illuminating science

Yet another study on the effects of mobile phones has been released: this time, saying that they’re basically safe. There really seems to be no consistency, with earlier studies showing a possible connection. It really seems like it would be wise not to read too much into studies like these, at least in a literal sense. One very important thing is that there’s only really 10 years of data, and that’s not really enough to be completely thorough, so we might be skeptical of studies claiming no effect (the effects might take longer than 10 years to appear). But at least on the timescale we have, if there are as many studies aren’t finding affects as not, then that puts some of the results of the affirmative studies in doubt. Basically, I don’t think we have enough data to be sure, and we shouldn’t panic about mobile phones. But nor should be be blaze. It’s probably sensible not to use a mobile phone excessively, or to use a hands free kit (although some of them have been reported to have even greater effects!)

In the end, the leading cause of death is birth (boom boom!) and it seems pretty much everything is carciogenic in some form or another. Even french fries are getting a bad rap, but everyone’s going to eat them regardless, right? So for the fabulous convenience that mobile phones provide, I, personally, would probably accept some small increased cancer risk. Although, I admit, that that’s probably easy to say when there’s no proven link. I’m a notoriously self-preserving kind of guy…heck, I’ve never broken a bone!

In other news, I’ve been having hard drive woes - trying to upgrade my Powerbook to Tiger (their new operating system) has revealed various hard disk errors. Basically, I think I’m going to have to reformat the whole lot and reinstall. Not great, but it may be nice to have a clean installation of Tiger. I’ve spent the last two days trying to find out if that’s my only/best option, and how best to backup my data. *sigh* It’s going to be a long road to recovery, I think, not least of all re-downloading and re-installing all my applications. So if my posts are a little less forthcoming over the coming days, my apologies.

Who says that personality tests have no basis? Well, me, actually, but for the sake of argument I just did a test to find out what “famous leader” I was. Guess who?

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I’ll happily take the implicit street cred (at least amongst physicsists!) that goes with that one, and leave it there. And I really did answer the questions honestly…

But I do promise: This is the first, last and only personality test to ever grace this blog.

I’m always fascinated by new research showing how intelligent animals can be, particularly when it suggests that humans aren’t quite so special as we once thought. Most recently, a killer whale at “Marineland” in Canada learned that it could
catch seagulls by regurgitating fish onto the surface of the water, then lurking below (jaws open!) for an unsuspecting seagull to swoop down in search of an easy meal. Then, the whale jumps up and has a tasty (if somewhat stringy :)) snack.

While this is pretty impressive in and of itself, what makes this so impressive is that the other killer whales in the tank eventually learned what he was doing and joined in. This includes his half-brother, their mothers, and more! This is apparently only the third species known to exhibit “cultural learning” where animals teach others to do some special trick. (The others are chimpanzees in controlled experiments, and wild dolphins who use sponges to protect their snouts when foraging on the sea floor. Wow!) As I understand it, this is distinguishing between behaviour which is simply genetic and behaviour that is learned from watching and doing. (Although, what about simple mimicking? Do animals know how to do everything from square one, or do they learn some things by mimicking? What about tigers or lions hunting? What’s the distinction here?) It’s also kind of cool that 2 out of the 3 known winners are sea creatures!

Anyway, let’s hope that the killer whales get to continue their hard earned trick, which apparently draws up to three or four gulls a day. And who knows? Maybe the gulls will become the fourth species, by learning that snatching fish from a killer whale’s tank isn’t such a hot idea. Though if enough of them get eaten, then perhaps we’ll see some real time genetic evolution!

In great news, Jenny recieved the “Student Encouragement Award” from the Smart Women - Smart State awards on Monday. This is basically an “honourable mention” award, which was presented to a student from any of the secondary student, undergraduate student or postgraduate student categories that did not win an award in their category, but showed outstanding achievement or potential. She was just one of a very impressive line up of candidates, and you can check out all the winners here, complete with photos and descriptions of their achievements. Jen’s outline was:

A physics student completing her PhD, Jennifer Riesz is working to determine the fundamental structure of melanin, so that its role in melanoma and other related melanin diseases can be understood. Melanin is a biological pigment found in the skin, hair and eyes of many species, including humans. Ironically, although melanin is designed to protect us from the sun’s harmful UV radiation, it is also involved in the formation of melanoma skin cancer. The study of melanin requires great innovation since most traditional methods have already been applied with little success. Jenny has made significant progress and has published papers on a number of her findings including a technique that allowed her to make the first accurate measurement of the radiative quantum yield of melanin, which is an essential quantity for understanding the way that melanin safely releases energy.

