Blood, Bombs and More Blood

With my love of horror and fascination with the biological basis of fear, I love reading science news as we draw closer to Halloween. The New York Times Science website has a number of spine-tingling articles this week.

First off, is a great article about nature's blood suckers called, "A Taste for Blood." From the article:

"Blood feeders must also be stealthy and wily and good at escaping the swats and fury of their often much larger hosts. The common vampire bat, Desmodus, which feeds on large terrestrial mammals, creeps along the ground like a spider and, in addition to flying, can spring straight upward three feet into the air.

The white-winged vampire bat, Diaemus, approaches a potential host chicken so softly and lovingly that the bird is deceived and sweeps it up to its brood patch as though to warm its own chick. Aquatic leeches aim for hidden pockets and crevices: dip your head into leech-infested waters, and the segmented, toothy worms may slip up your nostrils and make a home of your nose."

Read the full article here.

(Photo by Adrian Warren)

On a lighter note, they also review "Doctor Atomic," an opera now playing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Too bad I don't live there, otherwise, I'd definitely try to catch it.

From the review:

"'Doctor Atomic' was surely born on the dark side of science mythology. Pam Rosenberg, then director of the San Francisco Opera, wanted to do an opera about an American Faust, namely Oppenheimer, whose life certainly seemed to follow a tragic trajectory. Wealthy, articulate and effortlessly fluent in far-flung domains of learning and culture, he was the young American prince of the new science of quantum mechanics as well as a bohemian and a pal of communists (his brother Frank and his ex-lover Jean Tatlock). Less than a decade after he was hailed as the deliverer of Promethean fire and the symbol of American science, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance and banished from government circles."

Read the full review here.

Finally, there's an article about the "Wonders of Blood," which, while basic in its scope is well worth the read.

From the article:

"Our blood is the foundation of our very existence as multicellular animals, said Andrew Schafer, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and the outgoing president of the American Society of Hematology. Blood is the one tissue that comes into contact with every other tissue of the body, and it is through blood that our disparate parts communicate, through blood that our organs cooperate. Without a circulatory system, there would be no internal civilization, no means of ensuring orderly devotion to the common cause that is us."

Read the full article here.