Make Grad School Suck Less

Pick your flavor of study, click on it, and choose from dozens of ways to proclaim your kinky science love. Don’t see your favorite science topic? Leave a comment telling me which field you want to see (e.g. “I want astrology!”) and I’ll make the inappropriate references happen, and you can get your swag.

Deal? Deal.

Aren’t they the cutest?

So, if you’re STD savvy, you might have realized that all of the plush toys above are named after venereal diseases. These adorable little guys are the Venereals. I want to reiterate that these are cuddly toys that look like the actual infectious agents that give you these diseases. A little weird, maybe? Yes.

But I own them all. Can you imagine a better conversation starter? (“Oh that’s cute, what is that little star-shaped toy?” …”Herpes.” ). If you’ve ever wanted nerdy street cred, now is your chance. Just click the link for Venereals and these nasty little cuties can be all yours. Now let me explain myself….

1. Take pox for example. Pox also goes by the name syphilis, which you’ve probably heard of. Technically, the bacterium is called Treponema pallidum, but that’s not so catchy. But the plush toy for syphilis looks surprisingly similar to the actual bacterium:So these toys are the real deal. You could even call them learning tools, but something tells me that these should only belong to high school-aged and older individuals, despite how much a 5-year-old would want to cuddle them.

As cute as plushie syphilis is, you don’t want to get syphilis. You really don’t.

Syphilis gives you very un-sexy ulcers and a crazy amount of nodules all over the body:

Yup, definitely not cute. So have fun cuddling your syphilis plushie, but don’t actually, you know, come in contact with syphilis.

Luckily, if you’ve had syphilis for less than a year, penicillin should cure you right up. But, again, my advice is to avoid syphilis at all costs. And if you do end up with it, don’t spread it around.

2. Herpes is way too cute not to talk about. Look at this little guy:

Okay, so the actual herpes virus on the right isn’t nearly as lovable as the star-shaped, innocent-eyed, fluffy herpes on the left…. And many of us know what herpes looks like on someone’s face:

Ouch. Not a good look. And I’m betting it’s painful, too. Quite sadly, there isn’t actually a therapy to remove the herpes virus from the body. The best you can hope for are antiviral medications to reduce the frequency and severity of outbreaks for the rest of your life.

But again, the toy is too cute. And that’s what really matters.

3. Finally, it would be unforgivable if I didn’t feature chlamydia. LOOK at this face!

Despite the terrible letdown of the actual chlamydia bacterium’s appearance, the guys who designed this plushie toy deserve a lot of kudos. Look closely at the soft chlamydia. Look into its eyes. Those hopeful eyes that say, “I want to be your friend! Please be my loving friend.” And that hair! Timeless.

Oh yeah, but um, you don’t actually want to get chlamydia either. To my guy readers: you don’t want to have burning pee or unusual discharge from your penis or tender testicles. If chlamydia really takes hold in your testes, you can become sterile. I wouldn’t wish these things on my worst enemy.

And ladies: chlamydia likes to set up shop in your cervix, which can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which can cause difficulty with getting pregnant. And your pee will burn too. So chlamydia is an all-around bad time for everybody. Take heart though: chlamydia can effectively be cured with antibiotics.

You still shouldn’t go getting it though. What you should get is the adorably cute cuddly Chlamydia doll. It’s a tough choice between chlamydia and Herpes though…so that’s why I got ALL the Venereals! They keep each other company, and I love each of them in my own little way.

I’m the talk of all my friends, and you can be too. Just imagine all the nerdy hipster points this will get you! Now get those Venereals! But not the diseases. In all seriousness, men and women should carry condoms.

Stay nerdy and safe!

P.S. If you’re a bit weirded out about cute STDs, or you don’t feel comfortable getting those for children, check out Black Death, E. coli, Common Cold, and other wonderful, cuddly microbes!

Thank me later.

Janier M, Libar E, Bonnet A, Meunier P, Tabet M, Mathourais M, Paterour C, & Porcher R (2012). Treatment of late syphilis with 2.4 million units benzathine penicillin G (BPG): tolerance of single versus divided doses. Sexually transmitted diseases, 39 (5), 359-60 PMID: 22504599

De Clercq E (2012). Human viral diseases: what is next for antiviral drug discovery? Current opinion in virology PMID: 22846888

But it would also be cool if you tweeted the post, liked it on Facebook, submitted it to Reddit….

