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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18058\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/06/OR7pups.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18058\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/06/OR7pups.jpg\" alt=\"Wildlife officials confirm that OR7, a wolf that has visited California, has had two pups in southwest Oregon. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wildlife officials confirm that OR7, a wolf that has visited California, has had two pups in southwest Oregon. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California wildlife officials voted on Wednesday to protect gray wolves as an endangered species in the state. The Fish and Game Commission approved the listing under California’s Endangered Species Act against the recommendations of the department’s staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While no wolves are known to be in California currently, the state was thrust into the debate when \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/lone-wolf%E2%80%99s-historic-trek-provokes-questions-and-concerns/\">a lone, radio-collared wolf known as OR7\u003c/a> wandered across the Oregon-California border in 2011, becoming California’s first wolf since the 1920s. OR7 has since returned to Oregon and earlier this year was spotted with a possible mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as public testimony ramped up at the commission meeting on Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed that OR7 and a mate have produced at least two pups in southwest Oregon, the first litter observed since wolves returned to that area.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘Wolves are re-establishing themselves in California no matter what we do.’\u003ccite>— Michael Sutton, California Fish and Game Commission president\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The new pack raises the odds that wolves will expand into California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We expect that in a decade or less there will be wolf populations in California,” said Chuck Bonham, the director of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. “That is nature taking its course. They are migrating across the West and from the Northwest, south.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The debate centered around whether a species that’s recovering in neighboring states and isn’t currently found in California is eligible for protection under state law. Several commissioners rejected that argument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Wolves are re-establishing themselves in California no matter what we do,” Michael Sutton, the president of the commission, said. “We owe it to them, in my opinion, to do everything we can to help them recolonize their historic range in our state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife had recommended that \u003ca href=\"http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings/2014/jun/060414docs.aspx\">wolves not be listed\u003c/a> as endangered. They argued that, given existing scientific information on wolves in California, listing wasn’t warranted based on current threats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, they recommended wolves be designated as a “species of special concern” and that the commissioners use existing authority to prohibit killing or “taking” of wolves in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department is also working on developing a \u003ca href=\"http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/nongame/wolf/\">California Wolf Plan\u003c/a> with a range of stakeholders. The plan, expected to be finalized by the end of the year, will include recommendations on how to manage wolves and potential human conflicts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gray wolves are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, but the Obama Administration \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-wolf-science-attacked-20140207-story.html\">has proposed removing protections\u003c/a> for wolves in the lower 48 states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could not be more thrilled with the decision that the commission has made,” said Pam Flick of Defenders of Wildlife. “Gray wolves are just starting to recover in the Pacific Northwest states and this is one positive step toward a future of wolves on the California landscape.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Associated Press\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18053\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18053\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/06/pelicans.jpg\" alt=\"Brown pelican populations rebounded after DDT was phased out. (MSMcCarthy Photography/Flickr)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brown pelicans rebounded after DDT was phased out. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/msmccarthyphotography/6027728528/in/photolist-abDFFW-eYp4eu-4HD3B3-aKaeqM-fG7RhD-xCpoi-aCNc7a-8XGr5D-UeW2N-6djABh-e4QEHj-eXM3Xu-72KTM7-5uvwBB-9ja1k9-9rRpds-72KTMf-9awpim-dvahHe-9xCnAA-du1UtF-cxDcH7-bSGP9X-5n8Ee1-9hRoeD-du1V3Z-9VmMwg-kTrdAX-6VuMeZ-9awrZs------cN2VFJ-5P1qq8-821FC4-756vSX-kAHrgD-5Actk8-gmcs7J-93Ndix-5Mgmsj-gm5DAi-7cH7WV-5ztTro-7CYw5W-cQFuzs-6cKBXr\">MSMcCarthy Photography\u003c/a>/Flickr)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans, which were driven to the brink of extinction in the last century, are in trouble again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An annual survey completed last month found a drastic plunge in the population of breeding pairs, according to a statement released Friday by the University of California, Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The survey in Mexico’s Gulf of California — where about 90 percent of the\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>typically breed and raise their chicks — found that areas that typically host hundreds or thousands of nesting pairs held far fewer, and a few places were completely empty, the statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s what we call a failure, a bust. The bottom dropped out,” said Dan Anderson, a wildlife biologist and UC Davis professor emeritus who conducted the survey along with members of Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reason for the decline could range from food supply shifts to changes in water temperature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many birds arrived late to the Mexico breeding grounds this spring and “of those who nested, many abandoned their nests when they could not find enough food to sustain their stay,” the UC Davis statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bird’s range extends from Mexico to Canada, according to the National Park Service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, thousands of California\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>moved up the Southern California coast and even as far north as Washington, hunting their main prey of sardines and other fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breeding population crashes of the\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>often are associated with a warming of the central Pacific Ocean, known as El Niño, but that isn’t expected to begin until this summer and the drop also was much steeper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During most El Niño events we’ve seen, numbers of nesting attempts drop by at least half to two-thirds, and production goes down, too,” Anderson said, according to the UC Davis statement. “But it drops from thousands to hundreds, not to 10 or less.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelican\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>was declared an endangered species in 1970 after its population was pushed to the brink of extinction by the pesticide DDT, which caused the bird’s eggshells to become so thin that they broke. After DDT was outlawed, the bird made a recovery and was taken off the list in 2009, when the West Coast population was 150,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the species has faced new challenges since then because of a decline in sardines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2010, wildlife rescue centers in California were filled with emaciated\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans. The same year, young\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>attacked murre nesting colonies in Oregon, shaking the chicks until they regurgitated fish, then eating the fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They did it again in 2011 and 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, scientists said they were concerned that a crash in the West Coast population of sardines might also be starving the\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans. The 2013 Northwest survey by the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex found 7,018\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans, half the average of the past decade, and the lowest number since 1999.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "California brown pelicans, which were driven to the brink of extinction in the last century, are in trouble again. The reason for the decline could range from food supply shifts to changes in water temperature.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Associated Press\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18053\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18053\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/06/pelicans.jpg\" alt=\"Brown pelican populations rebounded after DDT was phased out. (MSMcCarthy Photography/Flickr)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brown pelicans rebounded after DDT was phased out. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/msmccarthyphotography/6027728528/in/photolist-abDFFW-eYp4eu-4HD3B3-aKaeqM-fG7RhD-xCpoi-aCNc7a-8XGr5D-UeW2N-6djABh-e4QEHj-eXM3Xu-72KTM7-5uvwBB-9ja1k9-9rRpds-72KTMf-9awpim-dvahHe-9xCnAA-du1UtF-cxDcH7-bSGP9X-5n8Ee1-9hRoeD-du1V3Z-9VmMwg-kTrdAX-6VuMeZ-9awrZs------cN2VFJ-5P1qq8-821FC4-756vSX-kAHrgD-5Actk8-gmcs7J-93Ndix-5Mgmsj-gm5DAi-7cH7WV-5ztTro-7CYw5W-cQFuzs-6cKBXr\">MSMcCarthy Photography\u003c/a>/Flickr)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans, which were driven to the brink of extinction in the last century, are in trouble again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An annual survey completed last month found a drastic plunge in the population of breeding pairs, according to a statement released Friday by the University of California, Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The survey in Mexico’s Gulf of California — where about 90 percent of the\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>typically breed and raise their chicks — found that areas that typically host hundreds or thousands of nesting pairs held far fewer, and a few places were completely empty, the statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s what we call a failure, a bust. The bottom dropped out,” said Dan Anderson, a wildlife biologist and UC Davis professor emeritus who conducted the survey along with members of Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reason for the decline could range from food supply shifts to changes in water temperature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many birds arrived late to the Mexico breeding grounds this spring and “of those who nested, many abandoned their nests when they could not find enough food to sustain their stay,” the UC Davis statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bird’s range extends from Mexico to Canada, according to the National Park Service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, thousands of California\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>moved up the Southern California coast and even as far north as Washington, hunting their main prey of sardines and other fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breeding population crashes of the\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>often are associated with a warming of the central Pacific Ocean, known as El Niño, but that isn’t expected to begin until this summer and the drop also was much steeper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During most El Niño events we’ve seen, numbers of nesting attempts drop by at least half to two-thirds, and production goes down, too,” Anderson said, according to the UC Davis statement. “But it drops from thousands to hundreds, not to 10 or less.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelican\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>was declared an endangered species in 1970 after its population was pushed to the brink of extinction by the pesticide DDT, which caused the bird’s eggshells to become so thin that they broke. After DDT was outlawed, the bird made a recovery and was taken off the list in 2009, when the West Coast population was 150,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the species has faced new challenges since then because of a decline in sardines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2010, wildlife rescue centers in California were filled with emaciated\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans. The same year, young\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>pelicans\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>attacked murre nesting colonies in Oregon, shaking the chicks until they regurgitated fish, then eating the fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They did it again in 2011 and 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, scientists said they were concerned that a crash in the West Coast population of sardines might also be starving the\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans. The 2013 Northwest survey by the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex found 7,018\u003cspan class=\"apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>brown pelicans, half the average of the past decade, and the lowest number since 1999.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Comb Jelly DNA Studies Are Changing How Scientists Think Animals Evolved",
"headTitle": "Comb Jelly DNA Studies Are Changing How Scientists Think Animals Evolved | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17811\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 639px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/SeaWalnut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/SeaWalnut.jpg\" alt=\"Comb jellies like this sea walnut are rocking the world of evolution. (Wikimedia Commons/Bruno C. Vellutini)\" width=\"639\" height=\"356\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17811\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comb jellies like this sea walnut are rocking the world of evolution. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_Walnut.tif\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NeLaS\">Bruno C. Vellutini\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Comb jellies are these beautiful, otherworldly creatures that sparkle gently in the sea. And now, if a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24337300\">study \u003c/a>in the journal Science and another \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24847885\">one \u003c/a>in the journal Nature hold up, they may not be so gentle on evolution or the tree of life. These “aliens of the sea” are fundamentally changing how we think about both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The standard line for evolution has been that all the complicated stuff evolved once. Way back when some common ancestor evolved a nervous system, muscles and so on and all of our systems are built on those first ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seems reasonable given how hard it probably was to cobble together all the components to get these systems to work. And there was a lot of evidence to support this idea too. For example, it looked like a subset of parts of the nervous system were shared by all the animals that have a nervous system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This no longer seems to be the case. Back in December, a group of researchers took a close look at the DNA of the sea walnut (Mnemiopsis leidyi) and found that it lacked the usual set of genes animals have to make a nervous system. They also found that this comb jelly lacked almost all of the genes needed to make muscles. This was even though this comb jelly has both muscles and a nervous system.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">This is mind blowing stuff that reshapes how we think about evolution.