Australian Science Communicators Conference Day One

// February 9th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Science Communication

Just got home after a massive day at #asc2010. Though I’m exhausted I’m feeling too excited to sleep, so instead I’ll give you my blow by blow account of the conference.

Welcome session
The day opened with a welcome from an Aboriginal elder who was not at all interested in science (actually, she said she hated it in school), but was nonetheless entertaining and welcoming. Later the minister did the “official” opening of the conference and also unveiled a new report on science communication policy called Inspiring Australia, which is in my bag to be tackled in all the free time I have. After opening the conference, he left, which was a shame. Guess he’s a busy man.

Plenary session #1
What is a plenary anyway? This was a panel discussion on the challenges for science communication with speakers from some major organisations, the NHMRC (National Health Medical Research Centre), the ARC (Australian Research Centre) and CSIRO. On the whole, it was great to hear from directors and managers from those kind of organisations, but a lot of it was beyond me… We talked a lot on what we SHOULD be doing for science communication strategically, but it seemed to lack that follow through of funding and prioritisation that you need in a business. Eh. It was definitely interesting, but not terribly relevant.

Sub-plenary
Described in the program as “the future of science reporting” I was really disappointed to find the session only heard from print media reporters… sure, it was interesting to hear their ideas about the future of magazines and newsletters, but the future of science reporting encompasses radio, television, blogs and STACKS more than print media. Plus one of the speakers actually said that newspapers were more reliable and accurate then blogs. Uh huh. Sure. Newspapers are accurate eh? Have you heard about Bad Science? And you think blogs are inaccurate? Have you even TRIED reading The Loom and Not Exactly Rocket Science? I’m sorry, but if you think blogs are bad and newspapers are good, you’re living in the past and it’s time to update.

Session Three – Denialists, sceptics and quackery
The panel included the president of the Australian Skeptics. It was described in the program as TACKLING these kind of viewpoints. Damn it if we didn’t just describe the damn problem in a self-rightous way! Yes, I KNOW homeopathy, chiropractics and the anti-vaccine lobbyists say some whacko stuff and have a scary amount of followers, but how do we REACH those believers and talk to them about the actual science? I’m already aware of the problems, I want to talk about solutions, and sadly we barely hit the very tippy top of the iceberg in this session. I’d like to come back to that idea later in this blog while I’m still in swashbuckling scientist mode.

Session Four – Freelancing
“Be a media slut until you can get paid!” No… I actually found this professional development session really worthwhile. Their “get published anyway you can” approach was, I think, good advice to someone starting out. I am certainly keen to start writing for anyone and everyone to garner up a folio of clippings! Ideas included writing for a uni newsletter, contributing to refereed websites, writing for local newsletters, and getting involved with community TV and radio. Yep, I can do that.

Session Five – Determining Junk Science
Our speaker was like Ben Goldacre for peer reviewed journals. OMG the things he said were scary! Over 50% of published journals mess up their statistics or do not explain their error bars! That’s just bad science! Worse than that, a basic knowledge of Poisson distribution should show reviewers when results have been fudged, because the given standard distribution is insanely narrow for the cell counts they are doing. Worst of all are the western blots, who under pretty rudimentary scrutiny by increasing contrast are shown to be cut and pasted, in some cases duplicated or mirror images used later on – basically results completely fabricated and falsified to create results that are flawed in their flawlessness. This session was an eye-opener, and it was good to remember the old stats homework and find some use for them.

Overall though, a conference is about networking, and I met some great people who are doing fantastic things with science communication. If you met me at the conference and scored a business card (yes, I have those now!) then it was lovely to meet you. It was also great to hang out with the gang from the RiAus, who were my SciComm pals in bonny Adelaide and are still doing some amazing things there. Wish I could attend the conference Tuesday and Wednesday, but sadly study calls and I must answer the siren song of commitment.

