Every now and then, I like to take a break from looking at the beauty of nature to look at the weirder, more terrifying things. For all the beautiful creativity that nature shows in the world around us, a close look can also find creatures that we find horrifying.

The most likely kind of creature to inspire this feeling is the parasite. A parasite is any organism that lives at the expense of another organism. Within that huge definition are two categories: endoparasites and ectoparasites. Endoparasites are parasites that live inside of the cells of host organisms, such as viruses and some species of bacteria. Ectoparasites, by contrast, are parasites that live outside of the host organisms, such as ticks.

These definitions are all well and good, but let’s see some real life examples of parasites.

Common Cuckoo: At their worst times, perhaps after weeks of little sleep, a parent may be forgiven for wanting someone else to take care of their children, at least for a while. For humans, that’s what grandparents or aunts and uncles are for.

Cuckoos, a species of small bird, take this wish quite a few steps further. Cuckoos will take their eggs to the nest of another bird species, push the other bird’s eggs out of the nest and replace them with cuckoo eggs. When the other bird returns to the nest, they take care of the baby cuckoos while some or all of their own eggs have vanished.

There’s a connection here to the old legends of fairies taking human babies and replacing them with fairy look-alike children for the human mother to take care of.

Leucochloridium: Leucochloridium is a genus of flatworm that matures in the intestines of songbirds. Well, that’s no fun for the songbird, but how is that any different from the myriad of parasites that infect animals in a similar way?

The Leucochloridium has to take an indirect and strange path to get to the intestine of the songbird. The worm lays its eggs in the intestine, which the songbird then passes out in its feces. A snail then makes its way to the feces and eats. The worm eggs are now inside the snail; they hatch, and now must get back into the songbird. However, songbirds don’t eat snails. How do they get there?

The answer is amazingly creative, though disturbing. The parasite forces its way into the snail’s eyestalks and begins pulsating. The eyestalk becomes enlarged from the parasite and makes the snail want to crawl toward sunlight. The songbird, thinking the snail’s eyestalks are a different creature it would like to eat, snatches the eyestalks.

Point: leucochloridium.

Slave-Driving Ant: Common names of animals are very helpful for understanding certain characteristics of the animal. The most obvious is the slave-driving ant. The slave-driving ants, officially called Anergates, invade the nests of Tetramorium and steal their pupae. When they hatch, the slave-driving ants make the Tetramorium ants work for them. Anergates do not make workers of their own and cannot even feed themselves without the slaves.

Unequal Conjoined Twin: In contrast to slave-driving ants, the official name of conjoined twins is much more informative than the common name of Siamese twins. For reasons not completely understood, most likely incomplete splitting of a fertilized egg, causes two individuals to share one or more organs. They could be attached at the hips, head or any other variety of locations.

An unequal conjoined twin, also called a parasitic twin, is when one twin is stronger and healthier than the other. The stronger twin eventually takes all of the nutrition from the other twin, resulting in the eventual death of the weaker one.

Why is this creepy? If you were one of the unequal conjoined twins, you were the strong one that absorbed the other. Think of the episode of “The Simpsons” in which Bart discovers that he had an evil twin, only to discover at the end of the episode (spoiler alert) that he had been the evil twin all along. Obviously, there’s no real good-evil binary in this situation; the stronger twin isn’t trying to cause harm, it’s just trying to survive.

Why do parasites act in the way that they do? While it is tempting to assign the parasite an “evil” role, that’s not really telling the full story. Take the cuckoo; the only reason the adult cuckoo knows which bird species to invade is because it remembers what species raised it as a hatchling.

While these are interesting cases, and fun to assign them horror movie plot-lines, keep in mind these organisms are only trying to do the same thing that we are — to survive.

AMY STEWART can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Chris Fassnacht, a professor in the UC Davis Physics department, has co-authored a paper appearing in Nature, which provides evidence to corroborate a theory of how galaxies form in a process that involves dark matter by detecting a faint satellite galaxy 10 billion light years away.

Fassnacht is currently visiting his alma mater, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), while on sabbatical in Pasadena.

It was Caltech astronomer Fritz Zwicky who noticed in 1933 that galaxies were “moving too fast and should have flown apart,” said Fassnacht, leading to the theory of dark matter.

