At the base of the human brain there lies a tiny organ called the pituitary gland. About the size of a pea, this demure little gland produces and secretes a cocktail of hormones into the bloodstream from its bony nook inside the skull, helping the body to govern many internal systems. The pituitary is perhaps most well-known for its production of the amino acid protein somatotropin, a growth hormone which stimulates cell reproduction and bodily development.

This humble chemical factory typically produces some amount of growth hormone throughout an individual’s life, though the volume usually drops off precipitously after adolescence. In spite of its small size, however, misbehaving pituitaries have been known to cause massive consequences for their owners.

Read the rest of this Article ▶

In order to run down and kill wolves, the people of Ireland bred the powerful and long-legged Irish Wolfhound. When they needed something to chase ill-tempered badgers into their holes to exterminate them, Europeans bred the feisty, short-legged dachshund. But five hundred or more years ago, the people on the northern coast of Norway had a different kind of prey to contend with: humble puffins.

Puffins are small sea-birds. They look rather like small, flying penguins with big colorful beaks, and they like to nest in the narrow, twisting caves which honeycomb the local rocky sea-cliffs. The sheer inaccessibility of those cliffs helps to keep the predators away, while the caves add yet another layer of difficulty to anything trying to get at the puffins. Yet in northern Norway, puffins used to be a major source of winter food, and catching them in enough quantity to make it through the long winters was absolutely necessary.

In order to fill this unique niche, the Norwegians bred a unique dog. The resulting Lundehund was an extraordinary animal with some unparalleled gifts. For all its uniqueness, the Lundehund is vanishingly rare. It has been so close to extinction that at one point there were only five of them in existence.

Read the rest of this Article ▶

Biological warfare is nothing new to the human race. Attempts to use disease to bring down enemies date as far back as we have detailed histories of warfare. Even when the mechanisms for the spread of disease were poorly understood, biological warfare was popular. Dropping cadavers into an enemy’s water supply was common. Some inventive Tartars even tried catapulting victims of bubonic plague over the walls of the city of Kaffa (modern day Feodesia) during a siege.

More recently, several European nations spread smallpox–inadvertently and otherwise–among Native Americans, and later attempted to use biological warfare to their advantage during the first World War. Only after World War I did the 1925 Geneva Protocol attempt to limit biological warfare, with mixed success.

In all this time however, every attempt at biological warfare has been essentially offensive. The idea has always been to incapacitate or kill the enemy. Except once, in Poland, during World War II, where a pair of quick-thinking doctors used a little-known organism to keep the Nazis at bay.

Read the rest of this Short ▶

In South America, in the swamps of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, lives a very unusual bird.

The hoatzin is a pheasant-sized enigma. The official national bird of Guyana, the hoatzin has defied attempts of ornithologists to place it in its proper place among the families of birds. No matter where it is placed, the hoatzin simply does not appear to fit. The hoatzin was given its own family (Opisthocomidae), but since the original designation it has been moved around from being grouped with the game birds (the source of its other name, the Canje pheasant), to grouping it with the cuckoos, to its current, though still speculative placement with the seriema family (most closely related to rails and bustards).

The difficulty is the hoatzin itself. While bearing superficial resemblance to all of these other species in some way, it has many peculiarities that sets it apart from them all. These oddities Include some very primitive traits not seen in most birds since the Jurassic period, coexisting with characteristics which are otherwise unheard of among birds.

Read the rest of this Short ▶

Cybernetic senses have been the subject of science fiction for decades. The idea of using sophisticated technology to repair damaged bodies, or even to enhance normal ones, has a tremendous appeal – but how far have we progressed towards that goal?

In some ways, we’ve gotten amazingly far. Cochlear implants are now a normal – if controversial – treatment for deafness. They substitute for damaged or missing portions of the inner ear, gathering and processing sound. The first generation of cochlear implants provided only a distant approximation of sound, making them of limited usefulness, particularly for understanding speech sounds. Even the more sophisticated models of today have yet to approach the functionality of a normal ear, though they are far more useful than their predecessors.

