www.weevilmagazine.com Issue #5 February 2010
When Poultry Roamed the Land
Ever wanted to meet a real live dinosaur? Hans chicken embryo could take up to 100 years. For
Larsson, from McGill University, Montreal, may those of you who can’t wait that long, inventors at
have the answer. Since birds are basically evolved Innvo Labs have the answer. Pleo, a robotic pet
dinosaurs, Larsson plans to genetically engineer dinosaur, can be yours for just a few hundred
chicken embryos to get them to follow a more pounds. Made to resemble a one-week-old
ancestral developmental route. Thus the embryos Camarasaurus, it can walk, explore and respond
would grow into creatures that are more dinosaur- to its environment. Its personality develops with
like, potentially involving teeth, a dinosaur-like tail time depending on how you treat your Pleo – he
and forearms. can become depressed unless you are nice to
him. It does, however, lack the charming features
Although Larsson claims that he has no plans to that make pet-keeping so appealing: it does not La
nd
take the modified eggs through to hatching, due to pee in your shoes, chew your furniture or decide
potentially huge costs of a dinosaur hatchery, I to use you as a trampoline while you are asleep. It
suspect that, were he to breed smaller-bodied also lacks the capacity to increase in size, so you
versions, many a Jurassic Park fan would queue may not be able to scare your neighbours with m
ed
th
e
up to get one. Some of the other scientists working him.
on the project agree, with Professor Jack Horner
from Montana State University planning to bring So perhaps a real live dinosaur pet is worth the
one into lectures on a leash. wait – surely 100 years is not that long?
Sadly, it is perhaps too early to get excited: Mia is going to spend those 100 years choosing a
according to David Stern, an evolutionary biologist name for her pet dino. How does Trixiebell sound?
at Princeton, creating a real live dinosaur from a W
he
n P
ou
ltry
Ro
a
Let Sleeping Hogs Lie...
“Hey... I think I need to bury my pig...” laughing in the
face of fear, I
It sounds like the world’s worst chat-up line, but for dislike being
the medical researchers of Bolzano Emergency firebombed), it
Medical Centre, Italy, and Innsbruck University, seems more than a little harsh to the pigs. After all,
Austria, a mass burial of sedated pigs was a deadly they are people too – well, mammals – and even
serious issue, seeking to increase their though they would have been asleep and
understanding of the nature of air pockets under contributing to the improvement of life-saving
avalanches. Unfortunately for Hermann Brugger techniques, they probably didn’t sign a consent
and his team, their attempt to conduct research that, form.
they hoped, would improve the success of mountain Le
t S
lee
pin
g H
og
s L
ie.
..
rescue (or, at worst, provide them with 29 frozen This leaves the world with a dilemma: how to
hog-roasts for the Innsbruck May Ball), was analyse the effect of air pockets on trapped
prevented by animal rights groups, who condemned humans, without using living, feeling beings, or,
the “bizarre and macabre” experiment to the trough failing that, Oxford University students. The animal
of history through the power of the complaint. rights protestors suggested using human subjects
(the researchers themselves), which seems
This issue dominates the public perception of contrary to the nature of their argument for
science. On one hand, the potential gain of this compassion; besides, no journal is going to accept
experiment is clear – everyone loves bacon, a paper written by a pig on the effects of air pockets
including those people who are unfortunate enough on researchers. If they do, it’s going to cost a lot to
to be trapped in an avalanche, but fortunate enough translate.
to be near an air pocket. Such people make up 20%
of avalanche victims every year, and this research J.R.I Coleman is planning an experiment into the
could have led to a greater understanding of how to heinous dangers of drowning in dark chocolate,
save them. On the other hand (and because, whilst using honeycomb as a model... any complaints,
Weevil is a rag-tag group of hardy science nerds, care of Queens' College.
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