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I have heard often about the bad health effects of spilled oil (and more recently oil dispersants) on birds and marine life, but what about the health effects on people? Like for instance, what if you were one of the workers trying to help clean up the Deepwater Horizon or similar spill, and you fell overboard into the (oil and possibly dispersant contaminated) water? And possibly ended up ingesting and/or inhaling a bit of it before you could get out or be pulled out? The mainstream news media don't seem to have said anything about this during recent spills.
Edit #1: But I did find this. So at least one scientific/medical article has appeared on the subject (and presumably more -- too late right now for me to do a major Google and/or PubMed search).
Edit #2: Unfortunately the above article doesn't address specific route of exposure (vapor inhalation vs skin contact/immersion/ingestion/etc.).
Well oil and other chemical spills are nasty for all life. It's just that humans can read a MSDS and know how to handle it safely, something a seal or pelican can't benefit from. I wouldn't jump into an oil slick naked to save a penguin or something, but I think most rescue volunteers generally have the training and equipment to minimize their own health risks
Are you applying to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute? Because I need some RPG players in my neighborhood! If you are, look for the security guard who wears RPG/geek T shirts.
Not aware of any relevant job openings right now. However I did apply to the University of Rhode Island, which is at least in New England?
Which sea mammal has the easiest spine to rip out?
As someone who literally helped do this in human anatomy lab, none of them, not without a lot of tedious and hard labor cracking vertebrae.
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What are some common misconceptions about sea life (like sharks having to stay in motion)?
Something I constantly deal in my line of work is the idea that dolphins are magical special creatures that are saints in cetacean form. I even had a former labmate who believed that dolphins come from another mystical plane of existence.
Dolphins are animals...much like any intelligent and social animal they engage in tons of behaviors that really are not very "nice". Including infanticide and killing porpoises for the lolz.
Also something that bothers my colleague. People calling manatees fat. They actually have very little blubber, which is why they are so vulnerable to sudden cold spells in Florida. They look "fat" because they have large guts to process plant vegetation and also super thick bones, which act as ballast.
Not aware of any relevant job openings right now. However I did apply to the University of Rhode Island, which is at least in New England?Are you applying to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute? Because I need some RPG players in my neighborhood! If you are, look for the security guard who wears RPG/geek T shirts.
Sadly that's a full hour+ from my location. Oh well, keep an eye out. Woods Hole is a lovely place to do marine stuffs.
Plus they got This bad Larry. The pics don't do her justice, she is a huge ship.
Well oil and other chemical spills are nasty for all life. It's just that humans can read a MSDS and know how to handle it safely, something a seal or pelican can't benefit from. I wouldn't jump into an oil slick naked to save a penguin or something, but I think most rescue volunteers generally have the training and equipment to minimize their own health risksI have heard often about the bad health effects of spilled oil (and more recently oil dispersants) on birds and marine life, but what about the health effects on people? Like for instance, what if you were one of the workers trying to help clean up the Deepwater Horizon or similar spill, and you fell overboard into the (oil and possibly dispersant contaminated) water? And possibly ended up ingesting and/or inhaling a bit of it before you could get out or be pulled out? The mainstream news media don't seem to have said anything about this during recent spills.
Edit #1: But I did find this. So at least one scientific/medical article has appeared on the subject (and presumably more -- too late right now for me to do a major Google and/or PubMed search).
Edit #2: Unfortunately the above article doesn't address specific route of exposure (vapor inhalation vs skin contact/immersion/ingestion/etc.).
I would be (pleasantly) surprised if no accidents to this effect had happened during the massive Deepwater Horizon cleanup attempt. (As well as lesser contact/inhalation exposures due to splashes and mists from hauling large objects drenched with contaminated water back on board, or aerosolization of oil-contaminated water and dispersants by pumps and/or leaking pipes, or even by wind and waves where the cleanup ships were working. Of course, some of the latter could be part of the exposure route for workers studied in the article I linked above -- like I said, unfortunately it has no breakdown according to exposure route.)
Here's a question. I came across some folks dissecting a harbor seal last night. They were removing large masses of worms from the seal's interior. I think they said they were lungworms? Have you ever heard of them? I was curious since there seemed to be an awful lot of them getting pulled out of the poor little feller, like huge tangled masses of white worms. Is this common?
As for why Us and not them, as the dominant species? My guess is humans possessed some sort of mental quirk, not necessarily greater intelligence or curiosity, but some feature that allowed us to become more adaptive and out compete other hominids.
