May 12, 2016 at 12:30AM

Yesterday I Learned: 1) Apparently radioactive animals are a serious problem for radiation containment. Rabbits contaminated by radiation, for example, have been known to leave cesium-filled poop all over the place, which is potentially a hazard... although if the rabbit can literally EAT that much radioactive material and still hop around long enough to leave that radiation elsewhere, I kind of wonder just how hazardous it really is.... 2) The gene Delta, like many genes involved in development, is named after the phenotype you see in flies when you knock it out -- in Delta's case, the knockout phenotype is wing veins patterned like a river delta. Given how crucial Delta is in a number of different cell types, all I have to say is... that's it?!?!?! (I guess I should expect the best-known developmental genes to have abnormally gentle knock-out phenotypes, as the ones with stronger knock-out phenotypes are harder to breed, therefore harder to study, therefore *not* the ones first characterized.) 3) Best estimates by climate change models predict that if the Earth warms by 4 °C, pretty much all of South America will become uninhabitable desert. As will much of the US. And China. And parts of Europe. And Africa. Global warming *could* cause reforestation... in the Sahel. The most barely-habitable of all currently-habitated deserts. How ironic.