Posts tagged biology

Stewart Brand talks about reviving the passenger pigeon at TED2013

Bringing back extinct species — this Friday, TEDxDeExtinction discusses how we’ll do it and whether we should

An endangered species is like a very sick person: It needs help, desperately. An extinct species is like a dead person: beyond help, beyond hope

Or at least it has been, until now. For the first time, our own species—the one that has done so much to condemn those other 795 to oblivion—may be poised to bring at least some of them back.

—National Geographic, “Species Revival: Should We Bring Back Extinct Animals?”

This process, the process of bringing an extinct species back from once-certain oblivion, is called de-extinction. As reported on the TED Blog, “The first de-extinction happened on the bucardo, a type of wild mountain goat. The last bucardo died out in 2000, but its ear was preserved, and in 2009 DNA from the ear was planted in a mother goat. The engineered bucardo died after 10 minutes due to a defect in its lungs.”

But is there hope for de-exintction to continue? With other animals? New Techniques? Could we someday see the wooly mammoth in the flesh? At TED2013, scientist Stewart Brand gave a introduction to the possibilities, and now he wants us to talk about it.

This month, along with his foundation Revive & Restore, with the support of TED and TEDster Ryan Phelan, and in partnership with National Geographic Society, Brand is convening a day-long conference — called TEDxDeExtinction — to showcase the prospects of bringing extinct species back to life, along with a discussion of the ethical issues involved.

On Friday, March 15, 2013, TEDxDeExtinction will bring 25 renowned experts together at National Geographic headquarters to contribute ideas to these four sessions:

• WHO:  Who among extinct species should be revived first?
• HOW: How can extinct species be revived?
• WHY AND WHY NOT: Should we bring back extinct species?
• WILD AGAIN: Could resurrected species ever be wild again?

Speakers include:

• George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and director of PersonalGenomes.org, the world’s only open-access information source for the human genome .
• President of the American Ornithologists’ Union Susan Haig, whose specialization is working with species facing the brink of extinction.
• Director of Genetics at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research Oliver Ryder, who oversees research efforts in cell culture and cryobanking, cytogenetics, population genetics, conservation breeding, evolution and systematics, and applications of genomics technologies to conservation efforts for managed and wild populations of threatened and endangered species.
• New York Times, National Geographic, and winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award journalist Carl Zimmer.

This day-long event will be webcast live on March 15 on the TEDx Livestream: http://new.livestream.com/tedx/DeExtinction and at http://nationalgeographic.com/deextinction.

To attend in person, event tickets can be purchased at the TEDxDeExtinction website.

Have you ever tried to swat a fly, only to be foiled, again and again? Ever wonder why flies seem to be so good at avoiding your approach? At TEDxCaltech, biologist Michael Dickinson explains the why this should be no surprise, revealing the shockingly sophisticated biology behind fly locomotion — and incredible power of its tiny brain.

He says:

The engine of a fly is absolutely fascinating. They have two types of flight muscle:

The so-called “power muscle” — which is stretch-activated, which means that it activates itself and does not need to be be controlled on a contraction to contraction basis by the nervous system. It’s specialized to generate the enormous power required for flight. And it fills the middle portion of the fly, so when a fly hits your windshield, it’s basically the power muscle that you’re looking at.

But attached to the base of the wing is a set of little, tiny control muscles that are not very powerful at all, but they are very fast and they are able to reconfigure the hinge of the wing on a stroke-by-stroke basis, and this is what enables the fly to change its wing and generate the changes in aerodynamic forces which change its flight trajectory.

And, of course, the role of the nervous system is to control all this…Flies excel in the sorts of sensors that they carry:

-They have antennae that sense odors and detect wind detection.
-They have a sophisticated eye, which is the fastest visual system on the planet.
-They have another set of eyes on the top of their head — we have no idea what they do.
-They have sensors on their wing — their wing is covered with sensors, including sensors that sense deformation of the wing; they can even taste with their wings.

Top photo via Flickr user cypherone.