But I digress. You know how, sometimes, right before you fall sleep, you’ll have those weird hallucination-type things, and it’s somewhere in between waking and sleeping and feels surprisingly real? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then this post may not make any sense to you.

For the rest of you, check out this research where people actually studied those hallucinatory moments right before sleep. By the way, being a participant in this study seems like it was equal parts awesome and annoying.

Who doesn’t like Tetris? (No one.) For this study, in which the participants were almost certainly financially compensated, researchers asked test subjects to play Tetris for two hours every morning for three consecutive days — sign me up! Here is a diagram, because this is the awesome part of the study:

Being woken up 15 seconds after falling asleep.

Then, the researchers told the subjects to take a nap in the afternoon (this study just keeps getting better). Here’s the catch: subjects were woken up either 15, 45, 75, 120 or 180 seconds after falling asleep. The subjects, after mumbling expletives to the scientists, then reported their “mental content” to three judges.

In what may or may not be a surprising result, 10% of the subjects (48 out of 485 people) reported experiencing exact replicas of the sights and sounds of Tetris. This was in contrast to two control groups: one in which the subjects played no games (sad face) and only 1 person in 107 reported Tetris-related hallucinations (ummm…Tetris fanatic much?); in the second group, participants played Tetris after the nap (still a sweet deal), and only 3 out of 112 of those guys pre-dreamed about Tetris (oh, the anticipation!).

So the key takeaway here is simply this: Don’t watch Nightmare on Elm Street films right before taking a nap. Not only because Freddy Krueger will enter your dreams and kill you (duh), but because you might vividly hallucinate about him right before you fall sleep. And no one wants that.

Stay nerdy

Kusse C, Shaffii-LE Bourdiec A, Schrouff J, Matarazzo L, & Maquet P (2012). Experience-dependent induction of hypnagogic images during daytime naps: a combined behavioural and EEG study. Journal of sleep research, 21 (1), 10-20 PMID: 21848802

If you leave your job for three months without explanation, you’ll probably get fired. If you leave school for three months without a really detailed doctor’s note, you’ll probably get kicked out. If you leave your children unattended for three months, even with a good excuse, they’ll probably hate you, and CPS might take them away.

So, if you used to read my blog, but no longer feel that you can trust me as a webmaster, that’s well within your rights. I could go on and on about my hiatus with all the lab meetings and the presentations and the hours spent slaving away over tubes of clear liquids — but that’s not actually so interesting. You know what is?

What’s interesting is that I’m alive and relatively healthy despite my abominable (to some) diet and lack of exercise choices. Please read on for a heartbreakingly honest confession of my wicked health ways, with photographic examples of the devastation I’ve wreaked on myself, and sometimes on loved ones.

Disclaimer #1: The pictures herein may or may not induce diet fail.

Disclaimer #2: I may or may not use tons of hardcore scientific fact to back up my feeble excuses for my health choices.

Disclaimer #3: I may or may not be an advocate of unhealthiness per se, but I strongly defend people’s rights to make whatever unhealthful choices they wish…so long as they can live to tell about it, as I am.

First off, I can’t decide what my goal is with this post. Is it to absolve myself of the guilt I feel for what I’ve done? Is it to brag about the fact that I can do what I’ve done and get away with it? Or do I just want a platform to rage back against the hordes of people who provoke me time and time again by asking “Oh my gosh, you’re going to eat that?!”? Because the answer to this question is almost always “Yes. With seconds.”

So let’s say you make a cupcake. A cinnamon-y cupcake. You’re feeling indulgent, so you top it with streusel, which is basically butter and cinnamon and sugar. This adds a nice crunchy layer of devil-may-care deliciousness to your dessert.

This would be a fine place to stop and enjoy your creation. Would be, if it weren’t for maple buttercream. This is essentially maple syrup, butter (the real stuff), and powdered sugar.

Wow, you’re really throwing caution to the wind now! And since you’ve gone this far, you can’t think of any great argument against garnishing this confection with crumbled bacon, can you?

Paula Deen has nothing on you, obviously, but why are you doing this? Are you hosting a party? (No.) Do you have an amazing food blog, in addition to having an awesome science blog? (No.) Oh, so you just have a thing for unhealthy food! Lots of unhealthy food.

You don’t even really share these with people, you just eat them. The only reason you’ve taken pictures is to make your friends jealous on Facebook. But maybe you justify this as a rare treat! …What’s that? It’s not a rare treat? You mean you make unhealthy stuff, like, all the time? Surely you jest.

