Science Tuesday - Pollen, Cannibalism, and The Big Bang Theory

Like Origami, Pollen Grains Fold Just So
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, April 26, 2010

After it is released from a flower’s anther, a pollen grain walks a humidity tightrope. It dries up a bit as it travels through the air, the cellular material inside becoming dormant so it survives until it reaches the humid environment of another flower’s stigma. But it can’t become so dry that the material dies.

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Three-Spined Stickleback Proves a Purposeful Cannibal
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, April 26, 2010

It’s a fact of life in the animal world that some fish (and birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, crustaceans — you name it) eat their young.

The three-spined stickleback, a species found around much of the globe, is one such finned filial cannibal. The males, who care for the eggs, are known to devour whole or parts of clutches. Sometimes, however, they might have reason to — since sticklebacks are known to “sneak” fertilizations, another fish might be the father of some of the eggs.

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Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs
By DENNIS OVERBYE, The New York Times, April 26, 2010

BURBANK, Calif. — Shudders and groans went around the blogs and coffee rooms of the physics world back in the summer of 2007, when CBS announced plans for a new comedy series about a pair of nerdy physicists and their buxom blonde waitress neighbor.

After all, the characters, Sheldon Cooper, a gangly supremely confident theoretical physicist at a place a lot like the California Institute of Technology, who has an IQ of 187 and entered college at 11, and his roommate, Leonard Hofstadter, whose IQ is only slightly less lofty at 173, and who is instantly smitten by the waitress next door, would seem to embody all the stereotypes that scientists have come to hate: physicists are geeky losers, overwhelmingly male and ill at ease outside of the world of Star Trek.

Not to mention their pals Rajesh Koothrappali, who literally cannot speak in the presence of a pretty woman, and Howard Wolowitz, who can’t shut up, and Penny, who works at the Cheesecake Factory and doesn’t seem to know Newton the Isaac from Newton the fig.

Three years later some scientists still say that although the series, “The Big Bang Theory” (Monday nights on CBS), is funny and scientifically accurate, they are put off by it.

“Makes me cringe,” said Bruce Margon, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explaining, “The terrible stereotyping of the nerd plus the dumb blond are steps backwards for science literacy.”

But other scientists are lining up for guest slots on the show, which has become one of highest rated comedies on television and won many awards. The Nobel laureate George Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley, and the NPR Science Friday host Ira Flatow, have appeared on the show.

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In searching for Waldo did we find ourselves?