Big Up Science!

2008-09-04T14:05:00.000+01:00

This blog is dead.

Long live the new (micro)blog: Science and Pies

Particle Accelerator TO HELL!

2008-05-16T11:04:00.004+01:00

"Scientists, Freemasons: same thing".

I didn't realise we were in a different dimension to space?

This guy is both scary and hilarious. What is strange matter? Why it's Nephilim flesh and Satan of course!

I KNEW physicists were black hearted necromancers, now here's the proof

Chris Morris, Brian Cox and CERN

2008-05-12T14:24:00.000+01:00

Listen to a man who used to play keyboards for D:Ream chat to Chris Morris about CERN, particle physics and relativistic mechanics here. I love the internet.

Me blogging habits

2008-04-17T14:00:00.002+01:00

I'm rubbish at blogging. I don't do it nearly as much as I expected I would when I registered this site back in 2005, and what I do write isn't all that entertaining. As such I'm moving all the dull, sciencey type posts to the Null Hypothesis blog (see the side bar for the link, as I cannot be bothered to make the link, though I realise that it would have taken fewer key strokes than this little aside would have). Now about 6 people can read my well interesting thoughts on such scintillating topics bibliogrpahic software, rather than just the two of you who sometimes glace this way.

However, don't you worry. Big Up Science is enduring. I'm going to concentrate on Science (capital S) and its collision with the pop culture which pervades our lives, or summat.

It's a brave new world. Maybe my spelling will improve. Only time will tell...

(Old) Science Singles: Jack Johnsons

2008-04-08T11:36:00.000+01:00

It's time for your semi-regular does of music reviews though a tenuous scientific lens.

Science?"If I had eyes", sings Jack Johnson, "then I would be living on the surface", for you see young Jack is a blind cave fish.

The review bit: Yawn

GeekPop '08

2008-02-28T17:17:00.003Z

Now listen up you two, the good folks over at the Null Hypothesis are doing a GeekPop science music festival podcast type thing. Check it! It's got Jonny Berliner and the Amateur Transplants on it, which is no bad thing.
Also is no bad thing is that a tune cobbled together by three members of my band (excluding the singer lady and drummer, rather key people) was sent to them too late. You are spared the horror of my, ahem, singing .

Science Singles: Late feb 2008

2008-02-22T15:52:00.004Z

There has been muttering that my choices for these reviews have been too obscure. So in order to rectify this, I'm now picking reviews from the home of all that's popular, youth and hip: the BBC Radio 1 playlist, and the A-List at that. You have been warned

What's It Gonna Be by H Two O Feat. Platinum

Science? H₂O will lead to the oxidation of many metals. Leave an iron bolt out in the rain for long enough and it will become encrusted with rust as negative hydroxide ions react with the positive Iron ions ( Fe²⁺) to form the iron oxides that make up rust. Platinum however won't oxidise with water and so doesn't easily corrode, a property which gives platinum it's high value.
For a two-step speed garage crew, H Two O is a pretty good name. However, I wouldn't collaborate with a group called Platinum. H Two O and Platinum don't react. I'd want my speed garage hits to be under a moniker that sounds vibrant and exciting. H Two O Featuring Iron is a bit better, but evocative of rust, corrosion and death. What you want is H Two O featuring some exciting alkali metal. Like Caesium. Yeah, H Two O featuring Caesium, that' be skill.

Is it any good? Oh no. Please no. Is this what gets played on day time radio 1? I thought speed garage died with DJ Luck and MC Neat. What happened? No one sent me the memo.

Next!

We Are Scientists with After Hours

Science? I'm a scientist. In about 10 minutes it'll be "after hours" in my lab. I won't be here though. I'll be in the pub. We Are Scientists are not scientists though, which is a shame. More rock stars should be scientists. I bet Brain Cox would never sing "Time means nothing".
Is it any good? This the acceptable face of safe and slightly dull US indie rock and roll. Take notes The Killers, you could learn a thing or two.

Rock Star Scientist Update

2008-01-29T21:22:00.001Z

Black hearted necromancer Brian Cox played keyboards with D:Ream. (What is it with these physic bods called Brian?)

That's a solid gold rock star scientist FACT!

Mexican Lemons prevent road death: that's a solid gold fact

2008-01-28T17:18:00.002Z

Solid gold factarama: graphs never lie. Not ever.

Answers in Genesis... the journal!

2008-01-24T15:54:00.000Z

http://www.answersingenesis.org/arj [via badscience.net]

The articles that are up at the moment do appear to be lacking in references to other (non-crazy talk) papers.

On the plus side, it does appear to be open access...

Evolution proved to be just plain wrong

2008-01-20T12:18:00.000Z

The evidence is overwhelming. [via b3ta.com]

Paper space plane

2008-01-18T14:04:00.000Z

I know this prime fodder for the achingly hip life-style geek blogs, but check this out: http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/01/origami-spaceplane-to-launch-from-space-station/

If anyone wants to do the maths in order to calculate how fast this thing is going to get as it enters the atmosphere, then feel free to add it to the comments. Though I'm not sure this will be possible, what without knowing the weight of the thing and all. Erm, terminal velocity, how does that work again? Blasted physics...

The usual "get a proper job, this is a waste of money" twunts are making themselves known in the comments of the above link. As if all the knowledge learnt by the development, design and manufactuing of the "paper" plane will then be instantly forgotten and never used in anything they, the self imposed auditors of worth, deem useful.

I make top ten

2008-01-08T10:52:00.000Z

Improbably, some thing I wrote has made a top ten of 2007 list.
http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/item/top_ten_null_articles_2007

I think it's singificant that it was the first thing I ever wrote for them: beginners luck and all that.

Science Singles: Back once again

2007-11-23T10:25:00.000Z

Yep, it's back .

Let's see what sciencey pop songs I've missed while I was stuck in a hole writing up.

Kaiser Chiefs - "Love's Not A Competition (but I'm winning)"

Science?: If one takes the rather unromantic and reductionist view that the concept of romantic love is nothing but the complex manifestation of basic mating urges combined with a strong pair bonding instinct, then love is indeed a competition. Many animals compete to win a mate, or to win valuable access to favourable mating grounds. From stag beetles to elephant seals, they're all at it. Zoologists consider the successful males those that have their share of successful copulations with fecund females, resulting in the birth of progeny. Is Ricky Kaiser Chiefs winning? Wikipedia no mention of Ricky Wilson having successfully copulated with a fecund females resulting the birth of progeny. Therefore, this hard boiled Darwinian blog considers him not a winner, but a loser.

What's it like?: When I first heard this I was convinced it was a cover of some 80s tune by Duran Duran or some such (apparently it's not). That should act as all the review you need.

Pendulum - "Granite"

Science?: Pendulums are part of a bit of science known as "Physics". This type of science, considered by many to be a dark art practised by black hearted necromancers, is so obtuse and arcane that no mortal can understand its ways without first going mad. The diagram below showing the key components of a pendulum clearly demonstrates this, as each elements sounds as if it belongs in a piece of gritty social realism theatre about life in a 1960s prison rather than a weight swinging about on a piece of string.

What's it like?: Granite is a common type of igneous rock, and this tune most certainly does (rock that is, not igneous. This tune igneouses would make no sense). It manages to achieve sounding great, whilst simultaneously sounding like a late 1990s dance remix of a slightly gothic metal song. Quite how this is done without sounding shite is a mystery only bettered by that of physics. Also there are X-Files-esque aliens in the video, which earns extra geek points and make me slightly scared. Well done.

Not science but....

2007-11-11T23:47:00.001Z

I know this isn't science, but xkcd is ace.

An excuse to pompous

2007-11-05T18:53:00.000Z

This may just be the delirium setting in, but I'm really enjoying writing the discussion of my thesis. I get to write such wonderfully pompous wank as: "I would therefore suggest that initially the cartilage and the ossified process are a highly integrated, but separate pair of developmental units. As development proceeds though to the post natal period, this integration becomes so great that they effectively function as one unit. "

[in a Stephen Fry in Blackadder stylee] baaaaahhh!

I think my typo in the last post was a Freudian slip though. I doomed.

T minus 13 days and...

2007-10-31T10:59:00.000Z

... and actually things are going scarcely well.

I've done the bulk of the writing, having done an rubbish introduction, and four ok results chapters. My figures were pretty much done as I went along, there's no stats to do thanks to my mickey mouse subject (whoop whoop!), and my supervisor is being super helpful in reading what I've done.
All I have to do is write the general discussion, add a few sections to the intro, collate it all in to one document (which doesn't look all that painful), do the references, format the bugger, bind and submit. Hmm, doesn't sound like a small amount now I've put it like that.

It's all been going too well. I'm sure some disaster is about to befall me. Not least from the examinations office, who I have to convince to let me submit before I said I would on all the stupid forms.

How not to go about writing you PhD thesis

2007-10-22T19:05:00.000+01:00

I've done what is perhaps a very silly thing. I've accepted a post-doc position which starts on the the 12th of November. It is today the 22nd of October. I have yet to finish my thesis. In truth, I had yet to start writing my thesis in earnest before last Tuesday. It is a condition of my starting the post-doc that I have submitted my thesis.

Fucknuts.

I've managed to wrangle them to let me start if I've finished the writing, allowing a couple of weeks for proof reading and binding. Over the next three weeks there will be no poorly wirtten things about science, and there won' t be any Science Singles, but there may well be the incomprehensible twitterings of an inceasingly more desparate writing up student.

I'll see you on the other side.

Big Up Pinball Number Count

2007-10-11T13:59:00.000+01:00

Science singles will wait this week, too much writing of thesis to do.
In the mean time I want to big up this to the nth degree.

You need to be able to count to do science. I pretty much learnt to count from this. And it's so funky, it almost funks itself to death.

Science Singles

2007-10-03T10:41:00.000+01:00

I've just realised that the name for this sounds a bit like a dating service for lab workers... oh well, let's get on with it.

