Anyone that knows me outside of the blogosphere, knows I won’t turn down a good game of Mahjong. Part of the fun is figuring out which scoring system your host is going to use, because I swear to to this day it changes by the minute. “Oh, is that a special hand worth 10,000 yuan??” Yeah right! I’ve never won a game but it is lots of fun and good excuse to drink rice wine with friends. But according to study by Chang et al. in 2007 it may be more hazardous to my health if I took it more seriously. This study reports case studies on ‘mahjong epilepsy’, a rare reflex epilepsy syndrome that occurs as recurrent epileptic seizures triggered by playing or even watching mahjong be played by others. In particular, they detail 3 different case studies.
Case Study 1: 79 year old male, played mahjong for eight hours, held a ready hand when onset of a generalised tonic-clonic seizure (GTCS) occurred. Upon admittance, normal neurological exam, EEG and CT. Man had a history of two other events while playing mahjong within the last three years. Stopped playing mahjong after third seizure and has not had any since (eight years later).
Case Study 2: 42 year old male, seizure while playing mahjong. Normal neurological exam, EEG and CT as well. He abstained from mahjong then resumed playing mahjong after a few years. Three years after resuming mahjong he had two seizures while playing (even with resumption of medicine). Quit playing for good, seizure free for last 18 months.
Case Study 3: 39 year old male, seizure onset after two hours of playing mahjong. Unremarkable examinations and scans. Avoids mahjong now, no seizures.
The authors note that:
“Reflex seizures associated with mah-jong, brought on by either playing or watching the game, constitute a rare condition not recognised until recently. To date, only 20 cases of ‘mah-jong epilepsy’ (MJE) have been reported in the English literature.”
The mean age of onset was 54 years, range 34-76 yrs. (n=23), males outnumber females 10:1 and attack frequency ranged from one every 3 years to more than 30 a year (depending on x, y, z).
“Mah-jong is a cognitively demanding game. It involves substantial higher mental processing and outputs: memory, concentration, calculations, reasoning, strategies, sequential thinking and planning, consideration of alternative solutions, and a lot of decision-making. From this perspective, mahjong–induced seizures are best classified as a subtype or manifestation of cognition-induced epilepsy”
Wait a second, thinking, calculating and making decisions can make you prone to seizures! Someone better tell my advisor this.
Click on table to display larger version.
Understandably, its pretty rare and I am sure sleep deprivation after playing 10+ hours and stress over losing copious amounts of money contribute greatly. I can see how someone’s cognitive system just shuts down or freaks out! Take it easy when you play mahjong! Play with fake money instead and drink plenty of water!
Chang RS, Cheung RT, Ho SL, & Mak W (2007). Mahjong-induced seizures: case reports and review of twenty-three patients. Hong Kong medical journal, 13 (4), 314-8 PMID: 17664536
I absolutely adore the theory of evolution. It has a divine predictive, the results so wondrous in and of themselves. During my studies into symbiosis I have seen alot of strange and unusual adaptations, but the deeper I dig they more they keep getting stranger and stranger. The word this week is:
Myrmecomorphy
Top: Sandilya Theuerkauf; Bottom: Sean Hoyland (both from Wikipedia Commons).
What does this word mean? The root words myrmex means at and morphos means form. Myrmecomorphy is ant mimicking! It is a fantastic word brought to my attention recently from a paper published in the Journal of Natural History by Nelson & Jackson.
This is a form of Batesian mimicry, which occurs between two often very different species that appear very similar. The caveat is that the initial species is usually toxic, spiny or otherwise unpleasant to eat, while the mimic is a fraud and only appears to be dangerous. In the two photos at left did you spot the real ant? If you count the legs its easy to tell. The individual in the bottom photo has 8 legs whereas the top photo is the Weaver Ant, Oecophylla smaragdina, the queen nonetheless. The mimic is Myrmarachne plataleoides (female shown in photo, males have gigantic mandibles, about 33% of their body length).
The spider genus Myrmarachne (Salticidae – the jumping spiders) is characterized by these fraudulent mimics with nearly 200 species of ant wannabes, and for good reason!
