A Somewhat Old, But Capacious Handbag

Mary B. Mitchell and Gene Conversion

2010-03-19T09:35:00.007-04:00

George W. Beadle in 1949, with an unnamed assistant who could plausibly be Mitchell but might not be.

I was reading up on gene conversion this week, and vaguely recalled that a woman discovered it, so I looked her up for the Zuskateer Party Calendar of women scientists' birthdays. Although I found her name easily enough - Mary B. Mitchell - and the 1955 paper in which she presented her results was available online, I found no birthday, no photo, and no biographical details except that her birth name was Houlahan. There wasn't even a description of her discovery on any blogs. Unto the breach! You can count this as an early entry for Ada Lovelace Day.

It may surprise you how good an understanding of genes scientists managed to achieve before they had any clue what exactly genes were. These days, if you choose your organism right, you can practically treat genes like Lego bricks, and break'em apart and stick'em back together how you please. But in the first half of the twentieth century, scientists worked out a lot about the nature of heredity, genetic variation, and the organisation and transmission of genetic information, largely by Counting Things.

22,747 mutants, ah ah ah. Mitchell counted over 100,000 spores for her gene conversion paper.

Fly-counters like Morgan are probably more famous, but one could argue that foost-counters like Beadle made even greater contributions. Mitchell worked in Beadle's lab, and she noticed something odd.

Photo by N. B. Raju, nicked from here.

This is the bread mould Neurospora, the fungus Mitchell worked on, under the microscope. Those things that look like strings of beads are groups of spores that have all come from one parent cell. Spores are made by meiosis - the same process that makes egg or sperm cells in people - and usefully, they're all held together so you can see which cell made what spores. Mendel's laws state that if the parent cell has two kinds of a gene, they should be doled out evenly to the spores. That's what's happening in the picture above: each set of eight spores is made up of four that are green and four that aren't.

Except it wasn't always true. Very occasionally there were six of one and and two of the other. It seemed Mendel's laws had some kind of loophole.

There were attempts to explain away this observation. Most blamed experimenter error, or insisted that two genes rather than one were involved, which would allow for a six to two split (if you're a biologist and can't see how, you should scribble your Punnett Squares right now and work it out). Mitchell's paper shot these doubts down: her experiments are meticulously controlled and double-checked at every stage to refute possible counterarguments. In her fungi, rarely but surely, a gene would sometimes change to match another one.

"Blimey," I hear you exclaim sarcastically, "how riveting. And how extremely surprising that a monk in 1850 knew a bit less than a professional geneticist in 1950." Sark ye not! Mitchell's results really did matter and they still do.
First, the findings lit the way to a better molecular understanding of the way in which genes are dealt out into sperm or eggs (or spores) and shuffled from generation to generation. Mitchell's discussion says: It might even be supposed that the event which gives rise to crossing-over took place in each case... but that this event results in an actual exchange in, statistically, only half the cases. This was startlingly prescient; explaining why is a whole 'nother post which I might write if there is general clamour for it, i.e. someone asks nicely.

Secondly, gene conversion has evolutionary implications that are still being argued over. It might affect the evolution of whole sets of similar genes, or the repetitive bits of our DNA (which is nearly all of it).

My third reason is more nebulous, and more tenuous, but I think it holds some water. Mitchell and the other founding mothers of non-Mendelian inheritance (Ruth Sager and Barbara McClintock - and maybe we can count Nettie Stevens) started people thinking about why genes are inherited the way they are, and what might happen if genes didn't play by the usual rules. They provided illustrative examples, conceptual frameworks, and probably a bit of inspiration, to the evolutionary biologists of the following few decades who were developing theories that centred on conflicts between selfish genes. So I'm particularly saddened that we don't know her birthday. I'd certainly celebrate it lavishly: I suspect she helped to kick-start my own field.

Amiable Cookies with Mean Choc Chips

2010-03-12T07:08:00.009-05:00

Cromagnon made these by accident when he used a bar of intense fuck-off 85% cocoa solids cooking chocolate instead of the normal stuff meant for eating. It was an adaptive mutation and we've been making them this way ever since. The cookie dough should be as mild and all-American as possible to contrast with the dark, bitter chocolate.
They're freezer cookies, so you make a vast batch of dough, freeze it in a cylinder shape, and slice off a few cookies at a time for baking. I defy the Breakfast Police and eat them for weekday breakfasts with orange juice and an espresso. Oh yes.
Makes about 100 cookies but not necessarily all at once.

Recipe
To make the dough, beat 175g caster sugar and 110g brown soft sugar with 225g butter (at room temperature), then beat in 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla extract.
Next, sift 450g plain flour with 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, and mix all that in. Finally stir 55ml milk and 100g very dark chocolate chunks through the dough. (Green & Black, Lindt and Cote d'Or all make 100g bars with 85-90% cocoa solids which you can chop up into little bits). Chill the mixture for an hour or so in the fridge if you have time.
Then tip it out onto a floured board and squish it into two sausage shapes about 5cm across and 30cm long. Wrap them in baking parchment and shove them in the freezer until needed. They keep for a good few weeks.

When you want cookies, preheat the oven to 200 deg C. Cut off 5mm slices of dough like slicing a salami, and put them on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment (or just well greased). Leave room between them so they can spread out a bit. Bake them for 7 minutes. Let them cool slightly before trying to remove them from the tray, as they're still very soft when they leave the oven.

Compare and Contrast

2010-03-09T12:06:00.008-05:00

Here are some edited highlights of a BBC news story published yesterday, about some medical research that only looked at female subjects:

Women... Women... Women... women... women... The women... the study did not include men, the authors believe the findings may not apply to men. The women... men who drink might not do this... the way men and women break down alcohol in their liver may differ, which help might explain why women... you... people should be wary... women... women.

Here are some edited highlights of a BBC news story published today, about some medical research that only looked at male subjects:

you... you... your body... us... we... we... our mood... we... People... we... volunteers... people... volunteers... volunteers... patients... patients.

Book review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2010-03-03T12:04:00.011-05:00

My copy, on campus at the University of Thighmarcester. I couldn't wait for the UK version to come out so I ordered the US one for a princely sum, and the VERY NEXT DAY someone offered me a review copy for free. Gah.

Are you a scientist? If you're not, I recommend that you read Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because it's a jolly decent popular science book.

But if you are, I urge you to read it, because it is not really a popular science book at all. It has yer standard pop-sci format – human interest, historical background, there's the eccentric genius, here comes the science bit, concentrate… but at heart it's a human story, albeit one that stirs up questions of politics, race relations, and medical ethics. What's inspired about it is that Skloot has inverted the usual "framing" of pop-sci, where personal narratives are a means to inspire the lay reader's interest, and instead uses scientific content to draw nerds like me into caring about a family history.

The family in question is that of Henrietta Lacks, who had eleventy squillion and six offspring: four sons, two daughters, and an immortal cell line cultured from the cancer that killed her in 1951. HeLa cells, as they were labelled, have thrived in laboratories across the world ever since: they’ve been to space, they’ve caught AIDS and Ebola, they’ve tested innumerable drugs, and they’ve caused an international scientific scandal. They’ve even been classed by Van Valen* as a new species of unicellular mammal, a distinction they share only with two transmissible cancers.

Henrietta's eldest daughter, Deborah Lacks, spent twenty years unaware of her mother's legacy, and when – by coincidence – she did find out, she was haunted for as long again by worries about the pain and distress her mother must be feeling as the subject of such horrific experimentation. If at this point you're tempted to snigger at Deborah’s ignorance, as I was when I heard a garbled version of this story thirteen years ago, you just exposed your own. The medical and scientific establishment made no attempt to inform the Lacks family about the situation - unless you count sending a postdoc who spoke little English to sample their blood and talk over their heads about adrenergic receptor genotypes - and the shadow of the Tuskegee syphilis study alone would have justified almost any level of paranoia. In fact, Deborah’s grace and forgiveness, her eagerness to understand her mother's contribution to science, and the extraordinary manner in which she comes to interpret it, lift the mood of a book that could otherwise have been a relentlessly miserable piece of Improving Literature.

The Immortal Life is thought-provoking, challenging, and downright harrowing at times. I hesitate to say you ought to read it because nobody likes a chore, but thankfully it's well-paced, suspenseful and inherently fascinating, so I only need to say you ought to start reading it and you'll finish it in no time (keep tissues handy if you have a soul - I cried). It's due out in the UK on the 10th of June, so get your pre-order in now so's you can smugly lend it to your friends after it wins a bunch of prizes.

*I will consider myself grown up when I can read the name of this distinguished evolutionary theorist with no accompanying urge to play air guitar.

Got Lurgi? Try Laudanum!

2010-02-23T11:03:00.013-05:00

*brushes away cobwebs and comment spam*
Hello! Life got busy and I went away and twittered a lot, and am now debating with myself whether and how to start blogging again. I'm starting to think I'd prefer to write about science under my real name, 'cos then I can claim it as Outreach and Writing For Lay Audiences and all that, but on the other hand I'd rather not attach my real name to too much swearing and pinko-commie-feminazi gubbins because we all know what nasty internet trollbags tend to do when they both disagree with you and know the email address of your employer. I'm sure anyone with ten minutes and a smidge of savvy could work out who I am, but I count on a. internet trollbags having short attention spans and b. my blog never getting very much traffic anyway, which has worked so far. (By Trollbag Logic, of course, writing pseudonymously is paranoid but writing under your real name is asking for trouble.)

Anyway, the lovely DrugMonkey asked for this picture a year ago. I'd only just got round to sending it to him when I also saw this post about historical attitudes to drugs, which reminded me that I had been meaning to blog it.
This is a page from my great-grandmother's cookery notebook. She was a cook in England in the late nineteenth century (yes, we have long generation times in my family). Elsewhere in the notebook she seems to be planning a menu for a visit by Lord Roberts of Kandahar, so her employers were clearly very, very posh. And, whenever they got a cold, very, very high.

Click pic for bigger. Here's a transcript (as best I can read it):
Hethys recipe for cough mixture

1 pennyworth of each
Antimonial Wine
Acetic Acid
Tincture of opium
Oil of aniseed
Essence of peppermint
1/2lb best treacle

Well mix and make up to Pint with water

I'm rather snot-ridden myself at the moment - can anyone sell me a penn'orth of laudanum?

Spot The Difference

2009-08-20T11:45:00.010-04:00

Here's a series of recent tweets from excellent pop-sci writer and academic ninja Ben Goldacre, on those infuriating "charity muggers" who stop you in the street and ask you to set up a direct debit to a charity, of which their company gets a cut:

charity muggers mean your experience of walking down the street is defined by having to say "no" all the time. this is really corrosive.

also, when i'm walking down the street, i'm thinking, and it's really important time to me. someone is paid to ruin it, for a margin.

RT @Natt: Realised the other day that I had developed a semi-permanent street-scowl to discourage them. And to put me in a bad mood.

how can this be healthy for a community? not sort of thing you'd make illegal, but massive, collective censure, surely?

okay, i want an idea for collective action, that any individual approached can use, to eradicate charity mugging. t-shirt+glory to best.

