News for Nerds - July 1, 2011

Welcome back to another edition of News for Nerds. This week I've got some bad news about your favorite diet sodas, some good news about an asteroid that didn't kill us all, and some incredible news about the strangers who are living in a Brazilian rain forest. But first: a frog with fangs?

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The World Wildlife Federation has announced the discovery of more than 1,000 new species on the Melanesian island of New Guinea. Among them: a round-headed dolphin, a blind snake, and yes, a frog with fangs.

Not many people could find New Guinea on a map, but its rain forests are the third largest in the world, trailing only the Amazon and the Congo. According to the WWF, the island covers just one-half of one percent of the world's landmass, but harbors as much as eight percent of the world's species.

Although only recently confirmed, these new discoveries all occurred within a 10-year stretch from 1998 to 2008, at the astonishing rate of two per week. They include dozens of species of butterflies, 43 reptiles, 71 fish, nine snails, and a snake that is only a few inches in length, cannot bite, has no venom, and which has scales over its eyes (making it blind).

These findings really only reinforce New Guinea's reputation as one of the most biodiverse places in the world. It's already home to the world's largest butterfly -- with a 12-inch wingspan, no less -- and rats that can grow up to several feet in length. Gross.

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Speaking of exotic locales like the Amazon, the Brazilian government announced this week that another previously uncontacted tribe has been found in the southwest region of the world's largest rain forest.

I say 'another' because, believe it or not, even in these modern times there are still about 100 primitive tribes spread across the globe who have never had a single encounter with the outside world.

I read a book last year called The Lost City of Z that touched briefly on this issue as well, and I find it just as fascinating now as I did then. There's something shocking, and even a little bit romantic maybe, about living in a world that is entirely self-contained within your own tiny village -- no cell phones, no Shia LeBouf movies, no annoying Facebook updates from that high school acquaintance who always posts weirdly inappropriate things. It's all just fishing, farming, building fires, and whatever else indigenous Amazonian tribes do with their free time.

In this one remote area of the Amazon alone, there are at least 14 such tribes -- and maybe many more. And while most of these tribes manage to maintain their own languages and customs, their entire way of life may be operating on borrowed time.

The increase in industrialization such as logging, mining and illegal fishing, along with drug trafficking and missionary activity (you don't often hear those things lumped into the same sentence, do you?) means fewer and fewer unspoiled, unreachable plots of land for these tribes to call home.

It's probably just as well. I hear the new Transformers movie is in 3-D, and how primitive do you have to be to not want to see that?

Is my sarcasm coming through loud and clear? Fair enough. On to the next story.

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Did you hear about the giant asteroid that zoomed past Earth earlier this week?

There was no direct impact, obviously. Asteroid 2011MD came within about 7,500 miles of Earth, which is a full 32 times closer than the moon, but it never did enter our atmosphere. And even if it had, most of it would have burned up during entry, leaving just a scatter of incoming meteorites.

But that's not really the point. The point is: we only got four days warning that this thing was headed our way in the first place. Four days. That's hardly enough time to confirm trajectories and alert authorities, let alone to wake up Bruce Willis and round up his misfit band of asteroid breakers.

The team that found this particular asteroid is called Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR). Based in New Mexico, LINEAR is one of several such agencies that are on the lookout for potential cosmic threats to our cozy little planet. But the problem is that there's a finite amount of resources (including high-powered telescopes and the money to pay for them), manpower, and hours in the day when it comes to searching the nearly infinite reaches of space.

2011MD wasn't ever really a threat, but even if it had been, we may not have known about it until the very last minute. Which, on the one hand, is kind of intimidating. But on the other hand, it's just one more testament to the vast intrigue that exists up in space. It's probably true that we're all sometimes prone to losing sight of just how magnificent, and how powerful, the universe is.

But if you don't go for all that star-gazing stuff, maybe you'll still find some interest in this slideshow featuring the top 10 ways to stop an asteroid. Please note that none of them involves Steven Tyler making googly eyes.

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And finally, for this last story, I'll have to kindly ask you to please not shoot the messenger. Because I know some of you are going to take this hard.

Two new studies from the University of Texas Health Science Center show that drinking diet sodas packs on the pounds. A lot of pounds. And may lead to diabetes. Good grief.

In one study, 474 participants were tracked over a nine-year period. During that time, the people who regularly consumed diet soft drinks experienced 70 percent greater increases in waist circumference than non-diet-soda drinkers. And it gets worse. The people who said they consumed two or more diet soft drinks per day? Their waistlines grew 500 percent more than those who abstained from the diet sodas altogether. 500 percent!

If you're looking for a silver lining of any kind, it's that no one seems entirely sure why diet sodas have this effect, or even that they are directly to blame. It could be a weird correlation factor of some kind, or a freak outlier in an otherwise big sample size. I wouldn't hold out too much hope, however. The UT Health Science Center is a pretty well-respected research institute, and they are careful to note in their report that they controlled their study for things like activity level, ethnicity, gender, and so on. In other words, they're pretty sure about these outcomes. Plus...

...a different study showed that high aspertame levels led to increased blood glucose levels in lab mice, which researchers say might be a sign that diet sodas (which are high in aspertame) could lead to diabetes in humans. Ugh.

I've never been a big soda drinker, but I have to admit: there are a few Diet Dr. Pepper (with cherry and vanilla!) lurking about in my fridge. It's sad to think that I may have to look at them with a more suspicious eye the next time I'm feeling thirsty.

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That's all, folks! Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and to sign up for the free e-Newsletter so that you can properly get your nerd on every single month!

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