“Ants are dangerous and unpalatable prey-size organisms and a variety of would-be predators of salticids, including other salticids and mantises, avoid making predatory attacks on, or coming close to, ants. Experimental studies have also shown that salticids and mantises that are averse to attacking ants are averse to attacking Myrmarachne.”
Jumping spider have complex mating behavior. Nelson & Jackson describe in detail the mating behavior of the mimics Myrmarachne assimilis and M. bakeri. Its quite the romance novel. Visualize a hot steamy jungle next to a white sand beach, a gentle breeze, seagulls laughing in the distance…
He’s alone, walking through the brush and then he sees her. The morning dew glistening off her abdomen. Her four eyes catching the sunrise to the east. He arches his palp and twitches his abdomen, standing erect. She faces him, waves her palps in the air as he watches with anticipation. She turns away, he follows. She turns around, he waits. Her cephalothorax lowers, he dances in response. She lunges past him, yet is blocked by his desire. Eight eyes are staring. She tries to leave, but his approach beckons her. His legs erect, brushing up against hers. She wants to run away, escape from these feelings, yet can’t seem to pull away. The hypnotic, primordial power of lust overcomes all her senses. She shifts her abdomen closer, he gently places his chelicerae upon her abdomen. Softly, calmly, he applies each palp once, then its over.
“When the male disengaged his applied palp, he moved over the female (her abdomen no longer raised or rotated), tapped and stroked and then, once positioned again beside the female, the male scraped his palp across her now flexed-up and rotated abdomen and resumed copulation. Before next palp application, while centered over the female, the male sometimes stepped backwards and forwards, stroking and tapping intermittently.”-Nelson & Jackson 2007
Barriers to dispersal come in all shapes and sizes and not all are obvious. Baker conducted experiments with jumping spiders, Phidippus princeps (Salticidae) in which he manipulated corridors connecting patches of old growth fields (clover and alfalfa). Patches were either not connected (bare corridors), all connected, or partly connected by vegetated corridors (see schema below, Fig. 1). Baker found that P. princeps always preferred vegetated corridors and was never found on bare strips.
“The results of this experiment show that corridors are important for the interpatch movement of female P. princeps: spiders moved almost exclusively to patches connected by vegetated strips. In the absence of vegetated strips, spiders rarely moved cross bare substrate to a new habitat even in overcrowded conditions.”
This has pretty fundamental consequences for dispersal ecology. The fact that these spiders will not move across a non-vegetated corridor despite reaching carrying capacity (Baker reports using densities 2-3 times that in nature) underlies the importance of connectivity between habitat patches. This is a ripe area of conservation research, which has mostly been done on large mammals like mountain lions, bears and other endangered vertebrates. Invertebrates, being much smaller, are more subject to small changes and greatly influenced at the micro-habitat level. This study shows how important it is to maintain habitat corridors for the little guys.
“If an animal, as in the case of P. princeps, does not respond to density pressures when habitat patches are surrounded by unfavorable habitat, the persistence of fragmented populations may be severely compromised.”
The fact of the matter is that many critters won’t risk it out in the open. They need cover to help ensure their survival when moving around. This is a nice argument for conserving or creating undisturbed corridors between suitable habitat patches.
Baker, L. (2007). Effect of corridors on the movement behavior of the jumping spider Phidippus princeps (Araneae, Salticidae) Canadian Journal of Zoology, 85 (7), 802-808 DOI: 10.1139/Z07-061
NPR has a story about the official prototype of the kilogram, it is ‘mysteriously’ losing weight. Obviously a terrorist plot. For over 120 years this sensational standard, housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, France, has provided the definitive definition of mass for the world (minus the “Coalition of the Weighing”). Physicists will be dismayed, chemists are contemplating career changes, biologists and geologists… really could care less since our error bars are so big anyways. So just how much weight has our faithful standard sloughed off? 50 micrograms! Clearly an international catastrophe of catastrophic proportions.
“The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart. We don’t really have a good hypothesis for it.”-Physicist Richard Davis at IBWM
Richard Davis, keeper of the kilo, at a loss over the weight loss of the sealed, air-tight, and well-guarded weight.
