From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road

Bounding The Biodiversity Problem

One of the books I read over the holidays was E.O. Wilson's Creation, a bestseller by the two time Pulitzer Prize winner that appeals to two opposing ways of thinking; religion and science to get together to save the biodiversity of the environment.  In this very well articulated book, he reminds us that in history (as captured by the fossil record) there has been 6 time periods where biodiversity has been vastly reduced, i.e. a lot of species have gone extinct.  The fifth was the end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and in each case it took the world about 10 million years to rebuild, re-evolve that biodiversity.

Sadly, the sixth is happening now.  We humans are taking over the planet and creating mainly habitat loss for the other species.  Whatever we end up doing in twenty thousand years, it may take nature another 10 million years to recover.  It is sad, it is depressing, but it is what it is.  The book mentions all the hot spots in the word where species are especially endangered.  The rainforests of the Philippines, Madagascar and thr Amazon are among the worst ones.  But throughout the book I was waiting for the pragmatic bounding of the problem.  How much would it cost to fix it all?  If by a magic stroke every country chipped in, what would it take to preserve the forests, or help endangered species recover?

E.O. Wilson answers that question, and frankly the answer is just as depressing as the question.  He estimates that $30B annually is needed to preserve all the biodiversity on land.  That's it $30 billion dollars.  In the grand scheme of things that's tiny.

Compare that to the data on the link here on global defense spending.  I don't know if it is true but, is says that the world annually spends $1100B on defense.  That's $1.1 trillion dollars.  More than half of it is spent by the U.S., less than half is spent by the rest of the world.  And all it would take would be 3% of that spending to maintain biodiversity that nature needs 10 million years to recover.

I see now why some of my ecologist, biologist, ornithologist friends of mine are depressed about it.

Nonetheless, E.O. Wilson's Creation is a fantastic read, it's short, thoughtful and most importantly well-written.  You can get it it here.

The Ultimate Empowerment of The Consumer

When people talk about "empowering the consumer" they are usually talking about the Internet enabling something that was previously too hard or too expensive.  Publishing a newspaper on a blog, or a book on Lulu.com are two good examples.  However, the empowerment I had in mind for this post is a slightly different kind.

I am talking about ways for you to isolate human epithelial amniotic stem cells from the placenta all in the comfort of your own home.  Am I kidding?  Absolutely not.  Read this marvelous post by my friend Attila Csordas, claiming that " isolating stem cells from the placenta is not more difficult than making a steak, and with proper preparation, investment and timing you can do it even at home..."

Welcome to open source science, welcome to do it yourself biology.

Welcome to the ultimate empowerment.  If you read the the instructions in Attila's post, you can see that they are not impossible, but more importantly, each step is well documented with links into very useful information about each step.  The know-how is out there for all to learn.  And there will be a lot more of it coming.

Use your imagination here, and think what that could mean for the future.  With so much information on the Internet and such ready access to scientific data, what Attila wrote about could very well be commonplace in 5-10 years.  This is a world where people could be "playing around" with their own biology.  I see two big impacts right away.

First, tinkering is the best way to invent things, and this would really push the envelope in scientific and practical discovery.  Second, if you think governments are having a hard time figuring out the laws to govern file sharing, let's see how they'll deal with "amateur genetic engineering".  This will be a huge issue.  Imagine people coming up with "user generated biotechnology".  Much better than the corporate biotechnology where its one drug fits all.  The tools for it are getting cheaper and cheaper.  There was a time woodworking tools were too expensive, there was a time where computing resources were too expensive, they are not anymore.  Why can't the same cost curve apply to biotech tools?  I can see it happening. 

One final word on Attila's post.  The concept of placentophagy.  Now that's a word you won't read on Guy Kawasaki's blog.  It's the "act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after birth".  Apparently, it has all sorts of good effects on the body.  Now, this blog has talked about many strange biological things.  I wrote about a bat eating centipede, I put a video of an octopus hunting a shark, but nothing is weirder and more disturbing than that picture of a goat eating its own placenta.  The animal is a herbivore and it's eating meat for God's sake.  That is just pure horror.

