Article posted Thursday, May 13, 2010 4:21pm

• The acronym MDMA stands for the “Minnesota Donkey and Mule Association” (no joke). But the acronym also stands for “3,4-Methelenediosymetamphetamine,” better known as “Ecstasy,” a popular mood elevating drug that is also a brain killer – and psychologically addictive. In the brain a controlled release of the neurotransmitter serotonin provides us with a normal feeling of well-being. But ecstasy induces a FLOOD of serotonin that results in an over-the-top ecstatic feeling. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 11 percent of twelfth-graders have tried it. Unfortunately, there is evidence that Ecstasy can be toxic to the brain and lead to destruction of neurons associated with learning and memory. The effects of its use may last for up to seven years and much of the damage done is permanent. (R. Restak, The Secret Life of the Brain, 2001, The Dana Press)

• When biologists followed the five-mile-wide path of a hailstorm across Alberta, Canada, in July of 1953, they counted over 36,000 dead ducks and ducklings killed by hail. In Montana in 1978, about 200 sheep were killed by hail stones the size of baseballs. The largest hail stone fell on Coffeyville, Kan., in September of 1970. It weighed 1.67 pounds and was about the size of a grapefruit. (Dennis & Wolff, It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes, Harper Perennial, 1992)

• Contrary to popular legend, Praying Mantis copulation in a natural setting does not always involve the female biting the head off, or eating, the male. More often than not, the male makes a hasty retreat after mating. (Gullan & Cranston, Insects, 2005, Blackwell Pub.; Science Magazine, 1985)

Please read the following only if you are up to a challenge:

• The genetic code of living things is contained in strands of DNA. Viruses, however, are not living things. They reproduce themselves only by taking over the machinery of a nucleated cell, such as the ones making up our bodies. In our cells, genes are expressed when the code in DNA is copied to another molecule, called RNA. The coded RNA then moves out of the nucleus and causes proteins to assemble that have an amino acid sequence originally specified by nuclear DNA. Proteins are the key molecules that provide the machinery of life. The code pathway is thus DNA to RNA to a specific protein.

Viruses, as non-living entities, may have DNA or RNA as their basic genetic material. RNA viruses, such as those causing AIDs, leukemias, and many kinds of fevers, are called retroviruses. If a retrovirus gains entry to a susceptible cell, it spills out its genetic RNA, which then initiates formation of a virus-specific DNA. This DNA enters the nucleus of the host cell and becomes integrated into host DNA. Imagine that the host DNA is a long chain of children linked hand-to-hand; now three new children (virus DNA) “cut in” and join the chain. The chain now has three new links. These are the links that code for virus-specific RNA that leaves the host nucleus and codes for virus proteins required to form a new virus particle. The virus RNA and these few proteins then pop off the surface membrane of the host cell, ready to infect other cells.

Not long ago it was thought that DNA was always the basic genetic material that coded for RNA. But the discovery of retroviruses demonstrated that this isn’t always so; in these viruses the pathway is reversed in that RNA codes for DNA (and this is where the prefix “retro” comes in).