That guy's simle says, "They're so impressed - thanks, Try Nerdy!"

Let’s be honest: Sometimes, you just want to know enough to sound reasonably informed during your coffee break. Here at Try Nerdy we totally respect that, so we’re putting together a list of the coolest nerdiest things that have had people talking in the last few days and weeks. And if you haven’t yet found yourself pulled into a conversation about one of these topics, then get people talking and get nerd credibility by asking “Hey, did you hear about…?”

1. “…That planet made of diamond?” Yes, Kim Kardashian’s 20.5-carat diamond engagement ring has been officially upstaged, and in a major way.  In late August, the journal Science published an article by researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia that, rather humbly, describes using a telescope to find a planet that is 4,000 light years away and most likely made of diamond. I say “humbly” because, despite the epicness of the find, the word “diamond” appears only once in the article, at the very end, and in parentheses:

The chemical composition, pressure and
dimensions of the [planet] make it certain to be
crystallized (i.e., diamond).

It’s the mark of a responsible, down-to-earth scientist to go on for pages with formulae and talk of pulsars before wrapping up with, “So, yes, in conclusion, we’re pretty darn certain we’ve found an entire planet made of diamond out there.” Kudos.

"O hai, I iz glowin."

2. “…Those cats that glow in the dark?” Truthfully, the coolest nerdiest thing about these cats isn’t the fact that they glow. Scientists at the Mayo Clinic have designed these cats to produce the monkey version of an enzyme that protects their cells from being infected with FIV, the cat version of HIV (which commonly leads to AIDS in humans). The green color is just a tool that’s been added to track with the monkey gene and make it easier to see whether the kittens of these cats inherit the gene (they do).

Well, I know what would be on the Christmas lists of 8-year-old girls everywhere…if 8-year-old girls stayed on top of disease research.

3. “…Those gamers who outsmarted scientists?” See, you don’t always need some fancy-pants degree to make a newsworthy breakthrough (although, 99.99999% of the time you do, so stay in school, kids). Briefly, the back-story here is that in order for the AIDS virus to do its dirty work and propagate itself inside someone, it needs to use an enzyme called a protease. Scientists would love to inhibit this enzyme, but to inhibit it they need the structure, and (until now) they just couldn’t figure the structure out. Enter the team of nerds gamers who play FoldIt, an online game for people to help science by predicting how proteins will fold (a really, really hard thing to do in most cases). The models created by the gamers were sufficiently accurate that researchers could determine the structure of the protease enzyme and even guess at where to target it with drugs.

More useful than Angry Birds...

Seriously, we need more games like that one.

4. “…That autistic ape?” First off, I’m never happy about disease in a human or an animal, but Teco the autistic bonobo is something of an awesome find for scientists who have been eluded by the mechanism of autism for years. Oh, and Teco is adorable:

For some reason, maybe because of his difficult birth or maybe because of his genetics, Teco shows many of the symptoms of autism that we see in human children: aversion to physical contact, avoidance of eye contact, fixation on shiny things, trouble with limb coordination, and more interest in objects than in his family. As mentioned, Teco is a bonobo, and bonobos are essentially a type of chimpanzee, which could make Teco a very near-human case study of autism. His genetics, studies of which are going on right now, have the potential to enlighten us about the extremely complex genetics of autism in humans.

So, hopefully this is enough to at least fill that awkward silence when you run into your boss at the water cooler, if not to make you the nerdy envy of everyone within earshot. Thank us by looking way over there on the right-hand side of your screen and liking us on Facebook (or following us on Twitter, or subscribing to our RSS feed… ).

What nerdy stuff has had you talking lately? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Stay nerdy.

Bailes M, Bates SD, Bhalerao V, Bhat ND, Burgay M, Burke-Spolaor S, D’Amico N, Johnston S, Keith MJ, Kramer M, Kulkarni SR, Levin L, Lyne AG, Milia S, Possenti A, Spitler L, Stappers B, & van Straten W (2011). Transformation of a Star into a Planet in a Millisecond Pulsar Binary. Science (New York, N.Y.) PMID: 21868629

Wongsrikeao P, Saenz D, Rinkoski T, Otoi T, & Poeschla E (2011). Antiviral restriction factor transgenesis in the domestic cat. Nature methods PMID: 21909101

Cooper S, Khatib F, Treuille A, Barbero J, Lee J, Beenen M, Leaver-Fay A, Baker D, Popović Z, & Players F (2010). Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game. Nature, 466 (7307), 756-60 PMID: 20686574

Dengue fever is a disease that is asymptomatic or mildly flu-like in the majority of people who get infected with the dengue virus. Those people generally live in tropical areas where mosquitoes spread the virus to anywhere between 50 and 100 million people per year, 12,500 to 25,000 of whom die from severe cases of the disease. In the past few decades, dengue infections have increased dramatically, hypothetically due to global warming and population growth, among other factors.

As you can see on the map above, as of 2006 the southeast coast of the U.S. harbored a species of mosquito able to transmit dengue (cyan), but did not have incidences of the actual dengue virus (red). Fast forward just a few years and the Florida Keys are now seeing cases of dengue fever recurring in the summertime, and the state is worried about the spread of this potentially fatal disease that has no drug or vaccine against it.

Scientists from a British company called Oxitec spoke with NPR after being contacted by Florida health officials because, fascinatingly, Oxitec specializes in developing genetically modified bugs to wipe out other ones that may be killing crops or, in this case, spreading disease. Oxitec has designed sterile male mosquitoes that, when released into a given environment, mate with the females and generate offspring programmed to die. A test of these “GM” (genetically modified) mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands lowered the local mosquito population an astounding 80%.

On the surface, it sounds miraculous that the mosquito population of south Florida could potentially be killed off. I know what it’s like to live there and be tormented by the pests, and the worst I ever got were itchy bumps, not dengue fever. But…as early as elementary school I learned about the food chain, and I know mosquitoes in Florida serve as a huge source of food for many other organisms (e.g., fish, birds, and other insects). A representative from the British non-profit GeneWatch, whose purpose is to monitor genetic technologies, has concerns along those lines and even suggests that other disease-carrying animals could spread new outbreaks in the absence of mosquitoes.

Either way, I think extensive testing and modeling of genetically modified pest control should be done before releasing scientifically altered animals en masse into an any ecosystem. Although, because there is still much governmental debate about how best to regulate the use of genetically modified organisms as environmental tools, Oxitec’s mosquitoes probably won’t be released into the Keys this year. So, my south Florida friends, despite this post’s title, don’t throw out that bug spray just yet.