RT @WHOMcD: Eckhart saw this coming. Forced facial expressions drive mood. Charities may be materially increasing the crime rate!

OK: you're minding your own business, and someone interrupts your train of thought, impinges on your time, asks you intrusive questions, persists when you say no politely and gets tetchy when you say no directly. Remind you of anything?

The difference between this and the kind of street harassment women put up with all. the. fucking. time. is that chuggers aren't actually frightening and probably won't outright swear or spit at you or try to follow you home. And I'm none-too-foxy, but I still get catcalled more often than I get approached by a chugger.

Ben's started a #chuggerstop tag. It has a few people defending chuggers by saying they raise a lot for charidee. Strangely, however, there's been no "can't you just take three seconds to be polite" and no "they think you look wealthy and generous, so you should be flattered!" and no "just ignore it" and no "well you should expect that to happen if you go to the shopping centre at that time of day" and certainly no "don't get so angry, haven't you anything important to worry about?"
I can't think of a witty closing sentence, so I'll just beat my head against this handy wall.

THUNK.
THONK.
THOP.

Just Ask A Brit! and then delete her answer

2009-07-30T08:38:00.006-04:00

I happened across this post attempting to scare fat Americans with bogeystories about fat people being denied medical treatment under "socialised healthcare". (I gather similar scare stories are being told to old Americans, along the lines of "The gubmint will come round on your 65th birthday and SHOOT YOU".)

Anyway, said post contained the line If you think it can’t happen, ask someone who lives in the United Kingdom or elsewhere. They’ll set you straight on that, and quickly.

So I commented saying yes, please do ask someone who lives in the UK! I'm one! And what d'you know, it seems they deleted my comment. It's possible it's some kind of auto-mod, although the comment showed up earlier and had no links or swearies in. Their blog, their rules an'all that, so I thought I might as well put what I can remember of my answer here, with extra ranting:

Contrary to popular American belief, NHS hospitals do not look like this.

I can tell you dozens of stories of fat friendsandrelations (and myself - I think I'm currently "overweight" by BMI) getting excellent, prompt treatment on the NHS. I've never known anyone be denied treatment on the basis of weight, although I've heard about it on the news occasionally regarding knee replacements. (Of course, US insurance companies often deny treatment to fat people too. And I'm sure there's as much prejudice here as anywhere.)

I've lived in the US (with good insurance), so I know both systems a bit. I've never known anyone who's lived under both systems who prefers the US one - an impression borne out by the comments here.
And to those of us who grew up outside the US, your system with its 22000 preventable deaths a year and its bankruptcies and its get-cancer-lose-your-house and its I've-spilt-a-chip-pan-down-myself-but-I-can't-afford-to-go-to-the-hospital and its "you're a biologist, do you think my kidney pain might be something serious?" looks utterly, criminally insane.

Well, you did ask.

Change at Baker Street

2009-07-28T08:58:00.010-04:00

Has it been ten weeks? Urk. I blame Twitter for letting off too much blogsteam.

Youse should all go and see Robin's play Broken Holmes on the Edinburgh Fringe.
It's got witty metafictional gubbins, knob jokes, angst, murder and poisonous snakes. And the cast are brilliant. I went to a preview in a pub in that there London, and had to leave my beer undrunk during the performance for fear of laughing it up my nose. You can, and should, buy tickets here.

The Singh thing: law being an ass

2009-05-09T04:32:00.010-04:00

Disclaimery bobbins: I kno o about law. This post is my opinion based on a bit of cursory reading and if you want 100% reliable truefacts the legal bloggers are a much better place to look.

The blogs are all over this story, but it's not in the papers yet. Physicist Simon Singh followed up his successful pop-sci book Fermat's Last Theorem with a new one called Trick or Treatment? on alternative medicine. In it, he called out* the British Chiropractic Association for promoting bogus treatments. The BCA, as is usual for a pore ole downtrodden group of penniless but well-meaning practitioners who just want a chance to debate the evidence, sent in the legal team.

The libel court's preliminary ruling, which lawblogger Jack of Kent describes as astonishing, was that to defend himself, Singh will have to prove that the BCA are deliberately and knowingly lying to patients. This is going to be almost impossible, because they are probably not doing so, which is why Singh never said they were in the first place. He was saying the treatments don't work, which they don't, and that the BCA promotes them, which it does.

I wish Simon all the best with the case and will for deffo buy his book now.

*In the present-day American meaning of "publicly challenged them", not the Regency "slapped them in the face with a glove, dashed a glass of Burgundy over their small-clothes and demanded single combat." Although that would be much cooler.

I fear change

2009-05-06T06:01:00.004-04:00

but I signed up for one of them there twitter accounts anyway. I used my real name, so if you know it, you can find out what I had for lunch without all that tedious mucking about with blogs. Interweb friends who don't know my real name are welcome to email me and ask!

Also, sorry I didn't join in Blog Against Disablism Day like I said I would. Blogger wouldn't let me post because some lagging mongrel of a 'bot thought it was spam. It's true: my blog ate my homework.

Good.

2009-04-29T11:31:00.005-04:00

Commons defeats are nearly always good news.
Gurkha soldiers, who have for many years done the UK's most dangerous dirty work for a pittance, have now earned the right to come and live here if they so wish. Immigration minister Phil Woolas is wailing that up to 100,000 Nepalese will immediately swarm over to enjoy our renowned cuisine, fine weather and welcoming disposition, but as Monty Python so elegantly put it, this statement is quite meaningless as the phrase 'up to' clearly includes the number 'nought'.

I suppose I should grudgingly thank my otherwise fuckwitted MP for supporting the Gurkhas. It's also nice to see the Lib Dems getting off their arses for once, although it'll take a few more examples before I forgive them for being such a pathetic bunch of milquetoasts over the Iraq war.

I bin to London Zoo again

2009-04-28T12:06:00.006-04:00

However, this here potto is from Quebec zoo.

Nocturnal House Triolet
If I only had a potto!
They're my favourite sort of lorid.
I would keep it in a grotto,
if I only had a potto,
and I'd feed it on risotto -
all those grubs and gum sound horrid.
If I only had a potto!
They're my favourite sort of lorid.

Addendum
A potoroo
Could live there too,
Inside the potto grotto zoo.

HOOOOOOO!

2009-04-01T11:16:00.005-04:00

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

How many did you get right?

Tuesday Evo-Psych Bollocks from the Institute of Pissing About

2009-03-10T11:31:00.008-04:00

I think I'll make this a regular feature. Everyone else does.

When cave-ladies ground up roots and seeds to make pies for their cave-husbands, a white colour indicated the food was free of toxic contaminants. Cave-ladies accordingly evolved to value white above all other colours, which is why women today all long for a white wedding dress!
However, cave-ladies also needed to be able to tell when their cave-pie was cooked to a delicious golden brown. Women's visual systems therefore make a far more acute distinction between white and brown than those of men, who in our evolutionary past only saw the pies in their cooked state. For this reason, men can't see dirt and should never do laundry.

Thanks to Pandagon and Physioprof for inspiration.

MMM PIE #2

2009-02-17T16:03:00.005-05:00

Behold our Sunday lunch! Cromagnon did the steak and mushroom filling, and I made flaky pastry using the recipe from Huge Furry-Witteringfool's MEAT cookbook. The result was even more yumscrumpshytastic than Pie #1 (a hot water crust pork pie), and all the rolling and folding of the pastry was jolly good fun in a playing-with-plasticene sort of a way.

It makes me want to rap about the pie.

Happy Darwin Day, every one

2009-02-12T09:48:00.010-05:00

I was going to write a bah-humbug post about how this Darwin Day stuff is getting on my wick a bit, and we should be cheering for all the thousands of people who've given us 150 years of cool science, rather than just one Founding Father. But today's Araucaria crossword got me in the spirit. I'll be making a traditional roast tortoise tonight, and following the old Darwinmas custom of hitting wildlife with a stick.

Edit: I just invented the Origin of Species drinking game. Each player has to read out a whole sentence from the book without stopping for breath. If they can't do it, they take a swig and try the next sentence instead. If they can, the book passes to the next player. It'll go like this:

Player 1: "Finally, then, I conclude that the greater variability of specific characters, or those which distinguish species from species, than of generic characters, or those which are possessed by all the species; that the frequent extreme variability of any part which is developed in a species in an extraordinary manner in comparison with the same part in its congeners; and the slight degree of variability in a part, however extraordinarily it may be developed, if it be common to a whole group of species; that the great variability of secondary sexual characters and their great difference in closely allied species; that secondary sexual and ordinary specific differences are generally displayed in the same parts of the organisation, are all..."
(Drink)
"All being mainly due to the species of the same group being the descendants of a common progenitor, from whom they have inherited much in common, to parts which have recently and largely varied being more likely still to go on varying than parts which have long been inherited and have not varied, to natural selection having more or less completely, according to the lapse of time, overmastered the tendency to reversion and to further variability, to sexual selection being less rigid than ordinary selection, and to variations in the same parts having been accumulated by natural and sexual selection, and thus having been adapted for secondary sexual, and.."
(Drink)

Let me know if you try it and survive.

Today's irresponsible tripe courtesy of Jeni Barnett

2009-02-06T12:41:00.010-05:00

Global Radio and LBC, who employ actress Jeni Barnett, are threatening to sue Dr Ben Goldacre after he posted an excerpt from her radio show and pointed out what a dangerous spew of woo-crazed drivel it was. Ben's taken the mp3 down because he wants to keep his house, but some other naughty internet people have put it back up again elsewhere. Here's a transcript of part of it (minutes 20-22):

Jeni Barnett: So what would you say – I mean, it’s not my job to say to people don’t do it, it’s not my job to do any of that, but you’re allowed to have your say. What would you say to people – as a mum of eight little lives that you are deeply responsible for – what would you say to people who are in two minds about it?
Caller: Er… I would never recommend having children vaccinated, and people think I’m very strange, but all my younger children that haven’t been vaccinated have been very very healthy. The youngest had measles about three months ago and he was fine, he wasn’t very well for about a week, ten days, and then he was fine and none of my others picked it up. So I think they must have a certain amount of natural immunity and I’m far, far happier for them to have developed that natural immunity than to be constantly being filled with artificial substances.
Jeni Barnett: Well thank you so much, my darling. That’s Amanda in Hayward’s Heath. “Just was listening to your show. If people actually took the time to look at what’s in vaccines, they would think twice about giving them to their children. As well as not being 100% effective, they also have cancer-causing agents. Also, a child’s immune system takes approximately 2 to 3 months to fully get up and running from birth. Also, if we look at the countries who have the highest populated vaccinated, you will notice that they have the most allergies. I’m not totally against immunisations, but we should be giving children at least a year to develop their own immune system to deal with the onslaught.” I didn’t say that. I wish you’d given me your name.

Three things that really grind my gears about this are:
1. Babies are not epidemiology qualifications. (Tara, who has both, would no doubt agree.)
2. Blah blah all we want is a chance to debate the evidence blah blah big pharma has all the money blah blah take down that criticism or our team of highly-paid lawyers will kick your arse.
3.