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This result has now been confirmed in a study out on May 21 on a second comb jelly, the Pacific sea gooseberry (Pleurobrachia bachei). The researchers not only found that this comb jelly lacks the same set of genes, but they also showed that its nervous system works in a unique way too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most animals use a very similar set of chemicals to communicate from one nerve cell to another. The authors found that the Pacific sea gooseberry uses hardly any of these shared neurotransmitters. No dopamine, serotonin or any of the other common ones you may have heard of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, this comb jelly appears to have its own unique set of neurotransmitters. And because these signaling chemicals are captured by their own specific set of receptors, this means that the Pacific sea gooseberry has its own set of unique receptors too. The DNA confirms this result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The easiest explanation for this is that the comb jelly nervous system evolved independently of every other animal’s nervous system. The other explanation that it had one like ours, lost it, and then invented a new one seems way less likely. Something similar probably happened with comb jelly muscles too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17817\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/TreeOfLife350.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/TreeOfLife350.jpg\" alt=\"New work puts comb jellies closer to the base of the tree. (Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"350\" height=\"445\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17817\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New work puts comb jellies closer to the base of the tree. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metazoan_Phylogenetic_Tree.png\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All animals to date that have muscles use the same subset of genes to make them. As these studies show, comb jelly (or ctenophore) DNA has almost none of these genes. It looks like these beautiful sea creatures have reinvented the wheel on this one as well. They have their own set of genes that cause their muscles to develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So complicated systems can evolve more than once. This is mind blowing stuff that reshapes how we think about evolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently evolving a nervous system isn’t so hard that there is only one way to do it. It also isn’t so hard that once something does it, that animal outcompetes everyone else before they can make their own nervous system. There is (or was) room in nature for many paths to complicated systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These findings have also caused scientists to remake the tree of life. Comb jellies now have their own branch, separate from all other animals. In other words, our common ancestor split into a group that led to comb jellies and another group that led to all other animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at the DNA of lots of different beasts is causing us to rethink how evolution happens. Results like this make it imperative that we sequence as many living things as we can get our hands on especially since looking at DNA has become so cheap and easy. Of course this all depends on the government giving scientists the money they need to do these studies.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17811\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 639px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/SeaWalnut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/SeaWalnut.jpg\" alt=\"Comb jellies like this sea walnut are rocking the world of evolution. (Wikimedia Commons/Bruno C. Vellutini)\" width=\"639\" height=\"356\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17811\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comb jellies like this sea walnut are rocking the world of evolution. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_Walnut.tif\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NeLaS\">Bruno C. Vellutini\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Comb jellies are these beautiful, otherworldly creatures that sparkle gently in the sea. And now, if a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24337300\">study \u003c/a>in the journal Science and another \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24847885\">one \u003c/a>in the journal Nature hold up, they may not be so gentle on evolution or the tree of life. These “aliens of the sea” are fundamentally changing how we think about both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The standard line for evolution has been that all the complicated stuff evolved once. Way back when some common ancestor evolved a nervous system, muscles and so on and all of our systems are built on those first ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seems reasonable given how hard it probably was to cobble together all the components to get these systems to work. And there was a lot of evidence to support this idea too. For example, it looked like a subset of parts of the nervous system were shared by all the animals that have a nervous system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This no longer seems to be the case. Back in December, a group of researchers took a close look at the DNA of the sea walnut (Mnemiopsis leidyi) and found that it lacked the usual set of genes animals have to make a nervous system. They also found that this comb jelly lacked almost all of the genes needed to make muscles. This was even though this comb jelly has both muscles and a nervous system.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">This is mind blowing stuff that reshapes how we think about evolution.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This result has now been confirmed in a study out on May 21 on a second comb jelly, the Pacific sea gooseberry (Pleurobrachia bachei). The researchers not only found that this comb jelly lacks the same set of genes, but they also showed that its nervous system works in a unique way too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most animals use a very similar set of chemicals to communicate from one nerve cell to another. The authors found that the Pacific sea gooseberry uses hardly any of these shared neurotransmitters. No dopamine, serotonin or any of the other common ones you may have heard of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, this comb jelly appears to have its own unique set of neurotransmitters. And because these signaling chemicals are captured by their own specific set of receptors, this means that the Pacific sea gooseberry has its own set of unique receptors too. The DNA confirms this result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The easiest explanation for this is that the comb jelly nervous system evolved independently of every other animal’s nervous system. The other explanation that it had one like ours, lost it, and then invented a new one seems way less likely. Something similar probably happened with comb jelly muscles too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17817\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/TreeOfLife350.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/TreeOfLife350.jpg\" alt=\"New work puts comb jellies closer to the base of the tree. (Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"350\" height=\"445\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17817\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New work puts comb jellies closer to the base of the tree. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metazoan_Phylogenetic_Tree.png\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All animals to date that have muscles use the same subset of genes to make them. As these studies show, comb jelly (or ctenophore) DNA has almost none of these genes. It looks like these beautiful sea creatures have reinvented the wheel on this one as well. They have their own set of genes that cause their muscles to develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So complicated systems can evolve more than once. This is mind blowing stuff that reshapes how we think about evolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently evolving a nervous system isn’t so hard that there is only one way to do it. It also isn’t so hard that once something does it, that animal outcompetes everyone else before they can make their own nervous system. There is (or was) room in nature for many paths to complicated systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These findings have also caused scientists to remake the tree of life. Comb jellies now have their own branch, separate from all other animals. In other words, our common ancestor split into a group that led to comb jellies and another group that led to all other animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at the DNA of lots of different beasts is causing us to rethink how evolution happens. Results like this make it imperative that we sequence as many living things as we can get our hands on especially since looking at DNA has become so cheap and easy. Of course this all depends on the government giving scientists the money they need to do these studies.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Sweet and Deadly: Bat-Borne Virus Brews in Bangladesh’s Date Palm Pots",
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"content": "\u003cp>New \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.wisc.edu/22356\">research\u003c/a> from the University of Wisconsin suggests that deforestation is promoting the spread of a disease called Nipah virus in Bangladesh. The virus has no cure, no vaccine -- and a mortality rate of more than 70 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Nipah virus first appeared in Malaysia in 1998, epidemiologists traced it back to Indian flying foxes -- giant fruit bats that are widespread in South Asia. In \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2013/04/30/climatic-ori-nipah-virus/#.U3Y4gcYhsnA\">Malaysia\u003c/a> the bats infected domesticated pigs, which in turn infected their farmers. But the latest outbreaks have been in Bangladesh, where pigs are rare. A 2006 \u003ca href=\"http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/12/pdfs/06-0732.pdf\">study\u003c/a> by the CDC and other groups concluded that the Bangladesh outbreaks were caused by drinking contaminated date palm sap, a sugary syrup humans and bats both love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70513\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 270px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_5914.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70513 size-large\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_5914-270x360.jpg\" alt=\"Sap collectors slice into date palm trees with machetes, then hang clay pots to catch the sweet syrup that drips out. Bats drinking from the pot can contaminate the sap with Nipah virus. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\" width=\"270\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sap collectors slice into date palm trees with machetes, then hang clay pots to catch the sweet syrup that drips out. Bats drinking from the pots can contaminate the sap with Nipah virus. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Date palm sap is collected from tree trunks, like maple syrup: collectors tap the trees with machetes and let the syrup run into clay pots overnight. During the night, when the bats are out foraging, they find these pots, drink from them, and sometimes leave behind the Nipah virus in their saliva, urine, or feces. Cooking or fermenting the sap could destroy the virus, but in Bangladesh the sap is commonly sold raw at street markets, a practice the government \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/health/22global.html?_r=0\">banned\u003c/a> after a 2011 outbreak that killed 21 children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That law isn't enforced, though, especially in rural areas, and the sale of raw sap continues. The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control, and Research in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, \u003ca href=\"http://www.iedcr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106\">reported\u003c/a> 18 more cases before February 11 of this year. Patients usually show up with a fever, headache, and neurological symptoms like confusion and seizures. There isn’t much doctors can do beyond keeping them comfortable and helping them breathe once the disease spreads to their lungs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understanding which villages are most vulnerable to Nipah would facilitate more targeted prevention efforts, but the virus' geographic distribution was puzzling. Outbreaks seemed to be clustered around a strip of territory in central and northwestern Bangladesh that’s come to be called the “\u003ca href=\"http://www.icddrb.org/media-centre/news/1996-dealing-with-nipah-virus-how-low-cost-methods-may-save-lives-in-bangladesh\">Nipah belt\u003c/a>.” Population density is higher in the Nipah belt than outside it, and forest density is lower, but the bat population -- presumably the source of the outbreaks -- is the same. And even within the Nipah belt, some villages escaped the virus entirely when similar ones, with the same number of bats, had outbreaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the mystery that intrigued Micah Hahn, then a graduate student at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nelson.wisc.edu\">Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies\u003c/a> at UW-Madison. “Why here, but not there? How does the environment help determine who gets Nipah virus and who does not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To answer that question, Dr. Hahn and her colleagues combined high-tech remote-sensing techniques with low-tech door-to-door surveys. They also hung infrared cameras to monitor bats feeding at night. All this data enabled them to create a high-resolution map that compared the geographic distribution and density of people, bats, and trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70516\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 650px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_1099-e1400185366313.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70516\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_1099-e1400185366313-541x360.jpg\" alt=\"Bat roosts. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\" width=\"650\" height=\"432\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">During the day, fruit bats roost in colonies of hundreds. But surprisingly, just having a bat colony nearby doesn't necessarily increase the chance that Nipah virus will spill over to humans. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That led to the discovery of a surprising culprit: deforestation. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that Bangladesh has lost nearly three-quarters of its forest in the last 30 years as its population has expanded. In the Nipah belt, as Hahn explains in this \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCnL3aoNEAA\">video\u003c/a> from the Nelson Institute, what remains are small, uneven patches of forest instead of large swaths of jungle. The places where the forest is most fragmented are the places most vulnerable to Nipah virus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For every 10 percent reduction in tree cover at the sites in the Nipah belt where the bats were roosting, Hahn found that a nearby village was \u003cstrong>twice\u003c/strong> as likely to have an outbreak. Why? Even though there were the same number of bats in these fragmented forests as in thicker ones, Hahn observed that they “tended to settle in several small roosts scattered throughout the villages, rather than in one large roosting colony.” In areas where the human population density is high, like in the Nipah belt, Hahn speculates that this dispersion increases the likelihood that the bats will find human food sources. When bats and humans start sharing food, disease transmission becomes much more likely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70520\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 650px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IGP5159.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70520\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IGP5159-537x360.jpg\" alt=\"Date palm sap is collected in clay pots like these. Covering the pots with fabric to keep the bats out can prevent contaminationDate palm sap pots. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn. \" width=\"650\" height=\"435\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Date palm sap is collected in clay pots like these. Covering the pots with fabric to keep bats out can prevent contamination. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But Hahn is quick to point out that the bats themselves aren’t the problem. In fact, since bats help regenerate forest by strewing seeds all over their territory, they could be part of the solution. “This is not just about having bats,” she said. It’s a combination of bat behavior and human behavior that sparked the emergence of Nipah virus in Bangladesh. “The disease risk is a result of humans changing the landscape in ways that create opportunities for human/wildlife interactions,” Hahn said\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nipah virus isn’t the only disease whose spread is influenced by the way humans manage the landscape. In Uganda, replacing natural swamps with cropland increased the risk of malaria. Yellow fever, leishmaniasis, and Hantavirus have also been shown to behave differently when the landscape changes. Hahn’s research will help target Nipah prevention and surveillance efforts to the most vulnerable villages, but it’s also evidence that the consequences of reshaping our environment could be more complicated than we expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70514\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_0199-e1400184212923.