Alright, so I’m talking about myself here. I’m constantly making stuff like this, and not sharing it either. High sugar, high fat — and not just for dessert. My meals are technically not much better: cheap Chinese food, half of a large pizza, Ramen noodles. Even when I cook for myself, which is at least half the time, the meal is almost always along these lines:

Lots of frying, lots of butter. I’m not even going to talk about all of this stuff that I have on the side:

Alright, so you’re getting the picture. I’m not necessarily counting calories. Or fat, sugar, salt, cholesterol…. Maybe at this point you’re saying to yourself “Okay, this is disturbing, but what does it have to do with science?”

I’m not so sure, exactly. I guess I’m only just now becoming fully aware of the fact that I have eaten like this for my entire life, while making no attempt at formal exercise whatsoever, and yet I’m alive. Alive with an unremarkably normal BMI of around 20, normal cholesterol levels, no sign of diabetes, and blood pressure on the lower side. This probably sounds a lot like some sort of Humblebrag. And maybe it is. But I like to think of it as an anomaly of nature, an anomaly that should be questioned, challenged, and weakly explained in list form.

And so I present you with reasons why I’m not dead:

1. “I’m on a ketogenic diet!” A ketogenic diet is one that’s high in fats. I’ve got that covered. However, a ketogenic diet it also low in carbohydrates, so I can’t actually claim to be on a ketogenic diet. But it’s interesting to know that such a diet exists and is used as a form of treatment for epilepsy, brain cancer, and some genetic metabolic disorders. When the body has a relatively high amount of fat and low amount of sugar, the liver will burn fat instead of carbohydrates, which generates a byproduct called ketones. In people who can’t metabolize sugars because of enzymes deficiencies, a ketogenic diet is the way to go; in people who have seizures, it’s not well understood why a ketogenic diet helps, but it does.

"Tonight, we dine in hell! ...Because we hardly ate all day."

2. “I’m on the Warrior Diet!” The Warrior Diet is fairly straightforward: “under-eat” during the day and “overeat” at night. Now, I don’t technically follow the Warrior Diet or any diet at all, but I do find that my breakfast is small, my lunch is small, and my dinner is HUGE. For breakfast, I might grab some Greek yogurt (<200 calories). For lunch, I’ll have something like pita chips
and a cereal bar (<300 calories). And dinner is as much food as I can fit into my body. I’m talking 1200+ calories of pepperoni pizza, 1000+ calories of pasta, or 1400+ calories of fried chicken and biscuits. Followed by whatever my most recent baked good happens to be. So maybe I intake a normal number of calories (or so I’ll tell myself), but most of that happens after 6pm…where no one can see me.

3. “I’ve got good genes!” Ah, yes, those all-powerful “genes.” Those things that we use to excuse ourselves for not being runway models, Olympic swimmers, or (insert enviable profession here). And of course genes have a lot to do with everything we are…but, which genes are we talking about specifically? Very few people actually have a gene in mind when they praise “good genes” or lament “bad genes.” In fact, there aren’t many genes that can be solely blamed for why people are fat, athletic, smart, etc. Truth be told, there’s an enzyme known to break down fat in food and in the body and convert it to energy, and I know one of my two copies of this enzyme is mutated. So I don’t think I can say I have superior genes that let me eat tons of fat and sugar without consequence. If you still think it’s my genes, my dad developed Type 2 diabetes in his 50s, and my mom was diagnosed with high cholesterol in her 50s… neither of them were ever supermodels, either, so my genes probably aren’t terribly special.

4. “Just you wait!” And, after all this, it’s certainly possible that I’ve got some rough days in store for me. Everyone’s heard about how eating lots of fats and sugars predisposes to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and just about every other negative biological outcome. It’s possible that my love of all things fatty is dooming me to a future with scarring in my brain, specifically in my hippocampus. I’m definitely not advocating for anyone to do as I do, but sometimes people break all the health “rules” and turn out just fine, and sometimes people follow every rule and are still struck with health misfortunes.

Honestly, I am in awe of people with well-balanced diets, those of you out there running marathons for fun, and the like. But…I’m just not like that. I’m sure as I get older, I will be forced to make concessions to nature and clean up my act a bit. But, until then, I’d love it if people would give me less grief about what I choose to eat, unless those people are doctors holding the results of my blood work.

