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what the heck? (non fishy)


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#41 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 19 December 2007 - 12:58 AM

Everything but a 12 string electric. Assorted makes and models. When you coming to play?


When I get good enough to play to anybody but myself. Guitar helps me relax. Doesn't do much for other folks, except maybe think they need another beer.

Speaking of Malaria, did you know that the sickle-cell trait is an adaptation to Plasmodium?

#42 Guest_daveneely_*

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Posted 19 December 2007 - 01:00 AM

They are doing just as eons of evolution has designed them to do..(as have their associated parasites such as Malaria) I can not fault them for that. Does not mean that killing them is a bad idea but what they do does not preclude them from being interesting and yes even capable of being "liked".


I don't have any problem with mosquitoes (even those evil little buggers in the UP of Michigan that nailed me through 3mm neoprene waders!!), but I had a really bad time with malaria last spring and I most certainly do not like it.

#43 Guest_smilingfrog_*

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Posted 19 December 2007 - 08:22 AM

The fluke larva then makes it's way to the ant's brain after a time, and controls the ant to grasp onto the tip of a drooping blade of grass and stay there.


I saw a program that featured parasitic fungi that do similar things. One which infects ants causes the infected ant to travel upwind of its colony, climb to the top of a blade of grass and clasp onto it and wait for death. After it dies the fungus' spore structures erupt from the ant and send their spores blowing in the wind toward the colony to infect more ants. According to the show worker ants can recognise an infected ant in the early stages and will attack it and carry it far from the colony. Don't recall if they figured out to carry it down wind or not.
The other fungus attacks flies, and causes them to do basicly the same thing. Land on something tall and exposed to the wind, and wait to die. The spores wind up being cast to the wind to infect more flies, but it is left a little more to chance than with the ants.

Back to the horsehair worms though (sort of), a few years ago I was diving in Lake Superior and saw what at first I thought was a horsehair worm but when I looked at it closely, I saw that the ends were not tapered. Not only were they blunt, they were flat. Imagine a soup can stretched out. When I saw this I thought maybe it was just a chunk of thick monofilament, but when I put it into the water column, it did undulate and swim the way a horsehair worm would. I looked around on the rest of the dive and actually saw several more of these and they were definitely alive. Anyone know what they might have been, just a different species of horsehair worm maybe? I was diving on a wreck at the time and if my memory is working right, I saw these around the wooden parts of the wreck. Don't know if that was a coincidence or not. The horsehair worms I am most familiar with are the ones that infect crickets, darker in color and definitely tapered at both ends. The ones in Lake Superior were kind of gray in color.

#44 Guest_Mysteryman_*

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Posted 19 December 2007 - 01:34 PM

On yet another side note, since Martin mentioned it, did you guys hear a couple weeks ago how sickle cell was cured with stem cells? You might recall about a month and a half ago how "they" were able to make stem cells from ordinary skin cells. Well, the same guys, ( I think ) in an effort to see if those artificial stem cells were good for anything, decided to test them out on some mice with sicklecell, and it worked, curing them completely. Sure, they're only mice, but it oughta work in humans, too, I'd think.

It will be interesting to see what excuse the pharmaceutical companies will try to use to stop stem cells now that religion is no longer an issue they can exploit.

Hmmm? Oh, right then, back on topic... parasites suck! ( often literally )

#45 Guest_Clayton_*

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Posted 09 August 2008 - 06:16 PM

It will be interesting to see what excuse the pharmaceutical companies will try to use to stop stem cells now that religion is no longer an issue they can exploit.



It seems odd to me that pharmaceutical companies would want to stop stem cells. I would think that they are the most likely organizations to have the facilities to capitalize on their use.

All this parasite talk makes me want to go find some human dewormer ...


EDIT: BTW sorry for the post necromancy. I'm catching up on some of the back posts and kind of spaced the fact that this was 8 months old.

Edited by Clayton, 09 August 2008 - 06:17 PM.





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