PZ Myers hated World War Z.
Category: Biology (page 9 of 63)
Vaping an e cigarette.
Inhaling vapor from e-cigarettes seems to cause a similar amount of respiratory distress as smoking a regular cigarette. At least according to this study in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology. The scientists looked at the amount of nitric oxide exhaled in 25 volunteers. Toxicologists view drops in nitric oxide exhalation as a marker of inflammation airway damage.
After ‘vaping,’ or inhaling e-cigarettes’ vapors, volunteers exhaled 2.2 to 3.2 parts per billion less nitric oxide than when exhaling normally. The bigger drop came after volunteers vaped a nicotine-free fluid. Smoking regular cigarettes dropped nitric oxide values by 2.8 parts per billion. An earlier studyfound a similar trend but couldn’t rule out nicotine as the culprit in the larger drop.
From ScienceNews.
Ed Yong reports on a species of insect where the female has the penis and the male has a vagina.
Neotrogla mating.
Ed writes:
This picture of two mating insects comes with an unexpected twist. The one on top is a female, and she has a penis. The one on the bottom is a male, and he has the equivalent of a vagina. During sexual bouts that can last for 40 to 70 hours, she penetrates him and uses her genitals not to deliver sperm, but to collect it.
The 3-millimetre-long species is called Neotrogla curvata, and it lives in Brazilian caves. There are four Neotrogla species and the females all have penises. They belong to a group of insects called barkflies or barklice—closely related to lice and true bugs, and only distantly related to actual flies.
…
Neotrogla’s set-up is very different. The female has a penis-like protrusion called a gynosome, which is erectile and curved. The male has no such organ; he has an internal chamber instead. When she penetrates him during sex, he delivers sperm into a duct in her gynosome, which leads to a storage organ. He still ejaculates, but he does so inside his own body, not hers.