For the birds

The Washington Post is claiming that listening to bird songs is good for you.

Looking to improve your mental health? Pay attention to birds.

Two studies published last year in Scientific Reports said that seeing or hearing birds could be good for our mental well-being.

So give them a listen as you learn why they may help.

Research has consistently shown that more contact and interaction with nature are associated with better body and brain health.

Birds appear to be a specific source of these healing benefits. They are almost everywhere and provide a way to connect us to nature. And even if they are hidden in trees or in the underbrush, we can still revel in their songs.

OK, fine, I will believe that going on regular walks in the park, paying attention to your environment, and living in a place compatible with other living things, is beneficial. I object to the idea that the effect is specific to birds. Why not spiders? A stroll in the park and checking out the trees and underbrush is something you can do while spidering, too.

You aren’t going to hear spider songs unless you have much better ears than I’ve got, but on the plus side, spiders don’t start shrieking and screeching and whistling outside your bedroom window at 5am.

Genetics…done!

All finals graded, grades submitted to the registrar, I’m gonna go take a walk. Later, y’all.

(I still have 4 term papers for the writing class to evaluate, but two of them earned an A in my preliminary assessment, so those are easy, and the other two will require a somewhat more thorough review. After I get some fresh air.)

Today is the day

It’s the last day of finals week. I have two final exams and a term paper due — and I foolishly made everything due at 6pm this evening. Everything. All at once. I am smart, S-M-R-T.

A few students have submitted their work early so I can try to get a leg up on all the grading. Grades are due on Monday, so there’s an absolute deadline to finishing up this semester.

Run/fly away, little fellas, I have cruel plans in mind

Started a big project today — we have a fate in mind for all these spiders my lab is churning out. It will be an interesting fate for me, but alas, not at all healthy for the spiders. I’ll be keeping my Patreon followers informed, the rest of you will have to wait until the Fall.

I’m going to be redoubling my spider farming efforts for a while. I literally had baby spiders nesting in my beard this morning, and I just now had one crawl out of my shirt cuff. It’s a good thing I like the little fellas. Which makes it sad that this kind of a meatgrinder project. I’m going to be the Cruella DeVille of spiders.

It is all out of my hands now

My exams look nothing like this. I must be doing them wrong.

I’ve been giving open book, open notes, online exams with no proctors, no timing, nothin’ but “here’s some questions, have fun answering them” for the last few years, prompted in part by the pandemic. I like it this way. It de-emphasizes rote memorization and requires them to understand the concepts (it also requires me to ask questions that can’t be answered with a recitation or regurgitation.) I also encourage them to study together and collaborate on figuring it all out — although they are required to write answers in their own words, no copying and pasting.

Anyway, all of my final exams are now written and posted to our Canvas site, and I have nothing more to do. Until Friday at 6pm, that is, when all these exams come winging back to me, demanding my immediate attention.

I think I’ll go for a walk.

Will not achieve today’s goals

I had planned to get both of my finals written today, but only finished the one for introductory biology. Even at that, it was frustrating: I had a set length to reach, a reasonable number of questions, and I had so many I had to cut them back by half. Alternatively, I could have thrown lengthy essay questions at them that were worth only a half point each. I’m not that cruel.

The genetics final will have to wait until tomorrow morning, because it’s only 4pm and my brain is worn out.

Sorry, genetics students. You weren’t in a hurry for this, were you?

Welcome to the last week of the semester

Everything crashes together at the end of the term. It’s inevitable that everything comes due before everyone goes away, and it’s urgent that I get it all graded as fast as possible. So I set a deadline of 6pm tonight for the final lab report in genetics; then tomorrow at 6pm is the deadline for the last take-home midterm; and then the day after tomorrow is the last class session, which I’ve set aside for final grade assessment. Everything has to be done by Wednesday so everyone knows their semi-final status! The next couple of days are going to involve me sitting late at night staring at reports and exams on the screen.

I have two more lectures to give in introductory biology, one on examples of modern evo-devo research, and a final discussion of bioethics.