CSS with Alcohol

Science? "Hey hey hey hey hey, do you want to drink some alcohol?" Well, it's 11:30 on a Monday morning, so it's probably not the best time to be getting drunk, but in the name of science and rock'n'roll I will. Ethanol (the alcohol you'd hope to have in your beverages) acts on the brain as a depressant. It decreases the activity of the nervous system by inhibiting (amongst others) the NDMA class of glutamate receptors and GABA receptors. These receptors are important in cognition, memory and motor skills, which is why you become a malcoordinated, forgetful fool after several pints. Mine's a brown ale.
Is it any good? Its a great pop tune with drunk bunnies in the video. I like good pop tunes. More good pop tunes please. And more drunkbunnies.

Facebook and science

2007-09-18T18:09:00.000+01:00

Like all the best London based media outlets (ha!), I'm going to go on and on and on about Facebook for a bit (but about a year too late, I really am cutting edge).

Facebook (*sigh*): I think I hate it, but amazingly I find myself a regular user; a fact that makes me sad on the inside. And yet some in the scientific community have taken to it like geeky ducks to nerdtastic water, no doubt a large part due to Facebook's origins as a university/workplace social network tool. There are over 500 science groups on Facebook, and I'm sure some are actually about science, such as the "American Association for the Advancement of Science" groups, and more frivolous ones such as the"I listen to the Guardian Science Podcast" and "Null Hypothesis - the journal of unlikely science" groups.

Now Biomedcentral have the option to post articles published by them on to Facebook (along side social bookmarking sites like digg and cool specialist scientific bookmarking sites like citeulike). I cannot quite work out if I'm angered or amazed by this. I think I'm amazed, it's really great to see social networking and all that web2.0 stuff creeping into biomedical science. The only think that makes me slightly scared is that Facebook is just a passing fad, and in a years time we'll all be like "hey remember Facebook? No one uses Facebook now, all the cool kids use Kidney Network". That said, BMC have nothing to lose in adding Facebook functionality. Who knows, maybe these social networking sites might revolutionise the scientific publication system in ways we are yet to imagine.

This reminds me, I really should add digg, del.icio.us, etc.. this blog.

Science Singles

2007-09-17T14:03:00.001+01:00

will.i.am (seriously, "will.i.am"...) with I got it from my momma (Genetics)

Science? Here's a brief synopsis of the entire lyrical content of this song: "I say my dear, how is it that you have such a pleasingly proportioned body?" "Why, my dear old mother is similarly blessed with a fine figure" "Oh I see. It must an inherited trait. Let's have sex"
The thing is, whilst attractiveness has a genetic element, environment plays a very big role. The lady will.i.am is chatting to no doubt works out, has a good diet, and (on the strength of the video) has had plastic surgery (maybe her mother paid for it?). And anyway, if it was genetic you've got to take in the father into account too.

Is it any good? It makes me sigh and feel slightly more empty inside.

Kate Nash with Mouthwash

Science? Good oral hygiene is obviously important to Kate "flavour of the month" Nash. She uses both mouthwash and dental floss, which our dentists tell us help prevent periodontal diseases and dental caries. Mouthwashes are often antiseptic and antibacterial, and so are claimed help to reduce the number of plaque-causing bacteria. Similarly, we are told by dentists that flossing is really important in reducing dental caries. However, one recent systematic review suggests that flossing at home is not all that effective.

Is it any good? Damn you Nash, damn you to hades. Despite my best efforts, I cannot help but find my self warming to Kate Nash's music. It's catchy dammit.

Big Up Science Singles

2007-09-10T11:40:00.000+01:00

It's Monday. Let's see what we've got here then....

The big release for me this week is Chemical Brothers with The Salmon Dance

Science? They are called the Chemical Brothers, but that's not all. This song is jam packed with salmon facts, all presented in a handy hip-hop format by Sammy the Salmon:
Fact 1: "All my peeps spend part of their life in fresh water and part of their life in salt water... They change round a couple of days after spawning, then we die."
Indeed, at around 2 years of age, young salmon leave their river habitats and migrate to the sea. They then return to the river after a year or so to spawn. However, they don't then die, instead they go back to the sea and return to the river gain around every 18 months to spawn. I'm disappointed in that factual error Sammy the Salmon.
Fact 2: "Most of our friends find home waters by sense of smell, which is even more key than that of a dog or a bear."
Salmon which were imprinted to Morpholine (C₄H₉NO), a heterocyclic amine, could detect the chemical at concentrations below 5.7x 10-10 M.
Fact 3: "My family also rely on ocean currents, tides, the gravitational pull of the moon."
There is also a theory that some salmon species can detect the earth's magnetic field.
Fact 4" "Polluted water can kill both baby salmon that are developing and the adult salmon that are on their way to spawn."
Epigenetic factors, such a water pollution, can affect the development of salmon, or indeed any fish; not just killing the developing fish, but also leading to malformations. This of particular importance when you consider the economic value of farmed species such as salmon.

Is it any good? It like a novelty record, and I suppose it is. However, the Chemical Brothers arn't about to release any old rubbish. It's novelty in the Lemon Jelly style, rather than the Mr Blobby one, and unlike Mr Blobby the guest rapper, Fatlip who used to be in the Pharcyde, is ace. Not to mention that salmon are a type of fish. Fish are still cool right?

HIM and The kiss of dawn

Science? The HIM proteins , or "High Incidence of Males", are a group of 19 proteins found in the C. elegans. Interesting huh?

Is it any good? As much as I'm not into worm genetics, I'd rather would enjoy sitting though a 5 day conference on gene-protein interaction in C. elegans than waste another 3 minutes 55 seconds of my precious life listening to this again.

Science Singles, as seen on the famous internets

2007-09-03T14:15:00.000+01:00

Here you go, have reviews of two of this weeks singles with a scientific meaning crowbarred in.

First it's the ever-lovely Magic Numbers with Undecided

Science? Bear with me here, it's going to get a bit nuclear physics. The nucleus of an atom is made up of two types of subatomic particle, protons and neutrons, known collectively as nucleons. According to the shell model of the nucleus, these particles are arranged according to energy levels in to "shells", much like the way we think about the arrangement of electrons orbiting the nucleus. When these shells are full, the nucleus is stable, and the number of nucleons needed to fill each shell is knows as a magic number (phew! we got there in the end). At the present time, science knows the following magic numbers: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126. The band the Magic Numbers hail from west London, and are made up of two pairs of hippy brother and sisters . At the present time, science doesn't know if the Magic Numbers know anything about nuclear physics.

What does it sound like? It's oddly familiar. Like when you try on a new pair of jeans, and you instantly feel comfortable in them. It's only when you get home that you realise they are remarkably similar all you other jeans. It's one of those Magic Numbers songs: it has a fairly driven bit, a slower quite bit, an a cappella break bit, and a drum pick up bit back up the driven bit. Not original, but it works.

It's that Emma Pollock with Acid Test

Science? The term "acid test", meaning a decisive test, is used for all sorts of things these days. Back in the day it was only used to test if gold was gold. Due to it's complete outer shell of electrons, gold cannot easily give away or receive electrons, and as such it is inert. Put nitric acid on most metals and you will oxidise it, that is to say give away spare electrons. This results in the formation a metal nitrate salt, nitrogen dioxide and water. Since the salt is soluble, the treated metal will dissolve It will not, however, react with gold (or for that matter platinum, which is also inert).

What does it sound like? Meh, I never really was into the Delgados (she used to be their singer), and this leaves me unmoved. It's perfectly nice and everything, but it doesn't really have that something that other non-cutting edge people, such as the afore mentioned the Magic Numbers, have. In her favour, however, is the fact that she had a single called Adrenaline and the Delgados were signed to the Chemikal Underground label, both factoids being suitably almost sciencey for me. And pollocks are a type of fish. Fish are cool right?

Science Singles, what what.

2007-08-28T10:30:00.000+01:00

I know this is late, but hey, it's been a bank holiday, and I've got a paper that needs writing.

This a top week for sciencey pop music. Behold:

Amylase by Cajun Dance Party

Science? This one is an absolute gift. Amylases are genuine enzymes (biological catalysts) with a genuinely important roles in physiology. No spurious links here, ho ho ho, no siree bob . The amylases (there are three different classes, alpha, beta and gamma) are enzymes that breakdown boring old starches into tasty, tasty glucose. You produce alpha amylase in your pancreas, to break down starches in your intestine, and in your saliva (see picture below) so you can start get the glucose form starch whilst you chew. Beta amylase is produced by plants, including ripening fruit, to break down their starches to sweet glucose. I'm not 100% sure what gamma amylase does. Something in the liver. Possibly to do with glycogen. Anybody?

Is is any good? La la la, jingle jangle, nice middle class boys and girls with messy hair, trendy jeans and guitars. So far so hip and down with the kids (gah, I'm getting old). "We need a catalyst" they sing. Ah, well, what catalyst would you like? Look, they are running through the country side. They must mean beta amylase, to ripen all that grain. "You're the catalyst that makes things faster, amylase will dry out the plaster". Huh? Amylase does what? How? Who? Where? Gah, I'm sure I'd know if this was balls if I'd just sat my GCSEs, as they have. Oh to be a teenager again. But not me when I was a teenager. Oh to be a popular, cool and attractive teenager.

Next are Múm and the improbably titles They Made Frogs Smoke Til The Exploded

Sceince? Obvioulsy Múm have been reading this research, "Adaptation of an amphibian mucociliary clearance model to evaluate early effects of tobacco smoke exposure" by Zyas et al, Respiratory Research 2004, 5:9, and then added they exploding bit to make it more exciting. Well done Múm for championing esoteric research articles that observe how bullfrog palates are affected by tobacco smoke.

Is is any good? Yes! Its like the happy dreams of a Texas Instruments Speak & Spell.

Big up the woo-busters. "out of body experience" induced

2007-08-24T10:52:00.000+01:00

Woo! Woo! That's the sound of the police.
Woo! Woo! That's the sound of the beast.

Woo woo is also a rank cocktail.

"Woo woo" is also what ghosts say in the Beano.

Woo woo is also a on-line geek name for supernatural and irrational beliefs and explanations for stuff.

One such example of woo (as all the cool geeks say) is the out-of-body experience. This is when you can float above you body and see your self form above. All very spooky.
However, all over the papers like a rather annoying rash, is this story, where Henrik Ehrsson and his colleagues induced the phenomenon by the use of some sensory trickery.
But they didn't actually induce an OoBE (is that the acronym?), the patients' conciousness didn't actually fly above their bodies.
The brain is an odd thing. So odd, it's bonza.