As NIST physicist Richard Steiner cautioned, “If somebody sneezed on that kilogram standard, all the weights in the world would be instantly wrong”. Thankfully, it is kept well-guarded and safely ensconced in a triple-locked safe at a French chateau, rarely seeing the light of day. The mysterious nature of this caper is striking.
Perhaps, it is an inside job? Is it Al-Qaida? Hamas? The Michigan Militia? Congressional conservatives still angry that Freedom Fries didn’t become universally accepted? Is Loki playing tricks again? Is Prince of Lies pulling his shenanigans? So many questions but so few answers.
So what are we, the public whom relies on accurate standards supposed to do? Another NIST, Peter Mohr, explains, “The actual ramifications for somebody going to the store will be negligible but for scientific work, it makes a difference”.
Study organism, photo from Uetz Lab (click through).
Wrinn & Uetz studied how leg loss and regeneration affected the condition, growth and development time of the wolf spider, Schizocosa ocreata (Lycosidae, photo at left). Spiders may amputate their legs as a defense strategy, but it’s not clear what trade-offs exist. For instance, if a spider amputates its leg and undergoes regeneration is future reproduction impacted, is it more susceptible to predation, is it less mobile, less of a competitor, or does it make finding food more difficult?
Wrinn & Uetz examined the frequency of self-amputation in the field and the relationship to size, mass and physiological condition. Additionally, they did laboratory experiments to test the hypothesis that leg regeneration impairs foraging, decreases growth or affects development time. The field data they collected indicated that leg loss impaired foraging ability, evidenced by decreases in mass, size and physiological condition. The laboratory experiments also suggest additional trade-offs. Though not significant, spiders regenerating legs took an average of 3.7 days longer to molt. One interesting observation was that
“Although spiders appear to show costs of regeneration, the differences in molt interval, size, and mass between intact and regenerating spiders were only true for the first molt after autonomy. During the second molt after autonomy, regenerating spiders were able to compensate for previous costs by either shortening their molt interval or increasing their growth.”
It appears these spiders are pretty flexible and bounce back to minimize costs associated with leg loss and regeneration to only one molt. Another trade-off was between development time and mass. Regeneration resulted in either longer time to molt or lower mass, but not both. Regeneration is a fascinating phenomena and certainly requires further study. The selection of improved regenerative capabilities comes at a cost, but clearly for the individual the costs do not outweigh the benefits of continuing to live and reproduce.
Wrinn, K., & Uetz, G. (2007). Impacts of leg loss and regeneration on body condition, growth, and development time in the wolf spider Schizocosa ocreata.Canadian Journal of Zoology, 85 (7), 823-831 DOI: 10.1139/Z07-063
Most snails walk the line and stick with doing the dirty deed missionary-style. No one even thinks about any of that kinky, low-down, unholy ways of propagating the world. But Schilthuizen and colleagues report in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (open access!) that one disgusting species of snail actually selects for anti-chiral mates (Figure to the right). This scandalous sixty-nine of satan is even sexually selected for by spermatophore morphology! Just when I thought I heard it all.
Chirality in snails refers to what directions the coils run, clockwise or anti-clockwise (known as counter-clockwise in some localities).
“The cause of directional asymmetry is clear in only a few groups (Vermeij, 1975), such as in gastropods (snails). Their coiling direction (not only of the shell but also of the entire body organization), determined by a single locus of maternal effect, is usually fixed within a species because mating among D and S individuals (so-called ‘inter-chiral mating’) is either impossible or very difficult. Consequently, a rare reverse-coiled morph will normally not persist because of frequency-dependent selection.”
Typically, anti-chiral mating is a pretty rare thing and snails who do not keep in line usually die out of the population fairly quickly. But not satisfied with being a typical gastropod, members of the southeast asian tree snail genus Amphidromus do NOT, yes I repeat do NOT, deviate from a 1:1 ratio of dextral (right-opening) to sinistral (evil left-opening) individuals. They keep their damned “whole-body chiral dimorphism”, but why would a snail do such a thing? Schilthuizen and colleagues proposed a series of hypotheses which they tested:
1) Frequency-dependent selection countered by extrinsic balancing selection. Basically, one morph is present in higher number and is predated upon unto rare than other morph which is then, in turn predated on, etc.
