Discover May 2013

Evolution Motivation In “Evolution Full Tilt” (page 32), Steven Kotler wrote of Homo evolutus, a stage when humans would control their own evolution. Thought-provoking article. Evolution has an overarching goal: natural selection. What will be the overarching goal of human-driven evolution? Beauty? Desire? Self-actualization? Living forever? Power? These are selfish goals that deny the evolution process that got us here, and it is reasonable to suspect that Homo evolutus as a species will be more vulnerable, thus less capable of survival over the long term than what came before. St. Louis, MO In “Evolution Full Tilt,” you quote Andrew Hessel saying, “When I was a child, Down syndrome was a real problem. Today roughly 90 percent of all fetuses with Down syndrome are terminated.” Mr. Hessel’s implication is clear: problem…

WHEN IT COMES TO QUESTIONS, I HAVE A BIT OF A PARADOX on my hands. See, it’s a basic rule of editing and writing, something drilled into me since my earliest days in this field: Tell a complete story. Leave no questions in the reader’s mind. Unanswered questions = unsatisfied readers. The thing is, that rule doesn’t really apply where DISCOVER is concerned. As you read through this issue, I think you’ll come away with plenty of questions. In fact, I hope you do. I know I did after I read “Trait vs. Fate” (page 48), our feature on behavioral epigenetics, which explores whether traumatic experiences in our past, or in our ancestors’ past, leave molecular residue adhering to our DNA, impacting our own psychological and behavioral tendencies. I found…

The dark clouds of a supercell thunderstorm make for a menacing presence over an isolated dirt road in eastern Colorado, as seen by storm photographer Mike Hollingshead. A supercell is characterized by a deep, persistently rotating updraft called a mesocyclone, which can make the storm look like a flying saucer or a mother ship. Supercells are commonly seen in the Great Plains, and they can produce tornadoes. “Nearer the storm, the inflow winds get quite high. They are like a huge vacuum,” Hollingshead said. He recalled hearing tornado sirens while he fueled his vehicle in Limon, Colo., before he took this photo on a late spring day.…

At the International Space Station, Robonaut 2 holds an air velocity meter in the densely packed Destiny laboratory in March 2012. The robot will be “another pair of hands” for the space station crew, said NASA project leader Ron Diftler in a video produced by the Johnson Space Center earlier this year. Built in collaboration with General Motors, the robot was designed with human-shaped hands and arms, allowing it to use the same tools and controls as the astronauts. NASA’s goal is to test and train the robot to autonomously perform tasks that are too routine or dangerous for the crew, including those outside the station’s airlocks.…

MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS, or chronic fatigue syndrome, is a perplexing disorder that may seem more like a voodoo hex than an illness. Patients might lie bedridden in dark rooms, in chronic pain, often with multiple neurological symptoms like muscle pain, sweating and dizziness. Doctors have targeted various causes, from herpes viruses to retroviruses to depression. But a surprising new explanation suggests that the disorder is an autoimmune disease of the nervous system caused by overactive B-cells, which are normally responsible for churning out pathogen-killing antibodies. In 2011, two Norwegian oncologists, Oystein Fluge and Olav Mella of Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, along with colleagues, studied 30 people diagnosed with chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS). Each received either a placebo or a highly specialized chemotherapy drug called rituximab, which rapidly and…

What determines if an individual B-cell divides, produces an antibody or evolves? Prevailing theories suggest that B-cells react to external cues, such as hormones, but some Australian researchers now believe that the driving forces may be, at least in part, internal. Immunologist Phil Hodgkin of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research says the immune system has a sort of default allocation of B-cells corresponding to the various possible outcomes. Each B-cell’s basic fate is sealed, in other words, at the outset. Hormones, then, merely stack the deck in favor of specific outcomes. By devising mathematical models to accurately predict the probability of a B-cell’s behavior, the researchers hope to design new vaccines and immune therapies for diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome.…