A microcosm of all that's good and bad about science in the media.
I just came across an article at New Scientist talking about research that compares our brains to Google's page rank procedure. The idea of the brain being googlesque is quite catchy, the kind of thing you could drop into conversation and seem quite intelligent for doing so. But before we go spreading that meme, it's worth taking a closer look. When we scratch the surface, things get a bit murky, although hopefully my scratching around clears some things up too.
It's only a short article, so I might as well let it speak for itself, with my self speaking for me in between. I will deal with the ideas as they are presented, but the problem is that without reading the journal article it's about, who's really to say what's going on? Very few readers will ever take the time to read the original journal article, and I'd bet that very few writers do either - at least to the level that allows a bit of perspective and criticism. This issue is absolutely ubiquitous in science writing, but I don't have time to address it now. Suffice to say it places a huge burden on the science writer's measly shoulders. Anyway....
Our memory for words can be modelled as a network in which each point represents a different word, with each linked to words that relate to it.
Ok, so we're talking about a model. Here in a nutshell is the daily focal point of most scientists - a model. It stands before them, naked and exposed to the world, doing its best to represent reality. Of course, scientists are equally (hopefully more, maybe less) focused on the reality their model is modelling too. In this case, we're trying understand... what? Something about the way our mind uses words. So let's build a model. It is a clearly fallacious to represent a word as a solid, defined entity in its own right, but we'll forgive them that because all models must necessarily simplify somewhere. Still, I can't help wondering whether they're putting the cart before horse in already specifying which words are related to which. Isn't how the mind super-specially figures this out for us a mystery worth investigating?
Psychologist Tom Griffiths and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, wondered whether the ease with which the brain retrieves words is similar to the way that websites are ranked by PageRank: by the number of sites that link to them.
It's essential for a science writer to mention the author, and preferably host institution, of the research. That way interested folk are just a hop, click and jump from finding the original research article, or the researcher's general interests, or commercial interests, or whatever.
I couldn't help but wondering just where Google popped up in all of this. Did it drive the research? Did it emerge unbidden from the pure experimental results? Was it a cute rejoinder in the original paper's discussion, aimed at lightening the tone? Was it added by the researcher or someone from their uni's PR department to get the mercilessly fickle attention of media Monitors in science mags? Anyway, it seems like a reasonable hypothesis - the more words that "link to" a given word, be it in terms of spelling, etymology, the sound of the word or whatever, the easier the word will be to retrieve. The more hits it will get!
It seems it might. In tests against other word-retrieval algorithms, PageRank most clearly matched the human model (Psychological Science, vol 18, p 1069).
Ok, so the crucial missing ingredient is some, any kind of description of a) the other word-retrieval algorithms, and b) some perspective as to how big a deal this is in the field. Was it unexpected? Was there another model that previously occupied the position of best model, that has now been ceremoniously (publishing results is a ceremony of sorts!) dumped in favour of the PageRank model of human word retrieval? Just what the Dickens are the implications of all this??
The results suggest human memory studies could be improved by examining the tricks that search engines employ, and vice versa, says Griffiths.
Ok, there they are. Just who is going to follow this new approach? The authors? Anyone else? Ultimately, they rely on the validity of the analogy between human brains and computers/internets.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Friday, December 7, 2007
The Latest Science Headlines
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER LINK BETWEEN OWN EXISTENCE AND AMAZING BREAKTHROUGHS
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER LINK BETWEEN VIEWING PORNOGRAPHY AND MALE SEXUAL AROUSAL.
Study is the largest of its kind in the world, in terms of both length and girth.
SCIENTISTS CONFIDENT OF CANCER BREAKTRHOUGH - IN GENERAL.
"This isn't based on any particular study or theoretical progress - it's just a general confidence. We're feeling pretty good."
SCIENTISTS "JUST WISH PEOPLE WOULD LEAVE US ALONE"
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE NOT A SCIENCE, SAY SCIENTISTS.
"We're rich and we can prove it," say management scientists.
PROCRASTINATION STUDY DELAYED AGAIN
STUDENTS STUDY STUDY STUDY.
A review of studying methods has been put under the microscope by students.
ENVIRONMENT IN "DEEP SHIT", SAY SCIENTISTS.
Environment agrees.
SCIENTIST THINKS OWN SHIT DOESN'T STINK
"We don't know shit," said JC Venter. "Which is why I've decided to make my lab the first to sequence the metagenome of a human's turd - my own of course."
SCIENCE IN THE MEDIA - AGAIN
INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSES
You would too if you'd been through what it has.
STEM CELL BREAKTHROUGH
Ethics committee approves research proposal.
MINDFUCK
Scientists have pinpointed 54 different areas of the brain associated with each of the 54 uses of the word "fuck".
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER LINK BETWEEN VIEWING PORNOGRAPHY AND MALE SEXUAL AROUSAL.
Study is the largest of its kind in the world, in terms of both length and girth.
SCIENTISTS CONFIDENT OF CANCER BREAKTRHOUGH - IN GENERAL.
"This isn't based on any particular study or theoretical progress - it's just a general confidence. We're feeling pretty good."
SCIENTISTS "JUST WISH PEOPLE WOULD LEAVE US ALONE"
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE NOT A SCIENCE, SAY SCIENTISTS.
"We're rich and we can prove it," say management scientists.
PROCRASTINATION STUDY DELAYED AGAIN
STUDENTS STUDY STUDY STUDY.
A review of studying methods has been put under the microscope by students.
ENVIRONMENT IN "DEEP SHIT", SAY SCIENTISTS.
Environment agrees.
SCIENTIST THINKS OWN SHIT DOESN'T STINK
"We don't know shit," said JC Venter. "Which is why I've decided to make my lab the first to sequence the metagenome of a human's turd - my own of course."
SCIENCE IN THE MEDIA - AGAIN
INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSES
You would too if you'd been through what it has.
STEM CELL BREAKTHROUGH
Ethics committee approves research proposal.
MINDFUCK
Scientists have pinpointed 54 different areas of the brain associated with each of the 54 uses of the word "fuck".
Friday, October 19, 2007
Logolution and large celestial objects
Some measure words and others, birds. Some measure stars and others, Mars.
Some measure holes that can't be seen. I write about them with Charles Sheen.
I described the story about words in my last post. All I would add at this juncture is that I like to call the study of the evolution of words and languages logolution. Sadly this fondness was not shared by Professor Jim Hurford, from the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit at the University of Edinburgh, who I asked about the research. "I can't see the point of the neologism 'logolution'," he said. "For one thing it focusses too much on words, as opposed to other features of language." I've taken Jim's comments on board, and hereby propose lingolution as a legit solution. In five years when there's a journal called Nature Lingolution, I want acknowledgement, royalties, and a wikipedia entry. In five years...
There's also been some amazing research done on black holes. Y'see, they've just found the biggest ever stellar black hole. Before you go calling your mum, bear in mind that it's not the biggest black hole - just the biggest stellar black hole.
A stellar black hole is formed from a collapsed star (typically out of exhaustion or its own gravitational pull, or both) and weighs exactly between 3 and 13 times the mass of our sun.
Some educated people believe that all galaxies have superdupermassive black holes at their centre, which are thousands to millions of times as heavy as our sun. They are called supermassive black holes. I don't know how they are formed, but if it's not from collapsing stars, what is it? Huh? Answer me! (There's also a song by the band Muse called supermassive black hole, which I suspect the physicists have ripped off)
The black hole they've just found is 16 solar masses. Ok, so it's not supermassive, but it's still freakin' big right? I mean, if you were standing next to it in a photo, you'd look bloody tiny. And get this, it's also in tight, tight orbit with a 70-solar-mass star. That's some big celestial objects.
So the next time you look up at the sun, see it for what it is - a pitiful 1/16th the size of the biggest stellar black hole, and an embarrassing 1/70th the size of this SBH's companion star. I'm so ashamed.
Some measure holes that can't be seen. I write about them with Charles Sheen.
I described the story about words in my last post. All I would add at this juncture is that I like to call the study of the evolution of words and languages logolution. Sadly this fondness was not shared by Professor Jim Hurford, from the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit at the University of Edinburgh, who I asked about the research. "I can't see the point of the neologism 'logolution'," he said. "For one thing it focusses too much on words, as opposed to other features of language." I've taken Jim's comments on board, and hereby propose lingolution as a legit solution. In five years when there's a journal called Nature Lingolution, I want acknowledgement, royalties, and a wikipedia entry. In five years...