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70514\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_0199-e1400184212923-551x360.jpg\" alt=\"When the forest is broken up into small patches with lots of holes in the canopy, bat and humans start to find food in the same areas. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\" width=\"650\" height=\"424\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When the forest is broken up into small patches and interspersed with human settlements, like it is in the Nipah belt, humans and bats can start sharing food sources. Bat-borne diseases are the result. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>New \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.wisc.edu/22356\">research\u003c/a> from the University of Wisconsin suggests that deforestation is promoting the spread of a disease called Nipah virus in Bangladesh. The virus has no cure, no vaccine -- and a mortality rate of more than 70 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Nipah virus first appeared in Malaysia in 1998, epidemiologists traced it back to Indian flying foxes -- giant fruit bats that are widespread in South Asia. In \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2013/04/30/climatic-ori-nipah-virus/#.U3Y4gcYhsnA\">Malaysia\u003c/a> the bats infected domesticated pigs, which in turn infected their farmers. But the latest outbreaks have been in Bangladesh, where pigs are rare. A 2006 \u003ca href=\"http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/12/pdfs/06-0732.pdf\">study\u003c/a> by the CDC and other groups concluded that the Bangladesh outbreaks were caused by drinking contaminated date palm sap, a sugary syrup humans and bats both love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70513\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 270px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_5914.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70513 size-large\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_5914-270x360.jpg\" alt=\"Sap collectors slice into date palm trees with machetes, then hang clay pots to catch the sweet syrup that drips out. Bats drinking from the pot can contaminate the sap with Nipah virus. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\" width=\"270\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sap collectors slice into date palm trees with machetes, then hang clay pots to catch the sweet syrup that drips out. Bats drinking from the pots can contaminate the sap with Nipah virus. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Date palm sap is collected from tree trunks, like maple syrup: collectors tap the trees with machetes and let the syrup run into clay pots overnight. During the night, when the bats are out foraging, they find these pots, drink from them, and sometimes leave behind the Nipah virus in their saliva, urine, or feces. Cooking or fermenting the sap could destroy the virus, but in Bangladesh the sap is commonly sold raw at street markets, a practice the government \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/health/22global.html?_r=0\">banned\u003c/a> after a 2011 outbreak that killed 21 children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That law isn't enforced, though, especially in rural areas, and the sale of raw sap continues. The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control, and Research in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, \u003ca href=\"http://www.iedcr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106\">reported\u003c/a> 18 more cases before February 11 of this year. Patients usually show up with a fever, headache, and neurological symptoms like confusion and seizures. There isn’t much doctors can do beyond keeping them comfortable and helping them breathe once the disease spreads to their lungs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understanding which villages are most vulnerable to Nipah would facilitate more targeted prevention efforts, but the virus' geographic distribution was puzzling. Outbreaks seemed to be clustered around a strip of territory in central and northwestern Bangladesh that’s come to be called the “\u003ca href=\"http://www.icddrb.org/media-centre/news/1996-dealing-with-nipah-virus-how-low-cost-methods-may-save-lives-in-bangladesh\">Nipah belt\u003c/a>.” Population density is higher in the Nipah belt than outside it, and forest density is lower, but the bat population -- presumably the source of the outbreaks -- is the same. And even within the Nipah belt, some villages escaped the virus entirely when similar ones, with the same number of bats, had outbreaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the mystery that intrigued Micah Hahn, then a graduate student at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nelson.wisc.edu\">Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies\u003c/a> at UW-Madison. “Why here, but not there? How does the environment help determine who gets Nipah virus and who does not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To answer that question, Dr. Hahn and her colleagues combined high-tech remote-sensing techniques with low-tech door-to-door surveys. They also hung infrared cameras to monitor bats feeding at night. All this data enabled them to create a high-resolution map that compared the geographic distribution and density of people, bats, and trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70516\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 650px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_1099-e1400185366313.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70516\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_1099-e1400185366313-541x360.jpg\" alt=\"Bat roosts. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\" width=\"650\" height=\"432\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">During the day, fruit bats roost in colonies of hundreds. But surprisingly, just having a bat colony nearby doesn't necessarily increase the chance that Nipah virus will spill over to humans. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That led to the discovery of a surprising culprit: deforestation. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that Bangladesh has lost nearly three-quarters of its forest in the last 30 years as its population has expanded. In the Nipah belt, as Hahn explains in this \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCnL3aoNEAA\">video\u003c/a> from the Nelson Institute, what remains are small, uneven patches of forest instead of large swaths of jungle. The places where the forest is most fragmented are the places most vulnerable to Nipah virus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For every 10 percent reduction in tree cover at the sites in the Nipah belt where the bats were roosting, Hahn found that a nearby village was \u003cstrong>twice\u003c/strong> as likely to have an outbreak. Why? Even though there were the same number of bats in these fragmented forests as in thicker ones, Hahn observed that they “tended to settle in several small roosts scattered throughout the villages, rather than in one large roosting colony.” In areas where the human population density is high, like in the Nipah belt, Hahn speculates that this dispersion increases the likelihood that the bats will find human food sources. When bats and humans start sharing food, disease transmission becomes much more likely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70520\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 650px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IGP5159.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70520\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IGP5159-537x360.jpg\" alt=\"Date palm sap is collected in clay pots like these. Covering the pots with fabric to keep the bats out can prevent contaminationDate palm sap pots. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn. \" width=\"650\" height=\"435\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Date palm sap is collected in clay pots like these. Covering the pots with fabric to keep bats out can prevent contamination. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But Hahn is quick to point out that the bats themselves aren’t the problem. In fact, since bats help regenerate forest by strewing seeds all over their territory, they could be part of the solution. “This is not just about having bats,” she said. It’s a combination of bat behavior and human behavior that sparked the emergence of Nipah virus in Bangladesh. “The disease risk is a result of humans changing the landscape in ways that create opportunities for human/wildlife interactions,” Hahn said\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nipah virus isn’t the only disease whose spread is influenced by the way humans manage the landscape. In Uganda, replacing natural swamps with cropland increased the risk of malaria. Yellow fever, leishmaniasis, and Hantavirus have also been shown to behave differently when the landscape changes. Hahn’s research will help target Nipah prevention and surveillance efforts to the most vulnerable villages, but it’s also evidence that the consequences of reshaping our environment could be more complicated than we expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_70514\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_0199-e1400184212923.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-70514\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2014/01/IMG_0199-e1400184212923-551x360.jpg\" alt=\"When the forest is broken up into small patches with lots of holes in the canopy, bat and humans start to find food in the same areas. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\" width=\"650\" height=\"424\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When the forest is broken up into small patches and interspersed with human settlements, like it is in the Nipah belt, humans and bats can start sharing food sources. Bat-borne diseases are the result. Photo courtesy of Micah Hahn.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "DNA 2.0: Adding Two Letters to Life’s Alphabet",
"headTitle": "DNA 2.0: Adding Two Letters to Life’s Alphabet | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17483\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/StainedGlassDNA.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17483\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17483\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/StainedGlassDNA.jpg\" alt=\"The DNA in this stained glass may need two new colors to represent two new bases. (Wikimedia Commons/Schutz)\" width=\"640\" height=\"328\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The DNA in this stained glass may need two new colors to represent two new bases. (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crick-stainedglass-gonville-caius.jpg\">Schutz\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Most everyone has heard of the A’s, G’s, C’s, and T’s of DNA. These four letters form the alphabet for the instructions for all life on the planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a group of scientists at Scripps in San Diego have taken the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13314.html\">first steps to adding two more letters\u003c/a>, d5SICS and dNaM, to this universal genetic code. No catchy single letter code for these unnatural bases yet though. Maybe S and N?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The big deal here isn’t that they have found some unnatural new bases they can add to DNA. These have been around for a decade or so. No what makes this astonishing is that a bacterium didn’t mind too much them being there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With a tweak that allowed the bacteria to take up the new bases, the researchers found that the bacteria happily copied the DNA containing these bases and passed them on to the next generation. And they did a pretty good job of it too. Despite a billions of years of optimizing everything for these four letters, the bacteria shrugged off the new ones and just kept going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, maybe shrugged off is a bit strong. The bacteria ran into problems if there were too many new letters in a row. But still, the mind boggles at the flexibility of the cellular machinery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17487\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 320px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/ET.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17487\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17487\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/ET.jpg\" alt=\"A first step towards having six base pairs in our DNA just like E.T. (Wikimedia Commons/Denis Bourez)\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A first step towards having six base pairs in our DNA just like E.T. (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denis_Bourez_-_Madame_Tussauds,_London_(8747016335).jpg\">Denis Bourez\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The next step will be to get the cell to read these new letters. Right now, they are copied but not understood. It’s akin to a medieval monk carefully copying Arabic text he doesn’t understand. This will not be easy to teach a cell but it is doable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is \u003ca href=\"http://www.dnalc.org/resources/3d/central-dogma.html\">complicated machinery\u003c/a> in a cell that allows it to read what’s written in DNA. Some of this will have to be redesigned so new words can be added to the cell’s dictionary, but this is a technical not a theoretical hurdle. With enough tinkering, it will get done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So now that we will finally have achieved E.T.’s biology (does anyone else remember he had six bases in his DNA?), the next question is whether this is worth it. Is this the best approach to rejiggering the genetic code? And can these types of changes improve on the current code?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>New Words vs. New Definitions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All life on Earth uses the same genetic code for its instructions. It’s a very simple language made up of 64 three-letter words made out of a four-letter alphabet. And it isn’t really even that complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 64 words of the language only have around 21 definitions or so. What this means is that a lot of the words have the exact same definition. For example, TAG, TAA, and TGA all mean the same thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The work here wants to expand the words of the code by adding new letters. All the words will still be three letters long (that is way too hard to change), but now instead of the usual 64 we could have up to 216 words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17489\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 275px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/GeneticCode275.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17489\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17489\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/GeneticCode275.jpg\" alt=\"Lots of room for making the language of life more complicated. (Wikimedia Commons/NIH)\" width=\"275\" height=\"241\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lots of room for making the language of life more complicated. (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:06_chart_pu3.gif\">NIH\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, since life isn’t getting its full bang for the buck with the 64 words it already has, we may not need such a huge expansion of life’s dictionary. Maybe a better approach is to simply give some of the old words new definitions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an example, maybe all the TAG’s could be changed into TAA’s and then TAG could be given a new definition. Now we can add something new without changing the alphabet. George Church’s lab is already doing this sort of thing in bacteria and is\u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news144\"> making real progress\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it is an open question which is the better approach. If your goal is to genetically engineer some protein with never before seen parts, the new letter approach might be easier. Since life doesn’t already have that word, you don’t need to change it in all of the bacterium’s genes. You would just need to do it in the piece of DNA you are working on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if you want to make a larger scale change, then it might be better to change the meaning of an old word. With enough changes, this approach gives the added bonus of being resistant to the viruses that use that old, natural genetic code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And of course the new letters aren’t just to form words. They make fundamentally new DNA that can be used by scientists to detect viral infections, make molecules that can better speed up reactions, be used as drugs, and probably lots and lots of other cool things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of these applications will be incredibly useful but probably aren’t the only driving force behind these experiments. No, the real reasons go much deeper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of these is undoubtedly a thirst to understand in detail how the current genetic code works. In the process of creating a new language, we will need to completely understand how the old one works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way we may even be able to improve on what Mother Nature has managed to cobble together with billions of years of evolution. After all, while DNA is a marvel, it is far from perfect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Good vs. Good Enough\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17492\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 257px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DNAbasePairs.