DNA dating websites – the genetics of love

// February 5th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Just for Fun, Sex and Reproduction

A new brand of “scientific” dating has sprouted up. It draws on an idea wrote about in the Chemistry of Kissing – basically, you have more snap, crackle and pop with someone who has an immune system very different to your own. Through your genes combined, the resulting offspring will have a stronger, more diverse immune system giving them an evolutionary advantage. Now this idea has been monetized to bring you GenePartner DNA Matching, because love is no coincidence.

For $99 US you get a kit so you can take a saliva sample and send it back to them for analysis. Two weeks later you’ll have your results, they’ll build up a profile for you, and you can start finding your perfect genetic match! *love*

What a service they offer too! They match partners based not only on how attracted you will be to them, but also how attracted they’ll be to you.

Plus they give you the probability of a successful pregnancy – which just feels like jumping the gun a bit to me. Really, you haven’t even MET the person and you want to know how likely it is you’ll get pregnant. I understand it’s super-important to some people, but it’s a bit ridiculous to expect a test like this to tell you about such a complicated thing as fertility.

The other bonus they list is that their site will prevent inbreeding. Then again I think the chances of accidentally inbreeding are pretty small. The world’s a big place, and most people know to look for a partner outside of their living room.

Honestly, DNA Dating, what will they think of next? Is there anything else they can cram science into in order to sell love?

Actually it reminds me of Gattaca, where they have booths set up where you can analyse stolen DNA from your lips after a kiss, or from the hair sample you swiped, if you’re that way inclined.

Arr!!! I think there be nothing wrong with the old fashioned method of kissing people, it’s cheaper! Who’s with me?

St Elmo’s Fire

// January 31st, 2010 // 4 Comments » // How Things Work

Some sailors regard it with fear and amazement, others see it as an omen of things to come, but when I see St Elmo’s Fire burning on the masts above I am struck with curiousity for this most bizarre natural phenomenon.

St Elmo’s Fire appears as a blueish glow gracing the tips of masts and other pointy objects (lightning rods, swords, staffs, unusually long noses) during thunderstorms. You may have heard of it before, it’s been mentioned in such classics as Tintin in Tibet, Terry Pratchett’s Nation, and Moby Dick.

Despite the name, it’s not fire. It’s actually plasma, just like lightning – except instead of travelling from a cloud to the ground it just… well.. glows. It works a bit like neon lights do – energy from stormy weather (rather than a powerpoint) collect on an object and discharge. When the discharge is strong enough, it ionises gasses in the air which makes them glow. It mostly happens on pointy objects because electric fields are strongest on curves – the curvier the object, the stronger the field.

The colour is blue simply because oxygen and nitrogen glow blue when they ionise (how’s that for a circular argument? I’m sure it’s got more to do with molecular spectroscopy *shudder* more than I want to go into tonight, but if you’re curious drop me a comment.) If our air was full of neon it would be all orange, and how cool would that be?!

St Elmo’s Fire was originally named for St Erasmus – the patron saint of sailors – but whoever came up with the name should get a prize because it sounds great. Off the top of my head I can think of three fantastic things which have stolen the name. It was the title of one of the Teen Power Inc books of my childhood. As a teenager I saw the awesome 80’s movie about the twenty-somethings who tackle life and relationships after leaving college. And lately I have been listening to the old song by John Parr… I can never pick up the words except for the titular line “in St Elmo’s Fi-yar!”… I have no idea what it means in this context but for some reason (probably the science) it really resonates with me. Click through to the lyrics.

I can see a new horizon
Underneath the blazin’ sky
I’ll be where the eagle’s
Flyin’ higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion
All I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future’s lyin’
St. Elmo’s Fire

Ohhhhh YEAH! St Elmo’s Fi-yah!

Why you can’t run your car on water

// January 28th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // How Things Work

For those of you who can’t sail to work like a pirate, or live too far away to walk or cycle, then chances are you use a car or motorbike to get around. You also probably feel guilty sometimes for the DAMAGE you’re doing to the environment, emitting toxic gasses and contributing to global warming and not offsetting your carbon emissions not to mention you’re not getting any exercise and who has the time to walk anyway and blah blah blah.

