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

Every campaign season, in a great degree predictably, someone from the GOP makes a paper like this, listing examples of spending that, in their view, represents the ~ numerous egregious excesses of governmental spending. Counting put ~ their voters not to know or mean anything about these projects (especially the room for passing these are carefully framed) and observant that nobody in the mainstream media order be pointing and laughing at them, they push these memes onto the credulous public.

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

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

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

Unsurprisingly, this latest think best contains quite a few volleys to match science – in service of politicking. A living scan finds about a dozen philosophical research projects already funded by founded on grants, and I think some of the other bloggers without ceasing the network may cover some of them. I self-reliance focus on this one:

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

What used by all sense suggests, science has confirmed excessively and over again: namely, that cocaine application is linked to increased risky sexual port.. Just to be sure, however, person federal agency thought it should criterion the hypothesis on a new subject: Japanese lose courage.

The University of Kentucky received a vouchsafe of $181,406 in 2010 from the National Institute of Health to study for what reason cocaine enhances the sex drive of Japanese lose courage. In 2011, grant funding was extended and each additional $175,587 was provided in spite of the study. The total awarded to the plot will be $356,933.140

The study seeks to prove to be correct the clinical observations that indicated that cocaine application in humans may increase sexual motivation, in consequence of that increasing the likelihood of the accident of high-risk sexual behavior. The researcher conducting the study highlighted by what mode Japanese quail are ‘ideal animals to appliance when studying the link between sex and drugs inasmuch as the birds readily engage in reproductive mien in the laboratory. University of Kentucky s website set forth that quail provide a convenient and entertaining alternative to standard laboratory rats and pigeons. This study is slated to tarry through 2015.

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

Let me start through the first statement that this research is done “on a new subject: Japanese lose courage”. Maybe it is new to Coburn, no more than Japanese quail has been a affectedly nice standard laboratory animal for about a hundred years. Not wanting to dig through my file cabinets to find several dozen supplemental reviews on printed paper, I reasonable did a quick Google Scholar inspect and found these few reviews steady the usefulness and importance of this shape 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 brief period about a century. That’s not “starting a~”.

Also note that most of these reviews are backward the paywalls.

Not everyone in the rural parts is deeply ideological. Most of the US voters are bright and open-minded. Every couple of years they privation to go to the polls in the same state they want to be making informed decisions. They behest look for information, but will not consume too much time and effort (and certainly not currency) finding it. So, it is deplorable that the side of reason, the Reality-Based common, is keeping its information hidden aft paywalls, while the side of Anti-Science is not exact making it all free, but actively pushing their disinformation by every avenue and channel available. Why is it a surprise that the guys who abjure reality keep winning? It is unaffected for snake-oil salesmen to cause to be fun of stuff that most clan cannot even access to read!

Why is Japanese faint such a good laboratory animal?

Japanese shrink is sometimes called the “mouse of bird research”. The two species are deserving comparison in a number of important properties (examine: 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 example, gestation in mice lasts 18-21 days. In quail, the eggs hatch in 16-17 days. Those are the pair extremely fast developmental times, making it comfortable to quickly breed a lot of ascertained animals.

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

Mice be able to have litters anywhere between two and 12 pups at a time. Quail be able to lay essentially an egg per twenty-four hours throughout the year, throughout their lives. Quail get on this one – they can yield much more offspring per year. Efficient.

While techniques because of genetic manipulation in quail lagged at the back of those of mice (just like those of mice lagged by many years behind Drosophila techniques), they are at this moment available. It is now possible to practise transgenic quail and use them in genetic examination.

In many other aspects, quail is a more acceptable lab animal than the mouse (or rat or chicken). While laboratory strains of mice take been “domesticated” for only a small in number decades, the quail has been entirely domesticated for about 500 years – it is poultry. While lab mice will rarely cling to, they have to be handled through care – on the other hand, you have power to CUDDLE with a quail if you come short to!

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A decade ago, cuddling with quail.

Unlike its disorderly counterparts which are long-distance migrants, laboratory strains of Japanese faint are very slow fliers. Unlike frantic songbirds (that need to be caught surface which is stressful) which, if they have lose in the lab one indispensably an army of technicians with butterfly nets to seizure it (stressed), I can’t not only so remember how many times I caught fugitive quail in mid-flight, with individual hand, barely looking (actually, many state of things I caught them in the obscurity, not seeing but just hearing and susceptibility where they might be flying). Then you throw together in confusion it, and pet it on the contrary and put it back in its cage. And you be~ a loving look back and perchance a quail-style “thank you” phrase. They are cute. But not while cute as many other species of birds, that makes it somewhat easier to gain the victory one’s reluctance to occasionally conclude something unpleasant to them, e.g., surgeries.

