Greg keeps me motivated.

Ant Wars- continued.

In grade school one of my favorite things to do was watch the black and red ants wage war in the playground. Later, I thought the coolest organisms on earth were the fungus and parasites that hijack ant brains. I wish they'd make a movie with human-targeting variants of them. Guaranteed bio-gore!
Now check this out. Further proof of the awesomeness of ants. You know that ants take prisoners of wars as slaves and force them to take care of the larvae. Well the slaves can become rebellious motherfuckers:

Achenbach and Foitzik collected 88 colonies of the slave-making P.americanus ant that had abducted workers from three species of Temnothorax. They found that the workers clearly care for the larvae, and nearly all of them were raised until their pupated. But at that point, the slaves' behaviour changed dramatically, taking on a more homicidal bent.

Two-thirds of pupae died before they hatched. The mortality rate was even higher (83%) for pupae containing queens, but very low (3%) for those containing males. The duo saw that the captives were deliberately killing the healthy pupae. In about 30% of cases, as in the photo, the workers would gang up to literally pull the developing ants apart. Another 53% of the pupae were killed by neglect, by workers who moved them out of the nest chamber.

These murders were solely the acts of the slaves. No P.americanus worker ever lifted a mandible against its own pupae. Nor are the deaths a reflection of a generally poor standard of care on the part of Temnothorax. In their own colonies, the majority of pupae hatched, with just 3-10% dying before that happened.

This rebellion takes its toll on the slave-makers and may explain why the nests of P.americanus tend to be very small. The captives may never reproduce themselves, but they do their part for their relatives back home by crippling the workforce of the slave-makers. These indirect benefits are particularly pertinent to Temnothorax ants because a single colony can occupy many different nests - a family of sisters spread out over a large area. If one nest is raided, it pays to ensure that none of the related nests are targeted later.

Random Goodies from Seminars

Sometimes part of the cool stuff during a research lecture is the peripheral stuff. Today, the topic of our lecture was this protein, porB, that hangs out in the cell membrane of one of the bacterias that can give you meningitis, Neisseria Meningitidis.

• 2 amino acid mutations in one of its membrane proteins can give this bacteria both penicillin and tetracycline resistance.
  
• There's no effective vaccine for children, and the adult vaccination has to be given every 2 years. 3% of all cases are fatal.
• Global climate change means that the vectors of many of these bacterial infections are migrating into places they would not have at survived before.
  

• There are receptors that specialize in targeting pathogenic bacteria, while leaving the good, symbiotic bacteria alone. When people have defects in these receptors (called toll-like receptors) and they can't differentiate a bacterial friend from foe, they get IBS.
  

Ridiculeces Boricuas

So I while ago Elvis Crespo, a merenguero, got caught jacking off in his seat during a flight to Miami.

Lab dreams

I dream of a magical place you can crash if you're tired and on the lab. I would have nice napping areas.

With a clean and bright place to warm our food

a cool espresso machine...

And an awesome, albeit small, shower.

Seriously, it would take the same space as a normal office. And I'd sacrifice office space for this. They can even reduce the sleeping space to this:

It's not that bad in real life. We have the fridges and microwaves. I one of the labs I worked they even had cutlery, plates, glasses, an electric burner, and a dishwasher. But seriously, somewhere to nap and take a shower would be appreciated. even if means sleeping here

and showering here. Actually, this would be a nice shower to have in a lab area.

Que vida

Thinking about the A exam is like thinking of nonchalantly strolling into Mordor and asking for a cup of tea. Writing my proposal feels sometimes like sitting down for a root canal without anesthesia. And it's kinda crazy because *I fucking love what I study*. Somehow I've read a gazillion papers and book chapters, but I can't will the huge mass of acquired information into a cohesive background for my project.

GAH! As if I didn't have enough on my palte already.

You know what is really awesome? When your boss decides to change your thesis project, and "tells" you by editing your study plan. Ooh, also awesome? It means yet another biophysical technique you have to know inside and out for May.

God, I haven't touched thermodynamics in ages.

But then I fell I'm just bitching because project he added is actually juicy, he could have easily given it to another student, and I can probably get to publish in a good journal because of it.