I'm A Celebrity, Get Me A Job With The Tory Party

2009-02-02T08:21:00.007-05:00

TV presenter Carol Vorderman has been appointed the Conservatives' "Maths Tsar" by David Cameron. No, really. She'll be touring schools and then delivering a report with suggestions for new education policies. Perhaps one day, thanks to her expert* guidance, British schoolchildren will be sufficiently numerate to work out that MMR is safe, "detox" is bollocks, and taking out a high-interest loan secured on your home is a very bad idea.

*Third class degree in engineering and knows her times tables.

Last-minute virtual shoe throw

2009-01-20T10:45:00.003-05:00

THUNK! Bye, Dubya.

Oh yes.

2009-01-19T14:40:00.001-05:00

Hipy papy chrithsmuths thudthdy

2008-12-24T18:28:00.004-05:00

Double helix socks (what I am knitting for my brother for Christmas but aren't finished yet), modelled by a small aubergine. Here's a cable chart in case anyone else wants some:

OMG! Weirdo child-people enjoy their jobs!

2008-12-15T09:08:00.010-05:00

Hurrah for Laura Howell, the first woman to draw a weekly cartoon for the Beano! She's been included in a cheery series of BBC articles about kids' dream jobs, along with a chocolate taster, a video game designer and the chief model-maker at Legoland.

No hurrahs for whoever linked it from the BBC front page with the title "The jobs that mean you don't have to grow up." Shto? Do Legoland managers spike the tea urn with hormone antagonists so their employees grow no body hair? Are chocolate tasters exempt from council tax? Can't Laura wash her own clothes and stay up after 8.30pm if she likes?
No, no, I understand. They're using "grow up" to mean "resign yourself to pointless drudgery for most of your waking hours for most of your life."

I once heard on the radio about a Nigerian village in which river blindness was so common that the inhabitants believed losing one's sight was a natural part of growing up. Losing one's sense of fun and purpose isn't natural either, and we've got less excuse for believing it.

I told you Canada was a sensible place.

2008-12-08T06:49:00.008-05:00

Q Transmissions, a Canadian skeptical radio show, is holding a contest! Record yourself singing these lyrics and you could achieve FAME and a PRIZE.

As some commenters have pointed out, the scansion is dodgy in parts and I couldn't be arsed to think of many three-syllable rhymes. But if you are not completely satisfied, you can have your money back! Here, just peel it off the screen:

I suggest you spend it on reading the first chapter of a swashbuckling adventure story.

Amazon knows best

2008-11-24T12:45:00.008-05:00

If anyone was wondering what to get me for Christmas, Amazon keeps pestering me with recommendations for not only "Coalescent Theory: An Introduction" by John Wakeley:

This monograph is intended mainly for biologists but it will also be of interest to mathematicians who wish to see how this branch of applied probability theory plays out in a biological setting.

but also "Zachary Quack Mini Monster" by Lynley Dodd:

Zachary Quack is back! The irrepressible little duckling is starring in his own story and is more pittery-pattery, skittery-scattery than ever.

I can't decide which I'd like best, so it's probably better to go for something in between like Hairy Maclary's Great Big Noisy Selective Sweep.

What genre-busting title does your recommendations page inspire?

Recipe November! Sossij and tomato casserole

2008-11-23T15:44:00.005-05:00

1 onion, chopped
2 tbs groundnut oil
6 sausages
200ml cider
50g tomato puree
4 sundried tomatoes, chopped finely
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
4 sticks celery, chopped
100g red lentils

Heat the oil in the bottom of a heavy saucepan, and brown the onion and sausages. Then cut the sausages into chunks (I stick my kitchen scissors in the pan to do this) and stir in all the other ingredients. Add more cider or water if needed to cover the vegetables. Simmer gently for about 45 minutes until the lentils are soft, season to taste and serve with mashed potato.

Recipe November! Supersticky banana loaf

2008-11-20T16:30:00.002-05:00

Preheat the oven to 170 deg C and grease or line a loaf tin.
Sift 225g self raising flour into a mixing bowl.
In a jug, mash 3 overripe bananas with a squeeze (about 1 tsp) of lemon juice, then mix in 50ml milk, 50g golden syrup, 50g malt extract and 70g brown sugar. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour and stir together adding 150g sultanas to make a stiffish batter. Scrape the batter into the tin and bake for 1 hour.

Recipe November! Lime and Ginger Cordial

2008-11-18T15:33:00.001-05:00

Pour 200ml boiling water into a large heatproof jug, add sugar until the volume hits the 300ml mark, and stir until the sugar's dissolved.
Slice 3 limes and a thumb-sized lump of ginger thinly and stir them into the syrup. Cover and leave overnight then strain into a bottle. Dilute to taste with sparkling water. It's got a nice bitter gin-and-tonicy tang to it.

Another blogfriend writes a book! Buy it too!

2008-11-17T16:38:00.005-05:00

Cell biologist Jennifer Rohn (editor of LabLit) has her first novel out this month. This impresses me even more than the non-fiction - imagine being paid to make things up!
Thanks to rpg for letting me know.

Recipe November! Peppadew Bacon Fusilli

2008-11-17T16:06:00.009-05:00

Peppadews are a tasty South African variety of piquante pepper which you can buy in a jar. Substitute any other peppers you like, but if they're raw fry them along with the mushrooms. I hold that fusilli is the best pasta shape cos it can't stick together as it cooks.

100g mushrooms, sliced
2 rashers streaky bacon, chopped
10g butter
1 crushed or chopped clove of garlic
4 or 5 peppadew peppers from a jar, sliced
100g fusilli
100g spinach, washed

The sauce takes about as long to cook as the pasta does, so get the pasta boiling first, then fry the bacon, mushrooms and garlic in the butter. When they're done, add the peppers and the spinach and put a lid on the saucepan so the spinach steams. Toss the lot together with the cooked pasta and eat it. Serves 1 if she ran home from work and got in STARVIN'UNGRY. Total distance run in training so far: 99 miles, or London to nearly Grantham up the East Coast Main Line.

Recipe November! Blue cheese pasta

2008-11-13T18:06:00.004-05:00

Another cheaty somebody-else's-recipe day: Cromagnon cooked me this made with Gorgonzola. NYOM.

"There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes."

2008-11-13T07:48:00.009-05:00

- Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin, via Pandagon

Sarah Palin was certainly the target of a lot of demeaning misogynist crap, which sucks even when the target is an evil theocratic wackaloon. I also suspect that if Palin had been a grey-haired man rather than a former beauty queen who fit so well into pernicious "bimbo" stereotypes, the world might never have noticed she was as dim as the microwave background. But 'ksake, she is dim, and ignorant, and incurious. If Paglia thinks otherwise, she's got a bad case of the deludes.
(Is anyone else reminded of a doting pet owner? Hey, Fluffy, biscuit! Biscuit, Fluffy! Aw, look at his eyes. He understands every word I say.)

Anyway, I propose a new system of degree classifications: First, Upper Second, Lower Second, and Powerful Clarity of Consciousness In The Eyes.

Buy my blogfriends' books

2008-11-12T07:24:00.009-05:00

It seems books are the new blogs.
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has written one that you ought to buy. Ed is a cancer researcher who writes clearly and entertainingly about life sciences, and his book, like his blog, is aimed at interested non-specialists who like their pop sci accurate and up-to-date.
For an even more diverse array of boffinry, try the Beano Annual of science blogging: The Open Laboratory, compiled by Bora "Coturnix" Zivkovic of A Blog Around The Clock.
Female Science Professor has put together a book too, about surviving academia and run-ins with Professor Troll. It's for a less general audience, but if you know a woman scientist she'd probably love a copy. Buy it here.
Lastly, Kate Harding and Marianne the Rotund have writ a real book with a real publisher about how dieting is shit.
Your Christmas shopping is now done.

PS: I almost forgot Bad Science! Everyone's favourite academic ninja rants lyrical about MMR, homeopathy and litigious copromancers.

Recipe November! Sweet Chestnut Paaaaie

2008-11-12T03:00:00.000-05:00

I heart Southern cookery, especially paaaaies. Here's an anglicised version of one of my favourites, with sweet chestnuts instead of sweet potatoes. I've always thought they had a similar velvety texture.

Pastry ingredients:
50g butter, diced
25g lard, diced
150g plain flour
3tbs cold water

Filling ingredients:
350g whole sweet chestnuts or 300g unsweetened chestnut puree
300g tin sweetened condensed milk
1 tbs dark brown muscovado sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 tbs cornflour
grated nutmeg

Rub the fats into the flour, sprinkle the water over, and squash the mixture together into a lump. Wrap your pastry in clingfilm and leave it to rest for 20 minutes, then roll it out and line a 9" diameter, 1.5" deep pie dish with it. Prick the pastry case all over with a fork and bake it, empty, in a preheated 220 deg C oven for 12 min. Remove from the oven and turn the heat down to 160 deg C.

Meanwhile, either boil and peel the chestnuts or open the tin of puree. I did it the long way but it took bloody ages. Using a blender, mix the chestnuts and all the other filling ingredients together.

When the mixture is lump-free, pour it into the pie case, sprinkle some nutmeg over it and put it back in the oven for about 40 minutes until the filling is just set. Let it cool a bit before serving with cream, ice cream or chocolate sauce.

Recipe November! Chocolate For Breakfast

2008-11-11T15:41:00.006-05:00

Heat up a mugful of milk in a small saucepan. Break up 40g good dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids is best - if it's any stronger you have to add sugar too, and three ingredients is more than I can cope with at breakfast time).
Switch the hob off sos's you don't burn the house down, then put the chocolate in the hot milk and whisk it like billy-o until there are no lumps left. Pour the hot chocolate into a mug and drink it.

Breakfast is healthful
and chocolate is breakfast;
you do the logic.

Recipe November! Beetroot Bortlebean Salad

2008-11-10T18:14:00.009-05:00

I couldn't remember the word "borlotti" the other day, hence Bortlebean. I've also blogged beetroot salads before, but this one has different things in, so there.

500g beetroots
250g raw carrots, peeled and grated
6 spring onions, trimmed and chopped finely
5 tbs walnut oil or olive oil
400g can of borlotti beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbs white wine vinegar
a handful of chopped walnuts
a handful of dried cranberries
1 tsp caraway seeds
chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Cook the beetroots by wrapping them in foil and bunging them in the oven while you cook something else. They seem very tolerant of differing cooking times and temperatures, but 45 minutes at 180 C is probably ideal for large beets.
Let them cool, then peel and chop them. Put in a large bowl and mix in all the other ingredients. Season, and add more oil or vinegar to taste. Scrape into airtight containers for packed lunch. Make sure they're good containers, because if this leaks it'll look like your handbag is dripping blood.

Never mind the saxophone.

2008-11-08T21:02:00.003-05:00

I could REALLY annoy the cats if I took up Mongolian throat singing.

I had no idea the human voice could do this.

Recipe November! Fresh gingerbread

2008-11-06T13:20:00.003-05:00

I'm cheating - I made this at the weekend (it's got tastier every day since) and the recipe's not even my own. My only tweak was to leave off the icing. It doesn't need it, and it's less messy in a packed lunch without.
Nigella's fresh stem ginger gingerbread.
That's an American recipe: the Brit version uses golden syrup and black treacle.