Sometimes driving comes with a side of guilt, and you may wish there could be a better way… Think, if only you could run your car on ethanol! It would save picking up a bottle of rum for a party. I’m not convinced on biofuels, they may be green, but I’ve heard that they use a huge amount of grains which could otherwise be eaten by the starving, which then leads to an ethically grey “my car is more important than your stomach” argument (although there are people starving now, it’s more an issue of how to get the existing food TO the hungry people, rather than us growing more food, so quanitity isn’t really the problem here anyway.) Bah, it gets too confusing for a pirate used to sails. Yet here is another option. Run your car on water.

The bonus? Green emissions. Your exhaust would be hydrogen and oxygen, what could be better?

The downside? It doesn’t freaking work.

Now for you who haven’t heard people talking about it and scoff at the mere suggestion of water as fuel, SHUT UP! People do think it’s possible, I know someone who tinkers away trying to remove every trace element of toxin from distilled water so it will work. But by looking at some basic chem, you can see pretty quickly that it won’t.

You see, water has already been burned. When you burn wood (or petrol for that matter) you take hydrocarbons, long chains of carbons and hydrogens, react them with oxygen to emit energy along with carbon dioxide and water.

Water is stable, which means it’s already low on energy. In order to get energy out of it, you’d need to break it into hydrogen and oxygen and then burn the hydrogen to make water again. Our engines are never 100% efficient (usually not even close), so it takes more energy to break the water apart then you would ultimately get out of burning the hydrogen.

Well, you may say, so you CAN run a car on water – you just need the engine to do two things – make hydrogen and burn hydrogen.

Sure, but how are you going to power the process to make the hydrogen? Please, PLEASE, correct me if I’m wrong, but sounds like stupid talk to me.

Weighing anchor and moving interstate

// January 26th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Jibber Jabber

Even though exciting things are happening in science, such as slime moulds being used to design railway systems, I have been otherwise occupied. What has harnessed most of my attention of late is my imminent move interstate.

Pirates have a certain inclination to horde treasure, and as such my cupboards are filled with nifty trinkets and almost empty boxes of crackers. No joke, I once had people over for dinner and out of the three boxes of Jatz on the counter, one was a quarter full, one was completely empty and the other had one cracker left. This measly appetizer was followed by a salad graced with a single olive – all I had left in the jar. My kitchen is full of stuff like this. Not cool.

Right now I have seventeen boxes sprawled about, the hallway has become an obstacle course and every single toe on my foot has been stubbed. Thank the stars my other leg is wood. I feel as uncomfortable as this little gingerbread guy looks.

Though the packing is painful, I’m heaps excited about the reason for the move – I’ve been accepted into a course to study Science Communication for the year. Having a chance to do science stuff full time will be in-freaking-credible.

So exciting times ahead! Expect a higher caliber of science posts this year, but until I get a bit more settled in they might be irregular and rushed. It depends on when I get me mitts on some internets. See, I was going to buy a macbook pro before I left, but I’m waiting in hope for them to unveil a new model in their next unveiling day thing, which I heard was tomorrow.

Exciting times ahead! Now where’s that packing tape… dammit all I need a nap.

Akhenaten and the cult of the sun (with added science)

// January 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Just for Fun

‘Tis 40 degrees celsius today, and the sun beats down heavily on deck. Wood has become warm to the touch, the sails are unbearably white, and when the bow dips and sprays the sweating crew with sea foam, you can hear a collective sigh of relief.

Such scenery brings to mind a myth I loved as a lass, the story of Akhenaten, the heretic Pharaoh. Sit by me in the shade upon this wooden chest, and I will tell ye of a tale. But ye skeptics be warned, this story contains religion, and I will hear no bad word uttered against that noble religion of Ancient Egypt.

In 1300 BC the Pharaohs promoted the worship of Ra, Amun, Isis, Osiris, Horus, Anubis, and all the other Egyptian deities that you are likely familiar with already. When Amenhotep III was Pharaoh, the priests of Amun were gaining a lot of power. Perhaps that is one reason his son, Amenhotep IV, started a religion of his own. He changed his name to Akhenaten and started worshiping Aten, the sun disc.

