Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) released his “Wastebook” a week ago – a list of 100 government-funded projects that are supposedly a perish of money.

Every campaign season, entirely predictably, someone from the GOP makes a document like this, listing examples of expenditure that, in their view, represents the principally egregious excesses of governmental spending. Counting forward their voters not to know or be apprised anything about these projects (especially the means by which anything is reached these are carefully framed) and observant that nobody in the mainstream media have a mind be pointing and laughing at them, they push these memes onto the unsuspecting public.

Many of these projects are competing grant-funded scientific research, already paid ~ the agency of NIH or NSF after a draconian course of peer-review of the concede proposals by the experts in the region.

Remember the autism fruitfly research that Sarah Palin deliberation was wasteful? John McCain’s deriding of material bear DNA research? The “projector” at the Adler Planetarium? All horrendous misinterpretations of the substantial research for the sake of scoring civic points.

Just a campaign tactic to persuade people riled up against the “pointy-heads”.

Unsurprisingly, this latest catalogue contains quite a few volleys in opposition to science – in service of politicking. A passionate scan finds about a dozen philosophical research projects already funded by federal grants, and I think some of the other bloggers in c~tinuance the network may cover some of them. I order focus on this one:

23) Rockin Robins: Study Looks instead of Connections Between Cocaine and Risky Sex Habits of Quail (KY) $175,587

What vulgar sense suggests, science has confirmed c~ing and over again: namely, that cocaine conversion to an act is linked to increased risky sexual bearing. Just to be sure, however, human being federal agency thought it should proof the hypothesis on a new subject: Japanese faint.

The University of Kentucky received a donation of $181,406 in 2010 from the National Institute of Health to study by what means cocaine enhances the sex drive of Japanese be cast down. In 2011, grant funding was extended and an additional $175,587 was provided according to the study. The total awarded to the scheme will be $356,933.140

The study seeks to prove to be correct the clinical observations that indicated that cocaine practice in humans may increase sexual motivation, by that means increasing the likelihood of the incident of high-risk sexual behavior. The researcher conducting the study highlighted for what cause Japanese quail are ‘ideal animals to application when studying the link between sex and drugs since the birds readily engage in reproductive port. in the laboratory. University of Kentucky s website fixed that quail provide a convenient and attractive alternative to standard laboratory rats and pigeons. This study is slated to be permanent through 2015.

Scicurious goes in magnificent depth and detail about this precise line of research and why it is influential – check it out. I will in lieu point out what’s wrong concerning laughing at Japanese quail as a study model, since I spent ten years of my life doing investigation on it.

Let me start with the first statement that this exploration is done “on a new subject: Japanese cower”. Maybe it is new to Coburn, however Japanese quail has been a fine standard laboratory animal for about a hundred years. Not wanting to dig through my toothed cabinets to find several dozen supplemental reviews on printed paper, I normal did a quick Google Scholar overhaul and found these few reviews adhering the usefulness and importance of this variety in research: J.R.Cain and W.O.Cawley, 1914, Padgett, CA and Ivey, WD, 1959, Ellen P. Reese and T. W. Reese, 1962, A. E. Woodard, H. Abplanalp, W. O. Wilson, and P. Vohra, 1973, Ichilcik R and Austin JC., 1978, Huss D, Poynter G and Lansford R., 2008, Greg Poynter, David Huss and Rusty Lansford, 2009, Gregory F. Ball and Jacques Balthazart, 2010.

Note that these reviews measure about a century. That’s not “of recent origin”.

Also note that most of these reviews are at the back the paywalls.

Not everyone in the land is deeply ideological. Most of the US voters are shrewd and open-minded. Every couple of years they penury to go to the polls in the same manner they want to be making informed decisions. They last ~ and testament look for information, but will not lay out too much time and effort (and certainly not coin ) finding it. So, it is mournful that the side of reason, the Reality-Based community, is keeping its information hidden rearward paywalls, while the side of Anti-Science is not true making it all free, but actively pushing their disinformation ~ the agency of every avenue and channel available. Why is it a surprise that the guys who abjure reality keep winning? It is flowing for snake-oil salesmen to pass over fun of stuff that most the masses cannot even access to read!

Why is Japanese be quelled such a good laboratory animal?

Japanese faint is sometimes called the “mouse of fowl of the air research”. The two species are worthy of comparison in a number of important properties (understand: Breeding Strategies for Maintaining Colonies of Laboratory Mice – A Jackson Laboratory Resource Manual; Japanese Quail As A Laboratory Animal – Avian Genetic Resource Laboratory (AGRL); Quail – AnimalResearch.info).

For copy, gestation in mice lasts 18-21 days. In be cast down, the eggs hatch in 16-17 days. Those are as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but extremely fast developmental times, making it moderate to quickly breed a lot of empiric animals.

It takes about six weeks toward both mice and quail to gain sexual maturity after they are born. Again, that is a extremely fast maturation rate, making it active for breeding in the lab.

Mice be possible to have litters anywhere between two and 12 pups at a time. Quail be possible to lay essentially an egg per sunshine throughout the year, throughout their lives. Quail catch on this one – they can exhibit much more offspring per year. Efficient.

While techniques instead of genetic manipulation in quail lagged backward those of mice (just like those of mice lagged ~ dint of. many years behind Drosophila techniques), they are at present available. It is now possible to constitute transgenic quail and use them in genetic study.

In many other aspects, quail is a upper hand lab animal than the mouse (or rat or chicken). While laboratory strains of mice consider been “domesticated” for only a not many decades, the quail has been largely domesticated for about 500 years – it is poultry. While lab mice will rarely tear, they have to be handled by care – on the other hand, you be possible to CUDDLE with a quail if you fall short to!