Placentophagy...I'll paypal five bucks to whoever can use the word in a sentence in a creative way.  Here is mine: "What was the name of that French restaurant that closed a week after it opened, wasn't it Lé Placentophagié?"

More on The Science Of Immortality

My new best friend, Attila Csordas, left the following comment on this blog.

"I've posted Aubrey's answers to my questions: http://href.hu/x/1xdv "

I think it is an important comment that deserves its own post, because it points to another insightful interview with my new favorite biologist, Aubrey De Grey, about the science behind life extension .  You can read it here.

Life In Cold Blood

I was in London for two days last week visiting family.  Even in this short blitzbesuch, I could not avoid seeing my favorite Brit, Sir David Attenborough in the news.  There was an interview with him in the Monday edition of The Guardian.

I wrote previously about his last series, 'Life In The Undergrowth' here.  I had heard then that this would be his last series, but in the interview he says he's working on a new project in Panama.  It's about amphibians and reptiles and the working title is 'Life In Cold Blood'.  This is great news.

The mere idea of being able to see one more series from who has been a role model all my life is hard to describe in words.  I was 12 years old when I first saw 'Life On Earth' in Turkish and in front of a black and white TV.  I distinctly remember watching it alone and in bewilderment.  Now, I will watch the new series with my kids beside me.  They are big fans already and know which two mammals lay eggs.

David Attenborough turns 80 in May.  Here is the best part of the interview:

And if he had another 80 (years), would he exhaust his interest? "(David): Oh, not in another 800 years!  Because there are always new people - people growing up all the time who've never seen a duck-billed platypus.'  And he looks thrilled and amazed.

I am not a person who is good at saying thank you.  Thank you for being an inspiration to me and thank you for being an inspiration to my children.

Your biggest fan.

attenborough

David Attenborough - Life in The Undergrowth

Over the holidays I got David Attenborough's new DVD "Life in the Undergrowth".  I've been a big fan of David Attenborough ever since I saw "Life on Earth" more than 20 years ago.  That series made me love biology.  Every time I watch one of his DVD's he manages to show us something new, something never done before.  This one is no different.  In an interview, he said that he left doing this last so that the technology of microscopic cameras would develop. 

There is one scene in the series that I found especially moving that I want to mention here.  One thing that I am always curious to see in nature documentaries is a primitive animal hunting a much more sophisticated animal, one far more advanced in terms of evolution.  I am talking of an invertebrate like a spider catching a fish, or a spider catching a bird.  So I wonder what the most primitive predator and the most sophisticated prey are.  Why do I find this fascinating?  Well, clearly birds evolved much later than spiders, so the spider that hunts a bird must have learned that well after the birds.  If they can learn to hunt birds, can they one day learn to hunt bigger animals like us humans?

Well, what I saw in Attenborough latest films is a big centipede, "as long as my forearm" according to Sir David, hunt a bat.  That's right, a bat eating centipede.  Centipedes are very primitive, one of the first hunters to get on land, and descendants of worms in the ocean.  Predators don't get more primitive than that (of course, the case of even more primitive bacteria killing a human doesn't count, not as dramatic).  Bats on the other hand are placental mammals.  They came way later than centipedes.  They are very similar to humans in that sense.  Well in this video, you see an arms length centipede climb up on a cave, hang down from the ceiling and grab a bat in flight, sting and kill it.  That's something you don't see a lot.

Of course, probably this centipede did this for millions of years to moths and other big insects, but the sight of a centipede catching a mammal is chilling indeed.

I recommend everything David Attenborough has ever done to everybody.  He is a brilliant storyteller.  "Life in the Undergrowth" is one of his best.    You can buy the DVD from amazon.com.uk (not in the US yet) but below is the link to the book and his other DVDs.

Other invaluable works by David Attenborough

Others are, "Life on Earth" (his first and best), "The Private Life of Plants".  Those can't be found on amazon.com