By using a larger, nearby galaxy as a “gravitational lens,” when a galaxy functions similar to an optical lens by bending light, Fassnacht and his co-researchers found a way to use sophisticated new computational techniques to discover the smallest galaxy that was ever discovered at the distances they explored.

“The preponderance of the evidence is consistent with General Relativity plus dark matter,” said Fassnacht, referring to Albert Einstein’s theory that space-time is curved, which altered scientists’ view of the structure of the universe.

Since the 1920s, the larger Pasadena area, including the nearby Mount Wilson Observatory, has served as an important locus of activity in scientific circles.

“Einstein was like a rock star when he was here,” said Loma Karklins, an archivist at Caltech whose son attends UC Davis.

During one visit in the winter of 1931, Einstein met with astronomer Edwin Hubble at Mt. Wilson Observatory to reconsider his theories. Hubble had made discoveries regarding specific patterns in the way that light observed emanating from galaxies is shifted to the red side of the spectrum.

Hubble “put ‘distance’ together with ‘recessional speed,‘” said Dave Jurasevich, the superintendent of Mt. Wilson Observatory, explaining how Hubble showed that the universe has a scale to its expansion.

“From 1917 to 1948 the 100-inch [telescope on Mt. Wilson] was the biggest telescope on earth. Hubble had the big picture because he had the biggest telescope on earth,” Jurasevich said.

“If your telescope is bigger,” Fassnacht said, “then you can get sharper images.”

Fassnacht explained that Mt. Wilson is still an excellent place to do work in the infrared spectrum, but he and his colleagues are doing work in the visible spectrum and chose the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The telescopes at Keck each have a special, smaller mirror which can be continually adjusted to cancel out much of the “twinkling,” or fluctuation effect, that is caused by the light traveling through the earth’s atmosphere.

Computers at Keck can interpret the signal variations in a beam of laser light that is reflected off the sodium layer 90 kilometers up in the atmosphere to make the compensating adjustments, Fassnacht said.

The inventor of the laser, Charles Townes, coincidentally is the Chair of the Mount Wilson Institute Board of Trustees, which oversees the operation of the Mt. Wilson Observatory.

Just as Fassnacht and his colleagues are able to make inferences about the sizes of distant galaxies by interpreting subtle geometric patterns of images in the visible spectrum, Townes and his colleagues are able to make inferences about the sizes and shapes of stars using a technique called “interferometry” that involves combining and comparing images of stars from two or more telescopes.

Townes gives the following advice to the younger generation of scientists hoping to make discoveries in the future: “Explore. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t let other people stop you. Think about [what you do] carefully, but make your own decisions.”

BRIAN RILEY can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Society continues to consume an increasing amount of its media in more interactive ways, in terms of music, videos and games. The medical community is also taking steps to provide its students with the tools to make learning more engaging and convenient. More specifically, medical students are gaining a new way to learn how to deal with end of life situations as a result of the eDoctoring program created by top medical professionals throughout California.

The program aims to better prepare medical students for real end of life situations and increase learning by making the process more intuitive.

“Doctors in California were doing poorly in issues pertaining to dying and end of life,” said Michael Wilkes, director of global health at the UC Davis School of Medicine. “The state advised medical schools around the state to improve these things.”

Wilkes, who is the program’s leading expert, said that the program approaches education in a different manner.

“Education has always been here and now; at the end of your time, you’re done. This tool makes you take and apply the learning that you’ve gone through,” Wilkes said.

The eDoctoring program features interactive videos and scenarios that help medical students get acclimated with situations they will face with patients approaching the ends of their lives. Along with presenting medical students with several aspects of problems a patient might be experiencing, it provides students with feedback on the exercises they partake in.

“The program gives hyperlinks and ways to go back and see what you’ve done, and areas where you can improve,” Wilkes said.

Wilkes said that the program instructs students in three critical areas: knowledge, attitude and skills.

“We know what patients die of, but what happens in the last few hours of their life? What do they want and feel?” Wilkes said.

Wilkes said that students learn to develop an attitude that even though a patient is dying, there are many things that happen before dying; before just giving up on the patient.

“In terms of skills, it’s knowing how to apply what has been learned and the attitudes you’ve developed,” Wilkes said.

