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recent bookmarks from jmRisky business: linking _Toxoplasma gondii_ infection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences2019-01-02T15:54:24+00:00
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.0822
jmUsing a saliva-based assay, we found that students (n = 1495) who tested IgG positive for Toxoplasma gondii exposure were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in ‘management and entrepreneurship' over other business-related emphases. Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197). Finally, after synthesizing and combining country-level databases on T. gondii infection from the past 25 years with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of entrepreneurial activity, we found that infection prevalence was a consistent, positive predictor of entrepreneurial activity and intentions at the national scale, regardless of whether previously identified economic covariates were included. Nations with higher infection also had a lower fraction of respondents citing ‘fear of failure' in inhibiting new business ventures. While correlational, these results highlight the linkage between parasitic infection and complex human behaviours, including those relevant to business, entrepreneurship and economic productivity.
]]>science biology infection toxoplasmosis parasites humans behaviour entrepreneurs business brains economicshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d60371f8ab12/Cordyceps even creepier than at first thought2017-11-20T16:28:40+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/
jmHughes’s team found that fungal cells infiltrate the ant’s entire body, including its head, but they leave its brain untouched. There are other parasites that manipulate their hosts without destroying their brains, says Kelly Weinersmith from Rice University. For example, one flatworm forms a carpet-like layer over the brain of the California killifish, leaving the brain intact while forcing the fish to behave erratically and draw the attention of birds—the flatworm’s next host. “But manipulation of ants by Ophiocordyceps is so exquisitely precise that it is perhaps surprising that the fungus doesn't invade the brain of its host,” Weinersmith says. [....]
So what we have here is a hostile takeover of a uniquely malevolent kind. Enemy forces invading a host’s body and using that body like a walkie-talkie to communicate with each other and influence the brain from afar. Hughes thinks the fungus might also exert more direct control over the ant’s muscles, literally controlling them “as a puppeteer controls as a marionette doll.” Once an infection is underway, he says, the neurons in the ant’s body—the ones that give its brain control over its muscles—start to die. Hughes suspects that the fungus takes over. It effectively cuts the ant’s limbs off from its brain and inserts itself in place, releasing chemicals that force the muscles there to contract. If this is right, then the ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Its brain is still in the driver’s seat, but the fungus has the wheel.
]]>biology gross cordyceps fungi fungus ants zombies infection brain parasiteshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:de8f315abfd2/How to Read a Scientific Paper (About That Researcher With a Nematode in His Mouth) - Wired Science2013-10-15T09:01:08+00:00
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/how-to-read-a-research-paper-about-that-scientist-with-a-nematode-in-his-mouth/
jmLet’s rewind to September 2012. It was about then- according to this recently published report (paywall) in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine – that an “otherwise healthy, 36-year-old man” felt a rough patch in his mouth, a scaly little area his right cheek. It didn’t hurt. But then it didn’t stay there either. He started testing for it with his tongue. It traveled. It moved to the back of his mouth, then forward, coiled backwards again. In the language of science: “These rough patches would appear and disappear on a daily basis, giving the patient the indirect sense that there was an organism moving within the oral cavity.”
]]>nematodes parasites biology medicine paper gross funny wired mouthhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:370a9d80c693/Today in nose-leech news -- it's a species!2011-05-23T22:46:27+00:00
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100415-new-species-t-rex-leech-orifices/
jmnose nose-leech leeches nature horror omgwtf via:jwz nightmare parasiteshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3ddb17cb5d42/