A better place than this

2007-08-23T13:50:00.000+01:00

Do you ever read a a science blog, or may be a medical science one, and think:

"Hey! This is pretty much what I wanted to do when I started my rubbish science blog. But their attempt is much better than mine. Curse them, curse their eyes."

I do. Curse. Their. Eyes.

http://agoodpoop.blogspot.com/

Science Singles, innit

2007-08-20T11:47:00.001+01:00

Oh dear god no, first up is Linkin Park with Bleed It Out

How the hell are you going to tell me this is sciencey? Back in the day, before the advent of modern medicine, it seems that those trusted with the treatment of ailments seemed to be more interested in hurting their patients. One way they did this was by blood letting, which remained stupidly popular up until the 18th century, a long time after William Harvey had told everyone it was a bad idea. Obviously idiot kiddie metalers Linkin Bizkit (or whatever they are called) are joining the call for a return to pre-enlightenment medicine. Other songs off their forthcoming album include "Mustard Compress", "I'm Not Schizophrenic, I'm Just Possessed" and "Fuck Antiretrovirals, See a Faith Healer".

But is it any good? No. It is no good. It is bad.

Hurray! it's Aqualung with Pressure Suit

Science? Once again: hurray! Both the name and the title are sciencey. An aqua-lung is one of the original names for SCUBA diving equipment. Unlike earlier diving suits, aqua-lungs, developed partly by Jaques Cousteau (with no little help from the engineer Emile Gagnan), were an open system. Air was passed from the tanks, to the diver, then released out into the water. This allowed for a lighter, more portable set or equipment, and led to modern sub-aqua exploration.
Pressure suits are are worn by pilots who fly at such altitudes that the air pressure if so low that to try and breath even pure oxygen they'd cark it. This includes astronauts' suit.

Is it good? Actually, it's a bit dull.

Brian May handed in his PhD

2007-08-14T11:32:00.000+01:00

Look, this is quickly becoming Big Up Science and Pop Music. I apologise.

Brian May has handed in his PhD thesis, just a few years late (36). The press seem to be suggesting that he's got his doctorate already, but he still has to have his viva. Imagine being on his panel...

Science singles

2007-08-13T15:02:00.000+01:00

I'm comin' up, so you'd better get this party started (gosh, I never noticed the blatant class-A meaning of that song before), here's this weeks almost sciencey tracks.

From Yesterday by 30 Seconds to Mars

Science? To get to Mars in 30 seconds would involve you travelling at least 1 900 000 000 metres per second, assuming you take a straight line when Mars it at its closest to Earth, which is around 57 million kilometres away. This, the black-hearted necromancers tell us, is impossible as it exceeds the speed of light (299 792 458 metres per second).
How does it sound? Gash.

How Do I Breath? by Mario

Science? "How", silver voiced Mario asks, "do I breath?" . Who'd have thought that behind that smooth RnB front, Mario is an inquiring soul crying out for knowledge about human physiology. Well Mario, contraction of the diaphragm pulls the abdomen downward, there by increasing the volume of the ribcage. The resulting negative pressure gradient pulls air into the lungs where it oxygenates the blood via the alveoli of the lungs. Relaxation of the diaphragm makes the thorax small, forcing the air back out the respiratory tract. So now you know Mario.
How does it sound? Virtually unlistenable.

Foot and mouth

2007-08-09T14:28:00.000+01:00

It's all going mad over at the Institute of Animal Health in Pirbright, Surrey.

First it seems that the latest outbreak of foot and mouth disease may have come from the IAH or a near by pharma lab, and now the IAH has an outbreak of legionnaire's disease. I suppose that's what you get when you work with scary bugs.

I went for an interview at the Pirbright labs a few years ago. It was the first time I'd been to such a secure lab. I turned up in a suit and tie which I had to take off and get into disposable overalls in order to visit the labs. On the way out I had to shower (but I think that was just because I'm a scummer).

Science singles

2007-08-07T16:40:00.000+01:00

If there's one thing we love here at Big Up Science (and I say "we love", but I mean "I love", the Scientician's Accomplice has been oddly silent for some time. I'm worried, should I call the police?) it's science cropping up in "the arts" and "popular culture", whatever those words actually mean.

Starting this week we'll (I say "we'll"...) be compiling a list of any sciencey things, no matter how tenuous, in any newly released UK singles. What with the iTunes led death of the music single being heralded by all the trend watchers, I'm once again on the cutting edge of the Zeitgeist of UK popular culture music scene...

Here are the science singles for the week beginning 6/08/2007.

First up is Get Up by Elektrons.

Here comes the science bit: "Elektrons" is electrons, negitivly charged sub-atomic particles, but with a k where the c should be. Clever.
How does it sound?: Other than the band name, I'm not hearing any science, but I'll let it off by being a good tune. And it has Soup from Jurassic 5 on it. And a giant cartoon robot in the video.

The other sciencey release this week is Bench Sleeping by My Little Problem.

Here comes the science bit: "Bench Sleeping" is what you do when you've not got enough sleep before going into the lab. After setting up an experiment, you decide to flout all health and safety rules and get 40 winks at your bench.
How does it sound?: Disappointingly this is not the tale recalling events like those suggested above. It's quite nice though, but it's so gentle might make me fall asleep at the bench.

HE HE HE

2007-08-07T13:27:00.000+01:00

I wish I could write this.
Though they could have added more similarities: both have 7 cervical vertebrae etc...

(the second sentence explains the first I feel)

2007-07-24T12:28:00.000+01:00

We are testing on more animals than we have for 15 years. I think this may be mostly my fault. I'm sorry. I'll stop it right now. There, i have now officially stopped.

Seriously, I have. That's nothing to do with the fact that I've just about finished my lab work. I've proved it by using this blatantly stolen picture of a lab mouse, rather than going to take a picture myself. Honest, it was exclusively for ~~missplaced~~ ethical reasons.

But wait, read on. Tests on primates are down 10%. Why isn't that the lead story? That's great news, but no one wants to hear that sort of news. Or maybe rather no one in the media wants to report that.

(please direct all death threats to someone else)

[Edit] typo promptly changed

This sounds familiar

2007-06-28T15:32:00.000+01:00

Once again we're ahead of the curve. LOOK!

I reckon they just read what we said about their publishers and decided to get their own back...

one all New Scientist... One all.

A ditty to the tune of the Superman Theme...

2007-06-18T17:13:00.000+01:00

[In celebration of the first giant manta ray born in captivity at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.]

Der de de de der
Der der der

Der de de de der
MANTA RAY!

[this better be the animal of the week next week.]

2007-06-14T12:38:00.000+01:00

You know what I freakin' hate? I freakin' hate freakin' adverts for products with freakin' "good bacteria" in them, or even worse, freakin' "friendly bacteria". Awwww, look the cute little microbe? What's that Mr Lactobacillus casei immunitas [tm]? You think I'm looking nice today? Why thank you. What a friendly bacterium you are. Freakin' bull freakin' crap.
Any way, every thing friendly isn't always good: friendly fire for example.

Well, (in plataspid stinkbugs at least) these EVIL (yes, not friendly, EVIL!) bacteria are making their hosts eat soya. SOYA! Why I outta...

Reed-Elservier decide to stop being evil.

2007-06-01T12:10:00.000+01:00

Wow, my faith in humanity is in a little way restored today; Reed-Elsevier have announced that they are going to stop running the DSEi and other arms fairs.

In a statement, they announced:

"it has become increasingly clear that growing numbers of important customers and authors have very real concerns about our involvement in the defence exhibitions business.
"We have listened closely to these concerns and this has led us to conclude that the defence shows are no longer compatible with Reed Elsevier's position as a leading publisher of scientific, medical, legal and business content."

Which appears to be a victory for those with any sense. Woot! I wish this sort of thing happened more often.

The end of the galaxy as we know it.

2007-05-22T11:14:00.000+01:00

I've long suspected that physics is a dark art, evil magic if you will, and that physicists are blackhearted necromancers. Now I have proof.
Apparently they've known for decades that in a mere 2 billion years the Milky Way, the galaxy that we call home, will collide with the Andromeda spiral galaxy and they never tell anyone about it, nor do they seem to doing anything to prevent this cataclysmic event. The gets.

Now they've used their demonic ways to calculate that during the event our humble solar system will be cast out of the party zones of the galaxy, and dumped unceremoniously in the outer reaches of the new one [1].
Apparently, the consequence of this is that we are royally fucked as a planet. And I don't even know if that new planet what they found will be ok. It's almost enough to put you off you tea...

[1] The Collision Between The Milky Way And Andromeda.
T.J. Cox, Abraham Loeb . May 2007. e-Print: arXiv:0705.1170 [astro-ph]

How a beetle made an idiot of a hamster

2007-05-14T17:35:00.000+01:00

Richard Hammond, aka, "The Hamster", is an idiot. This, I feel, in not really news, but I figure it needs reiterating, especially as he's just written a column in the Mirror stating how may-bugs (cockchafers) are proof that evolution is bollocks.

His main point seems to be that may-bugs are rubbish, and the spend all their time flying into houses that they must never get chance to reproduce. How does he think they do reproduce? Spontaneous generation?

He has taken the intellectually easy option of discounting evolution based on limited personal observations. He's obviously got thinking about it, and rather than perusing the thought through, and finding out about cockchafer life cycles and how they may work in the ecological niche to which they've adapted, he's made made assumptions based on a poor understanding of darwinian thought, an afternoon in the garden and five minutes on Wikipedia. Knob.

EDIT: Title spelling changed. Originally spelt Beatle, as in the pop combo.

Protein Synthesis! Hippies! Dancing!

2007-05-04T15:16:00.000+01:00

This might be one of my favourite things ever.

Although some of the words, including the final line "all mimsy was mRNA, and Protein chain outgrabe" just before the wigout at the end, do leave me somewhat confused. But I think that's becuase I'm a straight, not a wild crazy hep cat.

I heart Seed Magazine: Byrne and Levitin

2007-05-01T14:53:00.000+01:00

How great is Seed Magazine?
The answer is 12. 12 great.