I recently read a hyopothesis that H. sapiens' early domestication of dogs (from wolves) could easily have allowed them to outcompete other hominids -- they come to raid your caves at night and you have early warning; you raid theirs and have a lot of fangs backing you up.
I have read that there is a minor alternate theory of evolution that does not include apes in the human line directly, but more that we evolved ore directly from mammals in the sea
That is in no way a "theory."
(Context: I'm just about to finish my BS in Geology, and looking into grad school)
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To MMCJawa: Were you as excited about Tiktaalik as I was?
Not aware of any relevant job openings right now. However I did apply to the University of Rhode Island, which is at least in New England?Are you applying to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute? Because I need some RPG players in my neighborhood! If you are, look for the security guard who wears RPG/geek T shirts.
Sadly that's a full hour+ from my location. Oh well, keep an eye out. Woods Hole is a lovely place to do marine stuffs.
Plus they got This bad Larry. The pics don't do her justice, she is a huge ship.
Yeah hopefully I will have the chance to visit that area sooner than later. I know we want to do a New England data collection trip at some point, and one of the major whale hearing specialists is at Woods Hole, so anything is possible.
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Here's a question. I came across some folks dissecting a harbor seal last night. They were removing large masses of worms from the seal's interior. I think they said they were lungworms? Have you ever heard of them? I was curious since there seemed to be an awful lot of them getting pulled out of the poor little feller, like huge tangled masses of white worms. Is this common?
not uncommon. Most wild animals have pretty large parasite loads, which mostly don't seem to impact them to much. I haven't done many whale dissections so I haven't seen this as much as other people have, but I know porpoise facial sinuses are usually loaded with worms. So yeah..."fun" stuff to deal with if you deal with a lot of recently dead marine mammals (another perk of working with fossil!)
Any thoughts on sightings of 'Pizzly' and 'Grolar' bear hybrids in recent years and what impact the transition from primarily marine to terrestial habitat will have on Polar Bear development? Will they adapt and remain a separate species or be 'absorbed' into the larger Grizzly population?
It's a bit worrying. Polar bears are actually embedded within Brown bears...that is a population of brown bears in Asia was the direct ancestor of all living Polar bears. So hybridization is not surprising and I expect we will see more of it as Grizzlies expand north and as Polar Bears continue to forage further inland.
The one bright/hopeful point is that Polar bears, according to genetic and fossil evidence, branched off long enough ago that they have managed to survive climatic periods with an ice free Arctic summer. My guess is continental populations died or were interbred out but populations "stranded" on arctic islands may have survived and adapted, and provided a source population when climate got cooler. Of course, those populations didn't have to deal with human persecution/pollution/overharvesting of prey species. So who knows whether they will fare as well during our current warming.
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As for why Us and not them, as the dominant species? My guess is humans possessed some sort of mental quirk, not necessarily greater intelligence or curiosity, but some feature that allowed us to become more adaptive and out compete other hominids.I recently read a hyopothesis that H. sapiens' early domestication of dogs (from wolves) could easily have allowed them to outcompete other hominids -- they come to raid your caves at night and you have early warning; you raid theirs and have a lot of fangs backing you up.
Maybe...although you could argue that employing domestic animals in such a manner shows a certain ability to exploit novelty that maybe was lacking in our relatives.
To MMCJawa: Were you as excited about Tiktaalik as I was?
Tiktaalik was definitely cool, especially since it sort of "spurred" further re-examination of other fossils which have changed how we think animals "conquered" the land.
Thoughts on how well extant species will adapt to ocean acidification?
I totally forgot to reply to this yesterday:
I think coral reefs are basically $#%@. Ocean acidity will basically mean that a lot of calcium using critters won't be able to build there shells. Ocean acidification is probably the single most troubling climate related effect that we will be experiencing in the next century. The real question is just how badly things will be effected.
^Which brings up the question of what happened to corals (first appeared 542 million years ago) during past periods of high CO[2] (like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, ~55.5 million years ago)?
Thoughts on how well extant species will adapt to ocean acidification?I totally forgot to reply to this yesterday:
I think coral reefs are basically $#%@. Ocean acidity will basically mean that a lot of calcium using critters won't be able to build there shells. Ocean acidification is probably the single most troubling climate related effect that we will be experiencing in the next century. The real question is just how badly things will be effected.
That lines up with what we're kicking around the Emergency Management discipline. Delightful.
Ugh.
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^Which brings up the question of what happened to corals (first appeared 542 million years ago) during past periods of high CO[2] (like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, ~55.5 million years ago)?