2) Occupy separate niches
3) Dimorphism is maintained by intrinsic factors such as coiling genetics or reproduction.
They observed two separate populations of Amphidromus inversus with the same predation frequency. Though the dextral morph was less than half (~35%) of the population, predation was the same hence hypothesis 1 can be ruled out since there was no increase in predation frequency with the more frequent evil sinistral morph. Additionally, another analysis using 10 biometric features showed there was no difference between D and S morphs. They are in fact mirror images of each other, which suggests to the authors that they are ecologically equivalent. They provide other evidence from previous work led by the first author that both morphs have identical dispersal patterns and habitat preferences. Additionally, molecular data showed they were panmictic to argue against hypothesis 2.
Which brings us to hypothesis 3. To study inheritance of chirality, they grabbed all the egg bunches they could and waited till the juveniles hatched out (Figure to the left). Except for one clutch, all other clutches were invariant for coiling direction. In other snails, coiling direction has been found to be maternally transmitted from a single locus, which the data from this study on A. inversus is consistent with. Still waiting for the cool part? See below.
Fig. 5 showing the spermatophore. Important to note the spiral tip.
Oh yeah, that’s one mighty spermatophore, a 60 mm schlong that curves either to the right or the left. This curvature reflects the chirality of the shell.
“The oviduct is connected with the SRO [spermatophore receiving organ] at an angle to the left or to the right in a sinistral or a dextral recipient, respectively, whereas the spermatophore tail tip points to the left or right in a dextral or a sinistral donor respectively (viewed from the front of the recipient animal). Consequently, it can enter the oviduct more easily in inter- than in intra-chiral copulation (Fig. 5e–h).”
Its all about the fit not the size… So what is their conclusion? Why do I think this is a cool study?
“We have shown that mutual mate choice for a partner with mirror-image asymmetry stabilizes antisymmetry in these snails. As far as we are aware, this is the first confirmed case of heritable antisymmetry in the Metazoa.”-Schilthuizen et al. 2007
SCHILTHUIZEN, M., CRAZE, P., CABANBAN, A., DAVISON, A., STONE, J., GITTENBERGER, E., & SCOTT, B. (2007). Sexual selection maintains whole-body chiral dimorphism in snails Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20 (5), 1941-1949 DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2007.01370.x
I was alerted by Pink Tentacle of this animated map of nuclear explosions from 1945-1998. I couldn’t keep my eyes away and it is very disheartening.
The end tally is very terrifying, to make an understatement. Not only are the majority of explosions by the United States, but they are IN the United States, southwest to exact. As Chief Raymond Yowell of the western Shoshone wrote,
“The radiation has Shoshone, Ute, Navajo, Hopi, Paiute, Havasupai, Hualapai and other downwind communities to suffer from cancer, thyroid diseases and birth defects. We are now the most bombed nation in the world.”
Again, hit home during a 1978 congressional hearing of the Atomic Energy Commission’s operational records,
“The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that the only victims of United Arms since WWII have been our own people.”
(Both quotes are as quoted in the fascinating book Violent Environments by Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts)
I found a great quote and analogy from an essay published in Current Biology by Peter Lawrence titled The mismeasurement of science. This essay takes a look at how science is measured and examines the use of impact factors and other metrics that measure scientific progress for individual scientists, academic departments and institutions.
The quote is actually from Leo Szilard, the famous Manhattan project physicist. It comes from his short science fiction story The Mark Gable Foundation from The Voice of the Dolphins: And Other Stories (read on Google Books):
“You could set up a foundation with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make a convincing case. Have ten committees, each composed of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. …First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. …By going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. …There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashions would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not.”
The analogy is Lawrence’s own and relates to song writers being assessed in the same way as scientists, an analogy I can relate to having came to science from the music industry.