I attended the ceremony (which has got to be one of the best award ceremonies I’ve been to, see below). I particularly liked the way the MC (a news reader from a local TV station) very carefully pronounced “radiate quantum yield” (see the description above), then paused a moment for the audience to respond. (For the record, the quantum yield tells you what fraction of light absorbed by melanin is then re-emitted as light, as opposed to being converted into heat or used for some other purpose. For melanin it’s very low, meaning that most of the energy absorbed (e.g., harmful UV rays!) is safely dissipated as heat, rather than being re-emitted to harm cells.

The ceremony was at Parliament House in Brisbane, and began by lots of (free) drinks (Australian wine, bubbly and beer!) and nibblies, brought around by very friendly waiters & waitresses. Finally, they brought everyone inside and the Minister for Women (among other porfolios) gave a short speech about how far women have come, but also how far they have to go, particularly in science and engineering (only 1 in 6 or so engineers are female). She spoke really rather well, and seemed like a very friendly, very “Aussie” woman - I would have liked to have met her personally actually. Then, without further ado, they announced the winners, and read the little blurbs about their work. There are some seriously impressive people in Queensland! Check out their descriptions for all the details.

Then, the ceremony was over, and the winners went off for lots of photos (and I have to say Jen’s came out really well while the rest of the audience got back to celebrating - i.e., enjoying the drinks. I won’t tell you how many glasses of champagne I had… The actual ceremony was over in about 15 minutes or so, I’d estimate, and it really was about the winners and their work, a refreshing change from some of the pompous ceremonies where it’s more about the institution rather than the recipients (University graduation ceremonies come to mind!

My only negative point of the evening was that the Minister, when talking about how much women have achieved, also pointed out that women now hold 55% of all bachelor degrees in Australia. Although this is great for women, that means that men only hold 45% of degrees. If we’re aiming for equality, then this isn’t a good thing! I’m not sure whether the statistic meant “new” degrees (e.g., per year) or whether it really was of all degrees in existence, but particularly if it’s the latter, that’s a very bad thing given the once male excess. In vet science at least, women now make up about 90% of the students. Do we need to start focussing less on women, and more on boys and how they cope with school? Some women I’ve spoken to have (half-?)jokingly said that it’s about time that women came out ahead, but clearly that’s a ridiculous attitude.

It’s also somewhat disappointing that there are no “Compassionate Men” awards or anything like that for men who take up traditionally female dominated jobs - teaching and nursing are just two examples. Nor are there scholarships for men to study those courses, and I seem to remember there was a protest recently against suggestions to introduce some. Not that any of this in any way detracts from the importance or significance of the Smart Women awards!

Anyway, congratulations Jenny - you deserve it!

So Jenny (who had a couple of guest posts recently) has been shortlisted for the Queensland Smart Women - Smart State postgraduate award. There’s a presentation ceremony tonight at Parliament House where the winner will be announced - so best of luck!

I’m going to be a bit controversial now, though, and confess that I’ve always been a bit skeptical about “women in science” awards and what purpose they actually serve. First up, I actually think these awards are worthwhile. They really do have the purpose of promoting the idea that women are involved in science, and are doing great work just as much as the men in the field. The awards were quite widely advertised, and include a high school division, meaning that the girls who you want to encourage to do (or at least consider) science as a career get exposure.

Sure, they’re also rewarding the women who did the work, but if that was all there was to the award, then it would be a pretty stupid award - why should a woman get (or want?) money & recognition simply because she’s a woman? At school there was the Physics prize, and then the “Best female physicist” prize, sponsored by a local women’s organisation. I could never really understand that one. Surely everyone knows that there are girls in the physics class. So are they assuming that a girl can’t compete against the males in the physics class, and has no chance of winning the real award? (Because if she did, then she’d win both awards - and the second would seem quite superfluous.) I find it slightly irritating, but I think as a girl I would find it a little patronising. “Oh good, I received an award for being the best female physicist…”

I feel the same about scholarships for women at university. There are a ridiculous number of scholarships that are available only to women, and I just can’t see what purpose they serve - surely they’d be better going to whoever was most in need and deserving of them, whether male or female? Or (and I do think this deserves a separate scholarship pool) make them available to women who have taken time off from their careers to have (and care for) children. That’s where I think there is a real disadvantage (at least in terms of your career!) as a woman. These scholarships should help support a woman who is juggling study and children, and should encourage them to keep studying during that time. (Of course, you could argue that men migth benefit from that award as well, but there probably aren’t many stay-at-home dads out there, in reality. Though maybe that’s a good reason to offer scholarships, to encourage and make it easier for them to do it? Ideally, I would think it best if both parents worked part time, but that’s a different post )

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. Fingers crossed for Jenny and the ceremony this evening!

