All posts by Tim Jones

Science communicator who researches, strategises, writes, markets, in an atheistic, artistic, married, enthusiastic way....

Bum Genes Mean End Of The Line For Iceman

(I ought to add up front that the following is the result of an exercise in a type of sensationalistic reporting characteristic of certain UK tabloids)

Remember the Iceman? Not Maverick’s nemesis from Top Gun, but the 5000 year old Neolithic mummy found in the German Alps back in 1991.

Cool

After 17 years of peaking and prodding, Frozen Fritz is out of the freezer and back in the news. This time, Italian scientists working with DNA taken from the Iceman’s rectum have figured out he has no living relatives. A team including Franco Rollo from Camerino University, and Luca Ermini working at Camerino and Leeds University, used the genes in Iceman’s DNA like an identity card; but it turns out nobody today carries anything even similar.

Heat Friends And Influence People

If you want to get close to someone, give them a nice hot cup of tea. Or anything warm for that matter.

Nice Hot Cuppa
Can't beat a nice hot Cuppa

New research suggests that when someone experiences physical warmth, they develop increased feelings of interpersonal warmth – and it all happens without them even knowing.

Tests by researchers at Yale University and the University of Colorado at Boulder showed that when given a hot cup to hold, a subject would judge another person to have a ‘warmer’ personality. In another test, application of a thermal pad resulted in the person tending to choose a gift for a friend rather than themselves.

The key to this behaviour is the discovery that a part of the brain, the insular cortex, looks after both the physical and psychological versions of warmth information, with feelings like trust, empathy, guilt and embarrassment also implicated.

So there you go – yet more evidence that we are completely out of control of ourselves. Ho Hum…..

P.S. Only use a Los Alamos mug if you are looking for that ‘extra warmth’.

More info. in Science Vol.322.No5901.pp.606-607

CalTech’s Death-Star Insight on Global Warming

WONDERING what the world will look like when the heat is on?

A newly discovered micro-fossil of an organism that lived during a previous global warming is helping researchers understand how aquatic life could adapt to the warmer, lower oxygen, waters that may accompany radical environmental transformations.

"Magnetic Death Star" - CalTech image

Dubbed the “Magnetic Death Star”, due to its round and spiky magnetite structure, the fossil was found among sediment deposited 55 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when surging atmospheric carbon drove temperatures 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher. CalTech and McGill University workers believe the single-celled eukaryote evolved during the PETM, only to be out-competed and disappear again when conditions cooled off (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, DOI:10.1073 / pnas.0803634105).

Fireworks (and the Very Useful Application of Bishops)

As we approach the 5th November, many people in the UK will be considering which firework party to attend. But on the night, they probably won’t be thinking too hard about why they’re standing out in the cold, gripping a baked potato, and “oohing” and “aahing” to the explosive delights. Because the British public have been doing this for a while – 403 years to be exact, since that fateful day when a bunch of disgruntled catholics tried unsuccessfully to vapourise King James I and the English parliament. There you have it: gunpowder, treason and plot.

Thankfully, science as a social construct goes beyond applying the physical consequences of rapid combustion under containment to the government of the day. Centuries before Guido Fawkes got his catholic knickers in a twist, enterprising chemists were delighting expectant crowds at fireworks displays.

Vauxhall Gardens Fireworks - 1800s

A popular 18th and 19th century venue for fireworks was the Vauxhall Gardens pleasure park in London. While the elaborate promenades, bandstands, and the ‘firework temple’ have all disappeared, youngsters can still be found unwittingly (and illegally) maintaining the firework tradition on the patch of public park that remains, as this picture from 2003 shows.

Fireworks - Vauxhall Gardens 2003. Photo: Tim Jones

The manufacture of fireworks has always been a risky business. Factories typically comprise many small and separated work units, such that if one goes up in smoke the remainder are isolated from the blast. This aerial photograph well illustrates the layout at the now defunct Standard Fireworks plant.

Fireworks manufacturies do not make for good neighbours, as this 1858 newspaper report of a terrible accident in central London illustrates (interestingly the year before Vauxhall Gardens’ final closure). While regrettable, the event deliciously opportuned some wry social commentary towards the religious establishment and aristocracy of the day.

Also of interest:

Coke and Borg’s Biography of Vauxhall Gardens (Guardian review by PD Smith here)

What’s On

Early warning of three events into the new year that folk might like to consider joining. The Darwin related talks will sell out fast for sure – so think ahead – like me.

‘Weird Science’, Saturday 17th January 2009, London

Organised by the Centre for Inquiry, this all-day event promises to explore ‘Weird Science – science of the weird, and weird and flaky science’ . So pretty weird.

Expect presentations from Ben Goldacre, Richard Wiseman, Chris French and Steven Law. The venue is Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. Details at Centre for Inquiry.

