Month: April 2017

This just in: Organisms of different sexes have different physiology. It’s a wild idea, we know, but hear us out. A new report on pigeon hormones in the journal Scientific Reports refutes the longstanding scientific assumption that studying female organisms is a waste of time.

This is not an exaggeration. “There’s a problem of sex and gender inclusion at all levels of science from faculty to the animals we use,” senior author Rebecca Calisi of the University of California, Davis said in a statement.

Until quite recently, it was standard practice for researchers to use mostly or exclusively male organisms, from cells in petri dishes all the way up to patients in clinical trials. Scientific institutions working to correct this extremely un-scientific imbalance have been met with resistance, as some researchers continue to argue that including females is complicated, expensive, and redundant, as male organisms are surely a good-enough stand-in for an entire species.

Little by little, small experiments and large-scale studies are chipping away at these arguments. The latest evidence in support of balanced research practices comes from Calisi and her colleagues at UC Davis and the University of New Hampshire.

Calisi and her colleagues examined the genes of 24 pigeons (14 male and 10 female), focusing on the expression of genes in each bird’s hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and reproductive organs.

They found differences between male and female birds. A lot of differences. Hundreds, in fact.

“There are incredible differences in gene expression, especially in the pituitary,” Calisi said.

She and her colleagues were restrained in summarizing the significance of their findings, noting simply that “[Their] results highlight the need for sex parity in transcriptomic studies, providing new lines of investigation of the mechanisms of reproductive function.”

by Ryan Lambie

If there’s one designer who has shaped Nintendo into the video game juggernaut we know today, it’s Shigeru Miyamoto. His seminal 1981 game Donkey Kong gave the company its first arcade hit, establishing a light, cartoon-like tone and a pixel-perfect level of polish that later games would follow.

When Nintendo made the move from arcades to home consoles with the Family Computer (or Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1983, Miyamoto created some of its most popular games, including Super Mario Bros. and The Legend Of Zelda. That so many of his creations are still so familiar to us over 30 years later is a testament to the strength of Miyamoto’s vision.

But there’s another Nintendo employee who made a massive contribution to the company’s history: artist, animator, and character designer Yōichi Kotabe.

Unlike Miyamoto, Kotabe isn’t a name that comes up all that often—even among dedicated gamers. But even if you’ve never heard of him, you’ve certainly seen something he has designed or drawn: he is, among other things, the artist we have to thank for the look of many of the most recognizable characters in the Super Mario Bros. series. But beyond that, Kotabe was one of the most talented animators in the medium’s post-war boom in Japan. He worked on some of Japan’s most popular anime shows and feature films, and was a regular collaborator of both Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. Had he remained in animation, a highly successful career at Studio Ghibli might have beckoned.

Instead, fate chose a different path.

By the mid-1980s, Kotabe was growing weary of the punishingly long hours and hard work required by the animation industry. By then well into his forties, Kotabe had spent many years working at Toei Animation, where he worked as a storyboard animator. He’d served as animator on Wolf Boy Ken, Toei’s first animated television series, and the directorial debut of Isao Takahata. He worked with Takahata and Miyazaki on the 1968 film Horus: Prince Of The Sun.

When Takahata and Miyazaki left Toei in the 1970s, Kotabe followed, and continued to work as an animator on their Panda! Go Panda! short films. He also provided character designs for their TV shows Heidi, Girl Of The Alps and 3000 Leagues In Search Of Mother, and even animated a couple of key scenes in Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The success of Nausicaä led Miyazaki and Takahata to establish Studio Ghibli in 1985.

After 30 years in the animation industry, Kotabe felt that his work had begun to stagnate, so he began to search for a new artistic path. But having slaved away in high-pressure animation studios for so long, he suddenly found himself with a lot of free time—it was, he said, “a dull period.”

While sitting in a coffee shop one day, Kotabe happened to meet an old work colleague, Hiroshi Ikeda. Ikeda, who was two years older than Kotabe, was also a veteran of the animation industry. The two had worked together at Toei Animation, with Ikeda having rapidly ascended from assistant to director and later company president in the anime boom years of the 1960s and 1970s. But Ikeda had since made the move into the burgeoning video game market, joining Nintendo in 1983 as the general manager of its new games division. Ikeda had seen that games were becoming more sophisticated, and that the medium needed the skills of seasoned animators like him and Kotabe.

Though he had heard of Space Invaders, Kotabe had little interest in games. But with little else to do, he accepted Ikeda’s offer to join Nintendo, thinking he’d only remain at the company for a year or two.

It was when Kotabe arrived at Nintendo that he saw Super Mario Bros., the latest game designed by Miyamoto. “When I first saw all the movements Mario was performing in Super Mario Bros.,” Kotabe said, “I thought that video games were now doing what the original animation industry was forgetting.”