Recipe November! Malty baked apples

2008-11-05T14:58:00.004-05:00

Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
Core one cooking apple per person, place on a piece of foil and fill the core hole with 1/2 tsp butter, 1/2 tsp sugar and 1/2 tsp malt extract. (Eating apples would probably be fine, but I'd miss out the sugar in that case.) Wrap the apple in the foil and bake for about 25 minutes until softened. Tip the apple and its malty juice into a bowl and serve with yoghurt or ice-cream.

I heart Simon Schama

2008-11-04T22:18:00.004-05:00

and I am going to buy ALL HIS BOOKS, EVER because he is currently on the telly annoying an evil moustachey wackaloon by being right. Well done, America.
*terrorist fist bumps*

Recipe November! Chai Panna Cotta

2008-11-04T03:00:00.001-05:00

If you prefer your chai spiced with ginger, black pepper or cinnamon sticks instead, switch away. Green cardamoms will do fine if you can't find the bigger, menthol-scented black ones.

Ingredients
1 pint single cream (that's 2 1/2 cups light cream for you lot left of the pond)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 level teaspoon powdered gelatine
2 or 3 black cardamom pods
5 whole cloves
1 star anise
1 black tea bag (or some cold strong tea from a teapot)

Make 2 tablespoons of strong tea with the teabag and let it go cold, or measure out 2 tablespoons of cold strong tea into a cup.
Sprinkle the gelatine over the tea and leave it to soak.
Put the cream and spices into a saucepan and bring slowly to a simmer, stirring occasionally.
Add the sugar and simmer for 2 minutes more. Take out the spices.
Add the gelatine-and-tea mixture and whisk it in thoroughly, lest you make the considerably less delicious recipe Cream With Lumps In.
Divide between 4 to 6 small bowls or teacups (it's very rich!) and chill for a few hours until set. You can turn them out to serve, but I usually don't bother. Sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon on top to garnish.

Recipe November! Jerk-Spiced Squash Soup

2008-11-03T14:55:00.011-05:00

After three days, NaNoWriMo already feels like a chore and isn't going anywhere, so I'm quitting. But I need a. something else to make November less shitty, and b. something to drool over in the coming weeks when the Recipe War is over, so I'm going to cook and post a scrumptious recipe every working day this month. EVERYONE WINS and y'all can join in if you like.

Jerk-Spiced Onion Squash Soup

1 onion squash, or half a butternut, or some pumpkin or whatevs
1 onion
Butter or groundnut oil for frying
1 pint chicken stock (vegetable stock if you want it vegetarian)
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped, or 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1 teaspoon dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1/4 teaspoon mace or nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper
Cream or yoghurt for serving
Optional fresh herbs for sprinkling

Peel the skin off the squash, scoop out and discard the seeds, and cut the flesh into chunks.
Finely chop the onion.
Fry the onion and squash in the bottom of a large pan until they're starting to brown.
Pour in the stock and add the chilli and sugar.
Bring to the boil, add herbs and spices, and simmer until the squash is soft (about 10 minutes).
Blend until smooth. Stir in lime juice, salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with a swirl of cream or yoghurt and a sprinkle of chopped parsley or coriander (cilantro).

Tagged!

2008-11-02T17:25:00.006-05:00

The lovely Acmegirl has tagged me with a Six Arbitrary Things About Me Meme (I've renamed it so Robin doesn't disown me).
Here are the rules:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

And here are my things:

I don't like background music, except as a reality-excluder when doing disagreeable housework. If I'm trying to write, think, knit, read, cook, walk or chat, I don't want somebody else's noise in my head. And if music's worth playing, it's worth paying attention to.
Last week a Very Famous Biologist told me I was mired in 19th century concepts of conflict and parasitism overlaid with blinkered Dawkinsian genocentrism.
Occasionally, in times of stress, I feel a fleeting impulse to hide under the nearest table.
I like perfume, and am wearing L'Eau par Kenzo today.
I also heart cryptic crosswords. Araucaria and Shed are my favourite compilers.
I really, really want to go to space.

Consider yourself tagged, if you've avoided this meme thus far!

What? No, I'm a hardened cynic. I just have something in my eye.

2008-10-29T08:41:00.008-04:00

109-year old Amanda Jones, whose father was born into slavery, who paid a discriminatory poll tax for decades, and who was already middle-aged when Rosa Parks caught that bus, cast her vote this week. No prizes for guessing for whom.

Politicians, at best, disappoint, and I'm far too much of a pinko to pin much hope on a centrist like Obama. But I do hope that this little girl lives to 109, and sees as much change for the better as Mrs Jones.

Briefly distracted by shiny objects

2008-10-18T13:31:00.006-04:00

I'm happy to see that Etsy sellers lean heavily toward Obama.

In case you were wondering

2008-10-17T15:17:00.003-04:00

In the post below, I started lying at the word "hazelnut".
I'm busy this week, so read something else. Or better, write something! See Jane Compute wants contributions for Scientiae .

A Meme That I Just Made Up

2008-09-25T09:47:00.008-04:00

Someone's responded to all those "100 books you should read before you die" things by making a list of ten books not to bother reading. I've read three of his ten (Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings and The Beauty Myth), and enjoyed them very much. I also disapprove of the "don't bother" advice - lots of people clearly do love those books or they wouldn't be classics. But there's some fun to be had with the concept. So, in no particular order, here's:

Ten books you're supposed to like but I didn't

Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I know this is one of dramasequalzero's favourites, and it's possible my dislike stems entirely from having to read it in school. But I couldn't stand the scenes where Chris lies in bed looking at her body all smooth in the white moonlight and thinking of the day she will give it to a man and wishing there would some day come a full stop and blah blah blah blah blah... Sorry d=0.

The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway. Spoiler warning: a man catches a fish. Some sharks eat the fish. More involving plots are found in those cloth books for babies to chew.

Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh. I read this all the way through in one sitting, so it must have had something going for it, but it's gratuitously disgusting, it uses a pseudo-Scots I never heard spoken in Muirhouse, and the main character's an utterly implausible philosopher-smackhead.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. Heathcliff and Catherine can both fuck right off and take their self-inflicted swoony angry brooding decades of misery with them. I have NO SYMPATHY.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Albom. Imagine if you mixed a pint of treacle with a pound of itching powder then moulded bollocks-shaped lumps out of it. That's how sickly and irritating and bollocks this book is.

The Bone People, Keri Hulme. This one has redeeming features, like a story and reasonable writing, but it has a half-Kiwi half-Shetland author called Kere Hulme and a half-Kiwi half-Orcadian heroine called Keri Holme. Or maybe the other way round. Anyway the heroine is fiercely intelligent and independent and a hugely talented painter and she sees instinctively without learning any nerdy science how to make a solar-powered spinning top and she wins the lottery and builds a tower out of hazelnut praline and then commands an army of ninja walruses and is made queen. Go on, guess where I started lying.

Catch-22, Joseph Heller. I just didn't click with it or start to care about any of the characters. I'll probably give it another chance sometime because everyone else loves it so much.

Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe. Not its fault, but 285 years have not been kind to this one. Read Tristram Shandy instead, it's got jokes in.

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. Boooooring.

And finally, nearly all serious poetry. I'm not a total philistine, honest. I like Music What Hasn't Got A Tune, and actively prefer Paintings What Aren't Of Anything - but some enzymatic pathway in my soul has a mutation that prevents me from appreciating Poems What Don't Rhyme.

What's your ten? Have I grossly slandered your very favourite book? Let's have a heated debate!

The book review at the end of the Universe

2008-09-22T13:01:00.009-04:00

You've probably already seen this Herculean effort via Pharyngula, but if you haven't it's well worth a click and a skim. Some astonishingly determined chap has spent five years reviewing fucktrocious American fundamentalist apocalypse fantasy Left Behind, at the rate of two or three pages a week. The reviewer is of the able-to-think variety of religious person and has a lot of insight into the Conservapedia mentality. It's often truly chilling.
I particularly liked this introduction to the main character, this frankly creepy summary of the authors' attitudes to women, and this scene set immediately after the Rapture. A billion people have just disappeared without trace, and hundreds of thousands more are dead or dying in the greatest disaster in human history. This is such a bummer for the hero because he's stuck in an airport and it's going to be like hours before he can collect his checked baggage.

OMG SHOEZ

2008-09-21T15:35:00.008-04:00

I flung my last pair of high heels in a skip in a rage for being hurty blistery ankletwisty tools of the patriarchy and walked home barefoot. And today I bought some more because they had a nice peeking-from-under-the-pelisse-of-a-Georgette-Heyer-heroine look about them. This time it will be different! I'm a hopeless shoe romantic.

According to Correct Fashion Terminology they are merely "mid" heels and these are "low", but I refuse to use Correct Fashion Terminology because it is stupid.

On the Temporal Distribution of Zuskateer Parties

2008-09-12T07:01:00.024-04:00

Prism, L. and Cupof, T., Institute of Pissing About

Using a dataset of women scientists' birthdays, we find contrary to the predictions of popular bilge that no zodiacal sign is overrepresented. If anything, these birthdays may be overdispersed across the calendar. We conclude that astrology is, unsurprisingly, bunk, and furthermore any woman who shares a birthday with science pioneers such as Irene Joliot Curie (12/9/1897 - 17/3/1956), Dorothy Maud Wrinch (12/9/1894 - 11/2/1967) or Anousheh Ansari (b. 12/9/1966) should stop banging on about it like she's all that.

Fig. 1. BRAAAIINNNSSSS

The Zuskateer Calendar [1] lists the anniversaries of 206 auspicious dates for the purpose of celebratory boozing. The vast majority (203) of the dates commemorated are births of trailblazing women in science, medicine, engineering and technology. The three dates of death pertain to women for whom a date of birth is unobtainable, e.g. "James" Barry, and are excluded from this analysis.

Working out the exact probabilities of specific clusters of birthdays, assuming births at random and accounting for leap years, was hard so we wussed out and did randomisation tests. The star signs purportedly most suited to scientific research are Taurus and Virgo [2], although one would bloody well hope that few young people consider this factor when choosing a career in science. The ZPC dataset includes 12 or 25 Taureans and 22 or 17 Virgos depending on which flavour of astrological bogswill (Tropical or Sidereal) you prefer, which is consistent with random expectations: 278 of 1000 randomised calendars showed 25 or more birthdays in the first 31 days, and 98 of 1000 12 or less.

No other star sign showed significant lack or excess of parties either, and that's without even having to use a Bonferroni correction. Grubbing around like a starving piglet for a significant result found nothing, nada, zip zilch, except a slight but still insignificant tendency for randomised datasets to have a larger number of unoccupied days than the true calendar (948 of 1000 datasets). This may be because calendar compilers are more eager to add an event to an empty day than an already occupied one, or because being born on the same day as one or more exceptional scientists portends a lifetime of apathetic mediocrity. However, I can't be arsed to find out which because it's lunchtime.