Yesterday, I performed shows as part of National Science Week, at the local Queensland Museum and Sciencentre. It was pretty good fun - there was quite a good audience at each show, and some really smart kids! I did mainly a liquid nitrogen show - showing them liquid nitrogen, splashing it around - generally having good fun And, of course, I froze balloon animals in it, which is always a hit, especially with the younger kids. Anything with balloons they go crazy for - don’t quite know why that is!

This was part of a whole load of activities they had going on - outside the museum, they had stalls set up doing things like making slime, building towers out of marshmellows, the usual University advertising material, and the opportunity to play the Monty Hall game. (Interestingly, they played that with 10 “doors” (actually styrofoam cups, hiding a Starburst lolly!) instead of 3, and that made your strategy much clearer, as I previously mentioned in a post. It would have been interesting, though, to do it first with 3 cups, then with 10 and see whether their strategy changed.

Actually, for me the maths stall (run by a guy from the University here that I know) was probably the best there - they had juggling balls with strings attached which you could juggle into braids (does that make sense?) This was actually something I thought up (with Brett, I think) independently a while ago, and had meant to try out, but it just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun. Even better, there’s apparently a theorem which says any braid pattern you can think can be made by juggling, which is really interesting. (Actually, you can’t do it with real balls because the attached strings get in the way of your arms, but who cares about that?)

All in all, I think it was quite a successful day, and it’s still going on today for a whole lot of visiting school students. Unfortunately, my PhD committments mean that I couldn’t do any more today. Things are getting a bit nuts at the moment, and I really need to knuckle down and do some writing!

There was an interesting article on Slashdot the other day, about the feasibility of growing meat, in the same way as you would grow a plant . Basically, they talk about replicating a single cell many times, to grow a huge thin sheet of animal tissue (which is all meat really is!) which could then be folded or processed into chicken nuggets, meat patties or (reading between the lines) other dishes where neither shape nor colour is particularly important. Of course, it sounds like there are plenty of problems to sort out, like getting the right amount of fat and other flavourings. But you can also reduce the amount of fatty acids, for instance - making the meat more healthy!

If successful, it raises some interesting ethical questions related to vegetarianism. If no animals were harmed (let’s assume that the inital donor wasn’t killed in the process, which may well be true), then is it okay for vegetarians to eat it, even if it’s technically flesh? Other arguments include health and the environment, but what if you can remove the fatty acids, and what if growing meat isn’t (energetically speaking) significantly worse than making bread or other manafactured foods?

Like the scientists growing a brain in a petri dish, it raises some interesting ethical questions that will have to be answered sooner or later.

Well, I’m back in Australia! I’ve just been frantic, though, trying to catch up with everything, so I haven’t had a chance to post yet. Tomorrow though! I wanted to suggest however that any Brisbane people might like to come to a talk tomorrow afternoon, about hidden dimensions, string theory and other assorted goodies. Sounds quite interesting! Details are below:

———————————————————-
Date: Friday, 19th August, 2005
Time: 4-5pm, followed by refreshments
Location: Parnell (Building 7), Rm. 222
———————————————————-
“Warped Passages: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions”

Do we inhabit a three-dimensional universe floating in a four-dimensional space? What if the extra dimensions required by string theory were not curled up and unobservably small, but unfurled and vast, extending forever? Could an invisible universe only a tiny fraction of an inch apart in another dimension explain phenomena that we see today in our world? Physicist and author Professor Lisa Randall unravels the mysteries of the universe’s hidden dimensions.

Refreshments will be served after the talk.

For more information visit http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/colloquium

Jenny Riesz, who posted last week, kindly agreed to post some of her thoughts about studying biophysics, and why you might choose it over just physics or biology. Read on for all the details - Joel

When I tell people that I work in the field of biophysics, they always ask “so, what actually IS biophysics?” And it’s a good question! I don’t think that there really is a clear definition. Basically, biophysics is anything where biology and physics overlap. It’s a very exciting field; there are lots of interesting problems in biology that can really benefit from a physics-type treatment.