There's also been some amazing research done on black holes. Y'see, they've just found the biggest ever stellar black hole. Before you go calling your mum, bear in mind that it's not the biggest black hole - just the biggest stellar black hole.
A stellar black hole is formed from a collapsed star (typically out of exhaustion or its own gravitational pull, or both) and weighs exactly between 3 and 13 times the mass of our sun.
Some educated people believe that all galaxies have superdupermassive black holes at their centre, which are thousands to millions of times as heavy as our sun. They are called supermassive black holes. I don't know how they are formed, but if it's not from collapsing stars, what is it? Huh? Answer me! (There's also a song by the band Muse called supermassive black hole, which I suspect the physicists have ripped off)
The black hole they've just found is 16 solar masses. Ok, so it's not supermassive, but it's still freakin' big right? I mean, if you were standing next to it in a photo, you'd look bloody tiny. And get this, it's also in tight, tight orbit with a 70-solar-mass star. That's some big celestial objects.
So the next time you look up at the sun, see it for what it is - a pitiful 1/16th the size of the biggest stellar black hole, and an embarrassing 1/70th the size of this SBH's companion star. I'm so ashamed.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Bugs in space
For the first time, scientists have paid attention to microbes (which are related to bugs, but not as much as humans are) IN SPACE!
This article is worth reading for a couple of reasons.
- the future of astronauts depends on it. Or so some would have you believe. Essentially they think that microbes may be more deadly in space. They figured this out by taking salmonella on a shuttle, then infecting mice on earth and finding they died more than controls. What I really would have liked to see is mice in space being infected. After all, it's astronauts in space they're worried about, not astronauts on earth.
- it mentions the word panspermia. This is a mildly funny word. But it's used with deadly seriousness, for famed panspermioso Chandra Wickramasinghe believes the experiment suggests bacteria are evolved for space travel
There they are. The couple of reasons, laid out for you in the English language. My next article will be about the shock revelation that words that are used more often take longer to morph into other words than words that are rarely used. Alas, this probably means panspermiosi will have changed by its second usage. In the same story, there's research about how more and more English words end in 'ed' in the past tense, even though they used to not! This process is called regularisation, and it's happening as we speak. What else is being regularised? Our minds? Our media? Our owls? The answer is all around us.
Finally, I was pleased to see that research I covered in exciting depth won an Ig Nobel prize. I am prepared to wager a doubloon that this research, about the anti-jetlag effects of viagra (and cialis walium? Further tests required) in hamsters, becomes the first to claim the Ig Nobel / Nobel Prize sweep. You heard it first here, folks.
This article is worth reading for a couple of reasons.
- the future of astronauts depends on it. Or so some would have you believe. Essentially they think that microbes may be more deadly in space. They figured this out by taking salmonella on a shuttle, then infecting mice on earth and finding they died more than controls. What I really would have liked to see is mice in space being infected. After all, it's astronauts in space they're worried about, not astronauts on earth.
- it mentions the word panspermia. This is a mildly funny word. But it's used with deadly seriousness, for famed panspermioso Chandra Wickramasinghe believes the experiment suggests bacteria are evolved for space travel
There they are. The couple of reasons, laid out for you in the English language. My next article will be about the shock revelation that words that are used more often take longer to morph into other words than words that are rarely used. Alas, this probably means panspermiosi will have changed by its second usage. In the same story, there's research about how more and more English words end in 'ed' in the past tense, even though they used to not! This process is called regularisation, and it's happening as we speak. What else is being regularised? Our minds? Our media? Our owls? The answer is all around us.
Finally, I was pleased to see that research I covered in exciting depth won an Ig Nobel prize. I am prepared to wager a doubloon that this research, about the anti-jetlag effects of viagra (and cialis walium? Further tests required) in hamsters, becomes the first to claim the Ig Nobel / Nobel Prize sweep. You heard it first here, folks.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Kohagen, give the people air!
Whoops, wrong Arnie movie.
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
That's better. That's Predator. And predators are the subject of my latest article. Scientist says predation and biodiversity are tightly coupled (like my wife and I). What does this mean? Read the story (but ignore the comment at the bottom).
The story before that was about bacteria. Old bacteria. Hundreds of thousands of years old, in fact. Some say that old bacteria use the spore defence, whereby they shrivel up and cease metabolism and just hang on tight until things blow over. Now others are saying that without metabolism there would be no DNA repair, and the timespans involved mean DNA repair would be absolutely critical. You be the judge. Or foreman.
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
That's better. That's Predator. And predators are the subject of my latest article. Scientist says predation and biodiversity are tightly coupled (like my wife and I). What does this mean? Read the story (but ignore the comment at the bottom).
The story before that was about bacteria. Old bacteria. Hundreds of thousands of years old, in fact. Some say that old bacteria use the spore defence, whereby they shrivel up and cease metabolism and just hang on tight until things blow over. Now others are saying that without metabolism there would be no DNA repair, and the timespans involved mean DNA repair would be absolutely critical. You be the judge. Or foreman.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
NEWSFLASH! Dingoes are cute
The Australian dingo has been tearing about the Australian mainland for about 5,000 years. Many dingologists believe it is at risk of disappearing completely due to hybridisation with domestic dog breeds. Especially common are the dinginese (Pekinese), the dingdog (bulldog) and the dingutt (mutt). Pure bred dingos are still to be found in southeast NSW, such as parts of Kosciuszko National Park. Recent satellite tracking research carried out on wild dogs by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has determined that for the most part individual animals have very large home range sizes, mostly around 10000 hectares (ha) in size but up to 40000 ha. Within these home ranges the dogs travel constantly. The relatively large distances moved by animals further increases the risk of hybridisation, particularly if purebred dingoes 'interact' with other dogs that are genetically compromised (aren't we all?). Photo by Andrew Claridge, NPWS. Text from NPWS with an Artful Science twist.
Note: the usually reliable google system of discerning alternate spellings of words failed me here. 'dingoes' gets 312,000 hits, 'dingos' 291,000. That may seem like a big difference, but I am not confident it is spellistically significant.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The good old days of science writing
"... a golden age when scientific papers were written in a discursive style that you could understand, and at a length that made it possible to visualise a real person doing real experiments in a real laboratory."
This quote refers to a paper on sponges from 1907 and it's from The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins.
~~~
I've written a few more descriptions of research, one on a cool map of Angkor (as in Wat), one on the movements of olden (as in 500,000 years) day humans / homos / hominins / whatever you wanna call 'em. Are Europeans really Asian? Well, it's a complicated story.
This quote refers to a paper on sponges from 1907 and it's from The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins.
~~~
I've written a few more descriptions of research, one on a cool map of Angkor (as in Wat), one on the movements of olden (as in 500,000 years) day humans / homos / hominins / whatever you wanna call 'em. Are Europeans really Asian? Well, it's a complicated story.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Climate change meets defence
A very interesting discussion of the Australian Government's latest words on defence includes a pointed reference to an elephant in the room: the impact of climate change on global security, which it seems the Government ignores.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Volcanoes, mice
Two more journal articles to relate.
Most recently, there's the miraculous story of burnt hairless mice saved by coffee and exercise wheel running. Scientists reckon that caffeine and exercise both promote apoptosis, or programmed cell death. This is a deal (I'm not sure how big a deal) because
1) The cells that are killed are those that have been damaged by UVB radiation (one part of the sun's radiation spectrum). It's good to kill these because if they live they could turn cancerous.
[This reminds me of my Win-Win Law of Pharmaceutical Research: Whatever illness you're trying to cure, if your drug / treatment works, you're happy. But, if the drug / experimental conditions kill all your cells, you're also happy, because you've identified a possible cancer-cell-killer!]
2) they act synergistically. The effect of the two combined is 5 times as effective as either on its own. There's still a jazillion variables that need to be explored (amount of caffeine, type of exercise, other types of radiation etc), but it's an interesting result. Poor little burnt hairless mice.
Less recently, there's the story of Italian volcanologists unearthing the mysterious inner workings of volcanoes.
It turns out that the rumblings of certain kinds of volcano, named after Mt Stromoli off the coast of Italy, emanate from deep within the earth. These big bubbles of gas, called gas slugs, were analysed after fizzing out of the volcano. Judging from their chemical composition, it was deduced that they must have come from deep down near the mantle, rather than a few hundred metres down where volcano-related earthquakes occur.