1. Richards, P.L. and Prism, L. Zuskateer Parties: a compilation of reasons to eat cake. Th. Spk. Zsk. 2006.
2. Builder, C. Best Career for Your Zodiac Sign?, AOL, 2005.

Higgs might fly

2008-09-10T09:08:00.004-04:00

The Large Hadron Collider
Makes theoretical physics applieder.
It's a machine for doing proton-smashing experiments at near light speed on an unprecedented scale in,
And almost infinitely safer than handing control of the US nuclear arsenal to John McCain or Sarah Palin.

Almost exactly this happened

2008-08-31T07:59:00.013-04:00

(Sound of ringing telephone)
Female Voice: Upper Middle Class Department Store, Jemima speaking, how may I help you?
Me: Hello, my name's Dr Laetitia Prism. I bought a blender at your shop yesterday but I forgot to take it home and left it by the tills like a dozy bint.
FV: Ah.
Me: And I wondered if it was maybe still there or something?
FV: Hold on a minute (lots of beeping) No, there's nothing by the tills, so for all I know you're lying and want a free blender. However, our customers wouldn't do that sort of thing, so do you want a free blender?
Me: Oh yes, that would be nice.
FV: Just to make sure you're one of us, how many types of cooking oil do you have?
Me: Er... five?
FV: Splendid. Just pop to the store this afternoon, and provided you don't look poor we'll hand it over. (Air kiss) Byee!

Did You Know...

2008-08-21T07:10:00.009-04:00

..that the human gut contains a bacterial ecosystem more diverse than that in acidic runoff from a mine, but less diverse than that in a rotting whale carcass?

Nobody knows much about microbial ecosystems, so of course it's perfectly sensible to make comparisons between the few we do have data from. But something about the above still made me giggle a bit: imagine an alternative universe where scientists only just worked out how to weigh things. "We weighed a book! It's more than a shoe, but less than a cat!"

I'm neglecting my blog in favour of a shiny new toy.

2008-08-15T15:28:00.003-04:00

And I'm not sorry.
Parp!

Read this, get cross, write to someone.

2008-08-01T11:36:00.002-04:00

Incompetence, cruelty, racism or a delicious blended smoothie of the three? You decide. UK Borders Agency starves baby.

From the Reading Too Much Into It files

2008-07-18T08:00:00.008-04:00

It struck me as I grabbed for the deodorant this morning - what kind of name for a skincare range is "Vaseline Intensive Care"?
Lots of people must like a smidge of medical jargon with their face cream, or we wouldn't have Laboratoires and Prescriptives and so on, but isn't it a bit extreme to bring up intensive care wards? Are they trying to suggest my life depends on using this stuff, or what?

Next time I'll buy something with less disturbing connotations, like L'Oreal Accident & Emergency Unit or Nivea Outpatients Anticoagulant Clinic.

I feel 19 again!

2008-07-17T20:32:00.003-04:00

And do you know why?
Because it's two in the morning, I'm still at work trying to meet a looming deadline that I knew about six months ago, and I've only eaten vending machine snacks since lunch, that's why.

I much prefer being 31.

Warning colouration

2008-07-17T07:49:00.007-04:00

Bates and Muller's eponymic
Types of aposematism
Differ to the predators that sleuth some
In that Muller's sort of mimic
Carries out the threat it gizzem;
The Batesian is bluffing it, and toothsome.

Journals don't accept MS Paint diagrams, sadly.

2008-07-14T10:44:00.001-04:00

There's not been enough boffinry 'round here recently, so I picked a paper again. It's about hot fruit fly sex!

Everybody knows the phrase "selfish gene", but some genes are more selfish than others. A particular molecular git in Drosophila* is a mutant X chromosome called sex ratio, or SR.

In Drosophila, like humans, a male has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. If his X chromosome is normal, he produces equal numbers of X-bearing and Y-bearing sperm. All his partner's egg cells have one X, so half their offspring will be boy maggots and half will be girl maggots.

However, if the fly has an SR chromosome, it kills all his Y-bearing sperm and he can only have daughters. There's lots of sperm, so the eggs don't go to waste: they get fertilised by the SR sperm. See how the SR chromosome has been more successful than the normal X chromosome? It's in all the offspring now, not just half.

Of course, there is a problem here. With these SR chromosomes being so wildly successful, more and more daughters will be made, and fewer and fewer sons. That's how SR was discovered in the first place - some wild populations of Drosophila were almost entirely female. Quite quickly, you'd predict, females won't be able to find mates and the whole population will die out.

But it seems like that hasn't happened. Why not? Price et al. provide a potential answer. It turns out that if you let females mate with both normal and SR males, the normal males father most of the progeny - the effect is larger than you'd expect even allowing for the difference in number of sperm cells.

This is particularly interesting because it provides not only a way for males to escape extinction, but a reason for females to mate more than once. Why females mate with several males, given the energetic cost and and disease risk, has been the subject of debate for decades, so this paper hints at answers to two cool questions in one.

SEX RATIO DISTORTER REDUCES SPERM COMPETITIVE ABILITY IN AN INSECT
Tom A. R. Price, Amanda J. Bretman, Tomos D. Avent, Rhonda R. Snook , Gregory D. D. Hurst, and Nina Wedell. Evolution 62-7: 1644–1652

*This paper's done on Drosophila pseudoobscura, which is different from the usual Drosophila melanogaster but not much.

Monday singalong

2008-07-14T09:58:00.007-04:00

Someone should go back in time and kill Gilbert and Sullivan at birth, just to force satirical lyricists to be more creative. But here goes. Original idea by Lago at Pharyngula. Anyone (I'll wager DogHorse does a splendid Richard Dawkins voice) is very welcome to record it or add extra verses in comments. Tune here, list of gods here.

The New Atheist Major-General

I don't believe in Jahweh, Buddha, Ganesh, Zeus or Allah
And I don't believe in Limbo, Hades, Heaven or Valhalla
I don't believe in Brahma, karma, Rama, Thor or Jupiter
I've studied both the Testaments but can't say which is stupiter

I've got no time for Odin, Ceres, Poseidon or Kingu
They're as fictional as Sherlock Homes or Arthur Dent or Pingu
Venus, Saturn, Mercury and Mars provoke my laughter
The one thing gods are good for is to name the planets after

I think that Christianity, Islam and Scientology
Are all a scam that preys upon a quirk of our psychology
I care not if you curse me in the name of Baal or Shiva,
For I am the very model of a fervent unbeliever.

I don't believe in Atlas, Balder, Freia, Yam or Hester
Or in reincarnation, because when you die you fester
And I think the Holy Spirit as nonsensical as Frigg is
And I'll happily eat lobsters, cows and tasty little piggies (yum yum!)

I thoroughly despise the likes of Donohue and Bakker.
I posit that the Eucharist is just a frackin' cracker.
Though many people call me an insufferable know-it-all
They're equally dismissive when it comes to Quetzalcoatl.

I don't need any mantra, tantra, deity or deva
For I am the very model of a fervent unbeliever.

What's that in the sky?

2008-07-11T06:21:00.005-04:00

It's the Cephalopodsign! Quickly, to the Cephalopodmobile!

Developmental biologist PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota said something rude about religion, as usual, and professional religious offence-taker Bill Donohue took offence, as usual. All would be right with the world, except that Bill's flying monkey squad are now sending death threats and trying to get PZ fired for what he wrote in his own time on his own blog, which also happens to contain some of the most entertaining and accurate popular science writing on the web.

If you've five spare minutes and a liking for free speech, science and squid, perhaps you could jot off an email to PZ's boss and ask him, politely and literately, not to let the deranged witch-hunting theocratic wackaloons win this one. His contact details are in the last link above.

Youse should all read this.

2008-07-11T05:38:00.005-04:00

It's a book about chemistry and beauty and creativity and history and danger and excitement.
I heard the author talk yesterday at the Royal Institution, and his lecture was well worth the journey and the London black snot.

Very very easy banana cake

2008-07-06T10:05:00.006-04:00

(Photo to follow, if I find the camera before we scoff the lot)

This is the easiest cake recipe I have, and even easier with a blender, but unfortunately my stick blender recently started smoking and died (let that be a lesson to you all).
It's particularly delicious if you use bananas that are so overripe as to be nearly inedible.

Preheat the oven to 180 deg C.
Prepare a 24cm diameter cake tin or two small loaf tins, either by greasing well or lining with paper.
Sift, or merely chuck and stir, these things together into a mixing bowl: 350g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt.
Beat or blend all these together in a jug: 4 mashed bananas, 2 eggs, 200g brown sugar, the juice of a lemon, and 150ml corn oil (groundnut, sunflower or rapeseed oil are all perfectly good substitutes).
Pour the contents of the jug into the mixing bowl and stir everything together as briefly as possible. The longer you stir it the less it will rise, so it's OK if it's a little bit lumpy.
Scrape the mixture into the tin or tins, shove in the oven and bake for 30 minutes for the loaf tins or 45 minutes for the round tin. You can check for cookedness by sticking a knife in - if it comes out covered in uncooked goo, give it another few minutes - or by prodding the top of the cake and seeing if it feels springy.
Nom nom nom nom nom.

Optional additions: 1tsp cinnamon in with the flour, 1tsp vanilla extract in with the bananas, 100g walnut or pecan pieces stirred in at the end.

Unconnected news items

2008-07-02T06:24:00.010-04:00

I'm knitting this. It's difficult, and at the moment of purchase my yarn underwent a mysterious change from sophisticated russet to pillarbox red, but it's kind of fun. My next plan is to design one with DNA helices on it.
Here's a Handy Tip! Sew press studs into the hem of wide legged trousers, snap them up round your ankles, and say goodbye to remembering-to-carry-separate-bicycle-clips misery!
Running update: I can now do 2 miles without stopping or walking.

Total distance covered in training so far: 28 miles, the equivalent of Kings Cross to Stevenage up the East Coast Main Line; best wildlife seen while running: fluffly goslings, a red kite and a dead mole; pain of the month: calf cramps, which I'm blaming on the hot, itchy, hideous compression stockings I have to wear for another 341 days.
I absentmindedly wrote this event on my calendar as "Sex in Bath all day", then chortled and got tea up my nose. I should probably grow up or something.
Can we start a new civilisation somewhere else? This one's buggered.

Some blogroll updates

2008-07-01T12:58:00.006-04:00

I'm terrible at keeping up the blogroll, but these two additions seemed particularly long overdue:
ERV, best known for being the student who handed embarassment-to-biochemistry Michael Behe his arse on a plate with sauce bearnaise over HIV evolution, has a blog as exuberant as it is educational.
Physioprof invents at least one new swearword every week.

Read them to overcome your sadness at the news that the wonderful Post Doc Ergo Propter Doc is retiring from blogging. Fare thee well, Propter.

Cycling in traffic: it's a bit like being female

2008-07-01T07:09:00.010-04:00

The entire system has been designed for people other than you, who have more physical and political power. Most are happy to let you exist within it as long as you don't get in their way too much. Some are magnanimous enough to allow a few minor tweaks at the edges, like a scrap of parental leave or some Magic White Paint by the side of the road - and think you should be grateful for that, because it ought to make everything all right. If you ask for more fundamental changes, you're clearly a bitter inadequate whiner who wants to stop everyone else from getting anywhere or having any fun.