Great "Seed Session", with David Byrne (a musical genius, up there with Stevie in the hero rankings) and Prof. Daniel Levitin (used to be a session musician and sound engineer, but now is James McGill professor of behavioral neuroscience and music at McGill University) having a good old natter about the neuroscience of music and all dat wicked shit man...

DB: So when you watch a performance, sports for example, you're not only watching somebody else do it. In a neurological kind of way, you're experiencing it.

DL:Yeah, exactly. And when you see a musician, especially if you're a musician yourself--

DB: —air guitar.

DL: Air guitar, right! And you can't turn it off—it's without your conscious awareness. So mirror neurons seem to have played a very important role in the evolution of the species because we can learn by watching, rather than having to actually figure it out step-by-step.

microRNAs are really, really important.

2007-04-27T16:41:00.000+01:00

The first mouse knockouts for a microRNA (miRNA, short interfering RNA or siRNA [1]), has revealed that it has a important role in the immune system and for homeostasis.

In the work, by people at Cambridge University's Babraham and Sanger Institutes and published recently in Science [2], they knockout out bic/microRNA-155, and got immunodeficient mice that also had funky airways due to them (the airways) being remodelled more.

siRNAs are a fairly recent discovery, and we are only just getting our heads around that fact that they have an incredibly important role in how the genome is used by our cells.
The fact that such regulatory effects can have such a massive effect on the immune system and homoeostasis is really some thing.

All this makes me wonder if any of my own work, which looks at the roles of signalling molecules in the developing skeleton, means anything without knowledge of what siRNAs are doing. That's depressing.

[1] a small, single stranded sequence of RNA which, instead of coding to make a protein, acts to regulate expression of other genes.
[2] DOI: 10.1126/science.1139253

Can a crocodile bite a man's arm clean off?

2007-04-13T14:07:00.000+01:00

You've no doubt seen the story of the man who's arm was bitten off by a crocodile in Tiawan.
The arm belongs to vet Chang Po-yu at the Shousham zoo in Koahsiung.
It's a strinking photo isn't it?

The thing is, are croc's teeth not adapted for clamping, not cutting? Don't they bite their prey and drag them whole into the water to drown, rather than tear chunks off?

The teeth of most crocodillians are fairly short, uniform and cone like, perfect for clamping down hard on to a tasy vet's arm, but not cutting it clean off. They don't occlude in such a way to allow shearing and cutting of meat, like your front incisors do.

So what happend here? The arm looks severed just over half way down the forearm. You'll notice the the Did the crock clamp down, crushing the bone and then the skin and muscle tore off? Did the arm get clamped in, and the paramedics (or whoever) cut him free, leaving his fore arm in place? Or is the photo a fake?

Science Mix Tape = SciPop

2007-04-11T11:02:00.000+01:00

In a beautiful example of the convergence of memes, the people over at Null Hypothesis have been making a list of science rock and roll songs. Well done them, they have a much bigger list than ours.

Perhaps it is due to their brighter minds, keener understanding of the zeitgeist and larger music collection? Or maybe it's just that more than two people read their site (that's right, our readership is growing)?

I must say though, I see Atomic Kitten listed for "The tide is high". That's not cool. That's not cool at all. It's the Paragons, or I'd also accept Blondie, but Atomic Kitten? Words fail me.

Dropping Science 2

2007-04-11T10:56:00.000+01:00

A selection of suggestions for the mix tape from Blue and Brown and Dan, up form the comments.
Firstly, blue and brown's, note that there is a ban on all coldplay:

Apologies to Insect Life - British Sea Power.
The Test - The Chemical Brothers
Nature Boy - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Now Dan's
Bovine Spungiform Economics - Million Dead
Biological - Air
Gene By Gene - Blur
Tendon #7 - Chris TT [late addition due to non-emo nature, that and the fact that he lists Dawkins, Darwin, the Nat. Hist. and Sherlock's bro as influences on his MySpace thingymajigger, good man.]

(I'm going to ignore the rest of Dan's as they are either too emo, or I havn't heard of them... Or both)

dropping science

2007-04-10T15:56:00.000+01:00

More suggestions for the science mix tape:

"Inertia Creeps", Massive Attack
"Particle Man", They Might Be Giants
"Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology)", Marvin Gaye
"Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine", White Stripes

Big dog, little dog, single gene, dwarf mice and many authors.

2007-04-10T14:43:00.000+01:00

Research published in Science shows that variation in a single gene, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), may determine the body size of domestic dogs [1]. IGF1 is one of those growth factors that crops up all the time in skeletal development (mouse knockouts, for example, exhibit achondroplasia [2]), so it's not a shock to see it here. Though it is pretty cool science. You can read all about the ins and outs of this in other places, I've got another point to make.

There are 12 people on this paper. 12, from 8 different institutions. This is fairly typical for Science, Nature, Cell papers, and indeed any other high impact paper. People get put on papers to add weight to the research, or to embiggen friends, bosses and spouses. I have heard of at least one researcher who puts their partner on to papers, even when the partner in question has had nothing to do with the actual research, and conversely I know of students and technicians who have put the hours in to actually do the research for a paper, only to be thanked by being left off the paper, sometimes not even making the acknowledgments. These practices, whist being widespread, are dodgy at best and down right fraudulent at worst.

As I've said before, I'm just a lowly PhD student, and who am I to comment, but the whole situation leaves me saddened. Though, that said, if i was to be put on to a Science paper with out lifting a finger, would I get on my high horse and ride out into moral sunset? I doubt it.

I've copied the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' guidelines on authorship below [3]. I'd be very surprised if all 12 authors on this paper fulfil all three criteria of the first point below, though I'd love to be wrong.

Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
When a large, multi-center group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript (3). These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship defined above and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict of interest disclosure forms. When submitting a group author manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals will generally list other members of the group in the acknowledgements. The National Library of Medicine indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship.
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

[1]Sutter et al, 2007, DOI: 10.1126/science.1137045
[2]Wang et al, 2006, DOI:10.1210/en.2006-0196
[3]http://www.icmje.org/ accessed 10/04/2007

Rock and roll science

2007-03-23T11:16:00.000Z

I'm getting used to this slightly higher frequency posting game. It won't last.

Anyway, in my last post I mused if any (succesful) rock musicians quit the road and hit the lab. But I'd also be interested to hear of any link between rock and roll, and the world of science. So far, other than Dr Bryan May, all i can think of is that guy from the Offspring starting his PhD at UCLA, or the University of Southern California, or some place, but never finished it. Oh, and doesn't the guy from Bad Religion actual have a PhD?
Are there any good rock star scientists out there (other than Bryan May, the man is a legend), or are we stuck with rubbish Californian punk bands? I'll have a think and report back.

I'm also wanting to put together a mix tape of Sciencey tunes; here are a couple to be starting off with.

"Go Tell The Women", Grinderman.
"Lesson 6: The Lecture", Jurrasic 5
"The Scene is Dead", We Are Scientists
"Dr Funkenstein", Parliament

watch this space....

Heavy Metal Teen Geeks

2007-03-22T16:39:00.000Z

New Scientist's (boo Reed-Elsevier, boo!) blog rightly points out that research suggesting heavy metal music is listened to by clever kids is a bag of wank (I paraphrase). Actually, the research says they listen to it to cope with the stress of being gifted. Told you, a bag of wank.
The best thing is, if you click back to the Telegraph (I mean, come on, the Telegraph for feck's sake!) article linked in the blog post, you get a picture of Bryan May getting his (honorary) doctorate. Bryan May! How good is that?

Oh my, this is the third post in a week. I feel light headed....

EDIT: I feel a bit bad about this. I did some more digging, and the research was done by one Stuart Cadwallader at Warwick and the NAGTY. He's doing an only MA in psychology, and I assume this is part of his MA dissertation. I'm glad my MSc (yes, MSc, I'm still going to be a twat about this not being science, Ha!) never made the national press, cos ill informed bloggers would tear the bejesus out of that rubbish.
Shit, it seems part of his masters level research is being presented to the British Psychological Society, so really that's mightily impressive. No offence Stuart.

I'm sure NAGTY is a super institution, and the research is top notch. I think I am mostly enraged by the telegraph article. And Bryan May. He left his PhD for rock and roll, can anyone think of someone doing the reverse? A professional popular musician quitting to work in science?

EDIT 2: No, this is a bag of wank. Still, no offence Stuart. It's not your fault that you MA project made it onto the national press.

The invasion of the GM mosquitoes

2007-03-20T11:24:00.000Z

It's being reported in the Guardian and the Times (though the Times article seems better informed. Imagine that.) that the plan to release genetically modify mosquitoes, which are made to be unable to pass on malaria, is getting closer.

Traditionally, transgenic mosquitoes have been out competed by their wild type chums [1], but the big thing about this latest study, which is to be published in PNAS (but doesn't appear to be released at the time of writing), is that these mossies show in increased fittness, compared with the wild type.

Incidentally, reading the Times and Guardian articles, one gets confused as to who led the research. Is it Mauro Marrelli as the Times says, or, as the Gurniad has it, his colleague at Johns-Hopkins, Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena? I'm too lazy to go find out. That's the job of a journalist.

I suppose that I should say some thing about the controversy of releasing GM animals in to the wild, but you know, I don't think it's a worth while debate. Malaria kills more than a million people a year, most of whom are kids. Won't somebody please think of the children?

You know, just writing this gives me the willies. I have serious issues with mosquitoes. Nasty little fuckers. Almost as bad as daddy long legses. Now there is an evil insect. You know they suck the brains out of babies heads? It's true I tells ya .

[1]Trends Parasitology, 2006. 22(5):197-202 doi:10.1016/j.pt.2006.03.004

pretty pictures of a cell

2007-03-17T13:41:00.000Z

This is a electron tomography generated image of a yeast cell. Nice isn't it?

Researchers at EMBL and the University of Colorado have published this in Developmental Cell, as part of their research into the cytoskeleton.

The image was made by taking electron micrographs through the cell (transmission EM I assume, I'm at home and don't have access to the journal to check. This is blogging by press release, but then I'm feeling lazy), and then making a 3d reconstruction using the stack of images, much as you would when doing CT scans of people. Well, not how you would, unless of course you are a radiographer. Do I mean radiographer, or radiologist? Or both?