Imagine being a volcanologist.
Most recently, there's the miraculous story of burnt hairless mice saved by coffee and exercise wheel running. Scientists reckon that caffeine and exercise both promote apoptosis, or programmed cell death. This is a deal (I'm not sure how big a deal) because
1) The cells that are killed are those that have been damaged by UVB radiation (one part of the sun's radiation spectrum). It's good to kill these because if they live they could turn cancerous.
[This reminds me of my Win-Win Law of Pharmaceutical Research: Whatever illness you're trying to cure, if your drug / treatment works, you're happy. But, if the drug / experimental conditions kill all your cells, you're also happy, because you've identified a possible cancer-cell-killer!]
2) they act synergistically. The effect of the two combined is 5 times as effective as either on its own. There's still a jazillion variables that need to be explored (amount of caffeine, type of exercise, other types of radiation etc), but it's an interesting result. Poor little burnt hairless mice.
Less recently, there's the story of Italian volcanologists unearthing the mysterious inner workings of volcanoes.
It turns out that the rumblings of certain kinds of volcano, named after Mt Stromoli off the coast of Italy, emanate from deep within the earth. These big bubbles of gas, called gas slugs, were analysed after fizzing out of the volcano. Judging from their chemical composition, it was deduced that they must have come from deep down near the mantle, rather than a few hundred metres down where volcano-related earthquakes occur.
Imagine being a volcanologist.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Killing Time
A review of The End Of Time by Julian Barbour
Published by Phoenix
Foreword: I read this book, and some time later wrote this review, a while ago now. The End of Time passed my Gift Voucher Test. That is, you have a gift voucher and can spend it on any book you like. What book do you like the look of enough to actually want to own? Obviously, it must either be a classic, or a dense repository of knowledge - something to come back to, to lend to friends or pass on to children. Or maybe something so complex you need to read it several times. Of the million and one books I'd love to or have been meaning to read, very few of them pass the GVT.
On this occasion I was browsing around the pop science section of Collins (By the way, the changes in the pop sci book scene could make an entire column on its own). I've read a few popular physics and quantum theory books, but had never really encountered the idea of timelessness. The hourglass cover, decent thickness, and endorsement from John Gribbin combined to push me over the edge and buy it.
One other thing I didn't mention in the review was that Barbour is a big fan of Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. As it turns out, so was Einstein. My rudimentary impressions of his work, combined with these two facts, have made Ernst Mach and his ideas into an object of respect and curiosity to me.
~~~
“Time does not exist.” Try telling that to anybody with a deadline. Yet this is precisely the message of physicist Julian Barbour in his new book, The End of Time.
Barbour, who supported his research by translating Russian scientific journals on the side, believes that time is an emergent property - like the colour violet or the temperature of a bowl of pea soup.
This is a shocking thesis, yet in a straw poll conducted by the author, twice as many of his colleagues (physicists mind you, not translators) believed that time should not appear in the foundations of any theory of the world as those who thought it should. According to Barbour, there are only instants, snapshots, configurations - and a great deal of them at that.
We occupy one of these ‘time capsules’ and infer the past from it. Barbour takes up the onerous task of convincing the lay reader of time’s passing (it is almost impossible to avoid puns with this topic) with the gravity and finesse befitting such a grand topic.
He sets the scene using Turner’s amazing painting Snow Storm, which depicts the force and fury of a boat caught in a storm. Motion can indeed be created out of a static, timeless picture. We then fall into triangle land, Platonia and a rich discussion of the ideas underpinning his theory, including relativity and quantum theory.
I grappled with some of the mathematical and physical concepts, such as the foggy notion of ‘quantum mist’, yet in asking the reader to make the effort Barbour ensures the trip is a more satisfying one. A more philosophical epilogue, ‘Life Without Time’, and extensive notes demonstrate the author has thought about much more than the physics of time.
Although at times dense, this is a fascinating introduction to a timeless world.
Published by Phoenix
Foreword: I read this book, and some time later wrote this review, a while ago now. The End of Time passed my Gift Voucher Test. That is, you have a gift voucher and can spend it on any book you like. What book do you like the look of enough to actually want to own? Obviously, it must either be a classic, or a dense repository of knowledge - something to come back to, to lend to friends or pass on to children. Or maybe something so complex you need to read it several times. Of the million and one books I'd love to or have been meaning to read, very few of them pass the GVT.
On this occasion I was browsing around the pop science section of Collins (By the way, the changes in the pop sci book scene could make an entire column on its own). I've read a few popular physics and quantum theory books, but had never really encountered the idea of timelessness. The hourglass cover, decent thickness, and endorsement from John Gribbin combined to push me over the edge and buy it.
One other thing I didn't mention in the review was that Barbour is a big fan of Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. As it turns out, so was Einstein. My rudimentary impressions of his work, combined with these two facts, have made Ernst Mach and his ideas into an object of respect and curiosity to me.
~~~
“Time does not exist.” Try telling that to anybody with a deadline. Yet this is precisely the message of physicist Julian Barbour in his new book, The End of Time.
Barbour, who supported his research by translating Russian scientific journals on the side, believes that time is an emergent property - like the colour violet or the temperature of a bowl of pea soup.
This is a shocking thesis, yet in a straw poll conducted by the author, twice as many of his colleagues (physicists mind you, not translators) believed that time should not appear in the foundations of any theory of the world as those who thought it should. According to Barbour, there are only instants, snapshots, configurations - and a great deal of them at that.
We occupy one of these ‘time capsules’ and infer the past from it. Barbour takes up the onerous task of convincing the lay reader of time’s passing (it is almost impossible to avoid puns with this topic) with the gravity and finesse befitting such a grand topic.
He sets the scene using Turner’s amazing painting Snow Storm, which depicts the force and fury of a boat caught in a storm. Motion can indeed be created out of a static, timeless picture. We then fall into triangle land, Platonia and a rich discussion of the ideas underpinning his theory, including relativity and quantum theory.
I grappled with some of the mathematical and physical concepts, such as the foggy notion of ‘quantum mist’, yet in asking the reader to make the effort Barbour ensures the trip is a more satisfying one. A more philosophical epilogue, ‘Life Without Time’, and extensive notes demonstrate the author has thought about much more than the physics of time.
Although at times dense, this is a fascinating introduction to a timeless world.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Thank God! At last, it's here. It's really here!
Wireless power transfer, that is. Ok, so it's not that big a deal, but it's still kinda cool.
Published at Cosmos 8 June 2007.
Published at Cosmos 8 June 2007.
Ta bu shi Beijingren
Tonal language gets genetic insight. And no, I am not fluent in Mandarin.
Published at Cosmos 29 May 2007.
Published at Cosmos 29 May 2007.
I'm a Nemologist.
Talking fish are quite a sight. There's even a video accompanying this one. Science meets YouTube.
Published at Cosmos 18 May 2007.
Published at Cosmos 18 May 2007.
We kind of already knew this, but...
Aborigines didn't show up overnight. Still, I suppose it's nice for different lines of evidence to converge on the same point.
Published at Cosmos 8 May 2007.
Published at Cosmos 8 May 2007.
Molten mercury, so what?
Mercury's wobble means it's liquid, alright. Alright? Really, it's amazing the deductions that can be made from movements in light bouncing off rocks millions of kilometres away.
Published at Cosmos 4 May 2007.
Published at Cosmos 4 May 2007.
Is the effect of the rhythm method slight?
Alright, so it's not really about the rhythm method. It's about cycles of life and all that jazz.
Published at Cosmos 22 March 2007.
Published at Cosmos 22 March 2007.
Fly gene, fly!
What's a genome got to do with flight? Oh, it's got a lot to do with it. A lot.
Published at Cosmos 8 March 2007.
Published at Cosmos 8 March 2007.
I've lost my memory
Did you know that some people with hippocampal amnesia find it hard to imagine things? Shock!
Published at Cosmos 16 January 2007.
Published at Cosmos 16 January 2007.
Why would you want to regrow teeth?
C'mon, why would you ask a question like that? There are many reasons. Like 'because you can'.
Published at Cosmos 27 November 2006.
Published at Cosmos 27 November 2006.