It is a robust animal, very easy to keep, develop and feed, with minimal demands (which is why so many small farmers give rise to them around the world). They are social animals so they can be kept in groups. They are weak and generally happy and content, in the way that many more quail can be kept in a extent without being stressed than, for illustration, one can keep comparatively enormous, dead-breeding, slow-maturing chicken in the latitude of the same size.

The lab rodents, like mice, regard to be handled with utmost care, evermore keeping the threat of zoonozes in fix the ~ on – there are many diseases that be able to jump from mice to human and back. There is essentially trifle that can infect both a human and a faint, especially not in the isolated, climate-controled environments of a university laboratory.

Quail’s immune hypothesis is amazing. While one has to act a completely sterile surgery on mice, in be cast down it is done so only inasmuch as IACUCs (Institutional Animal Care and Use Commitees) not long ago started demanding this (discussion of the wastefulness of this approximate can be left for some other time). I stake you could do a surgery without interrupti~ a quail with dirty fingers and a rusty pocket-knife and the only weight would be that the bird’s pallid blood cells would heartily laugh at you. This is besides the reason why quail has been by means of intense research in Immunology for decades – granting that we learn something how the quake can be so resistant to essentially anything and everything in its environment, perchance we can apply some of that understanding to human medicine as well.

On the “spiritual being scale” of birds, the quail hits the calm bottom. It is, frankly, not that smart. And this is a good some~ from the point of view of inquiry on behavioral neuroscience. They “don’t observe” much thinking. They essentially go from one side the day like little automatons and greatest in number of their behaviors are routinized and stylized and automatic, like ‘fixed-action patterns’. Thus, manipulating a distinct brain area usually results in a circumstance change of a particular behavior. This is repeatable and replicable, without too much noise in the data (at least in comparison to more other species), so the statistics are tolerably easy to do and findings are affected clear. This makes research useful and active – sample sizes can be reasonably weak.

There are very few species of animals on the eve which we know as much considered in the state of we do, and in so numerous company areas of biology, as we suppose to mean the quail: embryonic development, genetics, science of organized beings, metabolism, reproduction, immunology, endocrinology, neurobiology and bearing. With such a large amount of background information, it is much easier to issue breakthroughs than when one is fair starting to explore a new living being model (though as my regular readers be aware of – I am very much in approve of adopting new models, as well taken in the character of just purely comparative research). Studying personal estate of cocaine on reproductive behavior is in this way much more efficient in a fashion in which we do not bring forth to start from scratch – we before that time know so much about its brain, manner and reproduction, we can move attached to more sophisticated studies than fair the first exploratory “basic experiments”. Thus we be possible to make faster progress. This is one efficient approach.

Most research on droop has – and often the same examination simultaneously – relevance to three different areas of human benefit: understanding of basic biology, application to human biomedical research, and application for agriculture – remember that shrink is poultry.

Quail and chicken are same closely related. Each one of their genes is not far from 99% identical. In many ways, the be quelled is a model for the chicken. Instead of harmony just a few large, slow-having chickens in the lab, doing unit slow experiment at the time, single in kind can instead keep hundreds of flinch in the same amount of extension without stress, and do several day of ~ing, simultaneous experiments in the same effect of time. That is efficient. And that is by what means we can learn how to become greater chicken (and turkey) productivity AND at the same time study how to make them vigorous, unstressed and happy while doing in such a manner – a very important aspect of Poultry Science research.

A big advantage of quail more than rodents is in the research without ceasing sleep. Rodents are nocturnal. Rats and mice death more during the day than for the time of the night. But their sleep is not consolidated – they drowse in many short bursts: there are condign more of these bursts during the twenty-four hours than night. On the other four inches , quail is, like us, a quotidian animal. Quail are fully awake quite through the day and have a ~ing consolidated sleep during the night (at minutest in short summer nights, while they may now and then wake up during long winter nights…wow – righteous like us!!!!)

Finally, my own farther than research combining the studies on circadian rhythms and clocks, thermoregulation, photoperiodism, seasonality and imitation (see this for a follow-up in another species) has several areas of relevance. It helps us answer for smarter husbandry for the poultry industry. It is a great model toward why human adolescents, once they stroke puberty, have phase-delayed circadian rhythms (cannot pass asleep in the evening, then cannot watch up in the morning, just like shrink). It helps to inform how to preserve endangered bird species, and to predict how the birds will respond to meteorological character change.

Not too shabby for a unimportant bird, right? You really want to tend fun of it for the consideration of politics? You are lucky the be quelled is just too nice to rend you back!

Related at Scientific American

Cocaine and the sexual habits of lose spirit, or, why does NIH fund that which it does?

The Guppy Project is not extravagant, Sen. Coburn.

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