Science Under Your Skin

Carl Zimmer is an author and writer that I enjoy reading. He is strongly anti-Creationist but writes in an even-handed rationalist way that avoids the mean spirited positions of Dawkins and his disciples. In fact he makes me think of Stephen Jay Gould.

For whatever reason, Carl took an interest in people who have science tattoos and has now collected images of these tattoos at the link below. I have to admit that I would never get a tattoo myself due to 1) a defining abhorrence of the idea of exposing more of my skin than absolutely necessary, 2) lack of faith in the hygiene practices in most tattoo parlours that I have seen and 3) no easy gloss that escapes this clear statement: Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:28
Nevertheless I am impressed that some people would go to the expense and pain of having these ink drawings pushed under their skin. An amazing number are chemical in nature.

LINK

Something New I am Playing With

I have found a program called CamStudio which is an open source facility that allows capture of audio along with screen capture. I am still working out how to use it but I am currently playing with the idea of posting a series of "videos" that show me solve a problem in real time and record my comments about logic and value. My first attempt is really choppy but I think I can see some promise as I hopefully get better at it.

There is a series of popular videos called "You Suck at Photoshop" that are really quite funny so for lack of a better name I have called this series "USuk@Chemistry" (LINK). That is also a bit of a shout out to a blog that used to exist about ABU Science called "Chem Sucks". I think that in this case my attempt to be funny might send the wrong message so I will probably give them some name like ChemPosts or ChemChats or DrMelHoldsYourHandWhileYouMeltDownatHomeStudyingForTomorrowsTest, you know something like that. Anyway, for those of you that are missing your Dr. Mel fix, here you go.

National Geographic Publishes Worlds Most Disturbing Photo

A couple of posts ago I was on about how we regard some animals as different from others and the fads of the day dictate if we consider them as appropriate for food or commercial exploitation. In the same vein I think the people at National Geographic wanted to publish a photo that would shock people to make a point. It is a very disturbing image concerning the bush meat industry in Africa. It seems that the appearance of oil money in some parts of Africa has resulted in a demand for bush meat and apes appear high on the menu.

This image shows the body of an ape being prepared for market. It seems that the value of the meat is increased if the hair is removed before sale but the skin is intact so they burn it off with a blowtorch. That is the image below.

LINK TO ARTICLE

This image is disturbing to me on a number of levels and I think that the National Geographic Society is going to get a lot of outrage going over this. I hope their gamble pays off. The trade in bush meat that results in these kinds of images needs to stop. But then again I wonder how much meat we would eat if we could see the killing floors of the industrial slaughterhouses of North America. Perhaps it is time for the National Geographic to point it's lens at our own culture before it ignites outrage over other cultures even if it is justified.

Mentos and Diet Coke Blurs Physics and Chemistry

You know, when it comes down to it Chemistry calls itself "The Central Science" because when you draw all of science as a Venn Diagram it overlaps with more sciences it than any other. For all that Chemistry is the most insecure science as well. Very few universities are creating pure chemistry departments now and are in fact rolling them into other disciplines such as biology and physics.

The line between Chemistry and the other sciences gets blurrier all the time. Take for example this recent publication by the American Journal of Physics ...

LINK TO ARTICLE

This is of course the famous reaction that spawned a 1000 YouTube videos and made these guys famous.

LINK TO EepyBird

The article has even been reviewed by the news magazine for the American Chemical Society [LINK] and it turns out that there are a number of factors that combine to make the Mentos / Diet Coke reaction explosive. It appears that the gum arabic used in the composition of the Mentos make the foam more stable and frothier. A microscopic analysis of the surface of the Mentos reveal that it is covered with gas bubble nucleation sites and that the density of the mint meant that it falls to the bottom of the bottle of pop. All useful insights.

But it is not physics. Indeed what exactly do the authors mean in their title when they say "physical reaction". Now I have a little physics in my background and as I remember my terminology a physical reaction is a response to a force (you know ... Newton's Laws and such). I think they are just trying to avoid the word "Chemical" as if it were a dirty word.

I think chemists need to protect their turf while it is still ours and this is not a physics paper. The problem is how do we protest? I mean, we all know the hierarchy ... if you are not smart enough to do math you do physics, if you are not smart enough to do physics you do chemistry, if you are not smart enough to do chemistry ... well you know how it goes etc. We will need to be careful and bide our time but we can't let them walk over OUR turf and pretend to own our ideas. Wait for the right time and remember the codeword (stoichiometry (it is the only science word that chemistry truely owns)).

Welcome to My World in Metaphor

There is a remarkable passage in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that goes:

"Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened."

My intellectual world occurs at a level far below our technical ability to "see" what we are doing. Oh yes, we can use some very elaborate methods , such as atomic force spectroscopy, to visualise the positions of atoms but only in crystals of heavy atoms.


Any so, if we want to "see" what we are doing in chemistry and biochemistry we sink to metaphor and simile. Whenever we reduce macroscopic objects and even ideas to the microscopic level we lose important information in the simplifications. I don't know how many times I have tried to use a simplified simile to explain a chemical reaction only to end up fighting with students that cannot get past the simile to the concepts taught.