Potent potable
- I mean painkiller discovered in saliva. I love it because just when people think they know about the body, they discover a totally new compound right there in somebody's spitball. Of course, you'd have to be a Pavlov's dog (or padlocked door) to drool enough to get any kind of effect.
Published at Cosmos 14 November 2006.
Published at Cosmos 14 November 2006.
But can they tell how many donuts I ate last week?
I'd like to see them try. Some researchers have examined ancient teeth to find out what ye olde hominid ate.
Published at Cosmos 10 November 2006.
Published at Cosmos 10 November 2006.
Intervention bad?
Some psychologists believe that if scared rats are any indication of human behaviour, we shouldn't rush in to treat the fears of recently traumatised people. Hmmm.
Published at Cosmos 8 November 2006.
Published at Cosmos 8 November 2006.
Surprise, surprise: erotic images are popular
This story about attention, racy pictures, and undergrads received thousands of hits. Did it deserve them?
Published at Cosmos 24 October 2006.
Published at Cosmos 24 October 2006.
Is colour blind?
This story is about whether people partition colours into the same lexical space across cultures. Read it, if you can.
Published at Cosmos 17 October 2006.
Published at Cosmos 17 October 2006.
Ant algorithms are adaptable.
I quite enjoyed this story. Researchers playing ant god, nest selection - it has it all.
Published at Cosmos 12 October 2006.
Published at Cosmos 12 October 2006.
Lazy sperm
Sluggish sperm. Low sperm counts. Blanks shooting. It's all here. And it's about mitochondria, people!
Published at Cosmos 3 October 2006.
Published at Cosmos 3 October 2006.
Burn the mouse, don't burn the mouse
Hope for pale skinned humans? Or cruel prank on albino mice? You be the judge.
Published at Cosmos 22 September 2006.
Published at Cosmos 22 September 2006.
Ice to see you
Cryonics in Australia? Get in now before the rush (and invest in alpacas while you're at it).
Published at Cosmos 4 September 2006.
Published at Cosmos 4 September 2006.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Race for Branson's Millions
As if we didn’t have enough incentive to tackle climate change, Richard Branson is offering US$25 million to anyone who can come up with an effective means of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Let's have a gander at some of the contenders.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, Al Gore and British billionaire Richard Branson announced recently they would help save the Earth - by giving away US$25 million. And to take advantage of Branson's generosity, all you need is an invention that will fix global warming.
More specifically, the Virgin Earth Challenge prize, worth A$32 million, will be awarded to a person whose invention removes significant amounts of "anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects". Let's put the word 'significant' in perspective.
The Australian government thinks it can prevent up to four million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide emissions by requiring virtually every person in Australia to swap their wasteful incandescent light bulbs for more energy-efficient options. This is less than one tenth of one percent of current annual global emissions. For Branson and Gore, 'significant' amounts to something in the order of one billion tonnes per year - 250 times more than what Australia hopes to achieve. To make it happen every year - without side effects - is a truly monumental undertaking.
To the winner of the challenge goes the cold hard cash and to the rest of us go the spoils of a less-spoiled planet. Though the task may seem insurmountable, prizes have proved a potent incentive for innovation in the past. Branson himself is reaping the fruits of another large prize - licensing the technology that won the US$10 million Ansari Prize for the first private manned space vehicle for use by Virgin Galactic, his venture into space tourism.
While slowing global warming is arguably a bit more difficult than sending a few tourists into space, and though the prize won't be awarded until 2010 at the earliest, individuals and organisations are lining up to throw their hat in the ring. And since they're already queueing, we might as well start inspecting them to see if they've got what it takes to meet the challenge.
Here, fishy fishy
Some technologies aim to harness or improve on nature's own carbon removal and storage systems; its oceans, forests and soils. Others use a more artificial approach to carbon sequestration. An example of the former is Ocean Nourishment.
"Ocean Nourishment takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts it into fish," says Ian Jones of Sydney University's Ocean Technology Group. The idea is to dump nitrogen in the form of urea into the open ocean to stimulate the growth of plant-like microorganisms called phytoplankton. Like plants, phytoplankton perform photosynthesis - turning carbon into sugars that they use for food. Phytoplankton are near the bottom of the oceanic food chain, and more phytoplankton means more food for fish and other marine life. The theory goes: every animal is basically a mobile carbon storage device, so more animals in the oceans means better carbon storage.
The scheme was originally developed to restore the health of 'desertified' parts of the ocean with dwindling plankton populations, but snaffling excess atmospheric carbon dioxide is a welcome side effect. Early trials have been promising, but the biggest question is what will happen when it is scaled up.
Dawn Levy, a science writer at Stanford University in California, is wary of strategies like Ocean Nourishment and an analogous scheme that uses iron instead of nitrogen as fertiliser. "Monkeying with the food chain may have ripple effects - unknown consequences - throughout the system, and I doubt it would have a big enough effect to make a dent on the problem," she says.
There's carbon in them thar hills!
If the Earth Challenge were awarded today, many people would place their own money on geosequestration. Already well into the testing phase, variations on the geosequestration theme are probably the best known carbon-reducing strategies at the moment. Basically, geosequestration is the burial of carbon in rocks. Many possible locations have been mooted, including old oil fields, saline aquifers and unminable coal seams. Some schemes are looking to store carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.
For years mining companies have been pumping carbon dioxide and other gases into oil fields to pressurise oil pockets, helping push the oil to the surface. To many it makes sense to take advantage of this pre-existing infrastructure. The energy industry is well-placed to take the lead with geosequestration, as they can capture emissions at the source. In the North Sea, a Norwegian company has been separating carbon dioxide from natural gas and burying it for the last ten years, with over 10 million tonnes stored so far.
Critics of geosequestration say it amounts to sweeping carbon under the carpet, with a real chance that it could leak out at a later date. If this were to happen to carbon stored under the seabed, it could make the ocean more acidic – and ocean acidity is already a problem in some areas.
Kelpie Wilson, environmental editor at the online magazine truthout.org, believes everyone has overlooked something that applies to all forms of carbon sequestration. "When plants pull CO2 out of the air and use it to grow stems and roots, they recycle the oxygen back into the atmosphere. Are we in danger of burying a needful portion of our oxygen deep in the Earth?"
Fake plastic trees
Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York has several fingers in the Earth Challenge pie. One project of Lackner's that has attracted attention is using artificial trees to capture carbon dioxide. In fact, it was Lackner's daughter who performed the proof of concept experiment for the technology - for her high school science class. Blowing carbon dioxide through a solution containing sodium hydroxide (lye), she captured half of the CO2 as sodium carbonate, or soda ash.
Artificial 'trees' would be coated with a carbon-capturing chemical, their 'leaves' far more densely packed than a regular tree, as they need only be exposed to air rather than direct sunlight. It has been pointed out that the coating would need to be regularly recycled and refreshed – something trees do for no charge. The carbon captured using this method would then be piped away and stored using one of the geosequestration techniques.
As part of the industry group known as the Zero Emissions Coal Alliance (ZECA), Lackner is also behind proposals to minerally sequester carbon. In this process, carbon is transformed into a less reactive and – more to the point – less dangerous form than carbon dioxide.
One limitation of this method is the relative scarcity of raw materials for the reaction, which converts carbon dioxide into magnesium carbonate. Another extremely stable form of carbon is diamond. But if researchers could transform atmospheric carbon dioxide into diamonds they wouldn't need the prize money in the first place.
~~~
It is genuinely exciting to think of the potential of these and other technologies that will emerge in the future. But how hopeful should we be?
Wilson has condemned the prize, which she calls "an engineer's wet dream", for encouraging inaction among the masses who blithely assume the inevitability of a techno-fix. This assumption is not shared by Jones and Lackner, who agree on the need to cut our fossil fuel use now. Others cry out for more support of renewable and non-polluting energies.
Levy, who thinks that the climate situation is more serious than the general public perceives, is more optimistic. "I think the prize will make a difference in both the short and long term. I am grateful people like Richard Branson and Al Gore are looking beyond profit and politics to address a problem that knows no borders."
A broader concern of Wilson's is one shared by many of us. When we set out to change the earth's climate on the grandest scale of all, how confident can we possibly be of precisely controlling its consequences? What if we overcorrect and remove too much carbon dioxide, killing all the trees and starving ourselves of oxygen in the process?
