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beccastareyesChilling at home, because my adviser is supposed to drop off his cat. He's going on sabbatical this semester, and is going to Australia, so needs someone to take care of kitty. Since I don't have my own cat, and I'm not going out of town until he gets back, it's easiest to leave Grace at my place than to play cat-shuffle.
Anyway, it's been making the news, but the Spirit Rover has been stuck in a sandpit for the better part of an Earth year, and its crew has finally thrown in the towel to getting it out. They will be trying to reposition it so it gets a bit more Sun, but otherwise, it's parked for the rest of its life. Which means that scientists will be getting to know that sandpit really well.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Rovers are nice, because you aren't stuck at wherever you land*, but landers can really focus on a place and make detailed measurements of it. Spirit tends to stay parked during the winters anyway -- it gets less Sun, so driving is hard -- and so a lot of its ops was 'make sure the rover gets to a nice, sunny spot in time for winter'. Plus, if something is parked, you can do a bit of science by measuring the radio signal you get from it -- the signal is changed by the planet's spin and wobble, which can tell you whether the interior is liquid or solid, and give you a rough idea of core and mantle. But you need a long amount of observations, and the only long-term lander missions that have been on Mars were the Vikings -- Pathfinder and Phoenix both were short-term missions, and Opportunity is still roving.
I also read an interesting blog article about evolution in medicine. One of the obvious applications for doctors knowing a bit about evolutionary biology is antibiotic resistance, which comes from natural selection. If you kill off all the bacteria that are susceptible to antibiotics and the ones that aren't as susceptible survive, you're going to end up with bacteria who shrug off antibiotics.
An interesting idea is to use evolution instead of fighting against it. Your average bacterium or virus would rather go unnoticed by its host, which usually means that making the host sick is a bad idea for continued survival. I mean, right now I probably have lots of bacteria happily swimming around my body -- some of them are helpful beasties that do things like break down food in my small intestine. Most are harmless things that are just looking for a free ride. They don't really bother me, since I don't notice them, and my immune system doesn't see them either.
As soon as my immune system notices a strain of bacteria, then it goes to work at killing them. And then either the bacteria themselves come to my attention (by making a toxin, say, as a byproduct of their happy little buffet or to try to fight off my immune system) or my immune system is making me miserable enough that I figure out it's reacting to something**. Then I either let the immune system work, or call a doctor and get some outside help.
So, the best route for the bugs is to not do enough harm to make me sick. This is also a good route for me. Enter creating a vaccine for bacterial toxins -- basically training the immune system to jump into bug-fighting mode whenever it spots a certain toxin in your system, even at levels low enough to not make you sick yet. Not only will this help fight off the infection, but the more toxic the bacteria are, the quicker the infection gets killed, and the less chance you have of spreading the infection. Suddenly 'nature' is selecting for bacteria that don't make this toxin, so the populations of bacteria that will be most successful, and have tons of little bacteria babies are the ones that won't make humans sick.
--
* And considering the engineers, a lot of times that's a boring place, because all the interesting geology might smash a landing spacecraft. My friend, Ryan, is involved in selecting the landing site for Curiosity, and it's pretty much that the scientists have all these cool places full of pointy rocks and cliffs, but the engineers want to land the rover in what essentially amounts to a flat, smooth plain with no rocks.
** A lot of cold and flu symptoms are essentially caused by your immune system rather than the virii themselves.
Anyway, it's been making the news, but the Spirit Rover has been stuck in a sandpit for the better part of an Earth year, and its crew has finally thrown in the towel to getting it out. They will be trying to reposition it so it gets a bit more Sun, but otherwise, it's parked for the rest of its life. Which means that scientists will be getting to know that sandpit really well.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Rovers are nice, because you aren't stuck at wherever you land*, but landers can really focus on a place and make detailed measurements of it. Spirit tends to stay parked during the winters anyway -- it gets less Sun, so driving is hard -- and so a lot of its ops was 'make sure the rover gets to a nice, sunny spot in time for winter'. Plus, if something is parked, you can do a bit of science by measuring the radio signal you get from it -- the signal is changed by the planet's spin and wobble, which can tell you whether the interior is liquid or solid, and give you a rough idea of core and mantle. But you need a long amount of observations, and the only long-term lander missions that have been on Mars were the Vikings -- Pathfinder and Phoenix both were short-term missions, and Opportunity is still roving.
I also read an interesting blog article about evolution in medicine. One of the obvious applications for doctors knowing a bit about evolutionary biology is antibiotic resistance, which comes from natural selection. If you kill off all the bacteria that are susceptible to antibiotics and the ones that aren't as susceptible survive, you're going to end up with bacteria who shrug off antibiotics.
An interesting idea is to use evolution instead of fighting against it. Your average bacterium or virus would rather go unnoticed by its host, which usually means that making the host sick is a bad idea for continued survival. I mean, right now I probably have lots of bacteria happily swimming around my body -- some of them are helpful beasties that do things like break down food in my small intestine. Most are harmless things that are just looking for a free ride. They don't really bother me, since I don't notice them, and my immune system doesn't see them either.
As soon as my immune system notices a strain of bacteria, then it goes to work at killing them. And then either the bacteria themselves come to my attention (by making a toxin, say, as a byproduct of their happy little buffet or to try to fight off my immune system) or my immune system is making me miserable enough that I figure out it's reacting to something**. Then I either let the immune system work, or call a doctor and get some outside help.
So, the best route for the bugs is to not do enough harm to make me sick. This is also a good route for me. Enter creating a vaccine for bacterial toxins -- basically training the immune system to jump into bug-fighting mode whenever it spots a certain toxin in your system, even at levels low enough to not make you sick yet. Not only will this help fight off the infection, but the more toxic the bacteria are, the quicker the infection gets killed, and the less chance you have of spreading the infection. Suddenly 'nature' is selecting for bacteria that don't make this toxin, so the populations of bacteria that will be most successful, and have tons of little bacteria babies are the ones that won't make humans sick.
--
* And considering the engineers, a lot of times that's a boring place, because all the interesting geology might smash a landing spacecraft. My friend, Ryan, is involved in selecting the landing site for Curiosity, and it's pretty much that the scientists have all these cool places full of pointy rocks and cliffs, but the engineers want to land the rover in what essentially amounts to a flat, smooth plain with no rocks.
** A lot of cold and flu symptoms are essentially caused by your immune system rather than the virii themselves.