And in the meantime, yes, I’m going to eat that.

Stay nerdy.

P.S. I really do apologize for so much time away from blogging. I’m going to shoot for updates every week or every other week, and hope for the best. Thanks as always for your continued support!

P.P.S. Check out this shiny new comedic science blog written by my buddy Tyler: http://www.biLOLogy.net

Lambrechts DA, Wielders LH, Aldenkamp AP, Kessels FG, de Kinderen RJ, & Majoie MJ (2012). The ketogenic diet as a treatment option in adults with chronic refractory epilepsy: Efficacy and tolerability in clinical practice. Epilepsy & behavior : E&B PMID: 22366051

Seyfried TN, Marsh J, Shelton LM, Huysentruyt LC, & Mukherjee P (2011). Is the restricted ketogenic diet a viable alternative to the standard of care for managing malignant brain cancer? Epilepsy research PMID: 21885251

Veggiotti P, Teutonico F, Alfei E, Nardocci N, Zorzi G, Tagliabue A, De Giorgis V, & Balottin U (2010). Glucose transporter type 1 deficiency: ketogenic diet in three patients with atypical phenotype. Brain & development, 32 (5), 404-8 PMID: 19515520

Thaler JP, Yi CX, Schur EA, Guyenet SJ, Hwang BH, Dietrich MO, Zhao X, Sarruf DA, Izgur V, Maravilla KR, Nguyen HT, Fischer JD, Matsen ME, Wisse BE, Morton GJ, Horvath TL, Baskin DG, Tschöp MH, & Schwartz MW (2012). Obesity is associated with hypothalamic injury in rodents and humans. The Journal of clinical investigation, 122 (1), 153-62 PMID: 22201683

Try Nerdy will be back next week with new and exciting nerdy stuff.

And remember, it’s probably not the tryptophan in the turkey that’s making you sleepy after your meal…it’s probably because a ton of blood has left your head and gone to your digestive organs to try to break down all that food. And maybe because you’re crashing after the sugar high from all that pie. Either way, enjoy yourselves and be thankful.

If you’re in good enough shape to read this post then I’m sure you’re just fine, but…well, it’s worth a look to see what the latest research says about all that refined sugar and/or alcohol you just consumed.

1. You might not remember stuff. You would think that this is because of the alcohol, but actually, this one’s about the candy. New research in Behavioral Neuroscience shows that when people are on a high fat and refined sugar diet, they have significantly impaired hippocampal memory. This means that the people in the study had trouble forming new memories about their experiences…like what they had even eaten. Depending on how many Skittles you’ve been popping, there’s a chance you might not recall as much as you would have if you’d opted for tricks instead of treats.

2. You might have ended up in the hospital. I don’t mean from alcohol poisoning, although that’s certainly the case for some, but I’m referring to alcohol-related injuries. A recent data analysis exercise estimates that a whopping 21% of hospitalized injuries are attributable to alcohol. A heavy drinker with alcohol in his/her system is anywhere between 4 and 7 times as likely to end up in the hospital with an injury when compared to someone who hasn’t hit the bottle. “But I’m not a heavy drinker!” you say. Turns out, moderate drinkers suffer more injuries per hour with alcohol in their systems than heavy drinkers do, and the occasional binge definitely raises hospital injury risk.

3. You might have had a fight with your significant other. A study in New Zealand found that alcohol was involved in more than 25% of altercations between intimate partners. Women were more likely to report anger, fear, and severity of aggression while feeling victimized, and the perceived severity was significantly greater if the male partner had been drinking. However, men and women claimed approximately equal rates of being the victim or the perpetrator of the aggression. You see, when alcohol’s involved in lovers’ spats, nobody wins.

4. You might have kick-started your heart disease. I hate to scare you, but a science journal called Atherosclerosis probably knows what it’s talking about. Researchers in New York took mice and divided them into three groups: group 1 had two drinks per day, seven days a week (“daily-moderate” drinkers; blood alcohol content 0.07%); group 2 had seven drinks per day, two days a week (“weekend-binge” drinkers; blood alcohol content 0.23%); group 3 had no alcohol (same number of calories, though). While good and bad cholesterol levels rose in both drinking groups, bad cholesterol went up significantly more in the binge-drinking mice. And although the researchers induced atherosclerosis (clogging of the arteries of the heart) in all groups, the moderate-drinking mice actually had smaller atherosclerotic plaques than the no alcohol group; plaque volume was significantly greater in the weekend-binging mice.