Elsevier promote arms sales

2007-02-26T15:34:00.000Z

Really, this update, which the first in a very long time, should be pithy, "comical" and light hearted. Especially as our one reader has viciously slandered me on their site.

Alas, it isn't to be.

Thanks Dr Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column in the Guardian, (and associated blog) I recently discovered that Reed Elsevier are involved in running trade fairs for arms manufacturers.

Remember kids, guns and bombs, death and destruction, all that stuff is bad. The arms industry is bad. It doesn't take a genius moral philosopher to work out why.

I'm writing a paper at the moment. You try and write a paper about biology and not think about publishing it in an academic journal owned by Elsevier, they publish the vast majority of all reputable journals in the biological and health science, including some of the biggies, such as the Lancet. Richard Smith[1] has recently published an engaging editorial on this very matter in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine pointing out the irony of health journals beng published by the agents of death[2], especially as the Lancet has published a few high profile pentagon baiting articles on the civilian death toll in Iraq and the danger of cluster bombs. I've no idea what it's like in other fields, but I wouldn't be surprised to find Elsevier dominating there too.

What to do? Well, protesting, boycotting and petitioning are all great places to start. It's easy to sign the petitions and wave a placard, but is what about boycotting? I'm finding a conflict between my ethics and my desire to get my first publication into the most respected and widely read publications possible. It's shite, especially as KCL (where I'm based) is not a full member of the open access published Biomed Central, and so to publish in their (equally excellent) journal will cost my grant several hundreds of pounds.
In my case, unless my boss and collaborators pull rank, morality will win out. and I'll ask to publish somewhere else, probably to the detriment of my CV. But I'm just one little [3] PhD student working in a rather obscure branch of biology, what difference will I make? It's time to get organised. As Richard Smith wrote:

It is essential, however, to act together. Somebody
needs to orchestrate a campaign. The people in the
strongest position to do so are the authors and readers of
The Lancet and the 2000 other journals. Who will take the
lead?

I'll get off the soapbox now. Occasional, poorly written things about science will continue to be posted in the future.

[1] medical doctor, former editor of the BMJ, journalologist (is that even a word?), and brother of comic Arthur Smith, that, as they say, is a fact!
[2] excuse the melodrama for a moment please
[3] ok, ok, I'm not little, but I am inconsequential.

At school with PLOS Biology

2006-12-19T11:02:00.000Z

[It's 11:15am on the last day of term at PLOS High School. Form 5b are sat in a biology lesson urging for the bell to ring. The teacher, Mr Scientician, is orating to an inattentive audience.....]
Tiny relative, or pathologically small human? Which is it? Hmmm? Hmmm? Come on, we haven't got all day. Powledge! Are you Chewing?
No? Then would you please answer the question! You class mates are waiting. What is the Hobbit?

EDIT: the answer is "dunno".

Big Up Enlightenment Science

2006-11-28T10:13:00.000Z

If there is one thing that gets me all excited and ranting on like a 10 year old off his mash on sunny-D and Haribo with a book on dinosaurs and a spiderman costume (other than the action of Tgf-beta signaling in mammalian branchial arch development, now *that* is sexy stuff) then it's the enlightenment. I know, I'm a cool dude.

Those enlightenment men in wigs brought us modern science and medicine. They traveled the world, collecting and describing the natural world, and in doing so laid the foundations for Darwin and his chums; crazy geniuses kick started what has become the dark arts of physical science; anatomy, physiology and pathology were studied, bringing about modern medicine and surgery; and they realised that they, human beings, had the ability to manipulate, tinker and generally arse about with the natural world in order to understand it's hidden mechanincs. But the best thing was, many of them were polymaths. It was BRILLIANT! And that is just the science. It can be argued that none of that would have been possible if it wasn't for the philosophy that defines the enlightenment. I love it. Which is why I got all excited when I was told of the e-Enlightenment Project. The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Duke, Wales, Johns Hopkins and Delaware, as well as Norstedts, Meiner, the Virginia Historical Society, the Voltaire Foundation, and now the Oxford University Press have all got together to publish a multitude of enlightenment era writing, right here on the world wide web. God bless 'em.

As you can probably tell from the ranting here, I'm not all that educated in the philosophy and history of the time, so feel free to mock and correct me. I can always learn, and new knowledge can only be a good thing: that's surely a post enlightenment sentiment.

By JOVE!

2006-11-27T10:43:00.000Z

Everyone loves the internet right? Of course you do. You may have moments when you hate it, but on balance, you think "that internet, 'salright really".

I do, I love the internet. I'm not obsessive about it, and I don't "live" here, as some are want, (in fact I don't "get" MySpace at all), but on balance I think it is ace. For those of us engaged in research the internet is an invaluable tool. I'm just a lowly PhD student, and so don't remember the dark days before Pubmed and the like, but quite how lit searches were done then, I have no idea.

Now, in these post-YouTube days, it was inevitable that JOVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, was created as:

an online journal publishing visualized (video-based) biological research studies.

Brilliant! So now (well, in a while, once there has been time for techniques to be submitted and uploaded), when you needs to learn a new techniques, and no one in your institute knows how to do it, you can watch a video of it, then have a go. Obviously this is no substitute for hands of tutoring in a experiment, but it is a great tool for those having a go on their own. Cool.
Here is a video on how to dissect fruit fly ovaries from Paul Schedl and Li Chin Wong of Princeton University:

errrrrm

2006-10-18T17:07:00.000+01:00

Errrrrrm,

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Errrrm, yeah. ok...

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.
Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.
However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.
Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.

errrrm, right. Isn't this what Peter Kolosimo said? But didn't he blame the moon being closer to the earth?

Further into the future, sexual selection - being choosy about one's partner - was likely to create more and more genetic inequality, said Dr Curry.
The logical outcome would be two sub-species, "gracile" and "robust" humans similar to the Eloi and Morlocks foretold by HG Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine.
"While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is a possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other, said Dr Curry.

?????? I've lost the ability to comment. I'm going to use some random punctuation. (&^@**£??}}}

He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

Ahh, I see. See here, here, here and here for further discussion.

Pretty animation

2006-10-16T11:42:00.000+01:00

Yes, believe it or not, this post isn't about fossils or evolution.
I just got sent this rather pretty animation of some cellular mechanism. Rather nifty, I'm sure you'll agree. Shame the music is really quite wank. Really, I watched it initially whilst listening to Elbow. It was good. I just watched it again to try and list the mechanisms being shown, but I was too distracted by the sub-Playstation style plinky plonky wanna be Future Sounds Of London. Anything else would have been better. Even, and perhaps especially, a song I wrote once about science. It consisted of one word, which was science, sung over and over to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Yes, that'd be MUCH better.
Oh well, other than that, it's nice. A good for visualising intracellular activity, especially for school kids. I'd make them watch it, and then test them on what they saw. That's if they all don't need to be rushed to hospital with bleeding ears caused by the rubbish soundtrack.

[BBC: Insert archive pictures form "Walking with dinosaurs" here.]

2006-10-06T12:04:00.000+01:00

Hej! Scando-Fossils! Giant plesiosaurs! From Svalbard! Home of Panserbjørne!

Dr. Jørn Hurum, Hans Arne Nakrem and their paleoentologist chums from the Norwegian Natural History Museum in Oslo have been up to Svalbard for a short two week field expidition, during which they uncovered 28 new species of plesiosaurs and icthyosaurs. The biggest (and therefore bestest) of which is a 10 meter plesiosaur, with a 2 meter long head. Look at this picture of it in the ground. See how they usfully put a man in it as scale. Look how that bit of dirt to the right is the head.

Yeah, this is why paleoentology gets kids excited. That one massive monster is eating that other one! Look, that's sweet! How much cooler could botany be? The answer is none. None more cooler.

Good shit. Well done Norwegian bone dudes, though it does look a tad chilly, I'll stay in the lab for now.

Not so well done the BBC. Specifically, not so well done the BBC news website. When ever there is anything in the news about dinosaurs, human ancestors or other prehistoric animals, nine times out of ten they will stick some of their pictures from Walking with Dinosaurs/Cavemen/Beasts on their front page. Fair enough, they cost lots of money to make, but this is over kill. Here's todays example:

Back to school/Cavemen on the Rock

2006-09-19T15:58:00.000+01:00

Welcome back, I hope you all had a super summer (Ha! "you all", as if. I know we only have one occasional reader, and they lost their job this summer).

For many of us still bumming about universities, this time of year leaves one reeling as your nice, quiet, sun drenched campus suddenly gets flooded with literally millions of identikit happy, confident, fresh undergrads. Today, I'm out of the lab helping register them (for cold hard cash you understand), and frankly, they are making me sick. When I was 19 and just starting uni I wasn't as happy or good looking. My cynical nausea is off set occasionally by periods of trying to be all suave and witty to all the pretty 19 year old girls as I issue them their email addresses. Then I feel like a dirty old man, and the cynicism returns. The Scientician’s Accomplice insists that they are so happy and confident just because they haven’t been broken by life yet, and the thought of them crying themselves to sleep in a few months time makes me feels somewhat better. The little gobshites.

I'm just bitter as I'm finally coming to my final year of formal education. Imagine how the last Neanderthals stuck on Gibraltar, as reported in Nature this week (doi:10.1038/nature05195) felt as all the hot new Modern Humans started invading their space. It was previously thought we had out competed Neanderthals around 35 thousand years ago (kyr), slowly chasing the dim-witted, but artistically bent brutes to the warmer finges of Europe (there is a movement to try and address the perception of Neanderthals as being stupid cavemen, but come on, they couldn't beat us so they must be rubbish). But now fresh radiocarbon dating results suggest that a population survived up until 28kyr in a cave system on the now British colonial oddity that is Gibraltar.

Here is the transcript of a typical conversation from the time...

Guuur: Bloody hell, here come a load of those fresh faces, confident, large society building "modern humans". Can we get no peace [Guuur actually does air punctuation whilst saying "modern humans"].
Ugg: awwww, no. First there are these bloody tailless monkeys that hang out this god forsaken place, next come these idiots.
Guuur: You know they’re just so happy because they haven’t been broken by life yet. They'll be crying them selves to sleep in a few centuries time.
Ugg: Yeah, the little gobshites.

By the way, the picture is of Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Wahington University, St Louis. He comes up whe you google image search neandertal phd.