Mark A. Robinson, master social worker and campus planner at the UC Davis Academic Geriatric Resource Center — a center that advocates training aimed at improving the care provided for aging adults — used his 20 plus years of experience to tune and polish the program. Robinson believes the program is very beneficial.

“It features enactment of real life drama. It draws students in and takes them through what is being done, and what can be done differently,” Robinson said.

Robinson said that students are often concerned with asking about data, facts and diagnoses, but are sometimes not aware of the process of when it is a good time to talk with a patient.

“Life and death situations are intense. If you reduce the situations to lab tests, acronyms and abbreviations, it doesn’t bring in the real difficulty of improving end of life care,” Robinson said.

He also believes that the program is beneficial because it gives students the opportunity to critique the ways more experienced students and doctors approach a situation, in their own time.

Liz Fierro, a third-year medical student at the UC Davis School of Medicine, agrees with Robinson in the convenience the program provides.

“Convenience is one of the biggest advantages,” Fierro said. “Sessions are only 30 minutes, which is nice because it’s a short period of time when compared to three-hour class discussions.”

Fierro said that the topics the program touches on are interesting and important.

“Generally, they are pretty difficult cases; it’s nice to see a video of somebody approaching a situation in a not-so effective way, and then in a better way,” Fierro said. “I think that it’s enjoyable, a good supplement, and I like that it’s part of our curriculum.”

The eDoctoring program is seeing widespread adoption in medical schools throughout California; it is continuing to garner evermore attention nationally and internationally for its ability to provide students and doctors alike with a well-developed and engaging web tool, according to Robinson and Wilkes.

ERIC C. LIPSKY can be reached science@theaggie.org.

The fight against cancer has been long and arduous. Researchers have made the occasional advance in treatment, but as of yet, cancer is still at large. However, a group of researchers based at UC Davis has made a major advance in cancer treatment that will dramatically augment our ability to fight cancerous tumors.

This advance is not a new drug or medication, but instead a new delivery method. Researchers created a nanoparticle, called a micelle, that holds cancer medications inside and will only release the drug once it is inside a tumor. Since the medications are only released within the tumor, doctors can administer far higher dosages of cancer drugs without having to worry about toxicity to the rest of the body.

“We [could] only give 15mg [of chemo] per kilogram of weight, otherwise the subject dies because too much [medication] goes into their system and is toxic,” said Kit Lam, professor and chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis.

The micelles are conglomerations of smaller molecules that each have a hydrophobic (water-avoiding) and hydrophilic (water-attracted) end. The molecules are specifically designed by the researchers to have these properties and are constructed through a basic peptide chemistry process. When these small molecules are dispersed into a water-based solution, they automatically assemble into micelles. Depending on how the molecules are constructed, they can be “tuned” to respond to changes in pH (acidity).

“The micelles … are stable during blood circulation and release the [medication] quickly when triggered by the acidic micro-environment of a tumor,” said Yaunpei Li, a postdoctoral fellow in Lam’a lab, and first author of the study. “Our micelle could prevent premature drug release [into the body].”

While chemotherapy remains a very effective treatment for cancer, it is limited by its toxicity to the rest of the body. In high concentrations, it will not only kill cancer cells, but all of your healthy cells as well once it disperses throughout the body. Since these new micelles are tuned to the specific pH of a tumor, they ensure that nearly 100 percent of the drugs go directly to the tumor and not to the rest of the body.

“With this micelle, we can deliver up to three times the dosage because all of it goes directly to the tumor,” Lam said.

Micelles have been used in the past as a drug delivery system, but until now, they were relatively unstable and bore the risk of prematurely releasing the medications.

“We used cross-linking to improve over past micelles,” said Juntau Lau, an assistant professor of pharmacology at State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University and one of the authors of the study. “The new micelles better maintain their chemical structure to prevent disassociation (breaking apart).”

As of now, the micelles are only effective against solid tumors, and not against blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma. However, the researchers were confident that with a little more work, they can make micelles that will be effective against not only blood cancers, but against many other diseases and even inflammation.

Perhaps the most important part of this advance is that since the micelles deliver most of the medication to the tumor, there is very little dispersed within your system to cause negative side effects such as nausea and hair loss.

HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.