Viral Copy of Origin

Ray Comfort, that ever-ignorant but highly-amusing (hey, I find him funny) spokesperson of creationism had hijacked a free ride on the back of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Ironic really, considering he frequently sets out to dispute the validity of Darwin’s discovery.

I have to admit, he wasn’t necessarily to know that Amazon’s freaky rating system would boost the version with his rather dubious foreword to the top of the list.

This video explains the screw-up:

Admittedly, my search on Amazon.com turned up this version first, and Comfort’s version second. Let’s hope it’s the first sign that they’re dealing with the problem.

If you’re interested in reading the Origin but don’t want to purchase the wrong copy, pop over to DailyLit and order it via a daily doe of email in manageable bites. Try with a few other science books too, it might even innoculate you against future, viral editions.

Zero Waste

Nantucket, Mass. appears to be the ideal model for the future of waste. The NY Times reports on a number of initiatives underway in America to meet the Zero Waste philosophy that is catching on, but none quite reach the lofty standards on Nantucket.

This little gem of an article was dropped in my lap by MDH, a friend in CA, US. What I found interesting was an innucuous sentence somewhere in the middle:

Although Mr. Willett has lectured about the Nantucket model around the country, most communities still lack the infrastructure to set a zero-waste target.

I’ve said it in a rant on waste before: the government can go on and on and on about the public ‘doing more’ in terms of waste reduction and recycle, BUT, if they don’t provide the infrastructure to support it, then it’s never going to work.

There’s plenty of bits I could drop off for arts and crafts, and for a reusable furniture, books, toys and bric-a-brac section at a central collection point. I could also recycle nearly all my waste, IF the local council, or the government, decided to provide the means to recycle it by. My garden is too small for the amount of compost I produce, but would happily keep it in a box and take it to a collection point or drop it on the kerb for a weekly collection.

At present I cannot recycle food scraps, yoghurt or margarine pots, certain types of plastic bottle, furniture, ruined clothing or rags, broken electrical equipment, batteries or anything else of that ilk.

Some charities collect milk bottle tops, I have to take my glass to a central collection point but not everyone can do that. I don’t know a sewing or thrift circle that would take my odd bits and bobs, and there’s no recycle facilities in the whole country that I know of to recycle the harder plastics.

If the government put the infrastructure in place, if they provided the facilities and if they provided a central collection point for bric-a-brac, we could dramatically reduce waste. What happened to the rag-and-bone carts? The guy who used to buy scrap metal? How about sewing classes and low cost sewing machines for families to buy and reuse their old clothes in new and innovative ways? I can think of plenty of uses, but I don’t have the necessary skills to utilise them.

Ordinary people have been making a start however, with Skill Swap websites, and Freecycle where you can put your unwanted stuff up for free, and ask for things you’re after. There’s also book swap sites, and secondhand sites with freebie pages, and charity shops. Take a look around your local community and see what you can find.

Crash Test Dummy

A little information on crash test dummies, an article which caught my interest since some bastard cut me up yesterday and I found myself being slammed into a broad metal wall moving at 20-30 mph. I was on a bicycle, it took a sweeping corner and came right across in front of me.

Being hit with a truck hurts.

Now I know how the crash test dummies feel.

Darwin on Arkive

Arkive has classroom materials on Darwin and evolution available for download at its site covering key stages 3 and 4. Whilst you’re there, take a walk round Arkive’s impresive collections of images of life on earth.

Simong Singh Gets Sued

Simon Singh is a prolific columnist and science writer. He’s also being sued by the British Chiropractic Association because they’re accusing him of libel for the way he described them and their claims. Apparently, people actually going to them for treatment isn’t sufficient validation, the opposition must be squelched. I’d prefer to make the opposition look an idiot and swallow their own words, pursuing legal action would make it feel like I couldn’t stand on my own merits.

I’m uncomfortable with the idea of suing someone for criticism, and frankly for outright lying, whether they were or not. Why can’t you just go up to them and announce those golden words- “say that to my face, sunshine!” ?

And, why, in the name of Unholy Cthulu can’t we simply write a retort and cite our evidence or point of view? The justice system wasn’t created to stifle debate and criticism, at least, I bloody hope it wasn’t. In the dawning light of the 21st century, one would hope that the justice system, no matter what its roots, would be preoccupied with more significant matters and (I can dream) that it wouldn’t cost a penny to pursue justice of all things.