Some of them think it's OK to yell at you and distract you, or jolly funny to threaten and scare you. And when this or anything else unpleasant happens, somebody's sure to tell you it's your own damn fault for not being submissive enough, not being assertive enough, wearing the wrong clothes, or simply going where you don't belong.

Submitted to Scientiae.

Live sharp, die young.

2008-06-27T10:00:00.014-04:00

Something that doesn't feel quite like skiving on a slow Friday afternoon is browsing a few journals for bloggable papers. Here's one. It concerns a question that vexes the best of us: Why are animals so bloody stupid?

Learning to find good things and avoid bad things is useful - there's a Statement of the Bleedin' Obvious for you - but many animals aren't as good at it as they could be. We can tell this using selection experiments: in a variety of species, if you let only fast learners breed, the population gets better at learning.

As it happens, those experimental results are almost as bleedin' obvious to biologists as the first bit. Selection experiments usually do work, because... well, because Darwin was right. Most species are genetically variable, and most traits have at least some heritable component, so selection is a powerful force. You can't beat bacteria for really long-term studies, but when it comes to animals, it's usually fruit flies as ever. In laboratories around the world you can find clever flies, long-lived flies, sexually insatiable flies, alcohol-tolerant flies, alcohol-susceptible flies (carrying a mutation called cheap date), and magnificent flying aces selected for their determined zooming down a wind tunnel. You can choose a tiny and seemingly insignificant character to select on if you like, and and that works too. It's publishably interesting, and requires a decent explanation, when a properly done selection experiment doesn't make a difference.

Here's the problem: if learning is advantageous, why aren't wild fruit flies already as clever as the selected ones in the lab? Is a fruitfly intellectual looked down upon as a nerd by potential mates, or targeted by secret police as a threat to the state, or is she merely prone to existential despair? Burger et al. tackled this problem with the aid of a batch of smartarse flies that could learn to avoid bitter fruit jellies. There's a chance this would instead select for flies with a particularly good sense of smell, but they checked for that.

It seemed that the smartarse flies were indeed at a subtle evolutionary disadvantage, i.e. they dropped dead. The lifespan of females - the selection had only been on female learning ability - was down by 15%, and that of males by 10%.

Now, a potential snag with this is that populations under selection are a bit inbred - necessarily, because fewer flies are having offspring - and that might make them sickly. However, in all the replications of this experiment, it was only lifespan that was affected, not body size or fecundity or any of the other usual problems with inbreeding. And finally, the authors also tested some of the long-lived flies I mentioned above. Those flies were, indeed, unusually stupid. This strongly suggests that there's a trade-off in flies between living longer and being brighter. In the wild, at the moment, living longer is a better strategy - and so the little dimwits know no better than to fly straight into your glass of sauvignon blanc and drown. Sad, but true.

(There are probably genetic trade-offs in humans as well, but they're very unlikely to be precisely the same ones as in fruit flies! So although a simplistic reading might cause understandable concern, do rest easy: this research does not imply that George W. Bush will live forever.)

Joep M. S. Burger, Munjong Kolss, Juliette Pont, Tadeusz J. Kawecki (2008) LEARNING ABILITY AND LONGEVITY: A SYMMETRICAL EVOLUTIONARY TRADE-OFF IN DROSOPHILA. Evolution 62 (6), 1294–1304.

Well done, California!

2008-06-17T15:31:00.004-04:00

California has legalised gay marriage. Many congratulations to the brides and the grooms who have waited so long.

The only two arguments ever made against gay marriage are we fear change and ewww, neither of which is truly logically unassailable. (God doesn't like it, coming from anyone who otherwise disobeys Leviticus - for example, wears clothes of mixed fibre or won't burn a pigeon when she menstruates - means one or other or both of the above.) So this is a victory not just for all the couples in California, not just for human rights and loyalty and love, but for reason and rationality.

Thinking is really, really good for us.

Children are weird.

2008-06-06T06:21:00.013-04:00

In the shopping centre yesterday evening, I noticed some unaccompanied children in front of me on the escalator. They were two girls, aged about three and five, both dressed in the customary top to toe pink, and the smaller one was holding tightly to a wheeled suitcase.
At the top of the escalator, I nipped into the nearest shop and asked the assistant to call security. Then I caught up with them, squatted down to their eye level and asked, had they lost their mummy?
The older one looked at me very warily, thought for a moment about whether I was the kind of Stranger one shouldn’t talk to and then said - very earnestly and with a slight Indian accent - “I went to find Aysha because she ran away with Mother’s luggage and I found her but now I cannot find Mother or Father again. I won’t bother to come and find you next time,” she added as an aside to Aysha.
“If we wait here, someone will come and help you find your mother and father,” I said.
Aysha mumbled something into her sister’s ear, at which they both suddenly looked terrified.
“What’s wrong?”
“They might have stopped looking and gone home without us.”
“No, no. I’m sure your mother and father are always very careful to bring their children back home with them,” I said as reassuringly as I could while trying not to giggle. They were unconvinced for a second, then Aysha whispered again and both of them cheered up immensely.
“No, they will not go home without us,” said the five-year-old happily, “because we have Mother’s luggage.”

(Their frantic-looking father turned up at a run a minute or so later.)

Ambition

2008-06-03T15:33:00.003-04:00

This time last year, I decided that when my legs worked again, I was going to bloody well use them.
Now that I'm capable of going running, I thought I might set an ambitious but hopefully-achievable goal. So I was thinking of signing up for next year's local half marathon, until Cromagnon pointed out that I could slog through the Thighmarcester drizzle anytime, and why not find somewhere more fun?

There's a tempting-looking one on the Isle of Barra. You can get there by a 5-hour ferry trip from Oban, or on a Twin Otter plane that lands on the beach.
Oh yes.

Elderflower champagne

2008-06-02T02:03:00.007-04:00

I'm in the middle of making a batch of elderflower champagne, which is partly a delicious recipe and partly a microbiology practical: the elderflowers flavour the drink, and the wild yeast in their nectar ferments it very slightly to add sparkle but negligible alcohol. (I haven't checked, but I reckon it's Saccharomyces paradoxus.)

First, dissolve 1lb 4oz (560g) of sugar in 8 British pints (4.5 litres) of boiling water. Let the syrup cool to room temperature, then stir in 2 tablespoons (30ml) of cider vinegar, 2 thinly sliced lemons and the flowers from 7 heads of elderflowers. Cover the mixture and leave it for 48 hours to let the flavour develop, then strain it through a funnel and a fine sieve* into clean, strong bottles. Seal the bottles tightly and leave them somewhere dark for two weeks. Chill before opening. It should smell very fresh and floral.

(Mine is at the "plants floating in a bucket" stage now. I'll let you know how it turns out.)

If you can't be faffed with making this, you can buy it in posh shops - under the name of Elderflower Fizz or some such, because of EU regulations on the use of the word champagne. It's customary to whinge about EU regulations at this point, but I'm not going to, cos they stop people selling us any old rubbish and calling it food.

Update: it's now in bottles in the sideboard.
*I actually put it through a coarse sieve to take out big lumps of plant, then a coffee filter to take out the insects and bits of lemon pulp.

Further update and PS: It's delicious, but has lumps in. And someone wanted to know why the vinegar's in the recipe. It's because acid inhibits the growth of bacteria while still allowing yeasts to grow.

Friday timewaster

2008-05-30T12:04:00.004-04:00

If you're unlucky enough to have seen much of the BBC's Have Your Say page and its population of semi-literate racist trollards, then The Twat-O-Tron might make you, too, click and laugh repeatedly for a long time.

Limerick

2008-05-27T06:44:00.003-04:00

A number I'd like to diminish
Is of Things That I Start And Don't Finish.
My socks are half-knit,
And my papers half-writ,

No need for you to have a bad week too, though.

2008-05-16T13:53:00.007-04:00

I found an old favourite on youtube - GREAT, an Oscar-winning musical cartoon biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, full of Carry On-esque single entendres, made in 1975 by the creator of Roobarb. Apart from the natives in the "We're Victorians" song, the humour's not aged too badly, and the Big Top Hat Song is jolly catchy. This clip is part 1 of 3.

Bad week. Have a bird.

2008-05-06T10:28:00.003-04:00

The Frogmouth is of mottled plume,
Its call is hoarse and hooty,
It swallows mice and doesn't chew'm.
That is its style of beauty.

Point of contention

2008-04-29T04:43:00.004-04:00

Cromagnon likes Jonathan Meades.
Jonathan Meades gets on my wick.
To help my readers make their own minds up, I present an exclusive extract from his most recent television programme, "Beyond the Pail", in which Meades explores the cultural and historical significance of the bucket.

Camera pans along B&Q shelf of £1.99 plastic buckets. Meades is sitting halfway along the shelf looking enigmatic.
Meades: Bucket.
Cut. Meades now sits, like Oor Wullie, on an upturned metal bucket.
Meades: Bucket. A cylindrical or truncated conical receptacle typically used for carrying water, paint or sand. Or is it?
Cut. Meades sits on a see-saw with a bucket on his head. He addresses us through a hole in the bucket.
Meades: There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza. And to mend it, I need a bucket.
Black and white footage of a bucket chain.
Meades (voice over): This is an elementary paradox of self-referentiality, a swirling, swilling brim-full barrel of twisted wisdom. But why is the bucket so pivotal to European thought? What is it about the bucket that can scuttle our precious logic? While a symbol of excess and overindulgence...
Footage of pig eating swill from bucket.
...and of our throwaway society...
Time-lapse footage of city centre bin filling, overflowing, then swarming with rats.
...the bucket is staunchly, counterintuitively old-fasioned.
Cut to a cold-looking British seaside. A small boy lifts a toy bucket, unmoulding a sandcastle, which crumbles to reveal Meades buried up to his neck in sand.
Meades, spitting out a live crab:The bucket is humanity's fourth most basic technology, behind only fire, the wheel and the snorkel. Or is it? And why does the bucket inspire such primeval longing, such yearning for a...
The small boy puts his bucket back over Meades' head. Pleasing silence ensues.
Announcer: The ever-irritating Jonathan Meades returns next week in BBC2's brand new documentary series "We Couldn't Afford Simon Schama".

I ain't a Londoner

2008-04-24T08:18:00.005-04:00

but I beg those of you who are voting: please, anyone but Boris. He's a gibbering incompetent nasty right-wing bigot whom I wouldn't trust to keep score in Scrabble. Putting him in charge of a city of seven and a half million people for four years would not be a jolly hilarious jape.

Stereotype threat gets in the news

2008-04-23T08:13:00.006-04:00

when someone suggests it can affect rich young able-bodied Englishmen!