While those dealing with cybernetic hearing seem to have decided upon their basic approach, dealing with lost vision is a different ball game. Several different research groups, using various methods, are attempting to produce cybernetic vision. Some, like cochlear implants, seek to replace a malfunctioning part. Others are attempting to produce something entirely new that will nonetheless function as vision. One of the projects that is furthest along is using exactly that kind of substitution. Rather than attempting to somehow re-engineer the eye, the vOICe system (Oh, I see) is using sound to bypass the eyes altogether and substituting the ears in their stead.

Read the rest of this Article ▶

Krakatoa may just be the most famous volcano of all time. More devastating than Mt. St. Helens, closer in time than Vesuvius; the volcano that destroyed itself and its island in one tremendous eruption is nearly iconic in the public eye.

The famous eruption of Krakatoa on August 27, 1883 has been estimated as the biggest bang in recorded history, heard over 3000 miles away. It killed over 36,000 people, and destroyed more than 3/4 of its island, literally blowing it to pieces. The cataclysm affected weather world-wide, cooling summers, and causing sunsets so vivid that in Poughkeepsie, NY, firefighters were called to put out the apparent conflagration.

All of this is well-known. What is less well known is that this same volcano is a repeat offender, and it is still with us. The sea bed just to the north of what remains of Rakata island began rising steadily shortly after the famous cataclysm. In 1927, a new island called Anak Krakatoa (Son of Krakatoa) emerged from the sea to take its father’s place.

Read the rest of this Short ▶

One of the favorite topics of speculative fiction is a society composed entirely of women. From the Greek legends of the Amazons, to the modern novels of Sheri Tepper and Joanna Russ, we have asked ourselves a series of questions. What would such a society look like? How would its members behave? And most importantly – how would they reproduce?

The answers to the question of reproduction have been as varied as the speculated societies. Most involve men in some form or another – whether captured and enslaved, or merely kept out of the society except for reproduction. Only a few have gone so far as to remove the men – because then the question of how women reproduce on their own comes into play.

Parthenogenesis – the production of offspring from an unfertilized egg – is a frequent contender, but parthenogenesis is unheard of in mammals. Also, it’s a form of asexual reproduction with all the disadvantages that entails. Trying to preserve a form of sexual reproduction with only one sex seems a little odd, but to preserve the genetic variety of the species, it would be necessary. Using two eggs rather than an egg and a sperm would seem a logical solution, but that scenario is never found in nature, and all attempts to produce offspring this way, in any animal, have failed – producing embryos which died early in gestation, if they even survived that long.

At least until recently. Then came Tomohiro Kono, a biologist at the Tokyo University of Agriculture. He and his team of researchers set out to produce a mouse from two eggs. In 2004, he succeeded, producing a mouse named Kaguya, that not only lived to be born, but grew to adulthood, and produced offspring of her own in the more usual manner.

Read the rest of this Short ▶

Would you be willing to semi-starve in order to live longer? More to the point, would you be willing to semi-starve simply for the chance that you might live longer?

If you’re a member of the Calorie Restriction (CR) Society, the answer to that question is probably yes. Pioneered by the late Dr. Roy Walford, the CR regime (which also has several other names) seeks to extend the human lifespan. Using information garnered from animal studies, and extrapolating the results to humans, the CR Society members are attempting to redefine the natural age-limit for humans. Their primary method for this life extension attempt is to restrict their calorie intake by amounts ranging from a relatively modest 10% to a whopping 65% from a full-fed diet.

As important as the calorie restriction, though, is the nutritional aspect. Advocates of CR are quick to point out that a nutritionally poor diet is likely to shorten life, not extend it. This gives them the sometimes challenging job of trying to fit a full range of nutrients and vitamins into their restricted calorie supply. In the mildly restricted diets, this high nutrition can look like nothing more than a light version of a normal health-conscious diet. In the more highly restrictive regimes this need to cram in as much nutrition as possible becomes more obvious, leading to tightly planned eating where every bite of every day has to carry its dietary weight. In some cases, practitioners may literally eat the same highly nutritious meal every day (or multiple times a day) for years at a time.

Read the rest of this Short ▶