Don’t kill the messenger, folks! But do be safe the next time you’re out having your candy- and alcohol-fueled party nights. Your memory/uninjured body/significant other/arteries will thank you.

Stay nerdy! And look way over to the right hand side of the site – you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our RSS. Everybody wins!

Francis HM, & Stevenson RJ (2011). Higher reported saturated fat and refined sugar intake is associated with reduced hippocampal-dependent memory and sensitivity to interoceptive signals. Behavioral neuroscience PMID: 22023100

Miller TR, & Spicer RS (2011). Hospital-Admitted Injury Attributable to Alcohol. Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research PMID: 22004026

Connor JL, Kypri K, Bell ML, & Cousins K (2011). Alcohol involvement in aggression between intimate partners in New Zealand: a national cross-sectional study. BMJ open, 1 (1) PMID: 22021745

Liu W, Redmond EM, Morrow D, & Cullen JP (2011). Differential effects of daily-moderate versus weekend-binge alcohol consumption on atherosclerotic plaque development in mice. Atherosclerosis PMID: 21930274

What would you say if I told you I could explain Edward Cullen (everything but his hair, that is) using science?

1. “Your skin is pale-white and ice cold.” Edward Cullen is strikingly pale and sometimes uncomfortably cold to the touch – as much would be expected in a guy with anemia. Because of his anemia, Edward has an abnormally low number of red blood cells, or decreased red blood cell function. So, logically, he is pale with a low red blood cell count and, since red blood cells carry oxygen, his deoxygenated tissues feel colder than a normal human’s would. However, although his skin “like marble” may be a source of discomfort in Edward and Bella’s romantic relationship, there is hope yet: scientists have just recently cured a mouse model of sickle cell disease (a type of anemia) using genetic manipulation techniques.

2. “I’ve never wanted a human’s blood so much, before.” Part of what charms Edward so much about Bella is her super delicious-smelling blood, and there you have the crux of their incompatibility. The sympathy that Twilght fans feel for Edward is duly heightened when they intuit that he suffers from porphyria. This disease can be acquired or inherited, and is defined by a defect in heme synthesis. Heme plays a role in keeping blood oxygenated and red, two things evidently defective in cold, pale Edward. What’s more, certain types of porphyria can cause people to experience intense skin irritation while in sunlight. A potential long-ago treatment for porphyria? Drinking human blood, of course.

3.”I don’t sleep.” “Ever?” “No, not at all.” Insomnia is no joke, folks. The side effects of insufficient sleep include irritability, anxiousness, and impaired memory. Insomnia is just one obvious potential explanation for Edward’s persistent brooding moods. And, although Edward’s is probably a severe case (he doesn’t even have a bed in his room), having insomnia really doesn’t make him all that special: according to the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, 1 in 3 adults suffer from this disorder occasionally. Thankfully, there are plenty of natural and man-made treatments for insomnia — just this month in the journal Sleep, scientists identified a drug doxepin that made it significantly easier for chronic insomnia sufferers to fall asleep and stay asleep. Take heart, Edward.

4. “His skin…literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface.” Perhaps I should’ve been more surprised when I learned that the vampires in Twilght sparkle, but, I wasn’t — it’s probably because I work with zebrafish. You see, there actually is a type of shiny skin cell, although they’re found in certain sea creatures (e.g. some fish, squid, and octopus species), and not in humans. The cells are called iridophores and they are full of guanine crystals that reflect light. So, you know, through some magic of genetic engineering, Edward has the genes to make iridophores (hey, his family is really rich). Because this is the trait of Edward’s that is least damaging to himself or others, I’m cool with it.

As I said earlier, science can’t explain Edward’s hair, but this site can help you recreate the look for yourself:

With posts like Prions and the “science” of zombies, Women defy biology to avoid giving birth on Halloween, and now this one, Try Nerdy is clearly feeling a bit of a Halloween vibe. Indeed, lest I be accused of supporting Team Edward, it seems only fair I cover the science of werewolves soon…because that Team Jacob can be viscous.