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17492\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17492\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DNAbasePairs.jpg\" alt=\"Is this the best you can do Mother Nature? (Wikimedia Commons/Madprime)\" width=\"257\" height=\"299\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Is this the best you can do Mother Nature? (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DNA_chemical_structure.svg\">Madprime\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>DNA is a great little molecule. It is very stable which is important for storing information for the long haul. And because of its double stranded structure, it is very easily copied and passed on from generation to generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The key to this last point is base pairing. Every A pairs up with a T and vice versa. The same thing is true for G and C. This arrangement makes it easy to separate the two strands and make a copy by matching up these letters. (This was a key finding from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Structure_of_Nucleic_Acids:_A_Structure_for_Deoxyribose_Nucleic_Acid\">Watson and Crick’s original work\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is why these researchers had to add two new letters. The S and the N pair up with each other like the G and the C or the A and the T do. But the unnatural bases pair up in a different way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Natural bases use a fairly weak force called hydrogen bonds to line up with one another. Turns out this may not be ideal since water pretty easily disrupts these bonds and cells are filled with water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new bases use hydrophobic forces which are actually strengthened in the presence of water. This should stabilize the pairing of these bases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once scientists swap out a lot of a cell’s natural bases for unnatural ones, then maybe we can learn if the weak hydrogen bonds were actually a good idea or if they were the first thing that worked well all those eons ago and life has simply stuck with it. And this won’t be the only thing we might be able to improve upon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DNA has a few other properties that at first blush look like they could be improved upon. Scientists may be able to intelligently redesign life so that it has a sturdier and more reliable genetic code. Or it may be that none of our tweaks improves anything much at all. We’ll have to wait and see.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "For the last few billion years, all life has used just four letters to spell out its instructions. Now a group in San Diego has added two new letters.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17483\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/StainedGlassDNA.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17483\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17483\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/StainedGlassDNA.jpg\" alt=\"The DNA in this stained glass may need two new colors to represent two new bases. (Wikimedia Commons/Schutz)\" width=\"640\" height=\"328\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The DNA in this stained glass may need two new colors to represent two new bases. (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crick-stainedglass-gonville-caius.jpg\">Schutz\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Most everyone has heard of the A’s, G’s, C’s, and T’s of DNA. These four letters form the alphabet for the instructions for all life on the planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a group of scientists at Scripps in San Diego have taken the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13314.html\">first steps to adding two more letters\u003c/a>, d5SICS and dNaM, to this universal genetic code. No catchy single letter code for these unnatural bases yet though. Maybe S and N?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The big deal here isn’t that they have found some unnatural new bases they can add to DNA. These have been around for a decade or so. No what makes this astonishing is that a bacterium didn’t mind too much them being there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With a tweak that allowed the bacteria to take up the new bases, the researchers found that the bacteria happily copied the DNA containing these bases and passed them on to the next generation. And they did a pretty good job of it too. Despite a billions of years of optimizing everything for these four letters, the bacteria shrugged off the new ones and just kept going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, maybe shrugged off is a bit strong. The bacteria ran into problems if there were too many new letters in a row. But still, the mind boggles at the flexibility of the cellular machinery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17487\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 320px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/ET.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17487\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17487\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/ET.jpg\" alt=\"A first step towards having six base pairs in our DNA just like E.T. (Wikimedia Commons/Denis Bourez)\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A first step towards having six base pairs in our DNA just like E.T. (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denis_Bourez_-_Madame_Tussauds,_London_(8747016335).jpg\">Denis Bourez\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The next step will be to get the cell to read these new letters. Right now, they are copied but not understood. It’s akin to a medieval monk carefully copying Arabic text he doesn’t understand. This will not be easy to teach a cell but it is doable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is \u003ca href=\"http://www.dnalc.org/resources/3d/central-dogma.html\">complicated machinery\u003c/a> in a cell that allows it to read what’s written in DNA. Some of this will have to be redesigned so new words can be added to the cell’s dictionary, but this is a technical not a theoretical hurdle. With enough tinkering, it will get done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So now that we will finally have achieved E.T.’s biology (does anyone else remember he had six bases in his DNA?), the next question is whether this is worth it. Is this the best approach to rejiggering the genetic code? And can these types of changes improve on the current code?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>New Words vs. New Definitions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All life on Earth uses the same genetic code for its instructions. It’s a very simple language made up of 64 three-letter words made out of a four-letter alphabet. And it isn’t really even that complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 64 words of the language only have around 21 definitions or so. What this means is that a lot of the words have the exact same definition. For example, TAG, TAA, and TGA all mean the same thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The work here wants to expand the words of the code by adding new letters. All the words will still be three letters long (that is way too hard to change), but now instead of the usual 64 we could have up to 216 words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17489\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 275px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/GeneticCode275.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17489\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17489\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/GeneticCode275.jpg\" alt=\"Lots of room for making the language of life more complicated. (Wikimedia Commons/NIH)\" width=\"275\" height=\"241\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lots of room for making the language of life more complicated. (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:06_chart_pu3.gif\">NIH\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, since life isn’t getting its full bang for the buck with the 64 words it already has, we may not need such a huge expansion of life’s dictionary. Maybe a better approach is to simply give some of the old words new definitions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an example, maybe all the TAG’s could be changed into TAA’s and then TAG could be given a new definition. Now we can add something new without changing the alphabet. George Church’s lab is already doing this sort of thing in bacteria and is\u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news144\"> making real progress\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it is an open question which is the better approach. If your goal is to genetically engineer some protein with never before seen parts, the new letter approach might be easier. Since life doesn’t already have that word, you don’t need to change it in all of the bacterium’s genes. You would just need to do it in the piece of DNA you are working on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if you want to make a larger scale change, then it might be better to change the meaning of an old word. With enough changes, this approach gives the added bonus of being resistant to the viruses that use that old, natural genetic code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And of course the new letters aren’t just to form words. They make fundamentally new DNA that can be used by scientists to detect viral infections, make molecules that can better speed up reactions, be used as drugs, and probably lots and lots of other cool things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of these applications will be incredibly useful but probably aren’t the only driving force behind these experiments. No, the real reasons go much deeper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of these is undoubtedly a thirst to understand in detail how the current genetic code works. In the process of creating a new language, we will need to completely understand how the old one works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way we may even be able to improve on what Mother Nature has managed to cobble together with billions of years of evolution. After all, while DNA is a marvel, it is far from perfect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Good vs. Good Enough\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17492\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 257px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DNAbasePairs.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17492\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17492\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DNAbasePairs.jpg\" alt=\"Is this the best you can do Mother Nature? (Wikimedia Commons/Madprime)\" width=\"257\" height=\"299\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Is this the best you can do Mother Nature? (Wikimedia Commons/\u003ca class=\"nofancybox\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DNA_chemical_structure.svg\">Madprime\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>DNA is a great little molecule. It is very stable which is important for storing information for the long haul. And because of its double stranded structure, it is very easily copied and passed on from generation to generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The key to this last point is base pairing. Every A pairs up with a T and vice versa. The same thing is true for G and C. This arrangement makes it easy to separate the two strands and make a copy by matching up these letters. (This was a key finding from \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Structure_of_Nucleic_Acids:_A_Structure_for_Deoxyribose_Nucleic_Acid\">Watson and Crick’s original work\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is why these researchers had to add two new letters. The S and the N pair up with each other like the G and the C or the A and the T do. But the unnatural bases pair up in a different way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Natural bases use a fairly weak force called hydrogen bonds to line up with one another. Turns out this may not be ideal since water pretty easily disrupts these bonds and cells are filled with water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new bases use hydrophobic forces which are actually strengthened in the presence of water. This should stabilize the pairing of these bases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once scientists swap out a lot of a cell’s natural bases for unnatural ones, then maybe we can learn if the weak hydrogen bonds were actually a good idea or if they were the first thing that worked well all those eons ago and life has simply stuck with it. And this won’t be the only thing we might be able to improve upon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DNA has a few other properties that at first blush look like they could be improved upon. Scientists may be able to intelligently redesign life so that it has a sturdier and more reliable genetic code. Or it may be that none of our tweaks improves anything much at all. We’ll have to wait and see.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "For San Francisco Bone Collector, Skulls Are a Lifelong Love Affair",
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"content": "\u003cp>[UPDATE: Ray Bandar passed away in late December, 2017. His work lives on at the California Academy of Sciences.]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are hobbies and then there are lifelong passions. Ray Bandar’s passion is finding and cleaning skulls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For six decades, Bandar has been making a quiet contribution to science, harvesting the bones of dead animals on the California coast and amassing an impressive collection of skulls. On Friday the \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/\">California Academy of Sciences\u003c/a> in San Francisco is opening a \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/academy/exhibits/skulls/\">new exhibit of skulls\u003c/a> that features his work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar keeps his own collection in the basement of his San Francisco home. The “bone palace,” as he calls it, holds close to 7,000 skulls and skeletons, stacked floor to ceiling. He organizes the shelves by species, including seals, sea lions, leopards, cheetahs, horses, zebras, giraffes and dolphins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is largest animal that lives and breeds in California,” Bandar says, holding up an elephant seal skull. “That’s an adult female.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar is a spritely 86-year-old with an encyclopedic knowledge of the bones. “Sixty years at Ocean Beach, I’ve been decapitating dead marine mammals,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17387\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01301-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17387 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01301.jpg\" alt='Ray \"Bones\" Bandar has spent six decades finding and cleaning animal bones. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)' width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ray ‘Bones’ Bandar has spent six decades finding dead animals and preparing their bones. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For most of his life, Bandar searched local beaches for dead sea lions and seals and removed the heads. As a volunteer with the California Academy of Sciences, he worked under its scientific collection permit from the state. The more exotic animals in his collection came from local zoos after the animals died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cleaning skulls is not for the faint of heart. “I remove as much flesh as possible,” he says. “Put them in bucket of water. Put them in a warm spot and leave it to sit there for weeks and the bacterial action removes all the organic material.