In an age of jackal headed gods and sky goddesses with wings, Aten was pretty weird looking. He was just… well.. the sun. Not the sun personified as a deity, just a sun. The only difference was he had arms coming out of him instead of rays, as though bestowing gifts of life and protection on everything.

Likewise, Akhenaten along with the Royal Family became rather odd-looking themselves. With wide hips and rather breasty looking chests there has been chatter around that perhaps the Pharaoh was a woman or hermaphrodite, had a genetic disease, or perhaps was an alien from outer space. My opinion is that he just liked the way he looked in those pictures – that his representation as a slightly feminine male had a symbolic meaning. It is difficult to say why he looked so weird, because a short while after his reign almost all trace of him was removed. His name was scratched out, his temples pulled down and he was never buried in his never finished pyramid. His descendant changed his name to Tutankhamen which realigned him with the worshipers of Amun, but even he did not last long.

Out of all the things in the world to worship, it was the sun that took center stage, with arms open in offering and protection. We now know that all our energy comes from the sun – if an organism doesn’t use it directly to photosynthesise, then it must be eating something else that does. A lion eats a gazelle which eats the grass, and so continues the circle of life. It’s the energy contained in little photons of light that give rise to the plethora of creatures that walk and swim the Earth.

But there be a couple of exceptions. Hyperthermophiles live deep underwater far below the decks. They dwell near volcanic vents in temperatures that exceed 100 degrees celsius, even hotter than it is today, and some of them get no energy from the sun. Their energy instead comes from these vents, from the very Earth itself, and they are the only ones I am aware of that live independently of the orb in the sky. They are the topic of my next video blog.

My sparkly new website design

// January 19th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // Jibber Jabber

Ahoy!

I’m pleased to announce the new layout and design of me blog. For all you people who RSS me, click through and check it out. It’s very sexy, if I do say so myself… I must confess a secret desire to marry the Twitter icon to the right and have feathery babies with it. Massive shoutout to Dream Labs for the fantastic design, if you need a facelift for your own site, give them a holler because they are great to deal with, plus if you’re a blogger they have plenty of Wordpress know-how.

We launched the new design to coincide with the ASC (Australian Science Communicators) event last night about science blogging, I spoke on the panel with four other bloggers. The event was great, very piratey, good fun, and Animal Penises came up more than once. Unfortunately there were SO many things we didn’t get to cover which would have been great to talk about. Anyway, more on that later.

If you come across any glitches / weird things in the blog, post a comment below so we can fix ‘em.

Absinthe drinking makes Homer something something

// January 15th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // Drugs, Poisons

When I was but a lass, freshly ID’d and able to finally hit the local tavern, there was a rumour around that Absinthe was THE drink if you wanted to get drunk fast, and as a bonus, if you could get the proper stuff, it causes hallucinations. OMG terribly exciting. I could feel jolts of electricity down my spine as I tremulously ordered (with much nudging from my friends) a round of Absinthe.

And oh, the DRAMA of it all! Green liquid, a sugar cube on a special spoon, and all of it on fire! We could only afford one each, before our pockets resolutely returned us to ordering jugs of Sangria. The bitter licorice taste lingered on though, and we were rollickingly tipsy.

Ah, the folly of youth. ‘Tis all a lie!

At the core of the myth is that Absinthe contains essential oil from the Wormwood plant, which is psychoactive and hallucinogenic. It’s true that Wormwood does contain thujole, which is a GABA antagonist (it blocks the effect of the neurotransmitter GABA), but it’s more likely to cause seizures than hallucinations. Also the amount of thujole in Absinthe is very low because of the way the spirit is made, and nowadays there are rules about what percentage of thujole is allowed. People have studied old bottles of the stuff too, and it wasn’t found to be super-thujolated. It was very popular with poets and artists; they said the green fairy helped them be more creative.