Last week the company Geopower Basel provided a timely warning to those who would save the Earth with technology. The geothermal energy project involved injecting pressurised water into 4.8 km deep bore holes near Basel, Switzerland, where the water is heated to 200 ° C. When the water returns to the surface as steam it drives a turbine to generate electricity. Unfortunately the work set off four minor earthquakes in the area.
Jones summed up the current pickle when he told the BBC, "Once you start managing nature you have to continue to manage nature, there is no use hoping that it will restore itself to a new equilibrium set up by humans."
Standing shoulder to shoulder, Al Gore and British billionaire Richard Branson announced recently they would help save the Earth - by giving away US$25 million. And to take advantage of Branson's generosity, all you need is an invention that will fix global warming.
More specifically, the Virgin Earth Challenge prize, worth A$32 million, will be awarded to a person whose invention removes significant amounts of "anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects". Let's put the word 'significant' in perspective.
The Australian government thinks it can prevent up to four million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide emissions by requiring virtually every person in Australia to swap their wasteful incandescent light bulbs for more energy-efficient options. This is less than one tenth of one percent of current annual global emissions. For Branson and Gore, 'significant' amounts to something in the order of one billion tonnes per year - 250 times more than what Australia hopes to achieve. To make it happen every year - without side effects - is a truly monumental undertaking.
To the winner of the challenge goes the cold hard cash and to the rest of us go the spoils of a less-spoiled planet. Though the task may seem insurmountable, prizes have proved a potent incentive for innovation in the past. Branson himself is reaping the fruits of another large prize - licensing the technology that won the US$10 million Ansari Prize for the first private manned space vehicle for use by Virgin Galactic, his venture into space tourism.
While slowing global warming is arguably a bit more difficult than sending a few tourists into space, and though the prize won't be awarded until 2010 at the earliest, individuals and organisations are lining up to throw their hat in the ring. And since they're already queueing, we might as well start inspecting them to see if they've got what it takes to meet the challenge.
Here, fishy fishy
Some technologies aim to harness or improve on nature's own carbon removal and storage systems; its oceans, forests and soils. Others use a more artificial approach to carbon sequestration. An example of the former is Ocean Nourishment.
"Ocean Nourishment takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts it into fish," says Ian Jones of Sydney University's Ocean Technology Group. The idea is to dump nitrogen in the form of urea into the open ocean to stimulate the growth of plant-like microorganisms called phytoplankton. Like plants, phytoplankton perform photosynthesis - turning carbon into sugars that they use for food. Phytoplankton are near the bottom of the oceanic food chain, and more phytoplankton means more food for fish and other marine life. The theory goes: every animal is basically a mobile carbon storage device, so more animals in the oceans means better carbon storage.
The scheme was originally developed to restore the health of 'desertified' parts of the ocean with dwindling plankton populations, but snaffling excess atmospheric carbon dioxide is a welcome side effect. Early trials have been promising, but the biggest question is what will happen when it is scaled up.
Dawn Levy, a science writer at Stanford University in California, is wary of strategies like Ocean Nourishment and an analogous scheme that uses iron instead of nitrogen as fertiliser. "Monkeying with the food chain may have ripple effects - unknown consequences - throughout the system, and I doubt it would have a big enough effect to make a dent on the problem," she says.
There's carbon in them thar hills!
If the Earth Challenge were awarded today, many people would place their own money on geosequestration. Already well into the testing phase, variations on the geosequestration theme are probably the best known carbon-reducing strategies at the moment. Basically, geosequestration is the burial of carbon in rocks. Many possible locations have been mooted, including old oil fields, saline aquifers and unminable coal seams. Some schemes are looking to store carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.
For years mining companies have been pumping carbon dioxide and other gases into oil fields to pressurise oil pockets, helping push the oil to the surface. To many it makes sense to take advantage of this pre-existing infrastructure. The energy industry is well-placed to take the lead with geosequestration, as they can capture emissions at the source. In the North Sea, a Norwegian company has been separating carbon dioxide from natural gas and burying it for the last ten years, with over 10 million tonnes stored so far.
Critics of geosequestration say it amounts to sweeping carbon under the carpet, with a real chance that it could leak out at a later date. If this were to happen to carbon stored under the seabed, it could make the ocean more acidic – and ocean acidity is already a problem in some areas.
Kelpie Wilson, environmental editor at the online magazine truthout.org, believes everyone has overlooked something that applies to all forms of carbon sequestration. "When plants pull CO2 out of the air and use it to grow stems and roots, they recycle the oxygen back into the atmosphere. Are we in danger of burying a needful portion of our oxygen deep in the Earth?"
Fake plastic trees
Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York has several fingers in the Earth Challenge pie. One project of Lackner's that has attracted attention is using artificial trees to capture carbon dioxide. In fact, it was Lackner's daughter who performed the proof of concept experiment for the technology - for her high school science class. Blowing carbon dioxide through a solution containing sodium hydroxide (lye), she captured half of the CO2 as sodium carbonate, or soda ash.
Artificial 'trees' would be coated with a carbon-capturing chemical, their 'leaves' far more densely packed than a regular tree, as they need only be exposed to air rather than direct sunlight. It has been pointed out that the coating would need to be regularly recycled and refreshed – something trees do for no charge. The carbon captured using this method would then be piped away and stored using one of the geosequestration techniques.
As part of the industry group known as the Zero Emissions Coal Alliance (ZECA), Lackner is also behind proposals to minerally sequester carbon. In this process, carbon is transformed into a less reactive and – more to the point – less dangerous form than carbon dioxide.
One limitation of this method is the relative scarcity of raw materials for the reaction, which converts carbon dioxide into magnesium carbonate. Another extremely stable form of carbon is diamond. But if researchers could transform atmospheric carbon dioxide into diamonds they wouldn't need the prize money in the first place.
~~~
It is genuinely exciting to think of the potential of these and other technologies that will emerge in the future. But how hopeful should we be?
Wilson has condemned the prize, which she calls "an engineer's wet dream", for encouraging inaction among the masses who blithely assume the inevitability of a techno-fix. This assumption is not shared by Jones and Lackner, who agree on the need to cut our fossil fuel use now. Others cry out for more support of renewable and non-polluting energies.
Levy, who thinks that the climate situation is more serious than the general public perceives, is more optimistic. "I think the prize will make a difference in both the short and long term. I am grateful people like Richard Branson and Al Gore are looking beyond profit and politics to address a problem that knows no borders."
A broader concern of Wilson's is one shared by many of us. When we set out to change the earth's climate on the grandest scale of all, how confident can we possibly be of precisely controlling its consequences? What if we overcorrect and remove too much carbon dioxide, killing all the trees and starving ourselves of oxygen in the process?
Last week the company Geopower Basel provided a timely warning to those who would save the Earth with technology. The geothermal energy project involved injecting pressurised water into 4.8 km deep bore holes near Basel, Switzerland, where the water is heated to 200 ° C. When the water returns to the surface as steam it drives a turbine to generate electricity. Unfortunately the work set off four minor earthquakes in the area.
Jones summed up the current pickle when he told the BBC, "Once you start managing nature you have to continue to manage nature, there is no use hoping that it will restore itself to a new equilibrium set up by humans."
A Few Good Viruses
Viruses generally get a bad rap, but when you scratch under the surface, you see not all is what it seems...
As far as words with negative connotations go, it's hard to top 'virus'. AIDS, bird flu, cholera, Dengue fever, Ebola - and that's just the first five letters of the alphabet. And when Agent Smith tells Neo in The Matrix that he considers the human race a virus, it's widely understood that he's not paying a compliment. But for a rising number of scientists, viruses aren't sinister at all.
Hitchhikers, hijackers & hosts
Defining viruses is notoriously difficult. Though viruses are a subject firmly rooted in biology, ask a biologist for an explanation of what they are and you're likely to hear some emphatically non-biological descriptives like 'particle', 'entity' and 'fragment'.
Like some bacteria, and even 'higher' eukaryotic organisms such as fungi, viruses are entirely dependent on a host organism for survival. But unlike the others, viruses are not generally afforded 'living' status because they consist of little more than DNA or RNA wrapped in a shell, without the tools for reproducing themselves or turning their genetic information into useful proteins.
When a virus infects a host cell, the cell becomes its workshop. It hijacks the machinery of the cell, turning it from its usual purposes to the sole task of replicating the virus's genetic material and protein coat. So effectively does the virus take over the cell - so many copies of the virus does it produce - that the cell eventually suicides, bursting under the pressure of the viral progeny (also called bicentuplets), setting them free to infect other cells and continue the cycle.