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar’s fascination with the natural world began as a kid growing up in San Francisco, when he collected snakes and frogs in Golden Gate Park and donated them to the Steinhart Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He collected his first skull in his twenties, dragging the head of a harbor seal back to his parents’ house — on public transportation. He says he wondered to himself how he could get the meat off. “So I put it in a big pot. Said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll boil it.’ And boy did it stink up the house. When my parents came home, they weren’t too happy about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17390\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement1-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17390 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement1.jpg\" alt=\"Bandar has almost 7,000 skulls and skeletons in his San Francisco basement\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">There are almost 7,000 skulls and skeletons in Bandar’s San Francisco basement. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Bandar attracted crowds of beachgoers as he harvested skulls. Occasionally, he attracted suspicion, like the time in Half Moon Bay when he was working on a 14-foot elephant seal carcass in front of the Ritz-Carlton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m sitting on his neck, cutting away, trying to sever the skull from the torso,” he recalls. “And I turn around and standing on the beach is three cops.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The policemen eyed Bandar’s ratty field jacket, covered in rotting flesh. They’d gotten a number of phone calls, Bandar says. “More than one call is, ‘There’s this homeless guy. He’s trying to eat this dead elephant seal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar’s wife of 60 years doesn’t mind his hobby. The two of them met in art school. On their honeymoon to New York City, they fell in love with the bone displays at the American Museum of Natural History.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vertebrae hang next to his wife’s paintings in their living room. “To me,” Bandar says, “they’re beautiful pieces of sculpture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17391\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement7-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17391 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement7.jpg\" alt=\"Bandar would often attract crowds of beachgoers as he worked, as well as the police. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bandar would often attract crowds of beachgoers as he worked, as well as, occasionally, the police. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bandar went on to teach biology for 32 years at Fremont High School in East Oakland, where dissection was a big part of the curriculum. “Even in medical school, the students do not get what they got in my classroom,” he says. “I still hear from my students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar retired from collecting specimens last summer. The skulls in his basement will eventually go to the California Academy of Sciences, where his work will comprise one-fifth of the museum’s ornithology and mammalogy collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Academy’s collection of skulls teaches the public, including thousands of school children who come to the museum each year, about wildlife and the natural world. One of the Academy’s collectors is curatorial assistant Sue Pemberton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the specimen preparation room, Pemberton describes the work she has in progress. “You’ll see over on the left here I have a young elephant seal skull,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The skull is crawling with dermestid beetles, which specialize in eating dead flesh. Pemberton uses them to clean skulls for the collection. She also uses large buckets of water, the same method Bandar employs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pemberton pulls a harbor seal skull out of a bucket, and a putrid odor fills the air. “Smells like the worst outhouse you can ever be in,” she says. “But that’s how it works. Everything kind of breaks down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17395\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01243-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17395 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01243.jpg\" alt=\"Dermestid beetles clean a young elephant seal skull at the California Academy of Sciences. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dermestid beetles clean the flesh off a young elephant seal skull at the California Academy of Sciences. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The skulls also help scientists learn how marine mammals are doing off the California coast. The bones reveal if the animals were sick and what they ate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pulls out a southern sea otter skull to illustrate. “Here you can see what color the teeth are. Bright purple, like the-color-of-grape-juice purple.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The otter stained its teeth eating purple sea urchins. Other sea otters have completely different diets, which they learn from their mothers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pemberton heads out to the beach whenever a report comes in of a dead animal; she’s part of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/networks.htm#westcoast\">Marine Mammal Stranding Network\u003c/a>, a group of wildlife centers and museums that responds to reports. Her whale kit is ready to go on the table: a dozen steak knives and an ax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17396\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01248-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17396 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01248.jpg\" alt=\"A southern sea otter skull has purple teeth, stained from the sea urchins that made up its diet. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A southern sea otter skull with purple teeth, stained from the sea urchins that made up its diet. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Sometimes there’s a blubber layer that’s two feet thick,” she says. “So you’re having to get through that to get to what you think might be the cause of death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pemberton and others have documented cases where ship strikes killed whales off the coast. The data actually helped change policy. Last year, federal officials \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/06/04/san-francisco-bay-shipping-lanes-narrowed-to-protect-whales/\">put in new speed limits\u003c/a> for cargo ships coming into San Francisco Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s what you think about when you’re elbow-deep in rotted, dead whales,” she says. “And it’s not pleasant by any stretch. But to know that it’s actually helping with the conservation and protection of all the whales that come after that, it makes all really worthwhile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Academy’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/academy/exhibits/skulls/\">exhibit of skulls\u003c/a>, featuring Ray Bandar’s work, opens to the public on May 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17401\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01268-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17401 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01268.jpg\" alt=\"DSC01268\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A box of monkey skulls in Bandar’s collection, with room for more. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences opens a skull exhibit this week, featuring the work of Ray Bandar, a man who has devoted 60 years to cleaning the skulls and bones of some of California's most beloved animals.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>[UPDATE: Ray Bandar passed away in late December, 2017. His work lives on at the California Academy of Sciences.]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are hobbies and then there are lifelong passions. Ray Bandar’s passion is finding and cleaning skulls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For six decades, Bandar has been making a quiet contribution to science, harvesting the bones of dead animals on the California coast and amassing an impressive collection of skulls. On Friday the \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/\">California Academy of Sciences\u003c/a> in San Francisco is opening a \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/academy/exhibits/skulls/\">new exhibit of skulls\u003c/a> that features his work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar keeps his own collection in the basement of his San Francisco home. The “bone palace,” as he calls it, holds close to 7,000 skulls and skeletons, stacked floor to ceiling. He organizes the shelves by species, including seals, sea lions, leopards, cheetahs, horses, zebras, giraffes and dolphins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is largest animal that lives and breeds in California,” Bandar says, holding up an elephant seal skull. “That’s an adult female.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar is a spritely 86-year-old with an encyclopedic knowledge of the bones. “Sixty years at Ocean Beach, I’ve been decapitating dead marine mammals,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17387\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01301-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17387 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01301.jpg\" alt='Ray \"Bones\" Bandar has spent six decades finding and cleaning animal bones. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)' width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ray ‘Bones’ Bandar has spent six decades finding dead animals and preparing their bones. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For most of his life, Bandar searched local beaches for dead sea lions and seals and removed the heads. As a volunteer with the California Academy of Sciences, he worked under its scientific collection permit from the state. The more exotic animals in his collection came from local zoos after the animals died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cleaning skulls is not for the faint of heart. “I remove as much flesh as possible,” he says. “Put them in bucket of water. Put them in a warm spot and leave it to sit there for weeks and the bacterial action removes all the organic material.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar’s fascination with the natural world began as a kid growing up in San Francisco, when he collected snakes and frogs in Golden Gate Park and donated them to the Steinhart Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He collected his first skull in his twenties, dragging the head of a harbor seal back to his parents’ house — on public transportation. He says he wondered to himself how he could get the meat off. “So I put it in a big pot. Said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll boil it.’ And boy did it stink up the house. When my parents came home, they weren’t too happy about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17390\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement1-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17390 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement1.jpg\" alt=\"Bandar has almost 7,000 skulls and skeletons in his San Francisco basement\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">There are almost 7,000 skulls and skeletons in Bandar’s San Francisco basement. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Bandar attracted crowds of beachgoers as he harvested skulls. Occasionally, he attracted suspicion, like the time in Half Moon Bay when he was working on a 14-foot elephant seal carcass in front of the Ritz-Carlton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m sitting on his neck, cutting away, trying to sever the skull from the torso,” he recalls. “And I turn around and standing on the beach is three cops.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The policemen eyed Bandar’s ratty field jacket, covered in rotting flesh. They’d gotten a number of phone calls, Bandar says. “More than one call is, ‘There’s this homeless guy. He’s trying to eat this dead elephant seal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar’s wife of 60 years doesn’t mind his hobby. The two of them met in art school. On their honeymoon to New York City, they fell in love with the bone displays at the American Museum of Natural History.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vertebrae hang next to his wife’s paintings in their living room. “To me,” Bandar says, “they’re beautiful pieces of sculpture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17391\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement7-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17391 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Basement7.jpg\" alt=\"Bandar would often attract crowds of beachgoers as he worked, as well as the police. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bandar would often attract crowds of beachgoers as he worked, as well as, occasionally, the police. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bandar went on to teach biology for 32 years at Fremont High School in East Oakland, where dissection was a big part of the curriculum. “Even in medical school, the students do not get what they got in my classroom,” he says. “I still hear from my students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bandar retired from collecting specimens last summer. The skulls in his basement will eventually go to the California Academy of Sciences, where his work will comprise one-fifth of the museum’s ornithology and mammalogy collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Academy’s collection of skulls teaches the public, including thousands of school children who come to the museum each year, about wildlife and the natural world. One of the Academy’s collectors is curatorial assistant Sue Pemberton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the specimen preparation room, Pemberton describes the work she has in progress. “You’ll see over on the left here I have a young elephant seal skull,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The skull is crawling with dermestid beetles, which specialize in eating dead flesh. Pemberton uses them to clean skulls for the collection. She also uses large buckets of water, the same method Bandar employs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pemberton pulls a harbor seal skull out of a bucket, and a putrid odor fills the air. “Smells like the worst outhouse you can ever be in,” she says. “But that’s how it works. Everything kind of breaks down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17395\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01243-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17395 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01243.jpg\" alt=\"Dermestid beetles clean a young elephant seal skull at the California Academy of Sciences. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dermestid beetles clean the flesh off a young elephant seal skull at the California Academy of Sciences. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The skulls also help scientists learn how marine mammals are doing off the California coast. The bones reveal if the animals were sick and what they ate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pulls out a southern sea otter skull to illustrate. “Here you can see what color the teeth are. Bright purple, like the-color-of-grape-juice purple.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The otter stained its teeth eating purple sea urchins. Other sea otters have completely different diets, which they learn from their mothers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pemberton heads out to the beach whenever a report comes in of a dead animal; she’s part of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/networks.htm#westcoast\">Marine Mammal Stranding Network\u003c/a>, a group of wildlife centers and museums that responds to reports. Her whale kit is ready to go on the table: a dozen steak knives and an ax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17396\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01248-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17396 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01248.jpg\" alt=\"A southern sea otter skull has purple teeth, stained from the sea urchins that made up its diet. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A southern sea otter skull with purple teeth, stained from the sea urchins that made up its diet. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Sometimes there’s a blubber layer that’s two feet thick,” she says. “So you’re having to get through that to get to what you think might be the cause of death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pemberton and others have documented cases where ship strikes killed whales off the coast. The data actually helped change policy. Last year, federal officials \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/06/04/san-francisco-bay-shipping-lanes-narrowed-to-protect-whales/\">put in new speed limits\u003c/a> for cargo ships coming into San Francisco Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s what you think about when you’re elbow-deep in rotted, dead whales,” she says. “And it’s not pleasant by any stretch. But to know that it’s actually helping with the conservation and protection of all the whales that come after that, it makes all really worthwhile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Academy’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/academy/exhibits/skulls/\">exhibit of skulls\u003c/a>, featuring Ray Bandar’s work, opens to the public on May 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17401\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01268-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17401 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DSC01268.jpg\" alt=\"DSC01268\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A box of monkey skulls in Bandar’s collection, with room for more. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Local and Migratory Birds Mingle in the Bay Area During Spring",
