Biology

The first thing you notice upon entering the tidy white room is the pervasive smell of formaldehyde. Then you see four people in lab coats cutting into an enormous, dripping elephant's heart. A few feet away is a table strewed with a human head, feet and arms. And on a shelf nearby sits a large set of someone's no-longer-functioning intestines. Oh dear, you realize, it's another day at Orange Coast College, full of learning and fun. "How beautiful!" exclaims Ann T.

Countering the prevailing theory that aging is the accumulation of wear and tear in cells, scientists studying worms have found that aging may be hard-wired, a sort of unintentional sabotage by genes gone wild. The study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, found that metabolic processes important during development may shift later in life in ways that harm the worms, causing them to age and die.

What doesn't kill the Japanese grass snake makes it stronger. The snake eats toxic toads and uses their poison to defend itself from predatory hawks, researchers reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The 3-foot-long snake, also known as the tiger keelback, stores the toxin in specialized glands on its neck. The snake doesn't inject the poison with its bite.

In a whale-sized project, a group of scientific organizations plans to compile everything known about Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one public website. The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers.

SOMEWHERE, in most women's conscious or unconscious minds, is the unspoken expectation that, if their marriages or relationships last, they will most likely outlive their partners. They know that their children, for whom they're primarily in charge, will grow up and leave. And they face a barrage of advertising and other societal cues that subtly but ever so steadily suggest that they're not getting older, they're getting invisible.

Having one or more older brothers boosts the likelihood of a boy growing up to be gay -- an effect due not to social factors, but biological events that occur in their mother's womb, according to a study published today. In an analysis of 905 men and their siblings, Canadian psychologist Anthony Bogaert found no evidence that social interactions among family members played a role in determining whether a man was gay or straight.

A new study on genetically engineered mice appears to offer a novel way to live as much as 20% longer: Chill out. Scientists engineered mice to have body temperatures 0.5 to 0.9 degrees lower than normal mice. Female experimental mice lived a median of 662 days, about 112 days longer than normal female mice. Male experimental mice survived a median of 805 days, 89 days longer than their normal counterparts.

Octopuses' eight tentacles divide up into six "arms" and two "legs," a study published by a chain of commercial aquariums said Thursday. Helped by more than 2,000 observations by visitors, teams of aquatic specialists carried out a study showing that the creatures seemed to favor their first three pairs of tentacles for grabbing and using objects, Sea Life aquariums said. "One can assume that the front six tentacles have the function of arms, and that the back two take over the function of legs," said Sea Life biologist Oliver Walenciak.

Re "A holy war?" Opinion, Aug. 11 As a long- standing member of the National Center for Science Education, I cannot begin to tell you how much harm Richard Dawkins and his fellow neo-reductionists have caused our efforts. Perhaps he has some secret agenda to "draw fire" from the creationists that is normally directed against biology teachers. If so, he is naive to a fault. The wall of fear and ignorance shielding the 46% of U.S. citizens cited in this article from modern science is merely stiffened by Dawkins' attacks.