Shouldn’t justice, along with freedom of expression, actually be free? In the face of modern civilisation, when we should be striving for enlightenment, peace and an end to environmental damage and world poverty, shouldn’t we be more concerned with such higher ideals, fielding ideas and action on such seemingly insurmountable problems rather than fielding lawyers on other people whose opinions we happen to disagree with? I’ve seen plenty of libel cases spring up in the headlines over the years and the sheer amount of money involved, possibly enough to feed a small town for a decade or so, makes my thrift gland hurt.

Fight for the future of science, go sign the Sense About Science Campaign.

Feed Me!

It’s not a lot, but I get between zero and sixteen hits a day. Would it kill some of you people to leave a comment?! Even if it’s to curse the very day I was born? Christ people, I’m going nuts here, say something! I can’t swear I won’t turn into a cannabalistic plant from outer space, but I’ll damn well try if that what it takes!

Exam Time

I have an exam next week. I’m not prepared, I haven’t touched a book on the subject in two months, and I skipped my last assignment because I had far too much to do. I knew this would happen, the whole thing started badly and I tried to junk the course before I got in too deep.

But the powers-that-be didn’t appreciate the idea and kept mouthing platitudes about it being alright, and how it would all work out.

Now, if I don’t go to the exam, they won’t get their funding, which will suck, but if I go, I’ll flunk. I have five days, including working days, to jam as much of the course material into my head as possible. That isn’t going to work, and whilst I thrive on deadlines, that one’s a bit tight even for me, especially since I have other deadlines closing in.

Best Student Award Goes To…

At one of my previous positions, I was asked, with another tech, to compile some information on what contitued the perfect student. In science, of course. We put together quite a large list, alongside some useful information for those sadly lacking the necessary skills. The top two on our list, being techs, were obvious.

LISTEN!

FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!

Beyond that, we get into specifics:

PPE – Wear appropriate Personal Protective Equipment. For the laboratory this generally means a labcoat, closed in shoes and tying back long hair. It can include gloves, face shields, goggles, etc, but your lecturer or technician will be able to advise you on those.

Be Aware – Watch out for others as well as yourself, risk assessment is a continuous mental process not just a piece of paper to be signed and filed away as another piece of petty bureacracy. It’s an important part of your laboratory activities.

Equipment – Know how to use the equipment. If you don’t know, ask. The technician would rather demonstrate than fix or replace what you just broke because you didn’t ask.

Courtesy – Be mindful of other laboratory users, if there’s a limited amount of equipment, don’t go taking extras just in case you screw up. Keep your workspace tidy and safe for others to walk around and don’t spill into your neighbour’s space. This extends to putting back equipment where you found it, and disposing of used equipment as instructed. The technician doesn’t want the lab to look like a bomb hit it after every practical class.

Be Prepared – Bring relevant notes and something to record your results with and on. If you know you have a practical class bring your lab coat, wear or bring the proper shoes and bring a hair band if you have long hair. Skip flowing clothes that can knock equipment or catch fire. It’s a lab people! Not a catwalk. We want you safe, not pretty.

Emergencies – Know who you have to call, where you have to go and how you should leave your work station.

This is only the practical side of things, there’s more to being a good student overall, although the first two still hold, you should LISTEN and FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. Everything else follows on from there.

There is another instruction for the practical side, one that techs usually only voice in the quiet security of the prep room:

“DON’T SCREW WITH THE EQUIPMENT! IT’S A LAB NOT A TOY STORE!”

Except, you know, most techs tend to swear sulfurously when they discover the waterbath ‘accidentally’ recalibrated, or…

Search Terms

…or ‘what people have been looking for this week’.

“phosphate buffer in the hill experiment”

For 2 litres:

1240ml 0.15 mol dm-3 of KH2PO4, and 760ml 0.15 mol dm-3 K2HPO4 with 6g of glucose per 100ml and 0.01g KCl per 100ml. From one of the MacKean Study Guides, I forget which one, I’ve just made so much of it lately I have the misfortune to remember the exact specs.

“ester bond”

I already covered this one, if you’d like a better man than me to tell you about esters and other fun chemically things, go visit Doc Brown.

“why ice?+hill reaction”

Because heat denatures the enzymes you’re relying on for this experiment to work. Dead plant material breaks down, like any organic matter, so whacking your experiment on ice keeps the material from degrading.