"headTitle": "Local and Migratory Birds Mingle in the Bay Area During Spring | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17343\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/photo2-1024x765.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17343\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17343\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/photo2-1024x765.jpg\" alt=\"Birders gathered for a recent celebration of International Migratory Bird Week at MLK, Jr. Regional Shoreline.\" width=\"640\" height=\"478\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Birders gathered for a recent celebration of International Migratory Bird Week at MLK, Jr. Regional Shoreline. (East Bay Regional Park District)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Our merry group of bird watchers gathered in the early morning, binoculars and bird books in hand, to explore the habitats along San Francisco Bay at Crown Beach. The beginning of May is a wonderful time to go bird watching with lingering winter birds and the arrival of neotropical migrants – birds that flew south for the winter and have returned to the Bay Area for summer – and local species all in the same area for a brief time. We checked three habitats over the course of our walk: a rocky shoreline, a brackish water pond and the mudflats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17344\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/640px-Black-crowned_Night-heron-216x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17344\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17344\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/640px-Black-crowned_Night-heron-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"Spectacular Black-crowned Night-herons are year round residents in the Bay Area. (Mike Baird/Wikimedia)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Spectacular Black-crowned night-herons are year round residents in the Bay Area. (\u003ca title=\"Black-crowned Night-heron by Mike Baird\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black-crowned_Night-heron.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">Mike Baird/Wikimedia\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The rocky shoreline was much quieter than a month ago, with most of the shorebirds departed for their nesting grounds to the far north. A \u003ca title=\"Black Oystercatcher, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black_Oystercatcher/id\">black oystercatcher\u003c/a> with its impressive thick orange beak and jet-black body put in an appearance along with a \u003ca title=\"Spotted Sandpiper, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/spotted_sandpiper/id\">spotted sandpiper\u003c/a>. The oystercatcher stays in the same area year round with a strong, monogamous pair bond and often nests in the same place year after year. The spotted sandpiper is unusual in the shorebird world for its polyandry – females choose and defend territory and compete for multiple males who will then incubate and raise the chicks alone. Their nesting grounds are to the north and east of the Bay Area mostly in mountains near lakes and streams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shoreline resounded with the raucous calls of Forster’s terns and a couple of \u003ca title=\"Least Tern, KQED QUEST article\" href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/05/25/its-summer-vacation-time-for-the-california-least-tern/\">California least terns\u003c/a>. These two species, along with the larger Caspian tern, all nest in colonies primarily on islands in the bay. There’s safety in numbers, with flocks of adults ready to defend their eggs and chicks from predators such as gulls and raptors. The least terns, an endangered species, have their largest, northern-most nesting colony at the north end of Alameda behind locked gates on the former Naval Air Station’s runway. There’s another colony of least terns in Hayward, on East Bay Regional Parks land, that’s monitored by our Stewardship department and a dedicated group of volunteers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the pond, bird life abounded with two new sets of mallard ducklings paddling close to their parents and \u003ca title=\"Red-winged Blackbird, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-winged_Blackbird/id%20\">red-winged blackbirds\u003c/a> building nests in the thick cattails. Skulking around the edges of the ponds, two magnificent \u003ca title=\"Black-crowned Night-heron, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black-crowned_night-heron/id\">Black-crowned Night-herons\u003c/a> were actively hunting the ducklings, though we didn’t observe any success that morning. Swimming with the mallards were two ducks that provided some identification fun as we narrowed them down to the species, \u003ca title=\"Gadwall, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/gadwall/id\">Gadwall\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17345\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 194px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/720px-Dunlin_in_the_surf-194x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17345\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17345\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/720px-Dunlin_in_the_surf-194x162.jpg\" alt=\"For a brief few weeks, we get to see shorebirds like these Dunlin in their breeding plumage rather than their drab winter wear. (John Beetham/Wikimedia)\" width=\"194\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For a brief few weeks, we get to see shorebirds like these Dunlin in their breeding plumage rather than their drab winter wear. (\u003ca title=\"Dunlin in the Surf by John Beetham\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunlin_in_the_surf.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">John Beetham/Wikimedia\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As we wound up our walk for the morning, with \u003ca title=\"Chestnut-backed Chickadee, All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Chestnut-backed_Chickadee/id\">chestnut-backed chickadees\u003c/a> and a \u003ca title=\"Red-breasted Nuthatch, All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-breasted_nuthatch/lifehistory\">red-breasted nuthatch\u003c/a> searching the branches of a failing Monterey pine near the shoreline, we found a few shorebirds working the mudflats. With the tide receding, they were feeding, packing on a few more ounces before their nighttime flight north to their breeding grounds. The small flock contained \u003ca title=\"Dunlin, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/dunlin/id\">dunlin\u003c/a> in their fancy breeding plumage with black belly patches and rufous backs, Western sandpipers and sanderlings. They’ll all be winging away soon for the summer to return again in August. One of the amazing things about these shorebirds is that, for many species, the adults return before the fledged chicks. The chicks are left on the nesting grounds to keep feeding and fly on their own to winter grounds they’ve never been to before, sometimes thousands of miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Bay has international significance as a habitat for shorebird survival with designation as a site of hemispheric importance, along with identification as a \u003ca title=\"Ramsar Site, San Francisco Bay 02 2013\" href=\"http://ramsar.wetlands.org/Database/SearchforRamsarsites/tabid/765/Default.aspx\">RAMSAR\u003c/a> site in 2013. We’re fortunate to have it as our “backyard.” I hope you’ll get out and explore soon so you can appreciate our amazing, cosmopolitan yet species-rich area. Check \u003ca title=\"East Bay Regional Parks, activities\" href=\"http://www.ebparks.org/activities\">EBRPD’s website\u003c/a> or the local \u003ca title=\"Golden Gate Audubon Society\" href=\"http://www.goldengateaudubon.org/about-us/\">Audubon Society\u003c/a> to find a birding group to join, or just scan your local park or backyard to meet your wild feathered neighbors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The beginning of May is a wonderful time to go bird watching in the Bay Area, with lingering winter birds, neotropical migrants and local species all in the same region for a brief time.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17343\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/photo2-1024x765.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17343\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17343\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/photo2-1024x765.jpg\" alt=\"Birders gathered for a recent celebration of International Migratory Bird Week at MLK, Jr. Regional Shoreline.\" width=\"640\" height=\"478\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Birders gathered for a recent celebration of International Migratory Bird Week at MLK, Jr. Regional Shoreline. (East Bay Regional Park District)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Our merry group of bird watchers gathered in the early morning, binoculars and bird books in hand, to explore the habitats along San Francisco Bay at Crown Beach. The beginning of May is a wonderful time to go bird watching with lingering winter birds and the arrival of neotropical migrants – birds that flew south for the winter and have returned to the Bay Area for summer – and local species all in the same area for a brief time. We checked three habitats over the course of our walk: a rocky shoreline, a brackish water pond and the mudflats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17344\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/640px-Black-crowned_Night-heron-216x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17344\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17344\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/640px-Black-crowned_Night-heron-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"Spectacular Black-crowned Night-herons are year round residents in the Bay Area. (Mike Baird/Wikimedia)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Spectacular Black-crowned night-herons are year round residents in the Bay Area. (\u003ca title=\"Black-crowned Night-heron by Mike Baird\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black-crowned_Night-heron.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">Mike Baird/Wikimedia\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The rocky shoreline was much quieter than a month ago, with most of the shorebirds departed for their nesting grounds to the far north. A \u003ca title=\"Black Oystercatcher, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black_Oystercatcher/id\">black oystercatcher\u003c/a> with its impressive thick orange beak and jet-black body put in an appearance along with a \u003ca title=\"Spotted Sandpiper, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/spotted_sandpiper/id\">spotted sandpiper\u003c/a>. The oystercatcher stays in the same area year round with a strong, monogamous pair bond and often nests in the same place year after year. The spotted sandpiper is unusual in the shorebird world for its polyandry – females choose and defend territory and compete for multiple males who will then incubate and raise the chicks alone. Their nesting grounds are to the north and east of the Bay Area mostly in mountains near lakes and streams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shoreline resounded with the raucous calls of Forster’s terns and a couple of \u003ca title=\"Least Tern, KQED QUEST article\" href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/05/25/its-summer-vacation-time-for-the-california-least-tern/\">California least terns\u003c/a>. These two species, along with the larger Caspian tern, all nest in colonies primarily on islands in the bay. There’s safety in numbers, with flocks of adults ready to defend their eggs and chicks from predators such as gulls and raptors. The least terns, an endangered species, have their largest, northern-most nesting colony at the north end of Alameda behind locked gates on the former Naval Air Station’s runway. There’s another colony of least terns in Hayward, on East Bay Regional Parks land, that’s monitored by our Stewardship department and a dedicated group of volunteers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the pond, bird life abounded with two new sets of mallard ducklings paddling close to their parents and \u003ca title=\"Red-winged Blackbird, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-winged_Blackbird/id%20\">red-winged blackbirds\u003c/a> building nests in the thick cattails. Skulking around the edges of the ponds, two magnificent \u003ca title=\"Black-crowned Night-heron, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black-crowned_night-heron/id\">Black-crowned Night-herons\u003c/a> were actively hunting the ducklings, though we didn’t observe any success that morning. Swimming with the mallards were two ducks that provided some identification fun as we narrowed them down to the species, \u003ca title=\"Gadwall, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/gadwall/id\">Gadwall\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17345\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 194px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/720px-Dunlin_in_the_surf-194x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17345\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17345\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/720px-Dunlin_in_the_surf-194x162.jpg\" alt=\"For a brief few weeks, we get to see shorebirds like these Dunlin in their breeding plumage rather than their drab winter wear. (John Beetham/Wikimedia)\" width=\"194\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For a brief few weeks, we get to see shorebirds like these Dunlin in their breeding plumage rather than their drab winter wear. (\u003ca title=\"Dunlin in the Surf by John Beetham\" href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunlin_in_the_surf.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">John Beetham/Wikimedia\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As we wound up our walk for the morning, with \u003ca title=\"Chestnut-backed Chickadee, All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Chestnut-backed_Chickadee/id\">chestnut-backed chickadees\u003c/a> and a \u003ca title=\"Red-breasted Nuthatch, All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-breasted_nuthatch/lifehistory\">red-breasted nuthatch\u003c/a> searching the branches of a failing Monterey pine near the shoreline, we found a few shorebirds working the mudflats. With the tide receding, they were feeding, packing on a few more ounces before their nighttime flight north to their breeding grounds. The small flock contained \u003ca title=\"Dunlin, Cornell All About Birds\" href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/dunlin/id\">dunlin\u003c/a> in their fancy breeding plumage with black belly patches and rufous backs, Western sandpipers and sanderlings. They’ll all be winging away soon for the summer to return again in August. One of the amazing things about these shorebirds is that, for many species, the adults return before the fledged chicks. The chicks are left on the nesting grounds to keep feeding and fly on their own to winter grounds they’ve never been to before, sometimes thousands of miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Bay has international significance as a habitat for shorebird survival with designation as a site of hemispheric importance, along with identification as a \u003ca title=\"Ramsar Site, San Francisco Bay 02 2013\" href=\"http://ramsar.wetlands.org/Database/SearchforRamsarsites/tabid/765/Default.aspx\">RAMSAR\u003c/a> site in 2013. We’re fortunate to have it as our “backyard.” I hope you’ll get out and explore soon so you can appreciate our amazing, cosmopolitan yet species-rich area. Check \u003ca title=\"East Bay Regional Parks, activities\" href=\"http://www.ebparks.org/activities\">EBRPD’s website\u003c/a> or the local \u003ca title=\"Golden Gate Audubon Society\" href=\"http://www.goldengateaudubon.org/about-us/\">Audubon Society\u003c/a> to find a birding group to join, or just scan your local park or backyard to meet your wild feathered neighbors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Surprising Amount of Neanderthal DNA Still Evident in Modern European and Asian Populations",
