Boa constrictor- picture by Leo Fleck (this image has a creative commons 2.5 licence- details [here])
Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful
Things have been a little quiet on this blog of late, for the simple reason that I have been juggling writing articles with conducting magazine interviews, scripting and producing two short films and preparing for some public talks (watch this space...). However, scientific progress continues relentlessly, so there have been quite a few interesting science stories in the news lately.
The biggest biological news of the last few weeks has been the discovery of parthenogenesis in Boa constrictors by Dr Warren Booth of the University of North Carolina. You can find the original press release of that story [here]and "Discover" Magazine's take on the news [here]
There will also be an exclusive interview with Dr Booth in the next issue of Practical Reptile Keeping Magazine.
If you have ever wondered why, when you are stressed, you are much more vulnerable to diseases, the emerging field of "Microbial Endocrinology" sets out to find the answers. In 1992, American endocrinologist Mark Lyte, of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, proposed that the situation was more complicated than just human stress hormones (cortisone, adrenaline etc) supressing the imune system, but rather that harmful bacteria are triggered to attack the body when these stress hormones are abundant. Prof Lyte and Dr Primrose Freestone of Leicester University, UK have now co-edited the first major book in the field; you can find more details here-
http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2010-archive/november/dawn-of-a-new-scientific-discipline-microbial-endocrinology
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