[insert witty title]

The Gibbon has just become one of my favourite animals, mainly because they seem to take great delight in being absolute pricks towards other species. Check out a gibbon tormenting a dog:

I think the reason this video is so funny is that the gibbon actually looks like an ugly little human, and when he runs away with his arms flailing everywhere I can’t help but think of a mischievous little child. Second, and much more hardcore, a gibbon takes on two tigers:

Thank you Mr. Gibbon for being an absolute bastard to the other animals and really making me laugh.

Recently the Guardian asked three writers, three scientists and two broadcasters to answer six basic scientific questions. Their results do seem to indicate that the writers and broadcasters aren’t exactly scientifically literate. Here are the six questions they asked, see how many you can get right:

Q: Why does salt dissolve in water?
Q: Roughly how old is the earth?
Q: What happens when you turn on a light?
Q: Is a clone the same as a twin?
Q: Why is the sky blue?
Q: What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

You can check you answers (and read other people’s) at the article Here.

I’m happy enough with my attempts (I didn’t quite get the saltwater question correct, but was very close. Also the clone/twin question was more of an educated guess than knowledge).

This is probably my favourite answer in the whole article, by Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark on why the sky is blue:

Because it’s a reflection of the oceans on the planet. No idea apart from that. I think the sky is blue because… the rain clouds obscure the blue, and the blue is a reflection… because of the sunshine. Fuck! I don’t know! Why is the sky blue?

Over the past couple of days I have been reading about proprioception, one of the body’s senses (outside of the five we are all familiar with). Proprioception is described very well by this article, which I quote from here:

Ask a neurologist how many senses the human body has, and you might get a surprising answer. Many identify nine or more senses- some listing as many as twenty-one. The first category of senses is the “special” senses, including the familiar sight, hearing, taste, and smell. The second category is made up of the somatic senses, which we usually lump under “touch”- including our perception of pressure, heat, and pain. The third category, however, is not nearly as well-known. These are the interoceptive senses- those that deal with data originating in the body itself.

Proprioception is one of this third category of senses and tells us the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body. For example:

To visualize this sense, close your eyes and extend your hand in a random direction. Now identify in your mind its exact position and open your eyes. Note that your brain was well aware of your hand’s position, even though none of the “classic” five senses were currently detecting it. This is proprioception.

But this is really scary, what if somebody were to lose the sense of proprioception? It sometimes happens a small amount during adolescence (when limbs grow very quickly it is possible, that our mind can’t quite keep up with where they are. Hence the stereotype of the clumsy teenager during puberty), but there is a disease called Proprioception Deficit Disorder (PDD), described first by Oliver Sacks in a book I new desparately want to buy (The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat):

In a matter of days, she [the patient] transitioned from a healthy and active mother of two to a helpless physical wreck, with no sensation of her own body. The preliminary testing showed that her nerves were in perfect working order; she could feel physical sensations nearly as well as she always had. However, somewhere between mind and body a roadblock had developed, preventing her brain from forming an accurate body image- or indeed a body image at all.

The results of this disorder are logical once one understands the concept of proprioception. Think of all the activities in a typical day that require the body’s knowledge of its own position. If you carry your briefcase to the car while fumbling for the keys, your legs do not buckle because they are currently unsupervised. Your hand does not drop its load because you neglected for a moment to think, hold on to the briefcase. Your jaw does not hang slack because you weren’t specifically concentrating on keeping your mouth closed. But for someone with PDD, these are exactly the type of things that happen.

In many respects, the body of a PDD victim becomes their puppet. Each movement must be carefully analyzed and put into motion; no longer can one trust the body to “just walk” or “just sit.” Thus, the movement does not look at all natural; opening a door becomes a laborious process of extend hand, tighten each finger, rotate knob, extend arm, raise foot, lower foot, and so on. Meanwhile one must not become distracted from the other foot, and who knows what is happening with the body parts not directly involved in the current process.

Now if that doesn’t sound unpleasant enough, just read one last sentence:

unlike most disorders, the more education one has [about PDD] the more likely one is to develop the affliction.

Sorry guys

Today the Guardian has a wonderfully blistering editorial piece on TV poo-sniffer Gillian McKeith. Her rudimentary misunderstanding of the basic tenets of biology and chemistry make for a great read, here are a few choice quotes.