"headTitle": "Surprising Amount of Neanderthal DNA Still Evident in Modern European and Asian Populations | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17099\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/NandertalFamily.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/NandertalFamily.jpg\" alt=\"Neanderthals may be extinct but at least 20-40% of their DNA lives on in modern humans. (Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17099\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neanderthals may be extinct but at least 20-40% of their DNA lives on in modern humans. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neanderthals_-_Artist's_rendition_of_Earth_approximately_60,000_years_ago.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA/Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back in 2010, Svante Pääbo’s group from the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany published the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20448178\">first big chunk of Neanderthal DNA\u003c/a>. This was a big deal, because it was the first time so much ancient DNA had been sequenced so completely and what they found when they compared this DNA to that of modern humans. It became pretty obvious early on that everyone except Africans shared around 2% of their DNA with Neanderthals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The simplest (although by no means only) explanation for this result is that humans and Neanderthals had babies together before Neanderthals went extinct. Based on this idea, scientists in two separate studies (\u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24476670\">here \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24476815\">here\u003c/a>) searched the DNA of over 1,000 modern humans to find what Neanderthal DNA still lurks in non-African DNA today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These scientists found that 20-40% of Neanderthal DNA is still hanging out somewhere in these folks’ DNA. That is a whole lot of DNA that’s still around after tens of thousands of years!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A close look at this Neanderthal DNA suggested that some of the DNA stayed because it gave the hybrids an advantage. It also suggested that the hybrids had trouble having kids. Neanderthal DNA giveth and it taketh away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Better at Surviving in Europe, Worse Fertility\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neanderthals arrived in Europe and Asia hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans did. This gave Neanderthals plenty of time to adapt to the cold and to all of the bacteria, viruses and so on that they had to live with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17103\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 320px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/EastFrisia.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17103\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17103\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/EastFrisia.jpg\" alt=\"Neanderthals had time to adapt to chilly northern Europe and Asia and kindly contributed genes to help humans survive when they moved there. (Wikimedia Commons/pixelfehler/Matthias Süßen)\" width=\"320\" height=\"236\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neanderthals had time to adapt to chilly northern Europe and Asia and kindly contributed genes to help humans survive when they moved there. (Wikimedia Commons/pixelfehler/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nebelostfriesland.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">Matthias Süßen\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When modern humans ventured out of Africa all those years later, they were undoubtedly assaulted by a range of bacteria and viruses they had never seen before (think \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html\">smallpox in the New World\u003c/a>). One way to survive the onslaught would be to have kids with the locals who had already adapted. Sure, you might still have problems, but your kids would definitely do better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you look at the Neanderthal DNA that has survived, you see \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21868630\">a whole lot of immune genes\u003c/a>. (The same is true for another ancestor, the \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2011/01/17/meet-our-newest-relative/\">Denisovans\u003c/a>.) This strongly suggests that interbreeding gave the hybrids the immune genes they needed to survive in this new environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You also see a lot of genes that have to do with skin and hair (keratinocyte genes). Although not yet proven, one idea is that some modern humans still have these because they helped them deal with the cold of the northern parts of Asia and Europe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There has also been a\u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24336922\"> recent study\u003c/a> that suggests that a bit of Neanderthal DNA that helps deal with ultraviolet light is very common in East Asians. This makes sense given the lighter skin needed to \u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask330\">get vitamin D up north\u003c/a>. And scientists keep finding more genes like this (click \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24690587\">here \u003c/a>for one dealing with fat metabolism in Europeans).\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Neanderthal DNA giveth and it taketh away\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Of course nothing in life is free. If you are going to breed with Neanderthals, you are probably going to have some problems too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you look for Neanderthal DNA in human DNA, you quickly realize that there is hardly any of it on the chromosomes that determine gender, the X and the Y. When this sort of thing is seen in the lab with fruit flies, it comes from something called hybrid sterility. Basically while humans and Neanderthals weren’t quite horses and donkeys, they were close. In other words, the hybrid kids weren’t sterile but they may have had trouble having kids themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken together these results suggest that the interbreeding of humans and Neanderthals gave enough useful traits to overcome the lowered fertility. Of course this assumes that Neanderthals and humans did have kids together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ancient vs. “Recent” Mingling\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results showing Neanderthal DNA in some modern human DNA does not necessarily mean the two had kids together when modern humans left Africa. Another less likely but plausible possibility is that the similarity between non-Africans and Neanderthals has to do with them having common ancestors a bit different from those of modern Africans. Both have human ancestors they just come from different gene pools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17107\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Africa.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17107\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17107\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Africa.jpg\" alt=\"Scientists may soon be able to pull ancient DNA out of modern Africans' DNA without any fossils. (Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"316\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists may soon be able to pull ancient DNA out of modern Africans’ DNA without any fossils. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Africa_satellite_plane.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">NASA/Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a simplified version, imagine that a few hundred thousand years ago or so our ancestors in Africa split into two groups. One group stayed in Southern Africa and one left to go north. Some of northern folks went on to Europe and Asia and some stayed behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group that left Africa went on to become Neanderthals while both groups in Africa went on to become humans (there was obviously some mingling between the African groups). Then a group of humans from the northern group leaves Africa to settle Europe and Asia. Once they got there, these folks wiped out the Neanderthals that had left their group a few hundred thousand years before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this scenario, European and Asian DNA would share more in common with Neanderthal DNA than they would with African DNA. The Neanderthals and the Europeans/Asians all started from the same pool of DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I said, this scenario is much less likely. And now a \u003ca href=\"http://www.genetics.org/content/196/4/1241\">new study\u003c/a> shows that it probably didn’t happen this way as humans and Neanderthals almost certainly had kids together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparing small bits of the DNA of a human, a Neanderthal and a third ancestor, a Denisovan, these authors provide strong evidence that all three are related because of interbreeding. In the absence of stumbling on a fossil from one of the original hybrids, this is about as strong of evidence as we are going to get for interbreeding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our randy ancestors bred with whomever they came across to birth hybrids that went on to become Europeans and Asians. And the same is probably true for Africans although their interbreeding would have been with other nearby relatives instead of Neanderthals. One day soon we may be able to pull those ancestors’ DNA out of modern African DNA the way we did with Neanderthal DNA in European and Asian DNA. This method is critical for this as we probably won’t get much useable DNA from fossils in tropical areas.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Neanderthals may be extinct but at least 20-40% of their DNA lives on in modern Europeans and Asians because of interbreeding. Neanderthal DNA survives because it gave useful traits to the ancestors of Europeans and Asians.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17099\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/NandertalFamily.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/NandertalFamily.jpg\" alt=\"Neanderthals may be extinct but at least 20-40% of their DNA lives on in modern humans. (Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17099\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neanderthals may be extinct but at least 20-40% of their DNA lives on in modern humans. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neanderthals_-_Artist's_rendition_of_Earth_approximately_60,000_years_ago.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA/Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back in 2010, Svante Pääbo’s group from the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany published the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20448178\">first big chunk of Neanderthal DNA\u003c/a>. This was a big deal, because it was the first time so much ancient DNA had been sequenced so completely and what they found when they compared this DNA to that of modern humans. It became pretty obvious early on that everyone except Africans shared around 2% of their DNA with Neanderthals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The simplest (although by no means only) explanation for this result is that humans and Neanderthals had babies together before Neanderthals went extinct. Based on this idea, scientists in two separate studies (\u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24476670\">here \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24476815\">here\u003c/a>) searched the DNA of over 1,000 modern humans to find what Neanderthal DNA still lurks in non-African DNA today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These scientists found that 20-40% of Neanderthal DNA is still hanging out somewhere in these folks’ DNA. That is a whole lot of DNA that’s still around after tens of thousands of years!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A close look at this Neanderthal DNA suggested that some of the DNA stayed because it gave the hybrids an advantage. It also suggested that the hybrids had trouble having kids. Neanderthal DNA giveth and it taketh away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Better at Surviving in Europe, Worse Fertility\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neanderthals arrived in Europe and Asia hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans did. This gave Neanderthals plenty of time to adapt to the cold and to all of the bacteria, viruses and so on that they had to live with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17103\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 320px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/EastFrisia.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17103\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17103\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/EastFrisia.jpg\" alt=\"Neanderthals had time to adapt to chilly northern Europe and Asia and kindly contributed genes to help humans survive when they moved there. (Wikimedia Commons/pixelfehler/Matthias Süßen)\" width=\"320\" height=\"236\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neanderthals had time to adapt to chilly northern Europe and Asia and kindly contributed genes to help humans survive when they moved there. (Wikimedia Commons/pixelfehler/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nebelostfriesland.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">Matthias Süßen\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When modern humans ventured out of Africa all those years later, they were undoubtedly assaulted by a range of bacteria and viruses they had never seen before (think \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html\">smallpox in the New World\u003c/a>). One way to survive the onslaught would be to have kids with the locals who had already adapted. Sure, you might still have problems, but your kids would definitely do better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you look at the Neanderthal DNA that has survived, you see \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21868630\">a whole lot of immune genes\u003c/a>. (The same is true for another ancestor, the \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2011/01/17/meet-our-newest-relative/\">Denisovans\u003c/a>.) This strongly suggests that interbreeding gave the hybrids the immune genes they needed to survive in this new environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You also see a lot of genes that have to do with skin and hair (keratinocyte genes). Although not yet proven, one idea is that some modern humans still have these because they helped them deal with the cold of the northern parts of Asia and Europe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There has also been a\u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24336922\"> recent study\u003c/a> that suggests that a bit of Neanderthal DNA that helps deal with ultraviolet light is very common in East Asians. This makes sense given the lighter skin needed to \u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask330\">get vitamin D up north\u003c/a>. And scientists keep finding more genes like this (click \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24690587\">here \u003c/a>for one dealing with fat metabolism in Europeans).\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Neanderthal DNA giveth and it taketh away\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Of course nothing in life is free. If you are going to breed with Neanderthals, you are probably going to have some problems too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you look for Neanderthal DNA in human DNA, you quickly realize that there is hardly any of it on the chromosomes that determine gender, the X and the Y. When this sort of thing is seen in the lab with fruit flies, it comes from something called hybrid sterility. Basically while humans and Neanderthals weren’t quite horses and donkeys, they were close. In other words, the hybrid kids weren’t sterile but they may have had trouble having kids themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken together these results suggest that the interbreeding of humans and Neanderthals gave enough useful traits to overcome the lowered fertility. Of course this assumes that Neanderthals and humans did have kids together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ancient vs. “Recent” Mingling\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results showing Neanderthal DNA in some modern human DNA does not necessarily mean the two had kids together when modern humans left Africa. Another less likely but plausible possibility is that the similarity between non-Africans and Neanderthals has to do with them having common ancestors a bit different from those of modern Africans. Both have human ancestors they just come from different gene pools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17107\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Africa.