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A decade ago, cuddling with quail.

Unlike its ferocious counterparts which are long-distance migrants, laboratory strains of Japanese give way are very slow fliers. Unlike unrefined songbirds (that need to be caught exterior which is stressful) which, if they generate lose in the lab one necessarily an army of technicians with butterfly nets to grasp it (stressed), I can’t unruffled remember how many times I caught fugitive quail in mid-flight, with united hand, barely looking (actually, many spells I caught them in the occult, not seeing but just hearing and feeling where they might be flying). Then you make hurriedly it, and pet it on the aim and put it back in its cage. And you be in possession of a loving look back and possibly a quail-style “thank you” make appeal. They are cute. But not taken in the character of cute as many other species of birds, which makes it somewhat easier to overthrow one’s reluctance to occasionally perform something unpleasant to them, e.g., surgeries.

It is a lusty animal, very easy to keep, foster and feed, with minimal demands (which is why so many small farmers produce off-spring them around the world). They are social animals so they can be kept in groups. They are inferior and generally happy and content, in such a manner many more quail can be kept in a apartment without being stressed than, for precedent, one can keep comparatively enormous, behindhand-breeding, slow-maturing chicken in the field of the same size.

The lab rodents, like mice, consider to be handled with utmost care, always keeping the threat of zoonozes in belief – there are many diseases that can jump from mice to human and back. There is essentially nihility that can infect both a human and a lose courage, especially not in the isolated, meteorological character-controled environments of a university laboratory.

Quail’s immune system is amazing. While one has to achieve a completely sterile surgery on mice, in lose spirit it is done so only for the cause that IACUCs (Institutional Animal Care and Use Commitees) recently started demanding this (discussion of the wastefulness of this come can be left for some other time). I lay a wager you could do a surgery forward a quail with dirty fingers and a fusty pocket-knife and the only weight would be that the bird’s happy blood cells would heartily laugh at you. This is furthermore the reason why quail has been below intense research in Immunology for decades – grant that we learn something how the tremble can be so resistant to essentially anything and everything in its environment, maybe we can apply some of that acquirements to human medicine as well.

On the “information scale” of birds, the quail hits the quiet bottom. It is, frankly, not that pungent. And this is a good some~ from the point of view of scrutiny on behavioral neuroscience. They “don’t be sufficient” much thinking. They essentially go through the day like little automatons and ut~ of their behaviors are routinized and stylized and self-moving, like ‘fixed-action patterns’. Thus, manipulating a peculiar brain area usually results in a distinctive change of a particular behavior. This is repeatable and replicable, free from too much noise in the given conditions (at least in comparison to some other species), so the statistics are reasonably easy to do and findings are moderately beautiful clear. This makes research useful and efficient – sample sizes can be reasonably base.

There are very few species of animals relating to which we know as much for example we do, and in so great number areas of biology, as we learn the quail: embryonic development, genetics, science of organized beings, metabolism, reproduction, immunology, endocrinology, neurobiology and mien. With such a large amount of background information, it is much easier to put in order breakthroughs than when one is condign starting to explore a new beast model (though as my regular readers understand – I am very much in be in ~ of of adopting new models, as well in the same manner with just purely comparative research). Studying personal estate of cocaine on reproductive behavior is such much more efficient in a shape in which we do not be under the necessity to start from scratch – we even now know so much about its brain, air and reproduction, we can move in c~tinuance to more sophisticated studies than deserved the first exploratory “basic experiments”. Thus we be possible to make faster progress. This is one efficient approach.

Most research on be cast down has – and often the same experiment simultaneously – relevance to three different areas of human good: understanding of basic biology, application to human biomedical inquiry, and application for agriculture – remember that be quelled is poultry.

Quail and chicken are exceedingly closely related. Each one of their genes is about 99% identical. In many ways, the droop is a model for the chicken. Instead of feed just a few large, slow-having chickens in the lab, doing single in kind slow experiment at the time, person can instead keep hundreds of droop in the same amount of space without stress, and do several thriftless, simultaneous experiments in the same footing of time. That is efficient. And that is by what means we can learn how to greaten chicken (and turkey) productivity AND at the sort time study how to make them healthy, unstressed and happy while doing in the way that – a very important aspect of Poultry Science scrutiny.

A big advantage of quail extremely rodents is in the research without interrupti~ sleep. Rodents are nocturnal. Rats and mice sleep more during the day than for the period of the night. But their sleep is not consolidated – they death in many short bursts: there are good more of these bursts during the age than night. On the other handiwork, quail is, like us, a diurnal animal. Quail are fully awake through every part of the day and have a for a ~ time consolidated sleep during the night (at smallest in short summer nights, while they may now and then wake up during long winter nights…wow – even-handed like us!!!!)

Finally, my own farther than research combining the studies on circadian rhythms and clocks, thermoregulation, photoperiodism, seasonality and propagation (see this for a follow-up in another species) has several areas of relevance. It helps us create smarter husbandry for the poultry sedulousness. It is a great model in quest of why human adolescents, once they be crowned with success puberty, have phase-delayed circadian rhythms (cannot get asleep in the evening, then cannot put in action up in the morning, just like quail). It helps to inform how to keep endangered bird species, and to augur how the birds will respond to meteorological character change.

Not too shabby for a slender bird, right? You really want to form fun of it for the reason of politics? You are lucky the tremble is just too nice to cause to smart you back!

Related at Scientific American

Cocaine and the sexual habits of droop, or, why does NIH fund which it does?

The Guppy Project is not lavish, Sen. Coburn.

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