With that all said as a preamble I see a new company has entered the market for industrial animation of science - biochemical - chemical processes. They have a sampler / demo reel at this site:

LINK TO DEMO REEL

There are some moments captured in the demo that I like. Such as the moment when an micelle / vesicle carrying a drug molecule contacts a cell wall and submerges like an asteroid into the ocean.

Or this moment that shows a fist full of pills dropping out of the pyloric sphincter an into the acid bath that is your stomach (thankfully a clear colourless liquid in this image, I know I have seen stomach contents in my life and it does not look like this). The pills begin to disintegrate as they travel leaving a drug plume.


And this image captures the moment in time just before a protein touches a glyco-protein receptor on a cell surface.


It is not my intention to get drawn into the whole irreducible complexity debate. I do however appreciate how these kind of images place an accessible window on the microscopic world of biochemistry that exists in my head. We are all large, salty bags of water with amazing and complex chemistry going on in our cells all the time. These images are nothing like what really happens but until we can see with our own eyes they will have to do.

It does not matter if you believe it was made or just happened. It is astonishing how little we know about the complexity of what happens below our skin. Every step towards humility in our discussions on complexity is a step forward.

Made me Laugh

What can I say? Both of these made me laugh but one of them shouldn't have I suppose ... I guess on second thought one of these isn't funny ... can you guess which one?

They Shoot Elephants Don't They?

It seems everytime you turn around some poor country in Africa is being over run by herds of elephants and the whole discussion of herd culls occur. Most recently, Kruger National Park is thinking of reducing the size of its herd. Link to Article. The issue is that 100 years ago there were about 6000 elephants left in Africa and a century of conservation means that there are currently about 600,000 and they are straining available resources.

Of course there is a very emotional response, the elephant is iconic for Africa in the same sense that the polar bear is iconic for Canada. There is also a real appreciation that elephants are long lived mammals with strong family ties and apparently real emotions. No one would say they are sentient or conscious but some would argue their intelligence.

The question needs to be asked though, what makes an animal off limits for killing? It would appear that a human emotional response to the animal (kittens and puppies which we kill by the thousands each year) scarcity due to human activity (whooping cranes) and perceived intelligence or kinship (the great apes) all mean that an animal should not be killed.

That brings us to the whales. If I understand the biology, whales are huge, long lived mammals (altho Herman Melville calls them fish and he saw a lot of them) that for the most part we hunted to edge of extinction. And yet, just like the elephants, we left them alone for a century and I tell you, you could walk around the island of Newfoundland on the backs of the whales and not get your feet wet. They are everywhere and are responsible for almost any positive news in tourism for the Atlantic Provinces.

We allowed the elephants to recover and their numbers justify both hunting and culling now. We allowed the buffalo to recover and if you go out west you can get a buffalo burger. We have allowed the whales to recover and some populations could easily accommodate a profitable "fishery" (doesn't it bug you to hear of the fur seal "fishery" each spring but "mammalry" sounds too similar to something else).

Link to Cartoon

Now, I like the cartoon "The Other Coast" it is gentle humour with a social and environmental consciousness. I am sure that they would be appalled to find that I have linked their cartoon to this discussion. But it was their cartoon today that got my mind thinking on this topic.

But I have to ask, if the biologists tell us that the populations are large enough and stable enough to allow a monitored whale hunt then why not? What is special about the whales as a species that puts them in the same class as the great apes? It would seem to me that Canada has a significant potential natural resource off its shores that it could be exploiting.

This is a photo I took a while ago when we lived in Newfoundland, a friend had taken us out in his boat and this is a whale in the mouth of St. John's harbour. The towers that you see on the horizon are the St. John's Basilica. What is strange about this is that St. John's harbour is essentially a huge sewer and if you go out at the right tide the water coming out of the harbour is brown with "suspended solids". Even so, there you have a whale frolicking in the harbour. Indeed, you can get an often spectacular live view of the harbour from the other side at this link.

And this one is waving good-bye from the waters of Freshwater Bay close to Cape Spear. Like I say, unless we can articulate a reasoned argument for continued protection I fail to see why limited hunts similar to the ones we have for polar bears, elephants and buffalo should not be allowed.

I have no idea where this came from. It is horrifically hot and muggy here and I guess I am feeling a bit like a beached whale and had to release a conservative rant or start biting people.

Summer Internet Surfing

I stumbled across this website that made me laugh ...


Created by OnePlusYou

and these are questions that have been bugging me as well ...


Created by OnePlusYou

$5190.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

Created by OnePlusYou

POSTSCRIPT

So it turned out that this site is not as benign as I first thought. I came across the link in a theology blog that I monitor and just went to the widget site. It figures that the link embedded in the images above in FACT sends you to a Russian "dating" website. I have told these people how old I am, my height and weight and some of my personal preferences in filling out the "questionnaire" to determine how many cannibals I could feed or how much my body is worth. I would assume that the email associated with this website is currently being bombed by "offers" of companionship by busty ladies named Svetlana. I have disabled the links as best I can now and all I can say is that I am glad that I use an Internet pseudonym for this blog. If any of you managed to get caught in this before I posted this warning you have my apologies.

Now, I have all these new email messages from Nadya to read ...