They've suffered mass die offs several times in the past (to the point of large gaps in the coral fossil record), but as the world is >70% ocean covered there has always been some corner of the globe they could survive in and then repopulate from there when conditions improved.
This time around we'll likely lose most of the reefs (which will have massive ecological and financial impacts), but still see individual corals in many locations around the world. Basically, the reefs will collapse under their own weight as the foundations dissolve away.
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Corals can colonnise further south (Southern Hemisphere), or further north (northern hemishere).
You may find their distribution changes, but extinction won't happen most likely. There's plenty of shallow ocean around the edge of continents that allows them to get light and the right temperatures.
We'll see some loss of diversity though. Further from the equator, the less light intensity. The symbiotic algae in Corals need that light and the corals need the algae. So some of the more light sensitive species may vanish I reckon.
^Which brings up the question of what happened to corals (first appeared 542 million years ago) during past periods of high CO[2] (like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, ~55.5 million years ago)?
The dominant reef building organisms have actually changed quite a bit over time, with different groups taking over the role after major extinctions. Scleractinian corals, which are the dominant group today, evolved in the Triassic but only became important parts of the reef building community during the Cenozoic. Various other groups, many either now extinct or reduced in importance, have been the dominant reef builders in the past. These include different coral groups, sponges, calcareous red algae, and even clams.
During the PETM..we do see a decline and eventual loss of coral reefs, beginning at low latitudes and moving north through time.
Not all Scleractinian corals builds reefs. Some are more "solitary" and also do not construct as hard of skeletons. It's possible that these forms ended up giving rise to the post PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) reef builders. It's hard to say because interpreting the evolutionary relationships of coral is really really difficult, since the soft anatomy doesn't preserve and there are only so many features you can use on a coral skeleton to interpret their evolutionary relationships.
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Corals can colonnise further south (Southern Hemisphere), or further north (northern hemishere).
You may find their distribution changes, but extinction won't happen most likely. There's plenty of shallow ocean around the edge of continents that allows them to get light and the right temperatures.
We'll see some loss of diversity though. Further from the equator, the less light intensity. The symbiotic algae in Corals need that light and the corals need the algae. So some of the more light sensitive species may vanish I reckon.
The thing I worry about is less temperature, but the lysocline and overall more acidic oceans. The lysocline is a depth in the water at which carbonate is dissolved faster than it can precipitate, due to the PH of the water. Basically anything that builds a shell beneath the lysocline has to spend a lot of energy into producing a shell, to make up for the constant dissolution.
Currently the Lysocline is at something like 4,200 meters beneath the ocean surface. However during the PETM it rose as high as 500 meters. The PETM is a popular period in the earth history to study because it's a period of rapid global warming associated with a major spike in CO2. THe more CO2 that is pumped into the ocean, the more acidic the ocean gets. Reef building corals have pretty specific environmental tolerances and it wouldn't take much shift in ocean acidity to cause a die off.
I am not saying that the Lysocline will be so shallow it will exist at the surface, but a sudden shoaling of this line would indicate overall an increased acidity in the oceans. That's going to play havoc with a lot of ecological communities, and corals already have to do deal with algal blooms from agricultural run off and changes in the community structure from overfishing.
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Yeah, I remember that being the concern when I did my marine biologist course, 20 years ago now.
Even if the Lysocline doesn't shift all that high, it's only a small shift downwards in pH before calcification thins and all sorts of aquatic organisms are stuffed. Planktonic as well as macroscopic. Plankton die off is pretty scary.
Plankton die off is pretty scary.
An understatement of hilarious proportions...
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Maybe...although you could argue that employing domestic animals in such a manner shows a certain ability to exploit novelty that maybe was lacking in our relatives.As for why Us and not them, as the dominant species? My guess is humans possessed some sort of mental quirk, not necessarily greater intelligence or curiosity, but some feature that allowed us to become more adaptive and out compete other hominids.I recently read a hyopothesis that H. sapiens' early domestication of dogs (from wolves) could easily have allowed them to outcompete other hominids -- they come to raid your caves at night and you have early warning; you raid theirs and have a lot of fangs backing you up.
Thus we'll never learn that the big secret behind h. sapiens success was a random mutation that made their smell more pleasant to wolves than other hominids and it were wolves who picked modern humans to survive to modernity, not the other way around... :P
Just had a thought: Is anything at least in principle capable of reef building using silica (or silicate minerals) instead of calcium carbonate? Closest thing I can think of to this are stromatolites.
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Just had a thought: Is anything at least in principle capable of reef building using silica (or silicate minerals) instead of calcium carbonate? Closest thing I can think of to this are stromatolites.
