Recent comments in /f/science

chrisdh79 OP t1_j9ewn41 wrote

Reply to Unlike most mammals, female naked mole rats develop new eggs throughout their entire lives – a finding that could lead to improvements in human infertility research. by chrisdh79

From the article: “This animal is the opportunity to think about and develop new techniques or potential targets for making new drugs, because their [reproductive] cells have the same program that we have in mice and humans, but they’re behaving differently,” says Miguel Angel Brieño-Enríquez at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

Native to East Africa, naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) live for up to 37 years and form underground colonies with social structures similar to those of bees, including a single queen that produces offspring for her entire life. By contrast, mice only live for about four years and their fertility starts dropping when they are only 9 months old.

Curious about these differences in reproductive lifespans, Brieño-Enríquez and his colleagues looked at the ovaries of naked mole rats under a microscope when the animals were 1, 5, 8, 15, 28 and 90 days old. They used advanced staining and testing techniques to identify the different kinds of cells they saw. In particular, they were looking for germ cells that can divide and mature into oocytes – or eggs – through a process known as oogenesis.

In humans, mice and other mammals, oogenesis only occurs before birth and, in some species, shortly afterwards, leaving newborn females with a limited lifetime supply of eggs. Those eggs gradually die over time, leading to reduced fertility with age.

In the naked mole rats, though, Brieño-Enríquez and his colleagues found large numbers of germ cells at every stage of life they tested, with numbers steadily increasing throughout the first week of life. At 8 days old, the naked mole rats had an average of 1.5 million egg cells – 95 times more than 8-day-old mice, says Brieño-Enríquez.

Study

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AutoModerator t1_j9ewh58 wrote

Reply to Unlike most mammals, female naked mole rats develop new eggs throughout their entire lives – a finding that could lead to improvements in human infertility research. by chrisdh79

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.

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shooter_tx t1_j9evrws wrote

Reply to comment by Gotanyfunkopops in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

"My wife is a physician and we have tested frequently for it since the onset, and nope, neither of us have caught it."

Are y'all just testing for active infection (e.g. PCR and RAT)?

Or have y'all actually had "full panel" antibody tests?

(I call them 'full panel' now, because in the early days of the pandemic I had to get two different referrals in order to get a f'n antibody test, and despite asking and getting assurances from four different people that it wouldn't be just a simple IGA test... it did, in fact, end up being just a simple IgA test... I was f'n livid, and they ended up not charging me for it)

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spambearpig t1_j9er0q9 wrote

Reply to comment by AllanfromWales1 in Snake reaction to sound strongly depends on genus — Woma Pythons tend to move toward sound, while Death Adders, Taipans, and Brown Snakes tend to move away by marketrent

I think the thrust of their research is showing that they can hear airborne sound at all. Their exact reactions to different sounds is as you say, not well explored here.

I kept snakes a lot as a kid, won some pet shows and learned my enthusiastic ass off about them. It’s been a well known fact that they don’t hear airborne sound. Interesting that if you really test it, that turns out to be false.

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marketrent OP t1_j9epgru wrote

Reply to Snake reaction to sound strongly depends on genus — Woma Pythons tend to move toward sound, while Death Adders, Taipans, and Brown Snakes tend to move away by marketrent

Findings in title quoted from the linked summary^1 with reference to its hyperlinked peer-reviewed article.^2

From the linked summary:^1

>A University of Queensland-led study has found that contrary to popular belief, snakes can hear and react to airborne sound.

>Dr Christina Zdenek from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology’s Professor Damian Candusso, played three different sound frequencies to captive-bred snakes one at a time in a soundproof room and observed their reactions.

>“Because snakes don’t have external ears, people typically think they’re deaf and can only feel vibrations through the ground and into their bodies,” Dr Zdenek said.

>The reactions strongly depended on the genus of the snakes.

>“Only the woma python tended to move toward sound, while taipans, brown snakes and especially death adders were all more likely to move away from it,” Dr Zdenek said.

>“The types of behavioural reactions also differed, with taipans in particular more likely to exhibit defensive and cautious responses to sound.

>“For example, woma pythons are large nocturnal snakes with fewer predators than smaller species and probably don’t need to be as cautious, so they tended to approach sound,” Dr Zdenek said.

>“Snakes are very vulnerable, timid creatures that hide most of the time, and we still have so much to learn about them.”

From the hyperlinked article:^2

>The snakes ranged in morphological body shapes and foraging types, including active foragers, ambush predators, arboreal species, and constrictor feeders.

^1 Snakes can hear more than you think, University of Queensland, 15 Feb. 2023, https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2023/snakes-can-hear-more-than-you-think/index.html

^2 Zdenek CN, Staples T, Hay C, Bourke LN, Candusso D (2023) Sound garden: How snakes respond to airborne and groundborne sounds. PLoS ONE 18(2): e0281285. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281285

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AutoModerator t1_j9eoco5 wrote

Reply to Snake reaction to sound strongly depends on genus — Woma Pythons tend to move toward sound, while Death Adders, Taipans, and Brown Snakes tend to move away by marketrent

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.

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1

Educational_Hawk1236 t1_j9em61w wrote

Reply to comment by 812many in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

This is why I don’t think it was a coincidence omicron emerged in an area of the world with a high rate of HIV infection, thus a lot of immunocompromised people.

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discodropper t1_j9eldxp wrote

Reply to comment by Riversntallbuildings in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

There’s almost always some monetary compensation for participating in medical research. The amount is typically associated with how intensive that research is. I’m not sure about long-term case studies like this one, but said compensation may have also included free treatment (which, for a year-long case, is pretty hefty).

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Beautiful_Welcome_33 t1_j9ejtwy wrote

Reply to comment by barebackguy7 in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

He was probably sedated and ventilated for the majority of it. 318 days of Covid isn't something you'll be up and about with.

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PA_Dude_22000 t1_j9ejs4r wrote

Reply to comment by Tex-Rob in The case of a patient who had COVID for 318 days helped scientists discover a new route for dangerous coronavirus strain emergence. They found mutations enabling T cell escape. Keeping track of mutations is crucial for understanding, monitoring, and controlling the pandemic by Skoltech_

I think the one overarching truth I have learned about people in general from Reddit, is that around 75% of the population has terrible opinions on just about everything.

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