Take a look at Mario through the years. #Mar10Day pic.twitter.com/iC5MEnGmDM

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 10, 2017

Miyamoto had been so hands-on with Super Mario Bros. that he had even designed the game box—his image of Mario, leaping through the air with a cheerful expression, did much to cement the image of a character who’d previously amounted to a handful of pixels. But in Kotabe’s experienced hands, the characters in Super Mario Bros. began to acquire greater personality details and clarity. He gave Princess Peach more distinctive proportions. He completely overhauled Bowser, crystallizing Miyamoto’s ideas of a half-ox, half-turtle creature into something more coherent.

What’s more, Kotabe’s confident, bold early illustrations fed back into the games, as the sprites (and later 3D models) took on the personality of the animation veteran’s drawings. Kotabe’s work at Nintendo didn’t end with Super Mario Bros., either; he worked on the character designs for The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and helped to create the classic Mario Kart. He contributed extensively to the Pokemon franchise, designing the 3D models for Pokemon Stadium on the N64, and working as animation supervisor on a string of Pokemon movies throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Kotabe retired from Nintendo in 2007 after 21 years, but has still contributed to the company’s games from time to time; in 2011’s Super Mario 3D Land, Princess Peach occasionally sends you illustrated letters as you progress. Those illustrations were provided by Kotabe.

When describing the universal appeal of Nintendo’s games, they’re often compared in style to Disney or Studio Ghibli. What many don’t realize is that Nintendo understood the importance of animation and character design in its games almost from the very beginning. Without the work of artists like Yōichi Kotabe, Nintendo’s games simply wouldn’t have been the same.

The typical house cat raised on plastic toys and canned food scarcely resembles its relatives in the wild. But all cats alive today can trace their lineages back to a common ancestor that prowled the Earth 11 million years ago. In this video from the science-oriented YouTube channel MinuteEarth, Joe Hanson explains the history of the domesticated cat.

Our mutual relationship with the animal started as a way for cats to get food and humans to get rid of rodents. The food part of that equation stayed the same, but today our feline friends offer more than just pest control. They’re also loving companions (when they want to be) and the inspiration behind the internet’s best memes. You can get the full fuzzy history lesson below.

[h/t Sploid]

After a good meal, you might want to check to make sure there’s nothing stuck in your teeth. Luckily, this generous narwhal is willing to give you its own horn to help you dislodge those stubborn pieces of food. Don’t feel bad, the horn grows back: just shake this clever, porcelain toothpick holder and a new horn will appear in its place.

Called Polar Picks, the adorable toothpick holder is the perfect addition to any kitsch kitchen. We recommend pairing it with this equally charming narwhal tea infuser.

Somehow, the Polar Picks isn’t even the first novelty toothpick holder we’ve covered. Last year, we wrote about this impressive Darth Vader device that wields toothpicks like a lightsaber.

Looking for good motivation to brush and floss? Mammal experts say the infamous lions that killed dozens of rail workers in Kenya in 1898 may have been driven by dental disease. They published a report on the unfortunate beasts in the journal Scientific Reports.

There were only two of them, but the damage they did was both extensive and terrifying. “I could plainly hear them crunching the bones,” Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson wrote in his diary, “and the sound of their dreadful purring filled the air and rang in my ears afterwards.”

Patterson eventually killed the lions, and their remains were preserved for scientific study. Today, the two skulls are kept in the collection of Chicago’s Field Museum so scientists can study them.

Historians have long believed that the lions turned to human prey out of desperation when a famine eliminated their usual sources of food. If this was the case, the lions would have relished every last bite of every animal they killed, including the bones.

But when Field Museum researchers examined the Tsavo skulls, they began to suspect that the lieutenant’s “very vivid recollection” may have been at least slightly exaggerated, as the lions had clearly not been crunching anything. The microscopic signs of wear and tear that accompany regular hard use were nowhere to be found in the lions’ jaws.

They did, however, find evidence of dental problems. One lion had broken a canine tooth several years earlier, was missing three incisors, and had a periapical abscess, or pus pooled around the root of a tooth. The other had a fractured upper left carnassial (the equivalent of a molar) and exposed pulp (tissue at the center of a tooth).

Bruce Patterson (no relation) is the museum’s curator of mammals. He and his colleagues think the Kenyan lions’ suspiciously smooth teeth and dental injuries could have played a role in their attacks on humans. These types of injuries aren’t uncommon, and they can be painful.

“Lions normally use their jaws to grab prey like zebras and wildebeests and suffocate them,” he said in a statement. If you’ve got a mouthful of hurt, you’re not going to leap face-first at a kicking wildebeest. “Humans are so much easier to catch,” Patterson said.

“We humans like to think we’re at the top of the food chain, but the moment we step off our paved streets, these other animals are really on top.”

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Prince Harry reveals his mental health struggles as he was growing up. His mother died when he was only 12, and he didn’t get counseling for 16 years.   
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