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17107\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17107\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Africa.jpg\" alt=\"Scientists may soon be able to pull ancient DNA out of modern Africans' DNA without any fossils. (Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"316\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists may soon be able to pull ancient DNA out of modern Africans’ DNA without any fossils. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Africa_satellite_plane.jpg\" class=\"nofancybox\">NASA/Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a simplified version, imagine that a few hundred thousand years ago or so our ancestors in Africa split into two groups. One group stayed in Southern Africa and one left to go north. Some of northern folks went on to Europe and Asia and some stayed behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group that left Africa went on to become Neanderthals while both groups in Africa went on to become humans (there was obviously some mingling between the African groups). Then a group of humans from the northern group leaves Africa to settle Europe and Asia. Once they got there, these folks wiped out the Neanderthals that had left their group a few hundred thousand years before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this scenario, European and Asian DNA would share more in common with Neanderthal DNA than they would with African DNA. The Neanderthals and the Europeans/Asians all started from the same pool of DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I said, this scenario is much less likely. And now a \u003ca href=\"http://www.genetics.org/content/196/4/1241\">new study\u003c/a> shows that it probably didn’t happen this way as humans and Neanderthals almost certainly had kids together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparing small bits of the DNA of a human, a Neanderthal and a third ancestor, a Denisovan, these authors provide strong evidence that all three are related because of interbreeding. In the absence of stumbling on a fossil from one of the original hybrids, this is about as strong of evidence as we are going to get for interbreeding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2014/05/20140505science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17201\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DNA-2.jpg\" alt=\"A magnified strand of DNA. (Credit: Tomasz Wyszomirski)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A magnified strand of DNA. (Tomasz Wyszomirski)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Consumers who want to find out about their genetic health risks without going to the doctor and paying a hefty price may have to wait. For a while, personal genetic tests were becoming more affordable and informative. But the industry took a blow last year when the government cracked down on Mountain View company \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/\">23andMe\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the last consumer gene testing company still offering health information after two years of federal efforts to regulate the industry. Unlike other companies, many of which folded or sold, 23andMe is working with regulators to come back to the consumer genetic health market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Passion for Consumer Genetics\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent Thursday evening at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/\">California Academy of Sciences\u003c/a> in San Francisco, the star of the show was not the giant T-Rex skeleton in the lobby but a small-framed, energetic Silicon Valley entrepreneur speaking about personal genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘One of the main things people think about when they think of their genetic information, is that they want the health interpretation.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“I want to ask this audience, how many people have ever had a genetic test?” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/about/board/\">Anne Wojcicki\u003c/a>, CEO of 23andMe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of about 150 people in the audience, some 30 people raised their hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So my goal is in the next ten years that every single one of you would raise your hand,” Wojcicki said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wojcicki said since 2007, more than half a million customers have sent in a saliva sample and gotten information that included their risks for developing cardiac disease and breast cancer, as well genetic traits such as how fast they metabolize caffeine. But last November the FDA ordered 23andMe to stop sales of its $99 tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FDA to 23andMe: Stop Selling Gene Tests\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/testimony/ucm219925.htm\">The FDA said\u003c/a>, in a very public letter, that the company’s test kit was a medical device that needed to be regulated and that 23andMe failed to prove it was interpreting health results accurately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17192\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 252px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17192\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Wojcicki-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, speaking at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in March 2014. (Jenny Oh/KQED)\" width=\"252\" height=\"189\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, speaking at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in March 2014. (Jenny Oh/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Wojcicki said the ruling has hit her company hard. “As a result, we have had to stop offering our healthcare service, and it’s had a significant impact because it’s one of the main things people think about when they think of their genetic information, is that they want the health interpretation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So now, 23andMe is working with the FDA in an effort to once again be able to offer health information. Meanwhile, the company can still provide ancestry information, which is already a crowded field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hank Greely directs the \u003ca href=\"https://www.law.stanford.edu/organizations/programs-and-centers/center-for-law-and-the-biosciences\">Center for Law and the Biosciences\u003c/a> at Stanford. He said dwindling sales will impact the company’s efforts to build a sizable research database—and that’s important to its business strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For those customers who agree to it by signing a somewhat opaque consent form,” Greely said, “they can sell that information to pharma and bio, but without lots of new customers coming in that service becomes less attractive to pharma and biotech.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some have criticized 23andme for considering selling anonymized data. But Wojcicki is unapologetic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“23andMe partners with those companies because those are the people who are making therapies,” she said. “And if we want to get better therapies for breast cancer, and you want to get better therapies for asthma and migraines and all kinds of the other conditions that impact our lives, we have to work with pharma companies.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nBig Data May Lead to Medical Breakthroughs\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And here’s where consumer genetics isn’t just about the consumer. All that genetic information, or big data, can be used to run studies in search of medical breakthroughs. That means any company that wants to stay at the forefront has to keep up with the changing science.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘We know that the world has been quite focused on getting the so-called thousand-dollar genome.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In your human genome you have an entire set of 23 human chromosomes, made up of, among other things, DNA building blocks called base pairs. The human genome is composed of 3 billion base pairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now consumer gene tests take tiny snips of less than a million base pairs to look at one person’s unique genetic blueprint. Each of these unique variations is called a snp (yep, pronounced “snip”), for “single nucleotide polymorphism.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Future Lies in Sequencing the Whole Genome\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a snp is just a fraction of the entire genome. Scientists say the key to the future of genetics lies in sequencing the whole genome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that the world has been quite focused on getting the so-called thousand-dollar genome,” said Vance Vanier, vice president of reproductive and genetic health at San Diego-based \u003ca href=\"http://www.illumina.com/\">Illumina\u003c/a>. The company has just unveiled a system it claims can sequence a human genome for $1,000. That’s a big drop from the nearly $3 billion dollar price tag to sequence the first genome in 2003.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the story of the next five years is to see that affordability spread more and more to broader segments of society and to clinical laboratories specifically,” said Vanier, who was CEO of an early consumer gene testing company called Navigenics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while he believes genetic testing will continue to be done primarily through medical professionals, he said he still sees a place for consumer gene tests. After all, Vanier said, there was a time home pregnancy tests had to be done in a doctor’s office. Now people can even buy over-the-counter HIV tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the pattern you see,” Vanier said, “is as information gets better understood and as there are more social safeguards around it to protect from a misuse of it, then there is increasing comfort of how it can evolve into the consumer market.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so the debate continues between those that believe accessing your DNA has become a basic right and those who believe gene tests are better left to a doctor.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nSince this story published, 23andMe officials confirm they \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/06/23andme-genetictesting-idUSL2N0NS0Y820140506?feedType=RSS\">are considering selling their gene tests in markets outside the U.S.\u003c/a> after facing hurdles with the FDA.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17201\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/DNA-2.jpg\" alt=\"A magnified strand of DNA. (Credit: Tomasz Wyszomirski)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A magnified strand of DNA. (Tomasz Wyszomirski)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Consumers who want to find out about their genetic health risks without going to the doctor and paying a hefty price may have to wait. For a while, personal genetic tests were becoming more affordable and informative. But the industry took a blow last year when the government cracked down on Mountain View company \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/\">23andMe\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the last consumer gene testing company still offering health information after two years of federal efforts to regulate the industry. Unlike other companies, many of which folded or sold, 23andMe is working with regulators to come back to the consumer genetic health market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Passion for Consumer Genetics\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent Thursday evening at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.calacademy.org/\">California Academy of Sciences\u003c/a> in San Francisco, the star of the show was not the giant T-Rex skeleton in the lobby but a small-framed, energetic Silicon Valley entrepreneur speaking about personal genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘One of the main things people think about when they think of their genetic information, is that they want the health interpretation.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“I want to ask this audience, how many people have ever had a genetic test?” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/about/board/\">Anne Wojcicki\u003c/a>, CEO of 23andMe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of about 150 people in the audience, some 30 people raised their hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So my goal is in the next ten years that every single one of you would raise your hand,” Wojcicki said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wojcicki said since 2007, more than half a million customers have sent in a saliva sample and gotten information that included their risks for developing cardiac disease and breast cancer, as well genetic traits such as how fast they metabolize caffeine. But last November the FDA ordered 23andMe to stop sales of its $99 tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FDA to 23andMe: Stop Selling Gene Tests\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/testimony/ucm219925.htm\">The FDA said\u003c/a>, in a very public letter, that the company’s test kit was a medical device that needed to be regulated and that 23andMe failed to prove it was interpreting health results accurately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_17192\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 252px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17192\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/05/Wojcicki-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, speaking at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in March 2014. (Jenny Oh/KQED)\" width=\"252\" height=\"189\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, speaking at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in March 2014. (Jenny Oh/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Wojcicki said the ruling has hit her company hard. “As a result, we have had to stop offering our healthcare service, and it’s had a significant impact because it’s one of the main things people think about when they think of their genetic information, is that they want the health interpretation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So now, 23andMe is working with the FDA in an effort to once again be able to offer health information. Meanwhile, the company can still provide ancestry information, which is already a crowded field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hank Greely directs the \u003ca href=\"https://www.law.stanford.edu/organizations/programs-and-centers/center-for-law-and-the-biosciences\">Center for Law and the Biosciences\u003c/a> at Stanford. He said dwindling sales will impact the company’s efforts to build a sizable research database—and that’s important to its business strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For those customers who agree to it by signing a somewhat opaque consent form,” Greely said, “they can sell that information to pharma and bio, but without lots of new customers coming in that service becomes less attractive to pharma and biotech.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some have criticized 23andme for considering selling anonymized data. 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That means any company that wants to stay at the forefront has to keep up with the changing science.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘We know that the world has been quite focused on getting the so-called thousand-dollar genome.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In your human genome you have an entire set of 23 human chromosomes, made up of, among other things, DNA building blocks called base pairs. The human genome is composed of 3 billion base pairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now consumer gene tests take tiny snips of less than a million base pairs to look at one person’s unique genetic blueprint. Each of these unique variations is called a snp (yep, pronounced “snip”), for “single nucleotide polymorphism.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Future Lies in Sequencing the Whole Genome\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a snp is just a fraction of the entire genome. 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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
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