Stay nerdy!
Xu J, Peng C, Sankaran VG, Shao Z, Esrick EB, Chong BG, Ippolito GC, Fujiwara Y, Ebert BL, Tucker PW, & Orkin SH (2011). Correction of Sickle Cell Disease in Adult Mice by Interference with Fetal Hemoglobin Silencing. Science (New York, N.Y.) PMID: 21998251

Stölzel U, Stauch T, & Doss MO (2010). [Porphyrias]. Der Internist, 51 (12) PMID: 21104216

Krystal AD, Lankford A, Durrence HH, Ludington E, Jochelson P, Rogowski R, & Roth T (2011). Efficacy and Safety of Doxepin 3 and 6 mg in a 35-day Sleep Laboratory Trial in Adults with Chronic Primary Insomnia. Sleep, 34 (10), 1433-42 PMID: 21966075

…They’re venomous? They have how many sex chromosomes?? They might save the world?!? (Not joking about that last one…read on as I cover the basics, and the not-so-basics, of nature’s most beloved WTF moment.)

1. The mammalian egg-layer. Just because the platypus isn’t the only monotreme (it’s one of five), doesn’t make the fact any less perplexing. The platypus seems to represent an evolutionary fork in the road, like an animal that wanted the sweet perks of lactation without all the messiness of the live birth. Who can blame them, really? Oh, and about that lactation? The platypus female has no nipples, so the milk is just released straight through the pores of its skin. Talk about cutting out the middleman.

2. The duck bill. The electric field-sensing duck bill. Yes, we all know about that characteristically out-of-place-looking duck bill that appears to be glued on to the face of a more normal animal. It’s kind of humorous and it makes the platypus easily identifiable (and very amenable to cartoon depiction). As if a duck bill on a mammal wasn’t perplexing enough, nature equipped it with electrosensors. Incredibly, part of how a platypus tracks its prey is by detecting the electric fields generated by the prey’s muscle contractions. The platypus hunts not by sight, not by smell, but by electricity detection. Nice.

Platypus venom gland and duct

3. The excruciatingly painful venom. You see, I spent most of my life thinking of platypuses as cute, cuddly little guys. Recently, however, I’ve reneged on the “cuddly” part. Turns out, a male platypus can release an impressive venom from a spur on the hind foot; the venom doesn’t kill you, but you will feel a pain so intense that it may incapacitate you, and you might be extra pain-sensitive for as long as months. Coincidentally, venomous mammals are extremely rare — just like everything else about the platypus.

4. The absurd number of sex chromosomes. At this point, if you’re starting to feel a bit lacking compared to the platypus, don’t be too hard on yourself — they do have five times as many sex chromosomes as you do. A human female or male is XX or XY, respectively, but a platypus female or male is XXXXXXXXXX or XYXYXYXYXY. I won’t speculate as to why the platypus has so many of these, but because it overachieves in all other areas, I also won’t question it. As far as its other, non-sex chromosomes, the platypus genome has been found to include genes that have origins in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Is your brain hurting yet?

5. The ability to save us from superbacteria. Now let’s take things beyond the limits of what’s reasonable (if we hadn’t already). New research out of Australia has found that strong antimicrobial peptides are expressed in the platypus, and these peptides are effective against a broad range of bacteria. Because these antimicrobials are peptides, and not chemicals, they are promising candidates for natural treatments to fight multidrug resistant bacteria. Currently, there are very few options for defending against superbugs, and some may soon be resistant to all currently existing antibiotics.

So maybe now this shirt makes a little bit more sense:

The platypus: a little bit of LOL, a whole lot of WTF, and a definite TGP (Thank Goodness for Platypuses).

Stay nerdy!

Grützner F, Rens W, Tsend-Ayush E, El-Mogharbel N, O’Brien PC, Jones RC, Ferguson-Smith MA, & Marshall Graves JA (2004). In the platypus a meiotic chain of ten sex chromosomes shares genes with the bird Z and mammal X chromosomes. Nature, 432 (7019), 913-7 PMID: 15502814

Wang J, Wong ES, Whitley JC, Li J, Stringer JM, Short KR, Renfree MB, Belov K, & Cocks BG (2011). Ancient antimicrobial peptides kill antibiotic-resistant pathogens: Australian mammals provide new options. PloS one, 6 (8) PMID: 21912615

Congratulations to @HelloCAHelloChi! This will soon be you:

Just send in a shipping address via the Contact Us page and I’ll take care of the rest! I’ll also be in touch with you on Twitter. Hope you’re as excited as that stick figure looks!

To everyone else, I’m sure this won’t be the last giveaway, and your continued support is truly invaluable. Also, you can still get your Try Nerdy gear through the Buy Nerdy page!

Stay nerdy.