Why they're hot

A EurekaAlert.org piece, New research reveals why chili peppers are hot, offers an interesting evolutionary explanation as to why chili peppers are hot.

Conventional thought says that the fruit of a plant is tasty so that animals will eat and disperse the seeds. Chili peppers are sort of an exception to this rule. The current theory, which is based upon research on wild chili plants in Bolivia, indicates that the capsaicin in a chili evolved to protect the seeds from Fusarium infections. Fusarium, a fungus that invades fruits through wounds, is a leading cause of seed mortality.

At higher elevations, where moisture is high and Fusarium fungus is rampant, the scientists found that 100 percent of the plants produced hot chilies. In the drier lowlands, where fungus is less of a problem, only 40 percent of the plants produced fiery fruits. The remainder spent more resources developing thick seed coats, which protect against the devastating ant populations common to lower areas.

Capsaicin in chilies, one of the first plants domesticated in the New World, may have been used to protect human food from microbial attack long before refrigeration or artificial preservatives were available. So habanero peppers must be nature's super preservative.

Does Word 2008 Suck?

I've been using the new Microsoft Office 2008 Suite for well over a year, and I've been of several minds about it. My first reaction was one of dislike -- the new interface just didn't do it for me. Although I've since adjusted to it, I still thrash around looking for some commands. Styles, which I thought I knew pretty well, also threw me for a loop in the new version.

After producing some documents in Word 2008, however, I grew to like some of the improvements, such as the improved way of working with header and footers.

Recently, however, I was helping a student with his 670-page Master's thesis, which was produced in Word 2003. I couldn't open (or thought I couldn't) his file in Word 2008. My next-cube-neighbor couldn't either, but he could open it using Office 2008 on his Mac laptop. So, he created a 2008-combatible (i.e., docx) file for me, and I got the same results. It really turned out that the file could load -- it just took 17 minutes to actually open!

In an experiment, I used VMware to open another XP session within my current one. I have Office 2003 installed under that session. Despite all of the inherent disadvantages of running Office under a virtual machine, Word 2003 was able to open it almost instantly.

Making a long story short, I think that Word 2008 had a real problem with the styles that the student was using. Most of his styles were variations of the normal tag, and I've read on Woody's that this type of "direct formatting in very large documents usually causes corruption."

Apparently this corruption only flummoxes Word 2008.

Dispatch from the Taliban Nation

In a bit of belated reading, I came across a March 6, 2008, item from gallup.com. Do Muslims Want Democracy and Theocracy? is an excerpt from the book Who Speaks for Islam?

The book is the product of a mammoth six-year study in which the Gallup Organization conducted tens of thousands of hour-long, face-to-face interviews with residents of more than 35 predominantly Muslim nations — urban and rural, young and old, men and women, educated and illiterate. It asks the questions everyone is curious about: Why is the Muslim world so anti-American? Who are the extremists? Is democracy something Muslims really want? What do Muslim women want? The answers to these and other pertinent, provocative questions are provided not by experts, extremists, or talking heads, but by empirical evidence — the voices of a billion Muslims.

So, when asked about democracy, most Muslims want a democracy, but one based upon Sharia, which is a code of law based on the Koran.

In only a few countries, such as Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, do the majority want Sharia to be the only source of legislation.

Interestingly, a 2006 Gallup Poll in the US finds that a majority of Americans want the Bible as a source of legislation.

• Forty-six percent of Americans say that the Bible should be "a" source, and 9% believe it should be the "only" source of legislation.
• Perhaps even more surprising, 42% of Americans want religious leaders to have a direct role in writing a constitution, while 55% want them to play no role at all. These numbers are almost identical to those in Iran.

Welcome to the Taliban Nation. Leave your sandals at the door.

Life in strange places

In Cosmos, The Science of Everything, Lauren Monaghan's article, Silent Spring, tells a strange tale of mutating fungi found in Ukraine's Chernobyl number four reactor.

Back in 1999, scientists had sent a robot inside to survey the reactor. The robot returned with samples of a particularly black fungi, indicating an abundance of the biological pigment melanin.

Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, thought that the presence of the melanin might be significant. Melanin is typically associated with 'protective' properties. Melanin in skin, for example, absorbs and safely transforms different electromagnetic wavelengths, such as DNA-damaging ultraviolet light.

In an experiment scientist analyzed three different types of fungi, including Cladosporium sphaerospermum, the species abundant in and around Chernobyl. Using ionizing radiation from the radioactive isotope, cesium-137, they exposed the fungi to radiation doses similar to those inside the damaged reactor.

Melanin-containing fungi exposed to the radiation – even when deliberately starved of nutrients – grew significantly larger and up to 2.5 times faster than fungi without melanin and those not exposed to radiation.

Even though the melanin-containing fungus was starved of typical fungus nutrients, it prospered. Although still a tentative hypothesis, the evidence indicates that the melanin might be converting radiation into nutrients for the fungus, somewhat like how chlorophyll converts sunlight into energy for a higher plant. If true, this is astounding.

This is like the discovery of chemosynthesis around hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean. In the deep, dark ocean, a bacteria was found to metabolize hydrogen sulfide given off by the vents. A relatively diverse ecosystem (organisms such as shrimp, crabs, tube worms) was found to exist entirely upon the bacteria.

If it could happen there, perhaps it is possible that life could similarly evolve around a food chain fueled by radiation.

Worms are playing a new tune

An InfoWorld article today, New worm transcodes MP3s to try to infect PCs, reports on the appearance of a nasty little worm.

The worm, designated by Kaspersky as "Worm.Win32.GetCodec.a," takes advantage of Microsoft's Advanced Systems Format filetype for audio and video streams. If you play an infected file in that format, it prompts you to download a codec. Instead of the codec, however, you're downloading and installing a Trojan horse, which installs a proxy program that allows hackers to route other traffic through your PC.

Once it takes off, the worm will look for other MP3 files on your system,transcode them to Microsoft's WMA format, wrap them in an ASF container and then add links to more copies of the worm.

Kaspersky says:

Unlike earlier Trojans, which used the WMA format only to mask their presence on the system (i.e., the infected objects were not music files), this worm infects audio files. According to Kaspersky Lab virus analysts, this is the first such case. The likelihood of a successful attack is increased because most users trust their audio files and do not associate them with possible infections. It should be noted that the file on the counterfeit web page is digitally signed by Inter Technologies and is identified by www.usertrust.com, the resource that issued the digital signature, as trusted.

As Dr. Raymond Stantz would say, "This is a really nasty one!"

Moo On Over Greenhouse Gasses

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam,
and I'll give you a whole lot of gas.

PHYSORG.com reports on a study by scientists at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina. By attaching plastic balloons to the backs of cows and running collection tubes from their stomachs, scientists were surprised to find that a standard cow produces between 800 to 1,000 liters of "emissions" (mostly methane) each day.

Why do this?

Well, if you must know, methane is 23 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The misguided scientists are now studying how changes in a cow's diet can reduce the amount of methane. It seems to me that capturing and using the methane as an alternative fuel would make a whole lot more sense. I'm studying this myself, and I'll give you an update on my findings.... as soon as I can get my feet back on the ground.

Musical Monday - Putin on the Ritz

A well-done musical parody, featuring Bush and Putin (my two favorite sub-humans).
Some little pop-up ads appear at the bottom of the play screen -- you can X out of them.

[It's gone  :-(   ]


(A tip of the hat to Marta for sharing this with me.)