriage,” said Musick. “These changes have blurred the boundaries of marriage, leading to questions about what difference marriage makes in comparison to alternatives ... our research shows that marriage is by no means unique in promoting well-being and that other forms of romantic relationships can provide many of the same benefits [as marriage].”

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X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

Lasers fire beams of light that can cut through steel or etch microchip patterns, depending on the power and wavelength. Now one team of scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., led by Nina Rohringer, has created an X-ray laser that fires more energy, with a more precise wavelength, than any previous model. The results are being published in the journal Nature.

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X-ray lasers are already used in spectroscopy, as a way to look into the depths of molecules like DNA. Back in the 1980s the “Star Wars” missile defense program even floated the idea of X-ray lasers as weapons, powered by nuclear bombs. (The idea was never implemented.) This laser will let scientists see things smaller than ever before.

A laser works by exciting atoms in a crystal, gas or liquid, pushing the electrons nearest to the nucleus into higher energy levels -- a process called “pumping.” When the electrons return to their ground states, neighboring atoms stimulate each other and they emit light of a specific wavelength -- ultimately the laser.

Most lasers, like the ones in CD players and laser pointers, use visible light or electricity to excite the atoms.

But getting a laser beam to work in the X-ray part of the spectrum requires tons of energy. Scientists use particle accelerators to push electrons to near the speed of light and then send them through a set of magnets. The electrons emit laser light in the X-ray spectrum.

But Rohringer’s team at SLAC wanted an even more powerful laser than that, so they used the first laser to pump atoms of neon. Hitting the neon with the beam pushed the electrons closest to the nuclei of the atoms into a high-energy state, and generated a beam with a shorter and more precise wavelength. To get an idea, a visible light laser (like a laser pointer) has a wavelength of a few hundred nanometers. The laser beam in Rohringer's experiment had a wavelength of 1.5 nanometers.

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Laser energies are sometimes measured in electron volts, and this one has a range of 1 eV. Previous X-ray lasers had a range of 8-15 eV. That's important when you want to see what atoms are doing, since the smallest object one can see is limited by the wavelength of the light you use to see it. To look at anything smaller than a few nanometers requires a light beam (a laser in this case) with a wavelength that size, and to get a sharp picture, you also need a well-defined wavelength. Previous X-ray lasers had too much “spread.” The neon laser gets past that limitation, allowing for pictures of smaller and faster phenomena.

Images: Greg Stewart, SLAC (top); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (bottom)

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