I don't care what kind of squabbles McKeith wants to engage in over the technicalities of whether a non-accredited correspondence-course PhD from the US entitles you, by the strictest letter of the law, to call yourself "doctor": to me, nobody can be said to have a meaningful qualification in any biology-related subject if they make the same kind of basic mistakes made by McKeith.

….

But, to me, it’s tempting to dismiss the question of whether or not McKeith should call herself “doctor” as a red herring, a distraction, an unnecessary ad hominem squabble. Because despite her litigiousness, her illegal medicinal products, her ropey qualifications, her abusiveness, despite her making the wounded and obese cry on television, despite her apparently misunderstanding some of the most basic aspects of GCSE biology, while doling out “scientific” advice in a white coat, despite her farcical “academic” work, despite the unpleasantness of the food she endorses, there are still many who will claim: “You can say what you like about McKeith, but she has improved the nation’s diet.”

….

But let’s look at the evidence. Diet has been studied very extensively, and there are some things that we know with a fair degree of certainty: there is convincing evidence that diets rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, with natural sources of dietary fibre, avoiding obesity, moderate alcohol, and physical exercise, are protective against things such as cancer and heart disease.

But nutritionists don’t stop there, because they can’t: they have to manufacture complication, to justify the existence of their profession. And what an extraordinary new profession it is. They’ve appeared out of nowhere, with a strong new-age bent, but dressing themselves up in the cloak of scientific authority. Because there is, of course, a genuine body of research about nutrition and health, to which these new “nutritionists” are spectacularly unreliable witnesses. You don’t get sober professors from the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research Unit on telly talking about the evidence on food and health; you get the media nutritionists. It’s like the difference between astrology and astronomy.

Sometimes nature is the most beautiful, wonderous thing, and the complexities of existence leave me slackjawed with awe. At other times I’m just left scratching my head at why billions of years of natural selection (or God, I guess) design such fabulously weird, incomprehensible things. Here are a few examples of creatures that just leave me wondering why (or how) they exist.

This little fellow looks unhappy to be out of the water:

A fish with stilts? What is it thinking?

I very much doubt that ‘clown’ is a viable career choice for a deep sea dwelling fish

A star nosed mole:

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

And finally, proof that real life is more confusing than anything you can imagine. Here are some slugs having sex

If anybody else has any examples of nature being weird I’d like to see them

Sometimes going out looking for one thing finds you another.

I have spent a disturbing amount of time recently just flicking through scientific papers. There is something very exciting about just looking at data*, wondering about connections, and sometimes finding something brilliant. This evening was one of those times.

I happened to be reading about prayer healing and came across a bunch of studies. Check out Wikipedia’s experimental evaluation of prayer page. Here you’ll find details of a double-blind study (Byrd, 1983) that shows small but statistically significant positive effects of distant prayer groups (they pray based on the patient’s 1st name and ailment).

However this is my favourite thing. A researcher, named Leibovici, later conducted another double blind study. Sending out the first names and ailments of a bunch of patients who were already either dead or cured to almost 3,500 prayer groups. He found that prayer on these out of date patient records showed a statistically significant improvement in their retroactive conditions.

I absolutely had to track down a copy of this paper and found the following page, which contains two awesome things:

^{clicky for readable}

Firstly Leibovici starts being facetious and suggests that, since God is independent of both space and time, retroactive prayer should be used in clinical practice (yay statistics!).

Secondly a serious journal, the BMJ, has published a picture of some cells in the shape of a reindeer. I find it hard to imagine ApJ or MNRAS doing the same.

Oh, and for those of you (like me) that don’t know what squamous cells are - “cell type often seen in areas exposed to significant irritation or trauma - eg skin. (www.uwo.ca/pathol/glossary.html)”

Mmmmmmm…. the funny side of skin cancer.

^{*Yes. If you are wondering I do indeed lead a pathetic and empty shell of a life}

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I watched a program about how clever monkeys are last night. It was really interesting, and one experiment stood out in particular. Its aim was to find out if two chimps could figure out how to cooperate with each other. Here is a map of the experimental setup:

There are two monkeys (called 1 and 2). Monkey 2 is in a cage all by himself, seperated from monkey 1 by a door. Monkey 1 can open the door by pressing the button in his cage.