But there is another path the virus can take, one that has spawned a research love affair with viruses. Rather than immediately hijacking the cell for its own reproductive ends, sometimes a virus will insert its genes into the host's genome, ensuring their safety and biding its time until conditions are right for replication. Often this is not harmful to the host cell, and during this period of dormancy the viral DNA gets replicated along with the rest of genome when the cell divides. Eventually, a trigger may activate the viral genes, which usurp control of the cell's machinery and send off daughter viruses to infect other cells.
Tool thief or tool?
In 1952, Martha Chase and Alfred Hershey used viruses to help establish that DNA, rather than protein, forms the basis of heredity. Cheap, quick to produce, and easy to modify, a core group of viruses has filled out the toolboxes of many a biologist ever since.
Their ability to entwine themselves with the host's genome has made viruses the darlings of the field of gene therapy. The once outlandish scenario of going into a person's cells and correcting genetic 'typos' is now an earnest aim of researchers, who hope intentional viral infections will one day help sufferers of diseases such as Parkinson's and Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), also known as 'bubble boy syndrome', a mutation in the genome that prevents the body's immune system from functioning.
Researchers plan to 'hijack the hijackers' - swapping the virus' harmful genes for a corrected version of the patient's defective genes and using the virus' unique abilities to insert the gene into patient's genome. In reality, the procedure is fraught with difficulties, not least getting the right amount of gene in the right location without side effects.
Pavel Osten from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, recently co-authored a paper on the use of viruses as DNA delivery systems, or vectors. "In my view, it is most likely that this work [gene therapy] will become a mainstream treatment of some of the devastating brain disorders for which there is currently no treatment," he wrote.
But how would you feel about being injected with a virus to cure a disease? According to Osten, the risks are low and decreasing. "The viral vectors … are in most cases stripped down to the most basic elements that are required for gene delivery, and thus in no possible way pose any risk with respect to the original disease."
Viruses don't attack only animal cells, however. The vast majority of viruses actually target bacteria, including the bacteria that infect humans; they are called bacteriophages, or phages for short (from the Greek phagein, to consume). "For years researchers have been looking at using this targeted bacterial killing as an alternative to antibiotics," says Jason Clark from Moredun Research Institute in Scotland. While this might seem a bit like inviting in the barbarians, it's also sound science; in August of last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a bacteriophage food spray designed to reduce the amount of illness-causing bacteria on ready-to-eat meals.
It's a virus' world
By probing their workings and exploiting their functions in laboratories around the world, scientists have gone a long way toward demystifying viruses. But recent revelations about the extent of viral diversity could radically shift our perceptions of them again.
The advent of a range of DNA-sequencing technologies has allowed microbiologists to move beyond the constraints of studying only what they can culture in the lab, and glimpse what exists 'out there' - in the soil, in the sea and in our guts. And the results have been eye opening.
According to some estimates, the total number of viruses exceeds the total number of cells in every other life form - including bacteria - by a factor of ten. "The total biomass and biodiversity of viruses is truly staggering," says microbiologist Nick Coleman, from the University of Sydney in Australia.
So what are all these viruses doing? Should we be avoiding contact with other people and frequently sterilising ourselves? According to Coleman, viruses actually do a lot to control other parasites. "The implication [of microbial biodiversity studies] is that most, if not all, larger microbes are subject to viral parasitism, and that viruses might be crucial in controlling the populations of other microbes."
Forest Rohwer of San Diego State University in southern California has conducted several landmark studies of marine microbial diversity. Rohwer has seen a change in attitudes towards viruses over the years. "Scientists have always recognized the importance of viruses, but recently it has become clearer that viruses are an integral part of every ecosystem and can't be ignored when we try to understand how life on Earth works," he says. "We usually only hear about viruses in the context of human disease. But most viruses are actually not harmful, and in fact have played an important part in evolution and in maintaining healthy ecosystems."
Andrew Holmes, a microbiologist from the University of Sydney, thinks that people should know that "viruses are everywhere and do not instantly equal 'bad'… [they] have the potential to cause very rapid biological change through epidemic disease, but that is exceedingly rare," he says. "Vigilance is important but panic is unwarranted." Holmes points out that this same process is an important part of correcting imbalances that occur in nature. For example, one mechanism by which algal blooms - explosions of algae that choke sea life and disrupt food chains - break down is viral disease. As Holmes puts it, "such viruses are the means by which the ecosystem corrects itself."
According to Rohwer, when you multiply the number of viruses out there by the billions of years they've been around, their probable influence over evolution is huge. "They are able to move genetic information between different hosts, but we still do not fully understand how this has influenced, and continues to influence, the evolution of new species."
So the next time your nose starts to run or you feel a tickle in your throat, spare a thought for your uninvited guest … and the role you play as gracious host to a galaxy of hitchhikers.
As far as words with negative connotations go, it's hard to top 'virus'. AIDS, bird flu, cholera, Dengue fever, Ebola - and that's just the first five letters of the alphabet. And when Agent Smith tells Neo in The Matrix that he considers the human race a virus, it's widely understood that he's not paying a compliment. But for a rising number of scientists, viruses aren't sinister at all.
Hitchhikers, hijackers & hosts
Defining viruses is notoriously difficult. Though viruses are a subject firmly rooted in biology, ask a biologist for an explanation of what they are and you're likely to hear some emphatically non-biological descriptives like 'particle', 'entity' and 'fragment'.
Like some bacteria, and even 'higher' eukaryotic organisms such as fungi, viruses are entirely dependent on a host organism for survival. But unlike the others, viruses are not generally afforded 'living' status because they consist of little more than DNA or RNA wrapped in a shell, without the tools for reproducing themselves or turning their genetic information into useful proteins.
When a virus infects a host cell, the cell becomes its workshop. It hijacks the machinery of the cell, turning it from its usual purposes to the sole task of replicating the virus's genetic material and protein coat. So effectively does the virus take over the cell - so many copies of the virus does it produce - that the cell eventually suicides, bursting under the pressure of the viral progeny (also called bicentuplets), setting them free to infect other cells and continue the cycle.
But there is another path the virus can take, one that has spawned a research love affair with viruses. Rather than immediately hijacking the cell for its own reproductive ends, sometimes a virus will insert its genes into the host's genome, ensuring their safety and biding its time until conditions are right for replication. Often this is not harmful to the host cell, and during this period of dormancy the viral DNA gets replicated along with the rest of genome when the cell divides. Eventually, a trigger may activate the viral genes, which usurp control of the cell's machinery and send off daughter viruses to infect other cells.
Tool thief or tool?
In 1952, Martha Chase and Alfred Hershey used viruses to help establish that DNA, rather than protein, forms the basis of heredity. Cheap, quick to produce, and easy to modify, a core group of viruses has filled out the toolboxes of many a biologist ever since.
Their ability to entwine themselves with the host's genome has made viruses the darlings of the field of gene therapy. The once outlandish scenario of going into a person's cells and correcting genetic 'typos' is now an earnest aim of researchers, who hope intentional viral infections will one day help sufferers of diseases such as Parkinson's and Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), also known as 'bubble boy syndrome', a mutation in the genome that prevents the body's immune system from functioning.
Researchers plan to 'hijack the hijackers' - swapping the virus' harmful genes for a corrected version of the patient's defective genes and using the virus' unique abilities to insert the gene into patient's genome. In reality, the procedure is fraught with difficulties, not least getting the right amount of gene in the right location without side effects.
Pavel Osten from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, recently co-authored a paper on the use of viruses as DNA delivery systems, or vectors. "In my view, it is most likely that this work [gene therapy] will become a mainstream treatment of some of the devastating brain disorders for which there is currently no treatment," he wrote.
But how would you feel about being injected with a virus to cure a disease? According to Osten, the risks are low and decreasing. "The viral vectors … are in most cases stripped down to the most basic elements that are required for gene delivery, and thus in no possible way pose any risk with respect to the original disease."
Viruses don't attack only animal cells, however. The vast majority of viruses actually target bacteria, including the bacteria that infect humans; they are called bacteriophages, or phages for short (from the Greek phagein, to consume). "For years researchers have been looking at using this targeted bacterial killing as an alternative to antibiotics," says Jason Clark from Moredun Research Institute in Scotland. While this might seem a bit like inviting in the barbarians, it's also sound science; in August of last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a bacteriophage food spray designed to reduce the amount of illness-causing bacteria on ready-to-eat meals.