“It is fun to imagine song writers being assessed in the way that scientists are today. Bureaucrats employed by DAFTA (Ditty, Aria, Fugue and Toccata Assessment) would count the number of songs produced and rank them by which radio stations they were played on during the first two weeks after release. The song writers would soon find that producing junky Christmas tunes and cosying up to DJs from top radio stations advanced their careers more than composing proper music. It is not so funny that, in the real world of science, dodgy evaluation criteria such as impact factors and citations are dominating minds, distorting behaviour and determining careers.”
Nothing goes down better with your sustainably-harvested shrimp pizza than Kevin Z’s homemade Aquavit! Its a very simple recipe modified from a brilliant norwegian cookbook I own called Kitchen of Light. It is a fascinating book, providing great recipes, beautiful photos of Scandinavia, stories and background on several of the meals. The fish recipes in there are to die for!
Growlers are a great vessel in which to make aquavit!
For this you will need:
1. 725mL Vodka, Absolut of course!
2. Lemon, Lime and Orange peel. I use the full peel of lime and orange, but only half the peel of the lemon as my first batch, the lemon was overpowering.
3. 1 tablespoon each of Fennel seed and Caraway Seed (you can add anise or tarragon too, if you swing that way)
I mixed all the ingredients in a separate container, but you can let them marinate in the vodka jar if there is enough room. A couple shots ought to clear out enough space for the ingredients! I let it marinate for a few days to a week in a sunny spot.
The golden color is very nice. After it is done marinating, next comes the filtering. I reused some nice bottles my dutch and japanese neighbors and I emptied out over the course of a few months of Mahjong. Oh yummy Beerenburger, why did it have to end!
I filtered the liquid using a funnel and coffee filter. You’ll have to remove the rinds periodically. I’ll think of a better system later.
The result is golden, smooth treat. This has been providing the liquid inspiration for my Spineless Songs (see my La Musique Profonde at Deep Sea News). The aroma is real nice and the hints of fennel and citrus make it a very pleasurable beverage. I accidentally left my bottle at my boss’ home after a lab dinner party and never saw it again! She brought into work but wouldn’t let out of her office LOL. Though this is some seriously tasty material, it is not quite perfect yet. My next batch, I will play around and tweak the flavor, maybe add a little hint of clove and more orange peel.
In a study published in American Naturalist, Konuma & Chiba publish demonstrated an interesting evolutionary trade-off between “force” and “fit” in carabid beetles (such as Damaster blaptoides to the left) that feed on land snails. Force means the beetles are stout, large-headed and able to crush snail shells with powerful jaws. Alternatively, they can be slender, small-headed and are able to fit into the aperature of snail shells (as in the above photo).
Large-headed beetles were most successful with thin-shelled snails, whereas small-headed beetles were more successful on snails with larger aperatures. It has been demonstrated that the same trade-off diversifies shell morphology in studies of freshwater snails, where elongate shells are adaptive in protecting against entry attacks and rounded shells are adaptive in protecting against crushing attacks.
Functional trade-offs are likely to affect coevolution between the prey’s defensive characters and the predator’s attack characters. Thus, the trade-offs between force and fit could play a significant role in character diversification through coevolution between snails and their predators. (You can read more at Science Daily: The Beetle’s Dilemma)
Anyone that knows me outside of the blogosphere, knows I won’t turn down a good game of Mahjong. Part of the fun is figuring out which scoring system your host is going to use, because I swear to to this day it changes by the minute. “Oh, is that a special hand worth 10,000 yuan??” Yeah right! I’ve never won a game but it is lots of fun and good excuse to drink rice wine with friends. But according to study by Chang et al. in 2007 it may be more hazardous to my health if I took it more seriously. This study reports case studies on ‘mahjong epilepsy’, a rare reflex epilepsy syndrome that occurs as recurrent epileptic seizures triggered by playing or even watching mahjong be played by others. In particular, they detail 3 different case studies.
Most snails walk the line and stick with doing the dirty deed missionary-style. No one even thinks about any of that kinky, low-down, unholy ways of propagating the world. But Schilthuizen and colleagues report in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (
1) Frequency-dependent selection countered by extrinsic balancing selection. Basically, one morph is present in higher number and is predated upon unto rare than other morph which is then, in turn predated on, etc.
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