Darwin Day Lecture, 12th February 2009, London

Prof Sir David King

You’ll be aware from previous posts that Darwin will be a bigger deal than usual next year, and appreciate the need to book early for events like the NSS lunch on 7th February. An event guaranteed to be even more popular is the BHA’s annual Darwin Day Lecture, given by Professor Sir David King on ‘Can British Science Rise to the New Challenges of the Twenty First Century?’ Good question. The event will be held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 on Thursday 12th February at 6.30pm. Attendance at the lecture is £5 for members of the BHA and £7 for others. Tickets are available from the British Humanist Association on 020 7079 3580 or by email on info@humanism.org.uk

Dan Dennett Lecture, 19th March 2009, London

Dan Dennett

I’m not alone in tagging Dan Dennett as the more philosophical, patient, and possibly more persuasive member of the media-branded atheist quartet of Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris.

On 19th March we will get to hear what will doubtless be an insightful and balanced analysis on ‘A Darwinian Perspective on Religions: Past, Present and Future’. Who better to deliver that than the author of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Penguin Science)
The location, prices, and contact details are as for the Darwin Day Lecture above.

Domestic Science – Not

I’m not the first to ask why science has become less popular with school children and young people. It’s a fact, at least in the UK and the USA, that fewer students are selecting science subjects at school or making a college or professional career out of science.

While there are doubtless many complex reasons behind the decline, some of today’s thinkers put at least part of the blame on the reduction in first hand experience and active personal experimentation in science that young people engage in.

And could something as apparently innocent as the emasculation of the home chemistry set, or the retreat by schools from the more spectacular classroom science demonstrations, be a contributing cause?

While I’ve been musing over my own formative influences, which I put down to: inherent curiosity, parental support, inspiring teachers, a home culture of learning and DIY (do-it-yourself), and relatively unhindered experimentation; my latest reading is a warning of what can happen when home grown science goes too far.

David Hahn was an adolescent Boy Scout from Michigan when he built an operational model nuclear reactor in his parents’ garden shed. His improbable but true story is told by Ken Silverstein in The Radioactive Boyscout: The True Story of a Boy Who Built a Nuclear Reactor in His Shed.

Silverstein describes Hahn’s obsession with nuclear power and radioactivity, culminating in his own nuclear pile. It’s a frightening and fascinating study in single-minded ingenuity; the ultimate expression of ‘string and elastic bands’ resourcefulness. But it’s also a sad tale of misguided talent and lost opportunity, with Hahn’s informal career in science never blossoming beyond the confines of his backyard. I’ve just finished this book from 2004 – another volume from my latest ‘3 for £5’ trawl – and can heartily recommend it. It’s a good adult read, plus you won’t find a more mischievous gift for any young person with a maturing interest in home science experiments.

Hahn’s own inspiration was the doubly infamous Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, a product of 1950s/60s US techno-optimism that was subsequently banned from most US libraries. Certainly, some of the children’s experiments described within its colourful covers are way beyond anything that today we would consider safe – for the child or the publisher.

There is of course nothing new under the sun, and, despite the recent plethora of mimic Victoriana ‘thing-to-do’ books, titled ‘The Dangerous Books for Boys, Girls,…Whatever’, nothing compares with the original bane of the enlightened Victorian parent – ‘The Young Man’s Book Of Amusement‘. Packed with all sorts of nonsense, ranging from

the harmless to the downright suicidal, my favourite wheeze from this 1850’s bible of curiosity is the Artificial Volcano. The experimental procedure, which results in a runaway exothermic reaction of iron filings and sulphur, specifies minimum quantities of both reactants such that, in the spirit of all good compost heap construction, a critical and sustaining thermal mass is achieved – in this case 28lbs of each. The 56lb of damp mixture is buried two feet below the ground, and left to do its stuff. Never having got up the nerve or the resources to try this, on any scale, I can only imagine the combined impact on the senses of vigourous suphur dioxide production, rivers of molten sulphur, showers of burning iron particles, all escaping through an earth bulging under the pressure of a man-made magma chamber. Environmentally friendly – not. Politically correct – not. Fun, thought provoking, and inspiring….? For more excerpts from this cheery manual visit Lateralscience (but don’t fall for the apochryphal stories surrounding the text – which is real).

I’m not endorsing the building of volcanoes or nuclear piles, in our back gardens or anywhere else, but we should consider what has happened over the last thirty or forty years with regard to our freedoms and restrictions in the home-science department. Are we to be trusted with only baking soda and citric acid? – apparently so.

I’ll wind up with a taste of how some of the ‘today’s thinkers’ I referred to earlier feel about the subject of scientific inspiration and freedom for self-experimentation. “Hands-on experience and experiments” was one of the ten categories highlighted by respondents to a 2006 study by the Spiked team who, working with Pfizer, asked some well-known scientists/thinkers (including Simon Singh whom I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting recently) – ‘”What inspired you to take up science?’” Many respondents emphasised the importance during their formative years of being able to do their own independent testing, experimentation, and indeed – risk taking. Here is the complete summary of responses.

Where Will You Celebrate Darwin’s Birthday ?

I suspect the run up to February 12th 2009 is going to be a bit like Christmas. A lunch here, a dinner there, an afternoon tea at Downe House, an evening at the Natural History Museum. Because February 12th 2009, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, is a very important date. Well at least for some people.

So where are you going to party?