Stereotype threat is basically a variation on the placebo / nocebo effect, which I've always found fascinating. If people are given a sugar pill and told "this will make your headache better but may make you nauseous as a side-effect", their headaches often get better and they often feel sick. In the same way, "your gurl-brane makes you crap at maths" can influence you to flunk an exam. It's a strange and powerful piece of human biology, and it's a shame that we currently know so little about its mechanisms - there'd be some interesting practical applications.
Such as PrismCo Algebraic Competence Capsules, which are packaged in a stylish tube with the word Smarties crossed out. I'll be taking three red ones this afternoon before doing some paper corrections.

Life hectic, blogging sparse.

2008-04-21T13:56:00.003-04:00

The sort of people who put out fires
Like to play in tumble dryers;
Those with cautious dispositions
Train as florists or opticians.

Showbiz

2008-04-04T17:49:00.005-04:00

This thread utterly made my day.
And this evening the pleasingly inept choir I sing with gave a pleasingly not-too-inept performance at a concert also featuring several singers from a local Gay Chorus and a wonderful ladies' choir not all of whom were ladies by silly old chromosomal standards. And that made my day again.
A tasty glass of Fat Cat IPA is now making my day for a third time. Cheers. I will write about science soon.

Charlotte Green

2008-03-28T15:54:00.005-04:00

Though giggling fits
During people's obits
Might anger some friends of the dearly departed,
I think that no mortal
Could stifle a chortle
On hearing a noise like a hornet that farted.

At least it was only one person's obituary and he died of old age. Could have been a lot worse, I reckon.

Sick Transits and all that

2008-03-27T13:02:00.005-04:00

I just realised how many years old my angel photo was, so I changed it. It was fun while it lasted though. Weirdly, for a while it was the very first Google Images search result for my first name, of which I was immensely proud even though I had no bloody idea how it happened.
I still have the tinsel false eyelashes in my make-up box, but I get annoyingly few excuses to wear them.

Bank Holiday Quackery Singalong

2008-03-24T18:37:00.008-04:00

Inspiration in equal parts from Bad Science and Piggy Moo.

Listen, you slobs
Lying on your settees,
Guzzling chips and cheese
Guess what's gonna happen to you!
Listen, you blobs,
I've an alternative
Do as I say if you want to live!

Swallow up your beetroot juice
'Til your face goes red
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

Stay away from MMR
Get the mumps instead
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

So take your fish oil pill (Woo-oo)
Chlorophyll (Woo-oo)
Can't get ill (Woo-oo)
Not if you don't accumulate toxins!

Stick a magnet up your nose
When you go to bed
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

Never have a pint of beer
Or a slice of bread
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

Try a horny goatweed bar
With some tofu spread
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

So boost your energy (Woo-oo)
Drink green tea (Woo-oo)
Work that Chi (Woo-oo)
Don't let the stress imbalance your chakras!

Never hold your mobile phone
Near your ears or head
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

Eat algae every day (Woo-oo)
Get feng shui (Woo-oo)
Dead sea clay (Woo-oo)
and Goji berries make you immortal!

Stick a hosepipe up your bum
In the garden shed
Take good care of yourself
Or you'll drop down dead.

Some Excellent reads for Easter

2008-03-19T06:55:00.007-04:00

I've been putting this off because I hated to pick ten, but I'm not going to finish the pair of socks I'm knitting in time to blog'em this week, I'm not going to get round to photographing the Lunchy Beetroot Salad* I made in response to Lady Bracknell and Clotilde's recent beets eats, and the only rhyming couplet about obscure animals that has snuck into my head this week is
Anyone who fails to appreciate the sleek, athletic beauty of the fossa
Is a tossa.

So here goes.

Other people have been avoiding tagging Seed's Sciencebloggers, but I'm making an exception for See Jane Compute 'cos she's new over there and she rocks.
Lab Cat's science-and-food-and-knitting blog always makes me happy, and sometimes a little jealous.
Endogenous Retrovirus works on Very Cool Science.
Acmegirl has a thoughtful and thought-provoking blog which I found via comments at Zuska's.
Right back atcha Nunatak. (Nominating someone who nominated you is fine if they have more than one blog. That's the rules I've just made up.)
Straying from science, Separated By A Common Language is fun, as well as being a very handy resource for pond-crossers and their friendsandrelations.
Randomspeak wins a special award for having the best pictures.
Vorare is entertainingly whimsical.
Baking For Britain makes me feel all patriotic like.
EnchantingJuno comes across as a lovely person and I hope she gets back to Clever Knitting soon.

*But if you're interested: 6 smallish beetroot, roasted, peeled and diced; 2 raw carrots, peeled and grated; 50g dried apricots, chopped; 200g Puy lentils, boiled and drained; a handful of coriander leaves, chopped; 2 raw shallots, chopped very finely; salt, pepper, lemon juice and walnut oil to taste. Healthful and delicious and BRIGHT PINK and springlike! Plus, an old, small and not so rigorously controlled study suggests it might help diagnose anaemia.

Vocabulary

2008-03-10T09:34:00.002-04:00

A gavial's a reptile that eats fishes for its dinner;
It's like an alligator, but its snout is rather thinner.
A gavel is a special kind of little wooden hammer
Which a Speaker bangs the table with to silence any clamour.
The likeness of the words can be confusing to the layman,
But a gavel's like a mallet, and a gavial, a caiman.

Friday afternoon whimsy

2008-03-07T10:52:00.004-05:00

This link might elucidate matters

The importance of being E.

2008-03-05T13:29:00.003-05:00

Thanks so much for the tag, CAE and nunatak! I'll make my nominations soon. But now for something completely different...

I once reviewed a self-help book about how to be taken seriously as an intellectual woman. Along with some advice along the lines of “read books” and “think about stuff”, its author suggested avoiding feminine topics of conversation like pets and recipes, giving up make-up, cutting long hair, and dropping the tone of your voice by half an octave.

Later, I met a laryngologist who said that many of her patients are successful women in male-dominated professions who’ve damaged their vocal folds by forcing a Thatcher growl out of a naturally soprano throat. The laryngologist suggested that women with high-pitched voices who want to sound authoritative should instead practise for fifteen minutes a day until
they
learn
to
speak
more
slowly.

I was reminded of these things when I read a post by Zuska about the advantages of double-blind peer review. Just like, when auditioning for an orchestra, a woman violinist will be perceived as playing more competently if she’s behind a curtain, journals which conceal the identity of authors as well as reviewers tend to publish more papers by women. Hence some advice which I’ve heard from a few different places: don’t use your first name if it identifies you as female. Use something unisex like Pat or Sam if you can, but otherwise stick to initials.

Now, I don’t for a second blame an individual scientist for being Chris rather than Christina on her manuscript, because she’s got her ambitions and should pursue them as she sees best. And look at me, blogging about pets and recipes under a pseudonym, but sitting quietly through conversations about football at conferences*. Still, I’m uneasy with all of this kind of advice, because it’s the kind that helps an individual at the expense of the group.

If a few of us go by our initials, we benefit from sexism rather than doing anything to stop it. If all of us do it, it stops benefiting anyone. Initials will soon be interpreted as female names, and if we all sound or dress less girlie we narrow the range of what’s acceptable, and before we know it we’re wearing false moustaches and the world’s no fairer. Something other than us needs to change here, as of course Zuska knows well and explains frequently.

*Actually, we had a coffee-room chat about cooking the other day, because a male postdoc brought some homemade cakes in. See, that’s the kind of thing that makes the world fairer. Men! Bake for equality! Or just for cakes, they’re good too.

Maladaptation

2008-02-29T10:43:00.004-05:00

A racing pulse and shallow breath
And palms that sweat and hairs that rise
Are useful, if impending death
Should face you in the form or guise
Of hungry, snarling sabre-tooth;
These days, it merely looks uncouth.
So when I lack finesse or ton,
I blame not stress, but Smilodon.

Bloggers! What a lovely bunch they are.

2008-02-29T07:03:00.009-05:00

I popped along to a Royal Institution event in London yesterday and listened to talks by some splendid people whose blogs you should go and read:

Jennifer Rohn, who's also behind LabLit, writes about coming back to science after a career break.
Ed Yong is a fully functioning Jargon-to-Clear-English translation engine and a jolly nice chap to boot.
Ben Goldacre, the nerd's nerd, was a very entertaining speaker with a lot of interesting things to say. Being a bit of a Celeb, though, he turned up late and left early, so sadly I didn't get to buy him a beer for being so skillfully rude about Gillian McKeith.
Oo, and I also met both an Ethical Palaeontologist and a Scientific Activist. Hurrah.

The gist, drift or executive summary of the evening was: if you are a scientist and you enjoy writing, get thee to a bloggery. You may only accumulate five regular readers, but if you like writing and they like reading, it'll make six people happier and punch one more hole in the wall between Science and The Rest Of The World.

Cold grey February days.

2008-02-14T16:15:00.003-05:00

I hate'em.
But this cheered me up no end.

This week's educational rant

2008-02-08T09:41:00.000-05:00

is brought to you by the letter H².

Heritability is a tricky concept, and to – for once – give science journalists their due, they seem to have tried hard to explain it in this story. But it’s a concept that really needs a careful and quantitative explanation, and sadly this is not the kind of numerate utopia in which news media present mathematical concepts that aren’t shit. Blogs can, though, so here goes.

To work out a value for heritability, you start with a set of people (or sheep, or rosebushes or whatever), and you look at the variation in weight (or wool yield or leaf length or whatever you’re measuring). Then you try to work out how much of that variation is due to genes. Because heritability is the variation due to genes divided by all the variation in the population, it’s a statistic that’s specific to the set of people you’re measuring, in the environment they’re in. Put the same people somewhere else and measure’em again in five years and you might get a different number. Measure a different set of people, and you might get a different number still.

As an example, in Britain as a whole, the heritability of hair length will be low, because there’s a lot of variability in how often and how short we cut our hair. Among a population consisting entirely of Sikhs, who tend not to cut their hair, heritability of hair length would be considerably higher because there’d be less variation overall.

Also, a high heritability does not mean that a characteristic is fixed or unchangeable, because it doesn’t tell us anything about what happens if the environment changes. I could keep a bunch of cacti in my window-box in which the heritability of plant height was 100%, but that wouldn’t mean they’d all stay the same size if I transplanted them to a greenhouse.

So you can’t just find out the heritability-of-obesity-full-stop. If you measure the heritability of obesity in ten-year-old twins in twenty-first century Oxfordshire, it may or may not be valid to apply your result to the rest of the children in Britain, or the rest of the ten-year-olds in Western Europe. It’s almost certainly not valid to use it to predict what’d happen to children in a hypothetical future with daily exercise sessions or a tax on corn syrup.

Now, taking off my Genetics Expert Hat and speaking only as a statistically literate pinko commie Islamofascist sympathiser, I suspect that if we curtailed traffic, encouraged walking and cycling, stopped subsidising intensively farmed meat, did something about the long hours, low wages culture that leaves people little leisure time to play sports or cook properly, kept junk food pushers away from children as much as possible, and found some way to stamp out the self-destructive hatred many people feel towards their own bodies… well, it probably wouldn’t make many fat people thin, because loads of fat people spend their entire lives trying to get thin with only occasional or intermittent success. But:
a. I could be wrong, because we simply don’t have the kind of data that would enable us to make that kind of prediction, and
b. we should do it anyway, because it would almost certainly make us – whether we’re fat or thin – healthier and happer.