Outside of monkey 1’s cage there are two delicious bananas on a wooden plank. There is a rope draped around the plank such that if both sides of the rope are pulled at once the plank will slide towards the cage allowing access to the bananas.

The two sides of the rope are situated further apart than monkey 1 can reach. If he wishes to get the banana he will have to allow monkey 1 into his cage so they can pull one side of the rope each.

Watching this on TV was brilliant! Monkey 1 gave each end of the rope a tug and realized that he couldn’t get the banana. Then he tried to reach both ends of the rope at once, failed, and then looked at monkey 2 for a bit. You could almost see him thinking “Well really I don’t want to share the bananas…”. After a little bit he wandered over to the button, let monkey 2 into the cage and they both pulled the rope and had a banana each.

It was really weird watching the little guys. You could actually see monkey 1 figuring out the problem bit by bit. I was seriously unaware how clever they were. In the same program we got to see rudimentary monkey language, monkey culture and lots of other fun and exciting things!

Probably the best bit though was when they tried the experiment a second time with the ropes close enough together that monkey 1 could pull them both. Monkey 2 went absolutely apeshit (do you see what I did there) as monkey 1 just completely ignored him and got the bananas for himself.

I occasionally write about the weird and wonderful things that the world provides for us, from jellyfish lakes to killer plants. Something new caught my eye today. Meet the hummingbird hawk moth:

I think he (she?) is beautiful, and pretty weird looking. Here is one drinking nectar from a flower.

And yes, the hummingbird hawk moth is a moth, not a hummingbird.

This is a Lyre:

_{Click the birdy for amazing video}

The Lyre sings complex songs to attract mates. Lyrebirds’ songs are composed of sounds they hear, including sounds from machines, such as a camera’s shutter mechanism and film drive, a car alarm, and logging equipment. This bird is like a tape recorder.

It is part of the awesomeness of nature that it actually managed to create Larvell Jones out of police academy, before humanity itself did.

A couple of days, whilst clicking around blogs that I like to read I stumbled over this post on evilsciencechick.com about making yoghurt. Making yoghurt sounds like loads of fun and will serve as a practice fermentation for my attempt at hobo wine over the next couple of weeks.

Now I should probably start out by mentioning that I have no idea how to make yoghurt, none of the equipment required by the recipe and no real clue why I’m doing this. I seriously don’t even know what I’m going to do with over two pints of yoghurt. Anyway, common sense and logical reasoning aren’t exactly my strong points so I took a trip to the supermarket today after work to get the ingredients:

The cast from left to right

• Powdered Milk: All yoghurt recipes seem to have powdered milk in them. It just sounds pretty gross to me. Ah well, who am I to argue with the experts?
• Honey: I chose german honey from a monastery just outside of Munich. That’s just how classy I am (also the only honey I have sitting on the shelf). Perhaps I should have consulted with jim2 about what sort of honey to use. Oh well, too late now.
• Active Yoghurt: My yoghurt contains the following bacteria: lactobacillus acidophilus, bifidobacterium, streptococcus, thermophilus. I don’t know what any of that means but it sounds impressive
• Milk: Comes from cows

The actual yoghurt making process goes as follows. Step one:

Sterilize everything! I just dumped all my implements into boiling water for five minutes. That should teach any ‘bad bacteria’ to keep out of my way.

Out of interest, what’s the difference between bad and good bacteria? Sounds like the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters to me.

Secondly pour the milk into a saucepan then add the powdered milk (1 cup, I just eyeballed it) and honey (two tablespoons).

Heat the whole milky mess up to 140 farenheit. I don’t have a thermometer so I used this handy hint from the evilsciencechick blog:

the milk had to be "scalded," but not boiling. (this is why it helps to read several recipes before you try something new). So I heated the milk until steaming, with tiny foam bubbles formed on the sides, but NOT to boiling.

That scalding should take care of any pesky terrorists in the milk.

Tip most of the milky stuff into a container. The original recipe suggests that you use a cylindrical plastic container. I’m not good with shapes so I just used a piece of tupperware (sterilized of course). Mix the pot of yoghurt thoroughly with the remaining bit of milky stuff and then add it to the tupperware container. The official yoghurt recipe now calls for some fancy stuff:
Place container into a narrow wine bucket, lined with a heating pad. Set the heating pad to medium. Let the mixture ferment for 3 to 12 hours making sure the temperature stays as close to 115 degrees F as possible.

