Our planet is a very interesting place. I understand that arguments could be made against my stance, but I happen to have a substantial bias — I live here. Many things make the Earth objectively uninteresting: it’s neither remarkably large nor small, there’s a single moon, there aren’t any rings or many extreme atmospheric conditions like on Saturn or Jupiter and it orbits a fairly ordinary star made up of hydrogen and helium. Despite being an ordinary planet, in an ordinary solar system, in an ordinary galaxy, Earth has a few characteristics that make it extraordinary in its own right.

Possibly the most noteworthy of these characteristics is the repeated violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Newton’s second law states that no system can increase in order without decreasing the order of another system. Living things represent an incredibly intricate ordering of particles; cell membranes, proteins and nucleic acids are very ordered and precise arrangements of molecules that entropically might prefer to be scattered about somewhere instead of being bundled into double helices or sheets or whatever form they happen to take within us and our fellow living things.

(A disclaimer to the angry physicists who’ve just read that previous passage and happen to be particular about definitions: the physical laws are not actually being broken, because living systems are not truly isolated. Through thermodynamic exchanges with electromagnetic radiation from the sun and other interesting things, disorder increases elsewhere, but that’s beside the point I’m making: life as we understand it today is something extraordinary).

From the Earth’s point of view, life appears to makes things happen incredibly quickly.  The current going theory popular among many geologists, astronomers, biologists and others within the scientific community goes as such: 4.6 billion or so years ago, some of the dust orbiting our fair star condensed through gravity into a sphere. Then it was bombarded with some meteorites and there was a great deal of volcanic activity. Things cooled down and stabilized a little more, and then life began to emerge.

This life was dramatically different from you and I — they didn’t even breathe oxygen. Fortunately for us and other beings, these ancient stromatolites photosynthesized and released a great deal of oxygen into the planet’s atmosphere. During that time and for a billion or two years after that, the living organisms were perfectly successful existing as isolated units. Some non-motile individuals aggregated into sheets or mats because they couldn’t move, and as they divided, they stayed right next to one another. Each cell was still independent of the rest of the group.

Eventually, something extraordinary happened. Some groups of cells began to increase their success by cooperating — and boom! Suddenly, there was multicellular life (It’s worth mentioning that since then, multicellularity has evolved several times across different groups, but doesn’t it sound much more fun to talk about the first time as a big moment?).

From there, living things could increase odds of surviving by aggregating in different arrangements, and organisms like sponges and algae started to arise. From there, the animals rapidly diversified with new traits like cnidocytes (the specialized stinging cells of creatures like sea jellies and anemones), or segmentation of the body plan in arthropods (lobsters, millipedes, etc.) which eventually allowed for the evolution of tagmatization: the specialization of sets of segments into different regions for different functions, as seen in beetles and shrimp.

As life became more prevalent, more evolutionary niches opened up, and more traits evolved to fill them. Traits like the endoskeleton, pharyngeal gill slits and the dorsal nerve cord gave rise to a relatively small, but conspicuous group: the chordates. These beings spread far and wide, moving from sea to land via the development of heavier skeletal structures in the outer appendages, and then eventually to the air, as those same skeletal features were selectively reduced in weight to facilitate flight.

Moving on to a few million years ago after a large rock collided with our planet and Earth had a bit of time to recover, some of those surviving land-going pioneers developed outwardly practical traits like fangs or fur. Some were selected for other structures, like a highly developed frontal cortex in the brain. While a frontal cortex wouldn’t allow these life forms to chew through tougher prey, or shield them from cold, it allowed for a much richer diversity of social interactions, cooperative behaviors and problem-solving skills. It enabled more sophisticated manipulation of tools. Eventually, the improved frontal cortex would allow for many spectacular things to transpire. The manipulation of stone and clay to form a wall visible from space, great buildings that convert the mechanical energy of rivers into electrical energy to power refrigerators and computers, precise control over plant genetics to ensure a stable supply of food, the rocket-propelled journey to the earth’s only natural satellite and back. Tectonic activity builds Mt. Everest a few centimeters every year. Our great brains allow us to build thousands of miles of roads and digital networks every day.

The development of the frontal cortex could even allow narcissistic writers to churn out drivel on evolutionary history. It is an absolutely marvelous adaptation.

ALAN LIN can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Blindness affects all demographics within the United States. While some cases occur at birth, other cases occur as a side effect of degenerative diseases.

One group of researchers from UC Santa Barbara believes there is a simple cure. The team has been analyzing and developing a use for embryonic stem cells in the treatment of damaged retinal cells. This new treatment could effectively help cure some forms of blindness due to degenerating retinas.

There are two main causes of the deterioration of retinal cells. One is age-related macular degeneration, and the second is due to diabetes. The first is natural, exclusively affecting the elderly, but the latter has become a bigger issue. According to the National Institutes of Health, diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. In the past decade alone, there has been a 21-percent increase in the number of cases of type 2 diabetes. This brings us to a possible side effect of diabetes: diabetic retinopathy.

“Diabetic retinopathy is a disease prevalent in young adults due to the increase in obesity rates. It causes the deterioration of retinal cells, [and] we hope the use of stem cells can help repair this degeneration,” said Dennis Clegg, a leading researcher on the UCSB team studying stem cell development. “We have some sort of timeframe for our project, but right now we’ve just begun to explore this field. We’re reporting back to the FDA the research on stem cells with our initial studies, and hopefully we’ll be able to explore deeper.”