German apartheid

2006-07-19T23:08:00.000+01:00

So this is a bit of Big Up History, but that's cool. Right, so Germans (and Dutch and Danish) people came to England about 1600 years ago. They were the Anglo-Saxons. The current English population is pretty Anglo-Saxon. BUT not very many Anglo-Saxons came over - not enough to explain why we're all so pallid and mousy brown and blue-eyed. Historians have grumbled over this for a while, but now Science saves the day and explains why the German genes are so predominant.

It's not all that nice a reason - seems those Anglo-Saxon types set up a kind of apartheid whereby the incoming, wealthy, boisterous A-S types were able to out-breed the dull, slow-witted native Brits (called Welshmen, even the ones in England -who knows why). The Welshmen weren't allowed to marry the Anglo-Saxons, and the economic advantage of the incomers (good at making sausages, reliable carts etc) meant that their genes won out.

This apartheid solution was hit upon by Mark Thomas at UCL by computer modelling the populations of A-S vs Welshmen - the apartheid model was the only one that fit the high proportion of Anglo-Saxon Y chromosomes in the English population. This was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B [doi:10.1098/rspb.2006.3627].

The most interesting thing about this story is that the Scientician and I met Dr Thomas in a bar in Copenhagen a few years ago, and talked at him drunkenly about science. *That* is a fact.

Homeopathy & Malaria

2006-07-18T13:44:00.000+01:00

Hey, check it out, two posts under a month apart (just).

There has been a little bit of a scandal over some homeopaths pushing their diluted pills as a prophylactic for malaria.
Newsnight, on the BBC, had an undercover reporter go and speak to some homeopaths around London about what the homeopathic options were for anti-malarials.
I had always been led to believe that malaria was caused by a parasitic invasion of Plasmodium in your liver cells, passed on to you by another host of the parasite: a mosquito. However, it seems to be caused by you having a malaria-shaped hole in your energy that the malarial mosquitos can come along and fill.

Ben Goldacre has a video from Newsnight of some woman from some homeopath's club defending it. She has to resort to saying "ooo, but yeah right, homeopathy has been around for aaaaages, so it must work". I may be paraphrasing.

All very scary. "When alternative medicine goes bad", it should be a series on channel 5.

Book Review: Unwin Hyman Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition.

2006-06-29T16:17:00.000+01:00

To restart Big Up Science with a bang, welcome to our occasional (i.e. this may well be the one and only) series of book reviews.

This book is quite functionally named, "Unwin Hyman Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition", and it seems to have a certain empirical beauty in that [1]. However, scratch beneath the surface, and a cold deceit lies at its black, black heart. This book is the same as the Harper Collins Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition. What would have happened if I'd bought the Harper Collins Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition as well as the Unwin Hyman Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition? What then? Hmmm? it doesn't bare thinking about.

Anyway, get on with it I hear you sigh. Ok.

I bought this dictionary in my first year of my undergraduate studies, way back in 1999. I've never really used it, until now that is. Today I forgot which was which out of tendons and ligaments. Stupid, I know, but is has been one of those weeks.

Tendon a bunch of parallel collagen fibres making up a band of connective tissue which serves to attach muscle to bone[2]

Nice, exactly what I needed to know.

Ligament a capsule of elastic connective tissue that joins bone[3]

That has confirmed it. Good work Hale, Margham and Saunders (the editors of the Unwin Hyman Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition).

So in summary, the Unwin Hyman Dictionary of Biology, 2nd Edition is an excellent reference source to remind you which is which out of tendons and ligaments.

Post of normal infrequency, which are just as poorly written will resume shortly. Honest. Thanks for your patience.

[1] Empirical, hmmm if only I had some sort of book full of words and their meaning to check to to see if I used that in the right context there...
[2] Entry truncated, you know, just cos i couldn't be bothered to type the rest
[3] see [2]

Did our ancestors shag chimps (ancestors)?

2006-05-19T16:26:00.000+01:00

genetics;manpanzee;evolution

So, do you come here often? Can I buy you a drink? What's that? A banana daquori? Sure. How's about you and I go some where quieter, maybe grab some food?I know this great little place just off the High Street, they serve termites there, you like termites right? Of course you do, what with being a chimp and all. Get your... well, you don't wear a coat, but any way, you've pulled.

Above is a made up chat up line that probably never happened. I've started this post with it as a rubbish joke in reference to a paper recently published on Nature.com which suggests that the divergence of the human and chimpanzee lines may not have been the clean break 7 million years ago as previously thought. The new research by Patterson et al, published online ahead of print, uses the principle of the molecular clock and reckons that the two lines may have diverged as recently as 5.3 million years ago, and further analysis indicates that the X chromosomes diverged later which implies the two lines successfully interbred.
The molecular clock is a sweet "trick" used by geneticists to work out when two populations diverged. This uses the principle that the genome, or parts of the genome, accumulates mutations at a fairly constant rate, and so the more differences between the genomes of the two populations (or species) the greater the time since divergence. I'm loathed to do this, but here is a wikipedia enrty on it, better to look at the papers listed here.

Currently, the authors of this research are very careful to point out that the chimp humping part of this research is at present only a hypothesis, though that hasn't stopped people, myself included, getting rather excited by it all. Any good biologist worth their salt (and a few rubbish wannabes like me) will be able to tell you that the accepted definition of species isn't all that good at describing the messy world of real life, and it's good to see we were no different back in the evolutionary day. Can we still interbreed with chimps? There is a likelihood that we can, since lions and tigers can produce offspring, and there has been a bottle nosed dolphin/false orca whale hybrid (a wholphin) that has successfully bred with another bottle nosed dolphin to produce a do-wholphin (I'm proper sorry about the source of the link, makes me doubt the story, anyone got a better one?). I say likelihood, but I have nothing to back this up, such as how related these species are to one another compared to humans vs chimpanzees, or when they diverged. Rubbish I know. Scrap the likelihood bit. That or go and try for yourself. A friend of a friend says there are places in Indonesia where you can fornicate with Orangs, so try and find a similar place but with chimps. You sick, sick man (or woman, don't want to sexist. It's been had enough to write this without using "man" to describe our species).

I am disappointed by the fact that the words Humanzee or Manpanzee feature not once in this paper. If I were the reviewer I'd insist on it.

All change

2006-05-18T15:03:00.000+01:00

I've only gone and bloody wrecked the blog. Dang. That'll learn me for trying to make it look nicer.
It does look nicer though doesn't it? Shame I've lost all our links. Oh well, they weren't very good. By the time anyone reads this (i.e. never) I should have put some new links in. I imagie they will be similar to the old ones.

Honey

2006-05-10T16:24:00.000+01:00

Today I have mostly been trying to stain some honey so that the pollen can be visualised can the source flower can be id'ed. Did I ever mention that I'm doing me PhD in developmental biology? NOT Palynology. Oh, this is why my project is moribund.

Apparently the flavour of honey is in some part dependent on the flowers the bee collected her nectar from. This being a hard nosed science blog (stop sniggering) I should back this up with some hard data and a couple of peer reviewed papers. However, I've already wasted too much time finding out about pollen stains to be bothered to look it up. That and the fact that as a mammal biologist, I wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to find that sort of stuff out.

Here is a picture of the honey pollen I stained with a fuschin basic jelly (3.5g gelatin dissolved in 20ml water at 50C, add 25ml glycerol and o.2ml phenol. Mix at 50C. Add Fuschin basic dissolved 1% in IMS or Ethanol until a rich pink colour, in case you are interested). A prize goes to the first person to email in with the correct analysis if the pollen.

aarrrgh, my brain hurts.

2006-05-06T14:02:00.000+01:00

It's a Saturday, so there is a fair chance that, like me, you are feeling a little delicate from excessive alcohol (in the form of ethanol) intake last night. I bet that you are not a mug and have gone to work though. I am, so I have. Rubbish.

Do you have a hangover remedy you always rely on? In my experience many people need eggs on the morning after, possibly accompanied with some salty pig flesh all covered in brown sauce and in a sandwich. Or you may prefer the "cleaning" effect of some fruit and cold porridge (muesli). You'll probably be wanting a nice cup of tea with that. And water. Lots of water. When I was an undergrad I used to swear by a BLT with chili sauce washed down with Oasis Citrus Punch, or in severe cases Lucazade Sport ("its gets to your thirst, fast"), whereas this morning I had a grilled halloumi cheese sandwich with garlic yoghurt sauce. But that's because I'm a bourgeois get.

Well it seems that all your remedies are no more affctive than the next one, accoring to not so new research published in the BMJ ages ago. Pittler et al conducted a review of 15 papers investigating various hang over cures, seven of which were rejected as they were non-randomised. Although they do list 20 cures they found ion google, including Marmite on toast (hmmmmmm), kidney dialysis (an option not availible to most I feel) and "russia party" (what the hell is this?), the cures included in the trial are all not things I've ever tried, borage for example. They did not include a grilled halloumi cheese sandwich.
Worringly for me, they highlight that more need to be understood of the pathology of the hangover. I'm sure that the average university has enough drunken idiots (I have no idea who these people are).

I have devised the perfect hangover cure, or atleast what i always want to be done to me when hungover: I want to take my brain out or my skull, and put it in a nice cool bowl of clean saline, swish it about about, then put it back in.... bliss.

Flickr

2006-05-04T17:09:00.000+01:00

To celebrate the brave new world of web 2.0 and the semantic web, or some thing, I did a search for the tag science on Flickr.
Look what the first image was. Ace, Darwin and some homonids in Lego form. More science should be represented in lego.

The entry for this photo is sweet too. Explains each of the guys. Not sure if this dude, Kaptain Kobold, is a science geek or simply an admirer, but props to him. Truly this is science embiggment.

Original

edit: now I've worked out how to do pics n'all. Watch out New Scientist's Short Sharp Science Blog, just watch out...

Official BUS statement re:Upstart Science Blog

2006-04-18T13:01:00.000+01:00

ooo, get you New Scientist, with your new (ish) Short Sharp Science blog.
Think you are better than Big Up Science!, with your well written, up to the minute posts on cutting edge science news?

Well, let me tell you something, when you've been infrequently posting poorly written things about science since 2005, then you can come play ball with the Big Up Science! massive, you dig?