Well I have neither wine bucket nor heating pad so I just chucked the tupperware in the oven and set it for 40 degrees.

So that’s where I am right now, there is a (hopefully fermenting) tub of milk and sugar sat in my oven. Fingers crossed I’ll have some lovely yoghurt for breakfast tomorrow and another of my glorious forays into the world of culinary science can be called a success.

My inner realist is reminding me that this is very unlikely to happen and something will go horribly wrong.

Don’t really have any time to add text to this post right now so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Beautiful, murderous plants:

I’m pretty sure that mother nature was drunk when she decided to make these. When I have a garden/greenhouse I’d love to try my hand at keeping some.

I know that I give mother nature a lot of stick for creating weird shit like seahorses and the stonefish but sometimes natural selection works to create something that is so wonderful it can’t help but catch the imagination. Here is one such example of natural beauty.

There are some saltwater lakes in Palau (an isolated island nation in the Pacific Ocean) that somehow became isloated from the rest of the sea. The inhabitants of these lakes then evolved independently from the rest of the underwater population. One lake resident of particular interest is the jellyfish. With no natural predators in their new home they gradually lost the ability to sting and instead of hunting for prey they actually became farmers by working in symbiosis with algae inside their bodies. During the day they swim to the surface of the lake, where they sun themselves to feed their algae. During the night they retreat to the depths of the pool, where the environment is rich in bacteria and they can absorb nutrients

Here is a picture of somebody diving in Jellyfish lake:

Sometimes nature is pretty mind boggling. Here are a couple more great images of jellyfish lake.

So I have finally managed to work some science into this blog, it’s not exactly astronomy on but it’s certainly interesting. I found the following paper in the basement archives of the University library:

West, LJ, Pierce, CM, Thomas, WD (1962) Lysergic Acid
Diethylamide: Its effect on a Male Asiatic Elephant. Science, 138,1100-1102

In summary some guys shot an elephant with a huge dose of LSD and it died. Then they wrote a paper about it and got it publised in Science

The entire paper makes for an interesting read and certainly highlights some huge differences in how people approach science today compared to how they did in the early sixties. There is one section that really sticks out in my mind, it is the following:

The effecting of even a transient rage reaction in the cat usually requires intravenous administration of at least 0.1mg/kg ... The amount of LSD finally administered to Tusko {that’s the elephant’s name btw}, by intramuscular injection was 0.1mg/kg, or 297mg … If the elephant’s sensitivity were of order of that of a human being, this would represent a considerable overdose.

Let me just underscore what a monumentally bad idea this is: In effect the researchers made the approximation that an elephant is a humungous cat, completely neglecting that obvious fact that elephants and cats are not the same animal, and that the dose they had chosen would be enough to fuck a human up pretty comprehensively.

They then seemed somewhat surprised when their high-precision, well thought out calculations failed them. Gee, I didn’t see that one coming. How did they conclude that this was a good idea?

There are also mentions throughout the paper of experiments done on other animals

Doses of up to 6.5mg/kg are required to kill a cat
and
In order to produce in the rhesus macaque a sensory blockade sufficient to cause loss of position sense and temporary blindness, Evarts gave doses of up to 6.5mg/kg

I don’t know what it is about this paper that fascinates me so much. Maybe it’s the fact that it highlights the difference in scientist’s attitudes towards animals back then; maybe it’s the fact that it went spectacularly wrong but the authors soldiered on regardless and published a paper on ‘killing an elephant with LSD’; maybe it gives me hope that Science will accept some of my work someday; maybe it’s the completely arbitrary decision that elephants are the same thing as giant cats, or maybe I like it just because it’s so incredibly unexpected and random that I can’t help but smile, poor Tusko.

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Found the link I was talking about in the last post, here are nine self portraits drawn by a man on LSD

Some of the comments made by the doctors observing the artist really made me smile:

"I can feel my knees again, I think it's starting to wear off. This is a pretty good drawing - this pencil is mighty hard to hold" - (he is holding a crayon).

"I'll do a drawing in one flourish... without stopping... one line, no break!"
Upon completing the drawing the patient starts laughing, then becomes startled by something on the floor.

The changes in the drawings are really startling and in some ways similar to the schitzophrenic cats in the previous post.

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