It's a virus' world
By probing their workings and exploiting their functions in laboratories around the world, scientists have gone a long way toward demystifying viruses. But recent revelations about the extent of viral diversity could radically shift our perceptions of them again.
The advent of a range of DNA-sequencing technologies has allowed microbiologists to move beyond the constraints of studying only what they can culture in the lab, and glimpse what exists 'out there' - in the soil, in the sea and in our guts. And the results have been eye opening.
According to some estimates, the total number of viruses exceeds the total number of cells in every other life form - including bacteria - by a factor of ten. "The total biomass and biodiversity of viruses is truly staggering," says microbiologist Nick Coleman, from the University of Sydney in Australia.
So what are all these viruses doing? Should we be avoiding contact with other people and frequently sterilising ourselves? According to Coleman, viruses actually do a lot to control other parasites. "The implication [of microbial biodiversity studies] is that most, if not all, larger microbes are subject to viral parasitism, and that viruses might be crucial in controlling the populations of other microbes."
Forest Rohwer of San Diego State University in southern California has conducted several landmark studies of marine microbial diversity. Rohwer has seen a change in attitudes towards viruses over the years. "Scientists have always recognized the importance of viruses, but recently it has become clearer that viruses are an integral part of every ecosystem and can't be ignored when we try to understand how life on Earth works," he says. "We usually only hear about viruses in the context of human disease. But most viruses are actually not harmful, and in fact have played an important part in evolution and in maintaining healthy ecosystems."
Andrew Holmes, a microbiologist from the University of Sydney, thinks that people should know that "viruses are everywhere and do not instantly equal 'bad'… [they] have the potential to cause very rapid biological change through epidemic disease, but that is exceedingly rare," he says. "Vigilance is important but panic is unwarranted." Holmes points out that this same process is an important part of correcting imbalances that occur in nature. For example, one mechanism by which algal blooms - explosions of algae that choke sea life and disrupt food chains - break down is viral disease. As Holmes puts it, "such viruses are the means by which the ecosystem corrects itself."
According to Rohwer, when you multiply the number of viruses out there by the billions of years they've been around, their probable influence over evolution is huge. "They are able to move genetic information between different hosts, but we still do not fully understand how this has influenced, and continues to influence, the evolution of new species."
So the next time your nose starts to run or you feel a tickle in your throat, spare a thought for your uninvited guest … and the role you play as gracious host to a galaxy of hitchhikers.
Nature of War
Landmines, chemical agents and hunting for bushmeat all take a heavy toll on wildlife during war, but on occasion animals can fare surprisingly well in times of conflict. What can we learn from these examples?
After ten years of bitter civil combat in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the outlook for the eastern lowland gorilla was looking grim. The combat itself, a marked increase in the bushmeat trade and illegal mining to fund the conflict had all taken a heavy toll. Conservation International was one of many non-governmental organisations chased out by the war in 1994. But upon their return ten years later, they found that gorilla numbers had collapsed by as much as 70 per cent.
This tale has a familiar ring to it. Asian elephants in Vietnam and Sri Lanka, waterfowl in Iraq, bluefin tuna and green turtles in Lebanon, rhinos in Nepal and hippos in the DRC have all suffered the fallout of human conflict.
It doesn't always have to be that way though. During a similar period in the 1990s, a radically different fate befell the eastern mountain gorilla, a montane cousin of the lowland gorilla. The species shot to fame after the work of conservationist Dian Fossey and the subsequent movie Gorillas in the Mist. Amidst Rwanda's own infamously bloody civil war, mountain gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes National Park experienced a remarkable upswing, of a round a fifth, in numbers.
This begs the question: why would a species do well at times of conflict? If conservationists can pin down the reasons, they might be able to learn from these experiences to help species survive future conflicts.
Hit list
The list of ways in which warfare can harm wildlife and their habitats is lengthy. Munitions, landmines and chemical agents can cause both immediate and long-lasting effects. Refugees and soldiers spill into wild habitats during conflicts, as does poaching and over-harvesting.
"Here in [Africa's] Great Lakes Region you are never far from war," says Andre Plumptre, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Albertine Rift Program in Uganda. Plumptre has seen the effect of war on wildlife first hand and says that conserving species while finding ways to work alongside a background of unrest is a way of life.
Large animals tend to suffer disproportionately as they are hunted for bushmeat, he says. That can also be "bad for the rest of the biodiversity, if it leads to loss of their habitat or conversion to another land use."
One such example is Akagera Park in Rwanda, which has shrunk to a third of its original area as a direct result of the civil war. The bushmeat trade also hurts conservation efforts indirectly as the loss of large 'flagship' species makes it much harder to generate funds and retain political support.
Agent Orange
Plumptre co-authored a 2002 study in U.S. journal Conservation Biology cataloguing effects such as these and detailing a litany of species battered by war. For example, during the Vietnam War (1955 to 1975) Asian elephants were routinely strafed and bombed by U.S. aircraft to prevent the Vietcong using them for transport. Landmines continue to maim wildlife and livestock, in addition to people, to this day.
Furthermore, around one hundred thousand tonnes of herbicide – such as the 'defoliant' Agent Orange - were sprayed over not just Vietnam, but also Cambodia and Laos during the conflict. A recent survey in an area of Vietnam untouched by the conflict found 150 species of birds; but a comparable area, blanketed with the herbicide during the war, was found to contain just 24 species of birds.
Asian elephants have also been caught in the crossfire in the ongoing Sri Lankan civil war. Starting in 1984, elephants that managed to avoid munitions have had their migratory patterns disrupted by the conflict. In 1986 a national park was directly attacked by rebels, killing staff and wildlife and crippling infrastructure.
No-go zone
Surprisingly though, some species do quite well in times of conflict. The answer may lie in the compelling deterrent conflict creates for people, and the ability of species to bounce back when humans leave them well alone.
According to Plumptre, war can sometimes give species the breathing space they need to rebound. "War can be good in that it keeps people from moving into an area and settling there," he says.
He cites the example of an area of the DRC west of Lake Tanganyika, which has been unstable because of rebel activity until the last few years.
"The forest is amazingly intact and few people live in the region despite the place having been totally unprotected for more than 50 years," says Plumptre. "If there had not been rebels here this forest would likely have been finished by now."
The deterrent effect isn't new either. Paul Martin and Christine Szuter from the University of Arizona in the U.S. studied areas disputed by Native American tribes from the 17th to the 19th centuries. They found that disagreement between tribes over these areas created buffer zones with few inhabitants, where species such as bison, elk and deer thrived.
Strange effects
The Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is perhaps the ultimate no man's land. Created in 1953 by the U.N., the DMZ (four-km-wide but 248 km-long) divides the Korean Peninsula in two and is the most heavily armed border in the world.
Thanks to this strange confluence of events, the DMZ is a treasure trove of biodiversity, packed with 149 U.N.-listed World Heritage Sites. The zone is home to a significant chunk of Korean biodiversity and two endangered cranes use it as a pit-stop on a migratory journey spanning thousands of kilometres across the globe.
Present day Australia is not the first place you'd think to go looking for war zones. One thing the country does have in increasing abundance though are military training areas, and these often have high conservation value too, says zoologist John Woinarski with the Northern Territory Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts in Darwin.
This is likely down to the fact that much of the rest of Northern Australia, at least the bits that aren't desert, are given over to cattle production, he says. "In this environment, any lands that aren't managed for cows will have biodiversity gains."
Working in a war zone
In between dodging bullets, conservationists working in war zones are constantly trying to extract maximum benefit from severely limited resources. But can we learn from the experiences of species that have been ravaged by conflict to better protect others in the future?
A study published in April 2007 in the U.K. journal Biology Letters argues that current efforts to protect endangered species during wartime may need rethinking. Guy Cowlishaw, a conservationist at the Institute of Zoology in London, U.K., and colleagues studied changes in the bushmeat trade in the DRC during periods of peace and conflict. Surprisingly, the number of anti-poaching patrols had little effect on bushmeat offtake.