During parts of the Mesozoic at least, the dominant reef builders were sponges that relied upon silicon to build their skeleton. There are still a few species left of those groups, but they are rare and limited to deep water. They are not successful today because diatoms (a type of microscopic algae plankton) also use silicon to build shells, and basically "steal" all the silicon in the water column at shallow levels, leaving not enough for the sponges.
Anthropogenic climate change is probably not going to impact diatoms enough to remove them as competitors and allow sponges to take over shallow water reef building.
More cellular than anything but here goes...
What would happen if you took CRISPER and swapped the DNA of your cells out for the DNA your cells had when they were younger?
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Not much. The question is somewhat misapplied and thus difficult to answer properly.
The CRISPR-Cas process is a way to cut and paste the genome of a cell. Thus, replacing your entire DNA in a cell is a different process. Further, your DNA doesn't change much in your life. The exception is the telomeres, a bookend of the DNA, if you will. A repeat region that gets shorter with each cell division. Copy those into the DNA of a cell and you get a cell that can divide more times...
... But you are already a living being. Your structure is there, and will not radically change because the DNA of certain cells changes. Your skin will not tighten up. Your muscles will not build more easily. Your eyes will not see better. And so on. All the things we call aging depend on structural changes over time.
Further, you are overlooking one massive problem: Replacing the DNA of each cell in your body is a problem which science has not a clue even how to get started with. We are not blobs of protoplasm where you can just inject it, but consist of billions of cells, each with a cell nucleus where the DNA is located. Further, your immune system is trained on your current structure, and a new DNA might well cause some pretty harsh immune reactions. Look up "host versus graft reaction" for more information on just how badly that could go.
These are by no means all the bad things and difficulties involved.
More cellular than anything but here goes...
What would happen if you took CRISPER and swapped the DNA of your cells out for the DNA your cells had when they were younger?
No clue...genetics/cell biology is pretty outside my wheelhouse.
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Syssyl pretty much nailed the ageing one.
Additionally, it's not the DNA that's the issue for ageing in long living cells. Ostensibly it's a process known as senescence, which includes oxidation of cellular membrane. That itself slows metabolic transfer of materials across cells, thus increasing the chance of cellular death over time.
If we can replace entire cell structures with younger cells.....well that's a different story.
Of course, you can't do that in any part of the brain that stores memory, otherwise you kill the cell clusters containing the chemicals responsible for the memories. That would be pretty bad I reckon.
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Syssyl pretty much nailed the ageing one.
Additionally, it's not the DNA that's the issue for ageing in long living cells. Ostensibly it's a process known as senescence, which includes oxidation of cellular membrane. That itself slows metabolic transfer of materials across cells, thus increasing the chance of cellular death over time.
If we can replace entire cell structures with younger cells.....well that's a different story.
Of course, you can't do that in any part of the brain that stores memory, otherwise you kill the cell clusters containing the chemicals responsible for the memories. That would be pretty bad I reckon.
I don't remember much since before I was 6 years old and bloody little more from the following 6 years and I'm still "me". Wiping memory is far less a concern to me than wiping whatever it is that makes personality.
Wipe my memories and personality to stay alive and I might as well clone myself and call it good.
Memories shape "you". They are as much who you are as the physical structure contains the chemical memories. If we just replace old cells in the brain with new cells through some future process, then eventually you might well lose sight of who you were.
On a positive note, you more than likely wouldn't even know though.
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Syssyl pretty much nailed the ageing one.
Additionally, it's not the DNA that's the issue for ageing in long living cells. Ostensibly it's a process known as senescence, which includes oxidation of cellular membrane. That itself slows metabolic transfer of materials across cells, thus increasing the chance of cellular death over time.
If we can replace entire cell structures with younger cells.....well that's a different story.
Of course, you can't do that in any part of the brain that stores memory, otherwise you kill the cell clusters containing the chemicals responsible for the memories. That would be pretty bad I reckon.
I don't remember much since before I was 6 years old and bloody little more from the following 6 years and I'm still "me". Wiping memory is far less a concern to me than wiping whatever it is that makes personality.
Wipe my memories and personality to stay alive and I might as well clone myself and call it good.
Memories shape "you". They are as much who you are as the physical structure contains the chemical memories. If we just replace old cells in the brain with new cells through some future process, then eventually you might well lose sight of who you were.
On a positive note, you more than likely wouldn't even know though.
That can be bypassed through nanotech enhancements to the brain. A layer of nanotechnology that acts as additional processing power and additional memory storage could easily be used as a long-term memory center. This would allow the brain to devote more of its mass to short-term memory and other processing centers.