We get the press releases n'all you know. It's just that we choose to ignore them as we know that what we write will be ill informed nonsense and only one of the Scientician's pals will ever read it.

To teach you a lesson, I'm going to put a link to you here and probably read your blog, as you frequently post interesting things that are just the sort of thing I like to read, thus wasting time when I should really be starting an in situ.

edit: and thet've got picture. Show offs.

Fight Night: Evolution vs creationism! (or why evolution is right and creationism is wrong)

2006-04-12T10:34:00.000+01:00

So last night your friendly local scientician popped off to the Royal Society in London for a lecture by Prof. Steve Jones of University College London (UCL) titled "Why creationism is wrong, and evolution is right"(availible here as download, as are a number of other interesting lectures).
Combative title, I'm sure you'll agree. Off I went, anticipating a juicy pompous lecture (pompous in a good way you understand) with creationist baiting much like you get in forums such as talk.origins, and a bitter debate at the end with placard waving members of the Evangelical Alliance egging Prof. Jones as he was ushered into a blacked out BMW to escape the lynch mob. But no, with the exception of a couple of cheap but frankly funny shots at G-Dub (to give the president of the USA his proper hip-hop name), the lecture was a concise primer of the facts of dawinian natural selection with the evidence speaking for itself. And very nice it was too. I'm not going to write about this evidence, it seems to me half the internet is full of this argument already. If you have even the slightest capacity for independent thought you'll be able to see that natural selection as described by the original Chuck-D (to give Darwin his proper hip-hop name) is just the way it is, and that creationism is just mythology and “intelligent” design and the rest are just plain balls.
So I left the lecture with a slight disappointment by the lack of blood spilt and the punches pulled, until I read the statement by the Royal Society issued at the lecture (as reported in the Guardian). The whole point of the lecture was for the RS to issue this statement. Christ, I thought, we are at the thin edge of the wedge with ID and creationism if such statement even need to be made. Prof. Jones in part cited the rise of fundamental Islam and Christianity as reasons for the apparent increase in creationism, but was most dispairing of the special place the PM has for faith schools in the education system. It all seems like madness.
But then I thought about the nice beardy man in purple and my faith in humanity was a little restored. But only a bit. Come on Rowan, have a word with our Tony will you? Or at least make sure Gordon is sensible (and the boy Milliband, just in case). Please.

edit: And Dave too. I suppose.

Hynosurgery... Live!!

2006-04-10T17:33:00.000+01:00

So, tonight More4 will be screening a live hernia operation on a hypnotized patient, with no anaesthetic. Crazy. I'll be tuning in for the screams, I'm morbid, I know.

The More4 web site has an interview with the surgeon here, he's done a couple of these before, and seems quite positive but not too hysterical about it, saying that it's not going to replace anaesthesia.
I'd write more, but I've not done my research. Watch this space, maybe. Actually, better to watch this space...

Bird Flu Mania

2006-04-09T18:28:00.000+01:00

Of course, BFM has been sweeping Asia and Europe for some time now, but being an unashamed Blighty-phile, things have now got serious.
A dead swan in Fife was found to have had *the-deadly-H5N1-strain* launching BFM across the UK (though as the swan was far far away from where newspapers are written, we're not yet at full scale BFM).
Swans enjoy a unique status in Britain, being feared for their arm-breaking ability yet protected by being owned by the Queen.
Poultry within a 3km radius of the swan have been 'forcibly housed'.
Flu viruses originated in water birds and doesn't normally make them sick, making it easier for the virus to spread (the birds aren't laid up in bed) to other birds. The scary thing about *the-deadly-H5N1-strain* is that it can spread to humans, and as it adapts to new hosts may be more deadly than flu strains seen in the past...

Sinister Snails Fox Crabs

2006-04-04T10:02:00.000+01:00

Sinister: such a great word, made all the better for being a synonym for left handed. I've never trusted them left handers.

What the devil am I blathering on about? Well mollusc fanciers (or malacologists as I bet they call themselves when trying to impress girls, like saying you're a scientician of any sort helps you pick up chicks (and no, there are no female malacologists, but don't quote me on that)), have discovered that contrary to expectations, back in the Plio-Pleistocene (2.5 MYA to 1.5 MYA) snails with a left handed, or sinistral (we got there eventually) whorl, had a better survival rate than their right handed, or dextral, cousins. The shock of this is that left handed species of cone snails pretty much went extinct 1.8MYA, and whelk dextral and sinistral species have lived side by side, suggesting no advantage and a possible disadvantage to sinistrality. The disadvantage coming about due to sexual selection form the females.

This research (Dietl and Hendricks, Biology Letters, 2006) reads like a forensic investigation, where they studied the number of repaired crab claw scars on paired samples of similar sinistral and dextral shell fossils, with increased scars indicating more survived encounters with hungry crabs. I did similar things back in my osteology/forensic anthropology days, but never on snails. I'm no malacologist. Or osteologist for that matter.
They then watched a crab (a box crab no less) attacking whelks and concluded that it has difficulty opening sinistral snails, although this was in the discussion and they don't present much data to back it up. Maybe they have better things to do?
The analogy of left handed snails and left handed boxers, tennis players and baseballers is then made (baseballers? is that right? hmmm, I'm English so I dunno. They don't mention cricket, but it's true there too, also in Biology Letters, Brooks et al), since the "opponent" knows little about the southpaw. Hmmm, best not take this too far or we'll be likening Matthew Hayden to a whelk soon.
It's an interesting point, but if the advantage of sinistrallity was so much, then why are they so rare? It is an advantage to be sinistral in a right handed world in terms of survival, but sexual selection pulls the other way for the right handers, a point they make, but they also finish the article with "it's not all about sex", nice quip. Malacologists eh? What are they like.
I say however, if everything was sinistral, or if sinistral and dextral were found in equal measures, then the opponent (crab or over hyped British tennis player) would have more experience of cackhandedness, and so the advantage would instantly disappear.
And so ends another overly long, poorly written and ill-informed edition of Big Up Science!

News: Rowan-Williams rejects teaching of creationism

2006-03-21T10:34:00.000Z

the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior cleric in the Church of
England and the de facto leader of the world wide anglican church has
pubiclically rejected the teaching of creationism in an
interview with the Guardian.
Not really science, I know, but of importance in the teaching of
biology. This is already a huge issue in the US, and growing more and
more here, and it will probably get worse with the whole faith schools
nonsense being banded about just now.

Hwang Woo-suk Sacked

2006-03-20T17:53:00.000Z

Sacked!

Hwang Woo-suk, the disgraced Korean stem cell researcher has been sacked by Seoul National University for the scandal surrounding his faked human embryonic stem cell research. (For background check here)

LOOK! REALLY IMPORTANT SCIENCE!

2006-01-13T14:42:00.000Z

You know, when there is a scientific discovery that contradicts things that even your nan might know, we’re talking about the sort of thing that actually spurs me to bother writing this, I am amazed that it doesn’t make the headlines on the News at 10. There has been such an event this week.
Think back to your school days for moment will you, back to those science lessons. Think about that nice carbon cycle diagram you were made to copy, learn for the exam, then, with an irony that was probably lost on you, burn down Big Rob’s on the last day of GCSE exams. Picture that diagram in your mind. Is it there? Good. Now, those arrows coming in and out of the crude plants that you drew (or in my case, the box with PLANTS written in it due to lack of artistic bent), what gasses do they represent? The arrow in to the leaf, now if you were paying attention, they should have Carbon dioxide or CO2 written by them, and the arrows going out should be labelled oxygen, or O2, the word or the symbol would have been enough I’m sure. Where was methane? That’s right, methane was being released from the pile of cow shit, the rubbish tip and the industrial complex. Was it is, I ask you, being released by plants? That’s right, it wasn’t.

BUT IT IS! LOOK!

This has been happening right under our noses for eons. Nobody noticed because no one looked. No one looked because no one expected it. And they discovered it by accident!
We are in early days, but it’s published in nature, so the science must be fairly robust, though as recent events show, a Nature or Science publication does not guarantee against fakery. This may have serious consequences for international carbon trading agreements, such as the Kyoto protocol, which allow planting of trees to off set carbon emissions (methane is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), and unfortunately may act as ammunition for those resistant to tackling climate change.

So here was have a major piece of science that will cause the basic biology taught is schools to be changed, raises questions on serendipity in science and will have consequences on how we tackle global warming. Yeah, that’s all well and good, but will Jodi Marsh be evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother House? That’s what I really want to know.

Ben Goldacre

2005-11-18T15:51:00.000Z

I missed this article from Dr Bad Science MDDS, http://www.badscience.net/?p=186#more-186, sicce it was hid in Time Out's alternative therapy special rathe rthan being in the Gauridian.

You've got to love Ben Goldacre. On what seems like a one man mission to spread some understanding of how science works and how the public are led astray by poor science journalism and dodgy science used to make people rich. For sure, his tirade against humanities graduate is offensive to said BAs, but only if you fail to notice the partially cheek implanted tounge (only partially, since he has a point about those not qualified in the sciences irresposibly pontificating in the press, and how this can be dangerous, especially when it comes to peoples health, or their perception of their health).

HOX time

2005-10-28T17:00:00.000+01:00

Hox code: not new, but something I think is super, simply super.