I won’t be done after that, though. I have to compose take-home final exams for genetics and the intro biology course, and get those formatted and submitted by Friday. Grading those will slap me in the face at the end of next week.

One bright spot in the endless misery of evaluation is that I’ve decided that Friday will be game day: I have a few decks of Clades and Ecologies and we’ll celebrate the last day of the semester with some fun.

Whoa, it’s been an awful long time since I had a french fry. Must be why I’m depressed.

Articles about nutrition are among the least interesting science articles I read. I’d like to care more, nutrition is important and affects our lives significantly, but so many of them look like this:

A research team in Hangzhou, China, found that frequent consumption of fried foods, especially fried potatoes, was linked with a 12% higher risk of anxiety and 7% higher risk of depression than in people who didn’t eat fried foods.

They fit into a simple template. We fished up a small statistical correlation of simple cause A to complex behavioral/physiological phenomenon B. It’s annoying because they don’t have a mechanistic explanation, only a correlation, and their result is the product of a huge amount of work.

The study evaluated 140,728 people over 11.3 years. After excluding participants diagnosed with depression within the first two years, a total of 8,294 cases of anxiety and 12,735 cases of depression were found in those that consumed fried food, while specifically fried potatoes were found to have a 2% increase in risk of depression over fried white meat.

The study had also found that the participants consuming more than one serving of fried food regularly were more likely to be younger men.

One hundred forty thousand subjects over 11 years! And all they have to show for it is that feeble increase in likelihood that young men who eat fried foods are somewhat more depressed and anxious. Oh, how surprising. Have they considered that cheap fried fast food might be what people who are depressed and anxious might choose to eat? Or worse, might have limited choices in what they can eat?

Instead, let’s look to animal models, specifically zebrafish. These researchers do some impressively detailed, thorough analyses of zebrafish behavior after they add up to 0.5mM acrylamide to their tanks. The fish didn’t like it.

In the new study, the researchers suggest that acrylamide, a chemical formed during the frying process, especially in fried potatoes, is to blame for the higher risk of anxiety and depression.

In a separate paper referenced in the new study, the researchers exposed zebrafish to the chemical, finding that long-term exposure had caused the fish to dwell in dark zones within the tank, a common sign of a higher anxiety level in the fish.

The zebrafish had also displayed a reduced ability to explore their tanks and socialize, as they did not swim closely with other zebrafish, even though zebrafish are known to form schools with their species.

I worked with zebrafish for many years and am familiar with their behavior. They are flighty and sensitive; it’s easy to provoke changes in behavior. They’re like people in that regard. Throwing software at detailed video analyses of their behavior might generate tons of numbers and lots of graphs, but I fail to see what we learn from it, beyond that short summary: they didn’t like acrylamide.


Behavioral profiles of zebrafish by the long-term exposure to acrylamide in the novel object exploration test and the social preference test. (A) Representative swimming trajectories of zebrafish in the control group and three acrylamide exposure groups (0 mM wide type, 0.125 mM, 0.25 mM, and 0.5 mM). A novel object for zebrafish was placed in the left part (Zone 1) and the right part was Zone 2. (B) Heatmap visualization of zebrafish trajectories in the novel object exploration test. (C) Duration time spent in Zone 1 or Zone 2 of total time (%). (D) Distance traveled in Zone 1 or Zone 2 of total distance (%). (E) Representative swimming trajectories of zebrafish in different groups (0 mM wide type, 0.125 mM, 0.25 mM, and 0.5 mM). (F) Radar chart of 12 behavioral parameters of zebrafish in different groups (0 mM wide type, 0.125 mM, 0.25 mM, and 0.5 mM). a, duration; b, distance; c, average velocity (cm/s); d, accelerated speed; e, average entry time duration (s); f, turning angle (°); g, turning angle (°)/time; h, activity; i, rapid move ratio; j, normal move ratio; k, freezing time ratio (s); l, freezing time duration (s). (G) Heatmap visualization of zebrafish trajectories in the social preference test. (H) Duration time spent in the left or right chamber of total time (%). (I) Distance traveled in the left or right chamber of total distance (%). (J) Traversing times between the left and right chambers. (K) Numbers of crossing the middle line. (L) Hierarchical clustering of zebrafish in the social preference test. All the histograms were present with mean ± SEM, while all behavioral parameter data were analyzed by the two-way ANOVA followed by multiple comparisons or the one-way ANOVA followed by the Turkey post hoc test. The level of significance was defined as *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001; #P < 0.05, ##P < 0.01, ###P < 0.001, ####P < 0.0001 (* indicates significance between different groups and # indicates significance between different regions within the same group).