“what’s the purpose of the buffering solution”

Buffering solution maintains a stable environment for your experiment, you don’t want an enzyme you’re using to degrade because it’s operating at the wrong pH, do you? Sometimes buffer is mistaken for isotonic solution, and sometimes the two are combined. Isotonic buffer gives you a stable pH (preferably the one you need to work at), and has the same osmotic pressure as inside the cells.

“ester lipase glicerol”

Glycerol is made when an ester is heated with an alkali (when fats/oils are saponified). Lipase breaks down fats, or rather, it catalyses the hydrolysis of ester bonds in lipids.

“reaction dcpip with citric acid”

Not sure about this one, citric acid is considered to have a limited effect on a vitamin C titration when taking samples for various citric foods, but that’s all I could find, having never done that one myself.

“ester bond in triacylglycerols”

Triacylglycerols, known as TAGs, are composed of glycerol which is esterified to long chain fatty acids. Look at the pic below, the ester bond is the -COOC- bit. An image search on Google yields a number of good examples, better than mine.

This all seems rather biochemistry based, so I think I’ll shuck the bonds of chemistry for a while and take you back to evolution with the next post.

Paper Junk

I’ve had a lot of time to accumulate meaningless junk, inlcuding a great deal of paperwork with more value to the tree it came from than it ever was to me. Anyway, I’ve got a pile of paperwork scattered around me right and I thought I’d share any gems of information that come my way:

The Biological Sciences Review, basically the review for A level and GCSE students in the life sciences. It’s not the whole thing but a photocopy of a double page spread called Stuck with Structures? a guide to some of the compounds biology students come across in their course. The Review includes exam advice by Bill Indge, a name you’ll recognise if you’re in science education, probably alongside Rowland and Bailey.

This one was a freebie, a downloadable PDF showing some of the biochemical pathways of the cell including fatty acid synthesis and glycolysis. Ironic really, considering I finished a residential school recently on FA synthesis and beta-oxidation. I’d link to the PDF, except I don’t remember where I got it from.

Pulling Our Strings from Chemistry World, an article exploring the nature of chromatin. Nice article, and Chemistry World has both a blog and a twitter, so go take a look.

A printed out email that circulated for a while with wacky answers that kids put on their exam papers, including a deinfition of solution that I found absolutely priceless. A solution is an answer, but to chemists a solution is when things are still all mixed up! Fabulous!

A superbug cartoon (PDF), which I tracked down to page 13 of a review from a biotech portal in India, but I have no idea where it originally came from.

A Guide to Effective Scientific Communication, aka translation of scientific lingo,  including this extract:

The 4 hour sample was not studied trans I dropped it on the floor
The 4 hour determination may not be significant trans I dropped it on the floor but scooped most of it up

The rest was pretty funny too.

Great Health & Safety Myths, I went to take a look at the HSE website, and they’re still doing them, only the section has been expanded to include a calender which you can buy or download. It brings home an important point, that health and safety is often mismanaged with people blaming the HSE rather than actually do a proper risk assessment.

Other lab techs’ll know what I’m talking about. The number of times I’ve heard an experiment has been ‘banned’, only to find it wasn’t and the previous administration couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork so they ditched the experiment. And then again, it’s a popular excuse to use on the students, especially in classes that are completely unmanageable where introducing volatile chemicals or sharp implements is simply asking for trouble. It’s more than unfortunate, it sucks, but until parents actually take a hand with their unruly kids, everyone else pays the price.

There’s a whole bunch of articles on nucleic acids, ligand binding and protein motifs that I won’t bore you with, plus a bunch of stuff on biochemistry from the RSC again. I won’t dig out all the links, but the site looks well worth a dig through.

Woot! My pretty, pretty OU Tree of Life poster from the Darwin 200 celebrations, which you can get right here. Go take a look at Evolution Megalab too whilst you’re at it.

Here’s an interesting little experiment to make glue from milk from, again, the RSC. There’s also a small experiment you can do at home, seperate out Smarties colours, like a a very basic form of chromatography.

Constructing a Standard Curve! I taught a class full of A level students this one, using BSA standards and a number of unknowns. Nice little experiment. And the MacGuyver Project from the Science Creative Quarterly, take a gander and give it a shot. I haven’t yet, but now I’ve unearthed this, I might have to.

Well, that was nearly pointless, but at least I have a shelf back.