UK readers might consider joining the event being organised by the National Secular Society in London on Saturday 7th February. The NSS is moving its annual Secularist of the Year Award presentation to coincide with the Darwin 200th birthday celebrations – making one big party.

Cerebral?
Soapy?

 

Three-course lunches are promised, plus entertainment that will include a reconstruction of the well known confrontation between Thomas Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford, ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce, at the British Association in 1860. (Scholars amongst you must surely join this just to dissect the production’s ‘angle of spin’?) And as the NSS blurb states – you will be expected to take sides!

You don’t need to be a rabid secularist to join and, if you are a student, tickets are only £15 (£45 for normal people).

Tickets are on sale at the NSS online shop.

Stephen Fry, Science, and the Night I Lost My Gorilla to a Python

This Sunday 12th October, Stephen Fry will present the first of a series of programmes recounting his epic 50 State tour of the USA. Fry is well known as an actor, TV presenter, novellist, film maker, and general wit and, as this quote from the current Radio Times reminded me, he’s also a great fan and defender of science:

Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry (Picture credit: Radio Times online)

“The best definition of science I have ever heard (embarrassingly, it’s my own) is ‘humility in the face of facts” and yet science in America is always being accused of arrogance! Arrogance? Compared to those Sunday evangelists and others who claim that truth is ‘revealed’ in a book, one book, whose journey into existence is traceable in history, whose fragments and parts and apocrypha were arbitrarily decided by compromise and pragmatic need? Yet America’s insistence on equal validity between ‘revealed’ truth and evidence-based truth has meant that evolution is now pitted against so-called ‘intelligent design’, a barbarously irrational mixture of pseudoscience and fallacious argument that poses itself ‘innocently’ as a credible alternative.” (Stephen Fry – Radio Times)

No mistaking Stephen’s position on ‘Intelligent Design‘ then.

This sort of comment is consistent with the Stephen Fry I encountered at the first DNA Memorial Lecture at the Royal Institution in 2003. Fry was Master of Ceremonies for Richard Dawkins‘s lecture ‘Queerer Than We Can Suppose‘. And no, this wasn’t a homage to Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid, but rather a celebration of the memory of the irreplaceable Douglas Noel Adams, patron to the beneficiaries of the evening – The Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund and Save the Rhino International.

Fry’s comments during the various introductions, links, and humorous ramblings revealed an impressively knowledgeable and scientifically literate guy, especially in all matters evolutionary. He’d doubtless be shocked that anyone would think otherwise, but this was a world as yet unexposed to the intellectual sound-bitery of the QI show.

The real, not to say surreal, reason I remember this all so well is the charity auction at the end of the evening. With Fry as auctioneer, I found myself bidding head-to-head with Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) for a two foot high, ceramic, silver-backed gorilla (as you do). Suffice to say the wrong Jones walked off with the pottery primate – leaving me apeless (sorry).

 

Also of Interest

“Douglas Adams loved ideas but hated writing, says Terry Jones”  March 2012 BBC article HERE

 


Run Rabbit Run

Do you find that riding a bicycle brings out your most inspired thoughts on evolutionary biology and learned behaviour? Do world-changing paradigms in the nature-versus-nurture debate spring unbidden into your oxygen enriched mind? No, me neither.

running rabbit
Run Rabbit Run (Photo: Tim Jones)

Well not normally. Thing is, I did today observe that the rabbits and squirrels on my Thames-side cycle route were markedly less afraid of a wheeled me than a walking me. Not only did the rabbits take their time getting out of the way (doubtless some variant of the ‘frozen in the headlamps’ syndrome), but also hung around after I stopped. Squirrels behaved in a similar fashion, as did magpies (which as a species seem to spend a good 50% of their time on the ground).

trench warfare
Trench warfare! (Photo: Tim Jones)

It’s well known that animals associate threat or opportunity with the shape of a predator or prey. Good advice in lion country is never to squat down or bend over. Those actions make humans look like four legged prey to large cats, so any bending at the waist while in mountain lion territory is a no-no (as my wife twice reminded me this summer as I tied my shoelaces in the San Gabriel mountains of Southern California).

squirrel
Freeze ! (Photo:Tim Jones)

But how much of the rabbit’s behaviour is learned, and how much is in the genes? Over what timescales do these influences operate? Indeed, to be fashionable, should I not consider whether an epigenetic influence is at work here, whereby gene activating chemistry has been triggered in an earlier generation of rabbits and passed to Junior – grandad meets a bipedal human with shotgun say, rather than jump to the more conventional explanation of gene natural selection?

Actually I’m inclined to jump to the conventional explanation. Sat on a bike we no longer look human, and bicycles haven’t been around long enough (and/or in a sufficiently rabbit-unfriendly incarnation) to reflect in rabbit evolutionary traits. The association of threat with the shape of a two legged man is, I suggest, genetic. The rabbit population of England has been managed as a commodity for centuries (rabbits were husbanded by a Warrener no less), so plenty of time for natural selection to do its work. However, this is supposition, and to be properly scientific we would want greater confidence in our hypothesis that any epigenetic influence is small. That, regrettably, would require quite complex trials involving geographically isolated test parks and cyclists armed with shotguns.

It’s clearly been one of those days.