Another weekend has swung by and we here at Froodee wish you all our dear readers a lovely weekend.

To wrap up the week, today will be the first roundup of tech, science and other geeky stuff that’s been causing the buzz around the world wide web this past week.

First up, Cosmos has a piece about Nemo, not the animated film but the real fish upon its main character has been based on, the clown fish or Amphiprion clarkii, scientists have found out what mechanism in the fish’s anatomy creates its “chirps” and “pops” which are the sounds it produces whenever other fish intrudes into their territory or in during courtship.

To decode A. clarkii’s utterances, Parmentier’s team came up with a three-pronged research strategy. They used a combination of high-speed video imaging, X-ray technology and sound recording to analyse the physical basis of sounds made by one clownfish approached by another in a classic Nemo scene: milling around a sea anemone.

Researchers called this a ’sonic chew’ the clown fish creates sounds by when they chew or grind their teeth together. This vibration is then magnified by their jaws and accompanied by other movements of their head.

This movement or action has been brought to a clearer representation in this animated video of not Nemo, but just his jaws in action.

Thanks to the clownfish, we now have an insight on how other fishes creates sounds which in turn could lead to new technologies and innovations we humans could benefit from. As long we don’t cause clownfishes to go extinct though.

Going bald? Fear not, gene therapy is hear to help

Thanks to the humble lab mice, scientists have found a possible cure for baldness.

In experiments on mice, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S. showed that the skin of wounded animals can naturally regenerate the follicles from which individual hairs grow.

They also identified a gene that is essential for normal hair development, and were able to stimulate or stop hair growth by boosting or inhibiting the protein’s activity at a molecular level, opening the way to non-invasive therapies.

The discovery surprised professional geeks, I mean scientists as it is commonly believed that human hair follicles are like brain cells, once we loose them, we loose them forever. However, things have now changed and gene therapy can now possibly cure baldness altogether.

Of course when we mention gene therapy today it involves stem cells, and when we hear “stem cells” we hear the conservatives whine and almost raise hell against it, but that’s for another story. For now, those who are loosing their top, literally, can relax a little knowing that lab mice and scientists are working hard to find a cure for you.

Photo by doublevelvet

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2 Responses

  1. Jay Gotera

    19|May|2007

    Lab mice and scientists are working hard to find a cure for baldness? It’s ok with the scientists, but if the cure comes from lab mice ..eew … would you like it when somebody says, “That’s a mice wig you’re wearing!” :)

  2. jhay

    20|May|2007

    Well it’s really wigs grown from mice, but yeah it would be a real surprise if it were. hahaha


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