Yep, I believe it. Stress zebrafish by dosing their tank with a strange small molecule, and stressed zebrafish are stressed. They proved it, I’m satisfied. I am more than satisfied, I must concur: they have quantified to a remarkable degree that zebrafish are stressed by the presence of one component of french fried potatoes in their tanks. That’s total overkill.

I would just ask, do you think fast food workers are stressed by the omnipresent smell of fried foods in their clothes, their hair, the air they breathe? Does that suggest that you have identified the specific biological agent that causes anxiety and depression? No, it does not.

I respect the amount of work that went into the analysis, and think that every bit of knowledge we gain from research is worthwhile. But is it “run to CNN and let the world know that french fries cause depression” level of worthwhile? Is it even “publish in PNAS” worthwhile? OMG, is it “16 authors!” worthwhile?

Anli Wang, Xuzhi Wan, Pan Zhuang, Wei Jia, Yang Ao, Xiaohui Liu, Yimei Tian, Li Zhu, Yingyu Huang, Jianxin Yao, Binjie Wang, Yuanzhao Wu, Zhongshi Xu, Jiye Wang, Weixuan Yao, Jingjing Jiao, and Yu Zhang (2023) High fried food consumption impacts anxiety and depression due to lipid metabolism disturbance and neuroinflammation. PNAS 120(18) e2221097120.

Araneus gemmoides left us a present last year

For the last few years, we’ve been graced with regular summertime visits by cat-faced spiders, Araneus gemmoides. They’re great big orbweavers, usually no trouble at all, although last year one of them took over our deck, stringing webs over the doors. We let her. When you’re that beautiful, you can get away with anything.

One of the reasons they’re no trouble is that they just lurk, and then when winter arrives, they die. Last year’s visitor crept up above our back door and left an egg sac in a dark corner. Here it is!

We got a step ladder to get closer, and I poked a lens right in there. The sac was partially torn open on one side (predation?), so I got a good view of the eggs inside.

Those are definitely spider eggs, but they aren’t very far along in development. It’s been chilly and snowy for the last few weeks, so it’s not surprising that they haven’t matured much. Maybe Minnesota will be kind and bring us a real spring soon?

I’ll keep you informed about this developing subject!

Starship post-mortem

After the biggest rocket in the world exploded shortly after launch, it’s time to figure out what went wrong. Mark Sumner provides the long detailed analysis, while Scott Manley gives us a video.

I’m not a space guy or engineer, but here’s my shorter summary: an important piece of the starship technology was the launch pad, or Stage 0. The rocket was so powerful that it destroyed Stage 0, sending massive lumps of concrete flying everywhere that smashed the engines. You’d think that the engineers would have been aware of these potential dangers, but someone decided they didn’t need flame diverters or water cooling jets. That someone was Elon Musk himself.

Even shorter summary: Elon Musk’s incompetence blew it up.

Now I really want to look on the bright side, so I have a suggestion. Elon Musk really likes money, so he should sell tickets for the next flight — big money tickets that only billionaires could afford. Promise them a grand party in space, with Elon Musk at the helm to show that he’s confident it’ll work. Pack it with a dozen billionaires as passengers. Then launch it. I’ll cheer the entire duration of its flight, and cheer even louder at the end.

It could be a glorious Billionaire Disposal System, but don’t call it that. Don’t want to tip them off.