What they found instead was that social factors were critical in determining the opportunities of poachers. In rural areas where village chiefs maintained a tight control over the supply of automatic weapons, poaching was restricted even during periods of armed conflict. In urban areas the outbreak of fighting lead to a catastrophic loss of control over arms and an increase in poaching.
These results point to the need for conservationists to establish closer links with the community. "Our results indicate that sociopolitical factors can be an important determinant of species offtake," say the authors.
"The impact of human conflict on wildlife and habitats is complex. While stretches of depopulated no man's land between warring forces can provide a sanctuary for wildlife, most war zones are more likely to act as population sinks through the proliferation of armaments and uncontrolled poaching by refugees and combatants," they wrote. "Given the threat that warfare poses and the prevalence of armed conflicts, it is imperative to identify how wildlife and habitats can best be safeguarded."
Their study is hopefully the first of many that will provide more data to help conservationists understand why the eastern mountain gorilla was able to do so well during the Rwandan civil war – and also help them find ways to protect less fortunate species such as the eastern lowland gorilla, which was so decimated during the DRC's neighbouring conflict.
After ten years of bitter civil combat in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the outlook for the eastern lowland gorilla was looking grim. The combat itself, a marked increase in the bushmeat trade and illegal mining to fund the conflict had all taken a heavy toll. Conservation International was one of many non-governmental organisations chased out by the war in 1994. But upon their return ten years later, they found that gorilla numbers had collapsed by as much as 70 per cent.
This tale has a familiar ring to it. Asian elephants in Vietnam and Sri Lanka, waterfowl in Iraq, bluefin tuna and green turtles in Lebanon, rhinos in Nepal and hippos in the DRC have all suffered the fallout of human conflict.
It doesn't always have to be that way though. During a similar period in the 1990s, a radically different fate befell the eastern mountain gorilla, a montane cousin of the lowland gorilla. The species shot to fame after the work of conservationist Dian Fossey and the subsequent movie Gorillas in the Mist. Amidst Rwanda's own infamously bloody civil war, mountain gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes National Park experienced a remarkable upswing, of a round a fifth, in numbers.
This begs the question: why would a species do well at times of conflict? If conservationists can pin down the reasons, they might be able to learn from these experiences to help species survive future conflicts.
Hit list
The list of ways in which warfare can harm wildlife and their habitats is lengthy. Munitions, landmines and chemical agents can cause both immediate and long-lasting effects. Refugees and soldiers spill into wild habitats during conflicts, as does poaching and over-harvesting.
"Here in [Africa's] Great Lakes Region you are never far from war," says Andre Plumptre, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Albertine Rift Program in Uganda. Plumptre has seen the effect of war on wildlife first hand and says that conserving species while finding ways to work alongside a background of unrest is a way of life.
Large animals tend to suffer disproportionately as they are hunted for bushmeat, he says. That can also be "bad for the rest of the biodiversity, if it leads to loss of their habitat or conversion to another land use."
One such example is Akagera Park in Rwanda, which has shrunk to a third of its original area as a direct result of the civil war. The bushmeat trade also hurts conservation efforts indirectly as the loss of large 'flagship' species makes it much harder to generate funds and retain political support.
Agent Orange
Plumptre co-authored a 2002 study in U.S. journal Conservation Biology cataloguing effects such as these and detailing a litany of species battered by war. For example, during the Vietnam War (1955 to 1975) Asian elephants were routinely strafed and bombed by U.S. aircraft to prevent the Vietcong using them for transport. Landmines continue to maim wildlife and livestock, in addition to people, to this day.
Furthermore, around one hundred thousand tonnes of herbicide – such as the 'defoliant' Agent Orange - were sprayed over not just Vietnam, but also Cambodia and Laos during the conflict. A recent survey in an area of Vietnam untouched by the conflict found 150 species of birds; but a comparable area, blanketed with the herbicide during the war, was found to contain just 24 species of birds.
Asian elephants have also been caught in the crossfire in the ongoing Sri Lankan civil war. Starting in 1984, elephants that managed to avoid munitions have had their migratory patterns disrupted by the conflict. In 1986 a national park was directly attacked by rebels, killing staff and wildlife and crippling infrastructure.
No-go zone
Surprisingly though, some species do quite well in times of conflict. The answer may lie in the compelling deterrent conflict creates for people, and the ability of species to bounce back when humans leave them well alone.
According to Plumptre, war can sometimes give species the breathing space they need to rebound. "War can be good in that it keeps people from moving into an area and settling there," he says.
He cites the example of an area of the DRC west of Lake Tanganyika, which has been unstable because of rebel activity until the last few years.
"The forest is amazingly intact and few people live in the region despite the place having been totally unprotected for more than 50 years," says Plumptre. "If there had not been rebels here this forest would likely have been finished by now."
The deterrent effect isn't new either. Paul Martin and Christine Szuter from the University of Arizona in the U.S. studied areas disputed by Native American tribes from the 17th to the 19th centuries. They found that disagreement between tribes over these areas created buffer zones with few inhabitants, where species such as bison, elk and deer thrived.
Strange effects
The Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is perhaps the ultimate no man's land. Created in 1953 by the U.N., the DMZ (four-km-wide but 248 km-long) divides the Korean Peninsula in two and is the most heavily armed border in the world.
Thanks to this strange confluence of events, the DMZ is a treasure trove of biodiversity, packed with 149 U.N.-listed World Heritage Sites. The zone is home to a significant chunk of Korean biodiversity and two endangered cranes use it as a pit-stop on a migratory journey spanning thousands of kilometres across the globe.
Present day Australia is not the first place you'd think to go looking for war zones. One thing the country does have in increasing abundance though are military training areas, and these often have high conservation value too, says zoologist John Woinarski with the Northern Territory Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts in Darwin.
This is likely down to the fact that much of the rest of Northern Australia, at least the bits that aren't desert, are given over to cattle production, he says. "In this environment, any lands that aren't managed for cows will have biodiversity gains."
Working in a war zone
In between dodging bullets, conservationists working in war zones are constantly trying to extract maximum benefit from severely limited resources. But can we learn from the experiences of species that have been ravaged by conflict to better protect others in the future?
A study published in April 2007 in the U.K. journal Biology Letters argues that current efforts to protect endangered species during wartime may need rethinking. Guy Cowlishaw, a conservationist at the Institute of Zoology in London, U.K., and colleagues studied changes in the bushmeat trade in the DRC during periods of peace and conflict. Surprisingly, the number of anti-poaching patrols had little effect on bushmeat offtake.
What they found instead was that social factors were critical in determining the opportunities of poachers. In rural areas where village chiefs maintained a tight control over the supply of automatic weapons, poaching was restricted even during periods of armed conflict. In urban areas the outbreak of fighting lead to a catastrophic loss of control over arms and an increase in poaching.
These results point to the need for conservationists to establish closer links with the community. "Our results indicate that sociopolitical factors can be an important determinant of species offtake," say the authors.
"The impact of human conflict on wildlife and habitats is complex. While stretches of depopulated no man's land between warring forces can provide a sanctuary for wildlife, most war zones are more likely to act as population sinks through the proliferation of armaments and uncontrolled poaching by refugees and combatants," they wrote. "Given the threat that warfare poses and the prevalence of armed conflicts, it is imperative to identify how wildlife and habitats can best be safeguarded."
Their study is hopefully the first of many that will provide more data to help conservationists understand why the eastern mountain gorilla was able to do so well during the Rwandan civil war – and also help them find ways to protect less fortunate species such as the eastern lowland gorilla, which was so decimated during the DRC's neighbouring conflict.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
The Beginning of a New Era
Welcome to Artful Science! This website will be dedicated to talking about science, talking about science in the media, not sensationalising science, understanding science, criticising science and more.
I will be posting stories, interviews, opinion pieces and of course a fair share of rambling nonsense thrown in for good measure.
I believe that people are crying out for a fresh perspective on science. A non-institutional perspective. One that is frank, honest, and not afraid to be uncertain (at least I think so). One that takes into account the humanity behind science, from which it grows, that supports it and that bears its brunt.
Like Big Kev, I'm excited!
I will be posting stories, interviews, opinion pieces and of course a fair share of rambling nonsense thrown in for good measure.
I believe that people are crying out for a fresh perspective on science. A non-institutional perspective. One that is frank, honest, and not afraid to be uncertain (at least I think so). One that takes into account the humanity behind science, from which it grows, that supports it and that bears its brunt.
Like Big Kev, I'm excited!
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