I have always been interested in the biological sciences. Genetics, in particular, has always fascinated me. How can this single DNA molecule contain all the information to make up an incredibly complicated creature? How do all the pieces come together in exactly the right way? I enjoyed studying genetics at university, and was always amazed at how little we actually know!

This is me in one of UQ’s laser labs. This is where I did a selection of measurements of the radiative lifetime of melanin (see the previous post!) using their sophisticated laser system.

So why, then, did I end up doing my degree in Physics rather than biology? I think the main reason was because physics was hard. I found that it really challenged me! And rather than putting me off, I found this inspiring! While I enjoyed learning about biological systems, it was simply memorization. I found that in physics I was learning problem solving and how to deal with much more difficult concepts.

I specialized more and more into the physical sciences until by the end of my degree I wasn’t doing any biology at all, and I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. The following year I did Honours, and I decided to go back to the field that interested me in the first place – biology. I negotiated with my supervisor to do a selection of high level chemistry, physics and biology subjects, and a physics research project on the biological pigment melanin.

It was challenging picking up chemistry and biology without having done the prerequisite subjects! I had to do a great deal of work to catch up on the material that all the other students had covered in the intervening years. But I managed, and found that I ultimately had a much deeper understanding of the material than the other students. Also, I’m convinced that had I tried to go the other way – done biology and tried to jump into physics in the deep end – it would have been impossible!

There’s no denying that working in biophysics is difficult. In many ways, I feel like I need to know twice as much as everyone else; I need to be an expert in physics to talk to physicists, and I also need to be an expert in biology to talk to biologists. Not to mention all the chemistry that goes on in between! (on the side, I hated chemistry in first year. I’ve since decided that it’s a necessary evil, and I wish that I’d forced myself to do more!). But the overlap of the sciences is where the truly fascinating things are happening, and I’m glad that I’m able to be there!

Here’s a neat page that I stole from Slashdot, about popping water balloons in zero gravity! I don’t honestly know why these experiments were carried out, but they’re just too cool not to look at. The experiments involved popping a water filled balloon with a needle in low gravity conditions, in this case in a NASA plane that flies in a parabolic trajectory so that it falls with gravity. It’s just like jumping when a lift starts going down - gravity seems less because the lift is falling with you. The plane falls at almost the same rate as gravity, so even though the water balloon and everything else is accelerating, it doesn’t seem to be from inside the plane.

Check out the movies - they’re awesome! I particularly like the second one where they frantically try to capture the water in a plastic bag before the plane pulls out of its dive and the water splats to the floor. They don’t even bother in the third video!

I thought this was a fascinating article - it’s about a 29 year old parrot (yes, a parrot!) that can count, distinguish colour, apparently understand basic English and understands the concept of “zero” or “none”.

Basically, they can get Alex (the parrot - cute little fella!) to look at a number of coloured blocks. Then, they ask him “What colour three?”, for example, meaning “There are three of which coloured blocks?” Alex can then answer with a colour, or with “None.” if there aren’t any blocks with three colours.

What makes this so astounding is that the idea of “none” or “zero” is a very complex concept. Children need to be at least a couple of years old to understand it. (Interestingly (and mathematicians correct me if I’m wrong!) it was a relatively significant advancement of mathematics to include the concept of zero. I can’t remember the details though. Brett?) The parrot had learned the concept of “none” from a there is/there isn’t context, rather than counting, and it was discovered quite by accident that Alex the Parrot could apply it to counting as well!

I tried to find the original paper, but couldn’t (anyone?). However, the work was done by the Alex Foundation, and it has some interesting links to their prior research and techniques. It really is fascinating how a creature with a brain that small (no offence - just the facts!) can have such relatively complex thought processes. Interestingly, the way they taught the parrot these concepts is being applied to children with learning disabilities as well (in a modified form, one presumes!) So this research might end up being even more beneficial than expected.

Speaking of evolution, here’s a pretty impressive caterpillar that actually eats snails! It spins web strands just like a spider (but not into a web), and disguises itself with lichen and leaves. Then, it sneaks up on sleeping snails and basically ties them down (those threads are very strong!) Then, it works its way into the snail’s shell, cornering the little guy, and finally eating the snail alive. Poor little snail!

It’s a pretty impressive gig this caterpillar’s got going, and they are only found in the rainforests of Maui, Hawaii. As the researchers point out, this is why it’s so important for us to preserve these native areas. Who knows what other species are yet to be discovered?