However, at this point we're ranging very far away from the topic...
Yeah, that's pretty flaming awesome though.
Ok, back to the marine mammal questions.
Just had a thought: Is anything at least in principle capable of reef building using silica (or silicate minerals) instead of calcium carbonate? Closest thing I can think of to this are stromatolites.
Cyanobacterial stromatolites are formed from the accretion of CaCO3; the silica composition of some of the older ones is the result of subsequent inorganic mineralization (i.e., they're basically fossilized).
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Memories shape "you". They are as much who you are as the physical structure contains the chemical memories. If we just replace old cells in the brain with new cells through some future process, then eventually you might well lose sight of who you were.On a positive note, you more than likely wouldn't even know though.
isn't that the same as the normal process of living though? If you replaced every cell slowly and individually one at a time it wouldn't really be noticable...
All aboard the ship of Theseus.
Ayyy I'm currently studying natural science with the intent to go into paleontology! Have you done any work involving marine reptiles (either extant or extinct groups)?
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Okay, here's a question that bugs me...
Do marine mammals see a different light spectrum than humans do?
A lot still remains to be learned, but it appears that both pinnipeds and whales have reduced sensitivity to short wavelengths, and probably couldn't see UV wavelengths very well, although they still seem to be able to distinguish between colors. Manatees have had even less work done, but probably have land mammal vision and lack any sensitivity to UV light (not that a manatee really needs much in the way of eyesight to graze on seagrass or other aquatic vegetation).
Ayyy I'm currently studying natural science with the intent to go into paleontology! Have you done any work involving marine reptiles (either extant or extinct groups)?
Not really, but I would like to. I do try to go to the talks at the vert Paleo meeting, but it seems they are usually up against another session that I need to go to. Their definitely cool animals though, and If I get my own lab I definitely want to expand into sea turtle research at the very least.
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Great thread! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
What are your thoughts about the ReptileEvolution.com controversy?
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Memories shape "you". They are as much who you are as the physical structure contains the chemical memories. If we just replace old cells in the brain with new cells through some future process, then eventually you might well lose sight of who you were.On a positive note, you more than likely wouldn't even know though.
isn't that the same as the normal process of living though? If you replaced every cell slowly and individually one at a time it wouldn't really be noticable...
All aboard the ship of Theseus.
Except the difference is in the chemical composition and neural networking for brains.
Replacing a liver cell is fine since its differentiated into a liver cell.
Replacing a brain cell requires differentiation AND exact copy the chemicals within as well AND ensure that the neural networks reconnect as well.
That's a little more complicated than the normal the cellular process of cellular repair and replication.
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Great thread! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
What are your thoughts about the ReptileEvolution.com controversy?
David Peters is an utter crank and doesn't know the first thing about evolutionary trees or how to construct and interpret them. I actually have been recently checking his blog because in the last few weeks he has started adding whales to his large reptile tree and has been reporting amazing (read = crazy) results, like dolphins and baleen whales not being related, or that dolphins are related to tenrecs.
As an example, a recent blog post had him post the idea that a group of very early baleen bearing whales were actually toothed whales. This idea was based solely on the fact he didn't know what modern whale jaws looked like and basically didn't realize what side was "up" and was "down" in a fossil specimen, so he misinterpreted the jaws badly. This is what happens when you don't actually look at specimens or bother to learn anything about the biology of organisms, but still somehow think you can not only state radical new ideas of their evolutionary relationships, but in the same breath dismiss the work of every other biologist and paleontologist in the field.
David Peters is an absolute idiot.
Why does phylogeny matter? I see the more esoteric type biologists arguing over it all the time but... why?
Memories shape "you". They are as much who you are as the physical structure contains the chemical memories. If we just replace old cells in the brain with new cells through some future process, then eventually you might well lose sight of who you were.On a positive note, you more than likely wouldn't even know though.
isn't that the same as the normal process of living though? If you replaced every cell slowly and individually one at a time it wouldn't really be noticable...
All aboard the ship of Theseus.
Except the difference is in the chemical composition and neural networking for brains.
Replacing a liver cell is fine since its differentiated into a liver cell.
Replacing a brain cell requires differentiation AND exact copy the chemicals within as well AND ensure that the neural networks reconnect as well.
That's a little more complicated than the normal the cellular process of cellular repair and replication.
You would need for the brain to have enough redundancy so that you could copy information from old cells to replacement cells. It would seem reasonable that the brain would have some redundancy, but I have no proof (not sure if anyone really knows at this stage of our technology).