In a healthy person, the body is able to secrete enough insulin to help absorb glucose, the smallest biologically active sugar. A diabetic person, on the other hand, is unable to absorb glucose normally, which results in free-floating sugars in the bloodstream. This glucose builds up over the course of several years, damaging blood vessels throughout the body, leading to diabetic retinopathy and damage to the blood vessels in the eyes.

The damage inhibits blood flow to the rest of the retina, which depletes the retina of oxygen and vital nutrients. The damage can also cause blood to leak, create scar tissues or even create a detached retina. The only treatment available is to physically remove the damaged areas of the retinas using lasers, and as usual, there are risks and unwanted side effects that could permanently impair vision. This is where embryonic stem cells can help provide the key to repairing damaged retinas. By manipulating the stem cells to mimic retinal cells, doctors can inject the cells under the retina and start the repair process.

Although the UCSB research team is pursuing a relatively new form of regenerative medicine, there are already some applications of stem cells in use.

“If you inject [stem cells] into a knee that’s damaged, you can regenerate the cartilage. This is currently being done with horses at the vet school,” said said Gerhard Bauer, an assistant professor at the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures. “So here at UC Davis, we treat horses with stem cells from fat or bone marrow stem cells, and inject them into the joints so they can walk again … we can do very similar things in humans, so they have many many applications.”

Applications for human use have already undergone testing. In collaboration with the UC Davis Cancer Center Hematologists and the UC Davis Stem Cell Program, Susanna Park, an ophthalmologist from the UC Davis Eye Center, performed a procedure that involves the use of adult stem cells in the repair of retinal tissue on Wednesday, a first in the U.S. Results are unclear right now, but there are high hopes of success. The process included the injection of adult cells, rather than embryonic cells, directly into the eye.

“With this method, we do not inject the cells directly into the retinas. In animal studies, adult cells, unlike embryonic cells, are able to hone into the diseased tissue … and migrate into the area,” Park said. “It takes a couple of days and migrates to the area where they need to be. The differences between adult cells and embryonic cells is [that] adult cells can get incorporated and do the repairs, and then go back into the bone marrow … [whereas] embryonic stem cells just stick around.”

If successful, the procedure could help millions of Americans using only a simple extraction of bone marrow and an injection into the eye, a much easier process than cutting damaged tissue out with lasers.

ALLEN GUAN can be reached at science@theaggie.org

This isn’t your grandmother’s science. This isn’t your nursery rhyme, “apple a day keeps the doctor away” science. Sure, apples are great for you, no doubt about it, but they’ve got nothing on the ultimate health booster. Food science tells us to eat healthy, exercise science tells us to have good cardio and endurance. Medical science tells us to take aspirin to lessen the risk of heart disease. But there is another science that covers all these bases, and more: Sexy Science.

Did you know that lack of physical contact with other people actually increases the amount of the stress-causing hormone norepinephrine? Other sexy hormones in the brain are testosterone and estrogen, which drive feelings of lust and sexual cravings; dopamine and (low) serotonin, which drive feelings of romance and passion, euphoria and obsessive thinking; and oxytocin and vasopressin, which are responsible for feelings of calm, tranquility, peace and stability.

Every single one of these sexy hormones is released in the brain at different times of physical contact, and the effects they have on body and mind can be profound. The health benefits associated with the release of these hormones are so extensive that a woman in New York has set up a professional cuddling business, based solely on the positive effects of physical contact … and she is successfully charging up to around $100 per hour for her services. One hundred dollars an hour, just for cuddling; no sex, no sexual touching. Her company is called The Snuggery.

How can she possibly run such a successful business without even selling a product?  Well, there is a product, and it is inside you. Customers, or clients, are essentially paying for a method to release natural hormones in their bodies. Not only are people clamoring to fit into her schedule, but many of her clients are repeat clients, so enamored of the benefits of her service that they will return time and again for it.

What kind of world do we live in where people feel the need to pay just for simple physical contact? When we look at our society, it is not all that surprising. Many of The Snuggery’s clients are men (and women) who just do not have time for a real relationship due to job stress, impatience or just because they haven’t found the right person yet. The Snuggery offers all the health benefits of a physical relationship without any of the messy parts, like dinner dates, movies and awkward conversation.

Physical contact feels great. The simple act of holding hands, let alone body-to-body cuddling, releases large amounts of oxytocin. It makes you feel happy, secure and safe, feelings that are often a rarity in college life or high-powered job positions.

Touch makes you feel sexy. In a real relationship, cuddling can lead to sex. The release of dopamine from cuddling causes intense sexual desire, and is great for physical and mental health. Obviously, The Snuggery cannot offer sex as a service, but the sexual desire stemming from their services may give clients the necessary confidence boost to get out there and find someone they can actually progress with.

The release of oxytocin during cuddling and sex is such a good stress reliever that it has been proven to reduce blood pressure, hypertension and the risk of heart disease.

All of these benefits are just from basic physical contact. What happens to these sexy hormones during the throes of passion, sex and orgasm? Sex and orgasm greatly reduce the body’s pain response, increase immune function and have long-lasting, mood-elevating effects.  Studies have even shown that couples in long-lasting, intimate relationships have fewer chronic diseases and live longer.

So guys, stroke her hair, interlace your fingers with hers, give a backrub, kiss her forehead. And remember, winter is coming. Get under those covers and get your cuddle on.HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.