More creative, or more deadly? One tale tells of a man who killed his family in 1906 and claimed Absinthe drove him crazy. He was actually excessively drunk from a number of drinks, and was found guilty. After this and the subsequent public outcry, Absinthe was prohibited in Switzerland. France and the USA followed suit. Nonetheless, it’s the remarkably high alcohol content in Absinthe that makes it a dangerous drink, you’d definitely die from alcohol poisoning before dying from Wormwood poisoning.

The scariest story by far is the one in Eurotrip where a guy makes out with his sister after an Absinthe bender. “Dude, you kissed your sister!” That’s way worse then killing your family!

So by all means, if you like Absinthe (I’m not a fan) then drink it, but any mind-alterations are probably just your imagination. You’re supposed to mix it with water to let the flavours come out. Has anyone actually done this? Apparently it makes the clear green liquid go cloudy, because the essential oils are not soluble in water. Now that’s science.

Big week for science blogs – Science Online and Open Lab

// January 15th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Science Communication

I get confused about the time and date in the US, being a resident of Kangarooland myself. Nonetheless, I have it on good Twitteriffic authority that Science Online 2010 has opened! It is a mysterious weekend where science bloggers unite and discuss… well… science blogging. Mostly.

Yeah, I wish I was there, it would be awesome to meet my RSS feeds in person. Being on the other side of the world, however, does include a hefty pricetag to attend events in the US, and seeing as my blog doesn’t make $2,000 (or, indeed, any money at all) I couldn’t justify it. Plus I would have had to start sailing ages ago.

Maybe next year you could all come to Australia!

Anyway, I’m keeping in touch with all the action via the wiki, Twitter (#scio10), and U Stream once I figure out how to work it.

Other big news: Open Lab 2009 has announced the finalists – the best science posts of the year to be included in a book. Congrats to everyone who made it, there are some awesome posts in there. My favourite is Blood and brains – can vampires survive a zombie apocalypse? by Southern Fried Science. There’s just something about zombies.

HeLa, the first immortal human cells and a tale of immorality

// January 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // Science Communication, Unethics

When we work with cell lines in the lab, we often work with HeLa cells. They can live in a vial of nutrients, and from a small sample you can grow a large quantity to use in cancer research, in vitro fertilisation research, stem cell research, virus research, pretty much any kind of human biology research actually. They’re a biologist’s wet dream.

HeLa cells come from an aggressive cervical cancer that attacked, and eventually killed, a women called Henrietta Lacks.

She has been dead for over 60 years but those cancer cells are still going strong. Which is pretty amazing! Usually when you take some cells out of a person they die pretty soon after, or they might live for a few months, but not 60 years. That’s rare. Cancer emerges after a lot of severe mutations and a Darwinian baptism by fire, only strong, successful mutants emerge from the ashes of their brothers who died from lethal mutations. The survivors are bad-ass.

They are also very weird looking. HeLa DNA has been extremely mutated, instead of 46 chromosomes it has 82, and it has several versions of human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA, which is found in pretty much every case of cervical cancer. So research with HeLa cells is NOT research with a normal human cell.

That strange DNA makes it do some pretty amazing things: It replicates abnormally fast, even for cancer cells, and it has an active copy of telomerase which means it can replicate indefinitely. Most other cells age as they divide until they reach the Hayflick Limit, then they don’t divide no more. Not HeLa. Neither do stem cells actually, but that’s a tale for another day.

HeLa cells revolutionised our understanding of human biology, but the family of Henrietta have yet to see a cent of it. In fact, those cells were taken from her without her knowledge. Dodgy, dodgy stuff. I’m placing this story firmly in the unethics basket just for that. HT to Ed Yong for telling us about a book soon to be released about the lady herself.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” comes out next month, written about the woman and the cells which should have made her famous. Rebecca Skloot been researching it for something like 10 years and it’s got some great reviews. I’m going to pre-order a copy, and if you’d like to know more about HeLa cells and Henrietta Lacks, do the same! It’s a story that deserves to be heard, and if there are enough pre-orders, Amazon will help promote the book. Plus it’s 30% off at the moment. What more could you want? Here’s the blurb.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.