Bili Buzz - Popular Science, Nature, Medicine, Archeology, Future & Myths

Pigs not only inspire scientists via delicious, brain-sustaining pork products. See the latest pig-influenced developments in medicine and tech, from diabetes treatments to pig-urine-flavored cigarettes

We’ve got pork on the brain here this week at PopSci. Earlier today we told you about how cells from a pig’s bladder helped a man regenerate part of his severed finger, and if you’re a PPX player, you know we just rolled out an IPO regarding PETA’s recent offering of a million dollar prize for anyone who can grow meat sans-animal in a lab, hoping to negate the necessity for livestock. However, it will probably be a while before anything created in the lab will rival the one food that we can’t ever manage to stop thinking about, even for dessert—bacon.

As it turns out, pigs have been the inspiration for several other recent medical and technological innovations in the last few months.

One such instance of pig science is a report from a group of Russian scientists who are implanting pancreatic cells from young pigs that produce insulin into diabetics. The sample size is still quite small (only 4 people have received the treatment), but the results are worth watching. It seems that some of the patients with the injected insulin-producing pig cells have been able to drastically reduce their insulin intake over long periods of time. This could be a significant step towards the cure for a syndrome that has become exceedingly common within the past few decades. One drawback, however, are the fears that this could lead to the cross-species transmission of pig-borne viruses.

If pig-based diseases aren’t disturbing enough, how about we turn our attention to pig urine? High-density industrial pig farms serve as home to a large percentage of the world’s nearly 1 billion pigs, and with high-concentrations of pigs comes high concentrations of their often toxic waste products, which can wreak havoc on the environment. However, one company has devised a novel way of disposing of the urine by rendering the urea into plastics for household items, such as pig urine cups, pig urine bowls and pig urine spoons. Once the process is perfected it could be cheaper and more environmentally advantageous than the regular fossil fuel-based plastics. Other manures can be used, as well, and the organic compounds that are extracted can be potentially used in a variety of ways, including as flavoring for cigarettes. A line of pig urine flavored cigarettes could be an alternative stop smoking product if the patches, pills or gum just aren’t doing it for you.

Finally, out on the extreme end of pig-based research is the glow-in-the-dark pig. A while back Taiwanese scientists were able to genetically modify a litter of pigs with jellyfish DNA so that they would fluoresce green. Though the visual results are striking enough to justify the experiment, the true reasoning behind the experiment is to show that stem cells can be tagged with the same fluorescent molecules allowing their growth and development to be easily observed and studied.

I personally like to think that these scientists wanted to secondarily cure a condition that has plagued man since his inception: the late-night munchies. And what better way to solve it than with glow-in-the-dark bacon?

By observing the seahorse’s unusual sex roles, scientists hope to learn more about how they came to be

The seahorse is a strange fish. Many of the traits it possesses have evolved in a direction unlike any other family of animals underwater—its bent S-shape; its head at a 90-degree angle to its body; its prehensile tail; and, most curiously, the male’s brood pouch. A lab at Texas A&M University led by Adam Jones is currently studying these structures in the hope of understanding how it was that male pregnancy evolved in seahorses and how it affects the traditional sex roles in the fish.

Male seahorses don’t just carry the eggs and young in their brood pouch. Once they receive the female’s eggs, the outer shell of the eggs break down and the male’s tissues in the pouch grow up around them. After fertilization, the male tempers the environment as they develop, maintaining blood flow, salt concentrations, and providing nutrients and oxygen just as a mother’s placenta would. The traditional male and female roles are as well reversed with mating behavior—the males are choosy, while the females compete.

Observing the rituals in this way—with males and females in opposite roles—has given the researchers a unique look into the workings of the reproductive process and is informing their hypotheses about how they came to be.

Via PhysOrg

The sophisticated navigation system of the moth keeps it on course despite powerful winds

We can only assume DARPA’s cyborg moths will be deployed relatively close to their targets, but we have no real word yet on their potential range. If the military does find the need to release the moths from the rear of operations under the cover of darkness, they would do well to pay attention to research coming out of the United Kingdom on how moths are able to migrate at night.

Scientists currently understand pretty well the abilities of migrating insects to travel during the day. They use the sun to determine their flight path and to correct for wind. But no one was sure how those like the silver Y moth were able to travel at night at heights of up to 150 meters on fast moving currents of wind without being substantially blown off course.

They discovered the answer was relatively straightforward: the moths would wait for a night when the wind was blowing in the right direction and then point themselves that way. It’s of course not entirely that simple—a magnetic compass is believed to aid them in adjusting their paths as they travel—which reveals a fair degree of sophistication in the moth’s navigational abilities.

So far, the work has been done by following swarms with radar. The hope in the near future is for radio transmitters to shrink enough to be attached to individuals for more accurate tracking.