The marriage of molecular genetics and traditional embryology has resulted in the field of modern developmental biology. In turn, developmental biology is being used to answer evolutionary question, much as comparative embryology was in the past. This is the exciting field of evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology, you know how these crazy biologists love their snappy titles),

One of the coolest things I think that genetics has told us about evolution is the how many genes are preserved, both in form and functions, though out the taxa of modern mammals. A famous example, if not the most famous example, is that of the HOX genes as they are known in vertebrates, or Homeotic selector genes (HOM) in the fruit fly. These guys are found in a nested pattern along the anterior posterior length (think tail to head) of developing human, mice, frogs, fish, lamprey (ugly ‘primitive’ jawless fish), truncates and fruit fly. So basically the common ancestor of all vertebrates and all insects, apparently a “flattish round worm” that lived, ooo I duuno, ages ago (I really should look that up. Let’s say it was 500 million years ago, but I just made that up. Probably much further back.) had this ‘code’ that specified its arse from its head and kept it has not changed since, more or less.
The nested patter basically means that the domain of expression extends further from the tail to the head in some HOX genes than others. Different areas express a different compliment of of hox genes, and these different areas grown into different structures. The tail expressing more of the HOX genes that those nearer the head. In jawed vertebrates the head doesn’t express any hox genes.
If you use the evil powers possessed by the evil biologist you can extend the expression of the HOX genes more anteriorly. Similarly you can restrict the expression away form areas it is normally expressed. For example, in mice (an humans) the 1st branchial arch (BA1) does not express any HOX genes and develops into the jaw.The 2nd branchial arch (BA2) expresses HOX2A only and develops into the hyoid and other neck type things. Knocking HOX2A out of BA2 leads to it developing suspiciously jaw like structures, and knocking HOXA2 in to BA1 leads to it developing suspiciously hyoid like structures. Cool huh? You can do similar experiments to these in frogs, fish and fruit fly and get similar results, showing that these transcription factors do the same thing in all these diverse animals. I really think this is ace. Properly.

check this review.
Gaunt, S.J. 1994. Conservation in the Hox code during morphological evolution. International Journal of Developmental Biology 38:549-552

its old, but I’d give a load of papers, but that would involve looking them up, and I'm lazy.

Mouse stem cells repair sheep hearts.

2005-09-19T16:57:00.000+01:00

Quick! Hide! Stem cells!

Researchers in France have used mouse embryonic stem cells (ESTs) to repair the heart muscle of sheep, and in doing so shown that the stem cells of one species of mammal may possibly be used in future stem cell therapy of another (i.e, us lot) with out incuring the usual immune response problems what have dogged xenotransplantation research since such things were first thought of, which was ages ago. I'm sure I seem to remember that in the 1600 some Russian used a bit of a dogs skull to repair the skull of an arisotcrat. Or some such. That doesn't really sound credible does it? Oh well.

Basically stem cells are cells that can differentiate into any, or almost any, of the cell types in the body and so are known as totipotent (if they can form any cell type), or pluripotent (for those that can form many many cell types). Only the cells of the first few divisions of a zygote are truley totipotent, so most ESTs are pluripotent. ESTs don't seem to elicite an immune response, possibly due to fewer cell surface signalling molecules or some such, and so were selected to see it they could cross the species barrier.

Some sheeps were taken, some of which were immuno-repressed, and heart attacks indues, thus leaving scaring on the heart muscle. Murine ESTs were cultured with bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2, one of the curses of my life) to make turn towards a cardiac fate, before being grafted on to the scar tissue of the the sheeps hearts. And you know what, it only boody worked. Well, kinda. And they only had 9 experimental animals, so don't do rushing out to get mice to help repair your heart attacks...

Claudine Mnard, Albert A Hagge, Onnik Agbulut, Marietta Barro, Miguel Cortes Morichetti, Camille Brasselet, Alain Bel, Emmanuel Messas, Alvine Bissery, Patrick Bruneval et al., Transplantation of cardiac-committed mouse embryonic stem cells to infarcted sheep myocardium: a preclinical study, The Lancet, Volume 366, Issue 9490, 17 September 2005-23 September 2005, Pages 1005-1012.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T1B-4H40RPY-18/2/48bcc71128a16489428e07447b25c88f)

Life: RIP

2005-09-08T16:37:00.000+01:00

Not really science, but I thought I'd lament the passing of he Life section of the Guardian newspaper. As they are re-formatting, to a nice Berliner size, they are going to ditch the Life section. Instead there will be a daily page of science. Hmm, not sure how I feel about this, since I always look forward to my Thursday fix.

Thankfully the sublimely anal Ben Goldacre's of "Bad Science" will not be leaving, though I'm not sure if Bad Science will carry on in its current guise. To tell the truth, I'm a little scared...

Big Wednesday

2005-08-08T14:03:00.000+01:00

So, I just came back from a weekend surfing in north devon. Well, I say surfing, but this being summer time the waves were little over a foot or two (or should I say 30-60cm?). Normally you'd be a little peeved at this, but the weather was fine and beer was cold, and at least there was no hurricane producing the biggest waves on record, as recently reported in Science [1]
Last year, on Wednesday 15th of September 2004 to be exact, hurricane Ivan passed over wave-tide gauges used by the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to measure these things The largest measured waves were to be around 27 meters, and the ones they missed reckoned to be 40 meters, or in surf-imperial, like, 132 feet dude. My lord. Surf's up.

[1] Science, Vol 309, Issue 5736, 896 , 5 August 2005

Pussy's not got no sweet tooth

2005-08-03T18:02:00.000+01:00

Cats eh? To some, lovable furry cute ball of fun and joy, to others the very spawn of satan condensed into a for of purest evil.
If you are of the former opinion and have ever tried to feed one of the smashers some jelly and ice cream, only to have the little get turn his nose up at you and then bring you a mouse for your three year old self to try and eat, you may be interested in knowing that new research indicates why cats, unlike most mammals, can not taste sweet stuff [1].
You may have read this in the papers as this is a rare old piece of research that can make genetics seem all cute and fluffy (kinda) instead of the evil monster that will turn us all in to rabid flesh eating zombies, a la Resident Evil.
Li et al found that the conserved gene for sweet receptors, Tas1r2 and 3 (TAS1R2 and 3 in humans, since we are special) are non-functional in domestic cats, where as they are all good and functional in sweet loving humans, rats, dogs and mice. There is a similar lack of sweet taste in the tigers and other felidae.
They also ask some interesting questions as to which came first, loss of sweets function in felidae or the exclusively carnivorous behavior.
Read it your self is you want more, I'm spent.

[1] Li X, Li W, Wang H, Cao J, Maehashi K, et al. (2005) Pseudogenization of a sweet-receptor gene accounts for catsÂ’ indifference toward sugar. PLoS Genet 1(1): e3. Full text online

Blink and you'll miss it...

2005-07-30T18:56:00.000+01:00

So when you blink, you don't notice it getting dark, do you? New research at University College London has found out why - your visual cortex automatically shuts down every time you blink [1].

They got some volunteers to wear light-proof goggles and put a fibre optic cable in their mouth which shone light on to their retinas by making their whole head glow, while lying in an fMRI scanner. The fibre optic was to make sure that it was the blinking, rather than the lack of light, that made the brain do what it did. Whenever the volunteers blinked, brain activity in the visual cortex was suppressed.

So that's why you don't notice yourself blinking. Though I bet you're noticing it now you've read this eh?

1. Bristow D, Haynes JD, Sylvester R, Frith CD, Rees G: Blinking suppresses the neural response to unchanging retinal stimulation. Curr Biol. 2005 26;15(14):1296-300.

Deep sea cannibalism

2005-07-30T17:58:00.000+01:00

The giant squid (Architeuthis dux) may be a cannibal according to analysis of its stomach contents by Bruce Deagle at the University of Tasmania [1].

Little is known about giant squid - sightings have been few and far between. Early human sightings fostered myths of sea monsters (such as the Kraken) perhaps understably. They are the largest invertebrate at up to 18m (that's the length of a bendy bus), have the largest eye of the animal kingdom (25cm diameter) and weigh nearly a ton. No one really knows what they eat, as their stomach contents are usually pulverised to such a soup that no body parts can be recognised.

The cannibal squid in question was caught by fisherman and Deagle and his team analysed the DNA in the 'amorphous slurry' from the squid's gut. The DNA turned out to be that of A. dux (along with the blue grenadier fish). They also found among the slurry some pieces of giant squid tentacle and possible squid beaks.

They don't know however whether the tentacles belonged to a rival squid or whether they were this squid's own - like us biting our nails when nervous, giant squid have been known to chew off their own tentacles when stressed.

1. Deagle BE, Jarman SN, Pemberton D, Gales NJ: Genetic Screening for Prey in the Gut Contents from a Giant Squid (Architeuthis sp.). J Hered. 2005 96(4):417-23

Odd science from the news 1

2005-07-19T01:48:00.000+01:00

Well, this is quite funny at first read.

Basically, the Chinese space programme is sending 50g of pig semen up on their next manned mission. Now i don't know off hand how much the average pig ejaculates, but I do know about human (again, off hand, as it were) and it's about 5ml. I'm assuming that semen is a little denser than water, so that's going to be no more than 10g at the very most, so 50g will be probably around 50ml, if not more. (That's a double). This will then be used to fertilise a female pig back on eart to study the effects of space travel on fertility and I suppose sperm storage....

Voices in my head....

2005-07-14T17:18:00.000+01:00

Those clever people at the University of Sheffield have recently
pubilished a paper in NeuroImage [1] to try and explain why auditory
verbal hallucinations, or voices in the head experienced commonly in
schizophrenia, are nearly always male.
Basically they played male, female and "gender ambiguous" voices to
male Sheffield uni students whist there brains were in a functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and looked how the brain
reacted to each stimulus.
The long and short of their finding is that the male student brain (and
I suppose by inference the male bran in general) process male and
female voices in distinct ways. The female voice activates regions of a
brain specialising in "hearing" human voices (the right anterior
superior temporal gyrus, near the superior temporal sulcus), rather
than the general "minds ear" that the male brain activates. (the
mesio-parietal precuneus area). So this may explain why female voices
are more engaging to listen to. I'll let you insert your own quip
there...

Does this mean that we, humans, have evolved to pay more attention to
female voices? Or just that males have evolved to pay more attention to
female voices? I suppose they'd have to do a similar set of fMRIs on an
equivalent female group.

[1]Dilraj S. Sokhi, Michael D. Hunter, Iain D. Wilkinson and Peter W.R.
Woodruff, Male and female voices activate distinct regions in the male
brain, NeuroImage, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 22 June
2005, .
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WNP-4GFV5ND-3/2/
b48bb743ebd2c3d3c25a6bc320a04309)

Science, not Science

2005-07-13T02:27:00.000+01:00

This is a new blog all about the wonderful world of sceince.
No, not Science, the guy currently in channel 4's Big Brother 6 house. This is not a space to big him up. But perhaps we should since his very name is promoting the public awareness of science, especially amongst the brain dead who tune in to BB6 (I don't watch it, honest, though it is often on when I put the tv on, and I find myself looking and listening in the general direction of the box..........)

So, lets get going with the SCIENCE!!!!