The worm sleeps tonight

2008-02-01T07:15:00.002-05:00

Rock-a-bye wormy, our studies prove
When the plate shakes, the wormy will move
When the plate stops, the wormy will snore
If it has kinase elg-4.

Someone's found a developmental stage in C. elegans that appears similar to sleep in mammals. This is cool because it opens up loads of new possibilities for sleep research.
The authors did some genetics to make it all look clever, but the best part is where they keep the worms up late by banging their petri dishes on the lab bench, and show that the worms need a lie-in afterwards. Yay SCIENCE.

What I Did On My Holidays

2008-01-23T07:45:00.000-05:00

Cromagnon and I just got back from two weeks in Cape Town. We had a wonderful time: the weather was glorious*, the food and wine were delicious, and the scenery was stunning.

We had few days out at vineyards in Stellenbosch, which were extremely enjoyable, and a day at Kirstenbosch botanical garden, on the slopes of Table Mountain. Kirstenbosch was one of the first gardens to prioritise the conservation of indigenous plants, and it's breathtaking. If I were a particularly well-behaved nun, and I died and got sent to Kirstenbosch instead of Heaven, I wouldn't feel at all short-changed. Even the tea room there was very unlike yer usual captive-market tourist attraction caff - the head cook there is also a food writer, and I ended up buying her latest cookbook after she came out to answer my nosey questions about the recipe for cinnamon buns.

I'd read good things about the African cookery courses available at Kopanong, but didn't manage to organise a visit in time. Ah well. Next trip maybe.

And of course, geeky biologists on holiday always watch wildlife! The nature reserve at Cape Point itself is windy enough to blow your nostrils inside out, but well worth it: you have to keep your car doors locked in case baboons attack, which makes a pleasant change from the city where you have to keep your car doors locked in case you get mugged. (Actually, the worst thing that happened to us was an attempt to charge unofficial parking fees, but locals warned us not to take any risks.) Our sightings included ostriches, Cape zebras, striped mice, tortoises, various whateverboks, and the beautifully out-of-place penguins at Boulders Beach.

*necessitating that I be thickly coated in a special reflective sunscreen for pallid limeys, which claimed on the bottle to be "barely-visible", but had an effect more along the lines of "look-Mum-that-lady's-dressed-up-as-a-zombie."

Yay! Freebies!

2008-01-03T14:29:00.001-05:00

Just before Christmas, Photobloc offered me a free canvas print, and here it is:

I'm very pleased with it, just like Eclectech was with hers. The canvas texture shows off the colours beautifully, and I really like the way the image wraps around the edges of the print.
I emailed Photobloc with a link to a suitable image, and they did the rest - the only difficult bit was choosing which of our favourite photos to have printed. Pretty flowers and cute animals were the front runners, but I eventually went for this pleasingly soppy holdy-handy picture for the bedroom wall. Awwww.

I do hope this "give stuff to bloggers" idea catches on. Especially with chocolatiers, artisan cheesemakers and the manufacturers of baby grand pianos.

Forgive me.

2007-12-21T09:52:00.000-05:00

I can has wine at department christmas party.

Bees do it (differently)

2007-12-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

I walked past a poster for Bee Movie this morning. I gather it is a heartwarming story of a male worker bee, and the sequel to Antz, the heartwarming story of a male worker ant. Of course, nobody wants to watch a film about a SOPPY GURL, but if you listen carefully to the soundtrack you will hear the constant, quiet grinding of biologists’ teeth.

Worker bees and ants, as Natalie Angier points out in this essay, are female. However, she doesn't cover The Reason Why Worker Ants And Bees Are Female, and it's a piece of genius, so I thought I'd try my very bestest to explain it here.

Ants and bees pass on their genes in a different way from most animals.

You’ll probably know how it works for us mammals: males and females have roughly the same amount of DNA, and when we’re making our sperm or egg cells, half our DNA goes into each one. Because it’s a different, randomly chosen half every time, every sperm is ~~sacred~~ genetically unique, and so is every egg.

You share half of your genes with your mum, and half of your genes with your daughter, and (on average) half of your genes with your sister, because she gets a different random sample from each parent.

Here’s how it works for ants, bees and wasps (together known as hymenopterans, meaning membrane wing):
A queen ant, like a female mammal, puts half of her genes into an egg cell. But that egg cell, unfertilised, will grow into a male. Males have no father, and only half as many genes as females do. When that male makes a sperm cell, he puts all his genes into it, so it can join with an egg cell to make a female ant. All of a male's sperm cells are genetically identical to each other.

A female ant, like a female mammal, shares half her genes with her mother or her daughter. But she shares three-quarters of her genes with her sister, because they both have exactly the same set of genes from their father. A female ant (or bee) is more closely related to her sisters than she is to her mother.
More importantly, she’s more closely related to her sister than she would be to a daughter of her own. Her genes will be better represented in the next generation if she sticks around and helps her mum raise a sister than if she spent the same effort raising an inf-ant, ha ha, of her own.
This wouldn’t be true of males: brother ants share half their genes with each other but all their genes with their daughters, so they’re much better off making babies than siblings.

That’s why ants, bees and wasps have a stronger tendency toward social living than other animal groups: evolutionarily speaking, it pays them better. And that’s why male worker bees are biologically implausible.

For more flabberghasting ant facts I heartily recommend Holldobler and Wilson’s Journey to the Ants. It's beautifully written, accessible and stunningly illustrated.

Song of the Perfect Postdoc

2007-12-07T20:30:00.000-05:00

A little ditty for Propter Doc's carnival. It is left to the reader to imagine how closely I and my labmates lived up to these ideals during my postdoc years.
To the tune of Ain't Misbehavin'.

No crazy night out
No steamy date
I've cut them right out
But I'm happy working late
Ain't misbehavin'
I slave in the lab for you

I'm always striving
I never kvetch
I'm through with skiving
I don't want to play iSketch
Ain't misbehavin'
I slave in the lab for you!

I'm a data
Generator
Take no tea breaks -
Not with cream cakes -
These papers are worth working for
Believe me...

I'm staying sober
Don't care to drink
Come in hung over
Throw up in the hot lab sink
Ain't misbehavin'
I slave in the lab for you!

As Promised: Genetic Mapping

2007-12-02T13:57:00.000-05:00

Fig. 1. T. H. Morgan's lasting scientific influence is evidenced by the large number of geneticists who name their cats after him.

RPM pointed out in comments to my post on "decoding" that another frequently misused term is 'mapping'. It doesn't bug me quite as much, because physical mapping can at least be a step in the genome sequencing process. However, like 'decoding', there's some fascinating science and history behind genetic maps that gets ignored in the confusion. So, in the naive belief that at least three of my readers aren't already biologists, here's What A Genetic Map Is And Why It Is Neither A Genetic Code Nor A Genome Sequence.

Genetic mapping was discovered way back when the science of genetics was very new. Watson and Crick determined the structure of DNA in 1953, and Hershey and Chase proved that DNA was the stuff of heredity only a year or so before that, but the first genetic map dates from 1911. A 19-year-old called Alfred Sturtevant drew it in a single evening, "to the neglect," he said, "of my undergraduate homework."

As is always a good idea, Sturtevant had made a wise choice of advisor. Thomas Hunt Morgan ran the new Drosophila laboratory - the Fly Room - at Columbia University and was working on the phenomenon of linkage, which he rightly considered to be good evidence for the Chromosome Theory of Inheritance.

At this point a 'gene' was merely a hypothetical entity, a symbol, that corresponded to a difference between individuals. There was debate for decades afterwards about whether genes even existed in any physical sense. The chromosome theory bypassed that question, holding that whatever-the-heck they consisted of, genes were nevertheless in, on, associated with, or stuck to particular coloured blobs that were visible in cells under certain staining conditions - chromosomes, which roughly translates as coloured blobs. (I love how the bewilderment and uncertainty of a dawning science shows in the jargon.)

Linkage is perhaps best described as "what Mendel missed". Everybody's favourite kitchen gardening monk-mathematician had shown in 1865 that when genes passed from generation to generation, they did so independently of one another: for example, inheriting your father's dark hair makes it no more and no less likely that you will inherit his blood type. This became known as Mendel's Second Law, or the Law of Independent Assortment, but exceptions were found almost as soon as anyone started looking for them. Sometimes, it seemed, a pair of characteristics tended to be inherited together.
For example, if you crossed a sweet pea with long pollen and purple flowers to another sweet pea with round pollen and pink flowers, the seedlings rarely had long pollen and pink flowers (or round pollen and purple flowers). They usually resembled one parent in both characteristics.

Morgan reckoned that if the genes were on the chromosomes - and there were certainly more genes than chromosomes - then these exceptions to Mendel's Second Law could be caused by pairs of genes close together on the same chromosome: that is, genes that were linked. So scientists in the Fly Room were busy finding as many examples as they could of differences between flies that could be conveniently used in crossing experiments: white versus red eyes, rudimentary versus normal wings, and so on - and looking for pairs of linked genes. Sometimes genes were tightly linked, meaning that almost no offspring were ever found with a combination of both parents' characteristics, but sometimes there was a sizeable minority of these "recombinants".

Sturtevant took the idea one stage further. If the loosely linked genes were far apart, and the tightly linked ones were close together, it should be possible to sketch out the relative positions of a whole group of genes, and then use that sketch to predict what the offspring of new experimental crosses should look like and how many recombinants there should be of each type.
It worked. All the genes could be plotted on one straight line.
Over the following years, more genes were discovered and added to the map. It kept working, and it worked for other species too. For any particular species there always turned out to be as many groups of linked genes on the map as there were chromosomes in the cells.
Eventually, this forced the opponents of the chromosome theory to shut up.
And they all lived happily ever after.
And the moral of the story is Never Do Your Homework.

Phoebe Sturtevant and Lilian Morgan also worked hard in the Fly Room, but got little credit for their contributions. When TH Morgan first visited Lilian after she gave birth to their eldest child, she asked after his new white-eyed mutant fly before he had a chance to ask after the baby. I've heard this story quoted as an example of what a dedicated and obsessive scientist he was, weirdly enough.
However, Phoebe is quoted as saying that Drosophila geneticists make good husbands, so I was very happy when my best friend married one.

An educated guess

2007-11-13T15:59:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing that wedding cake decorators,
by which I mean real, Prufeshnal wedding cake decorators who know what they're doing,
very rarely have two black cats.

RAAAGH. That does it.

2007-11-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

DANDRUFF DOES NOT HAVE ITS OWN GENETIC CODE.
Our betters in the media apparently believe we are all too thick to appreciate the BEAUTY of SCIENCE. But you, my readers, will be Made To Understand what a genetic code is, and I will do it with knitting, cakes and spam.

Thing A. Genetic Code.

Here is the genetic code. It took thousands of exceptional scientists the entire 1950s to work out, and it isn't fully understood even now.
It's sort of a phrasebook or conversion table. In fact, the closest parallel I can think of to it is this. It's a description of how a string of information (aggtgcgatagct, or k2 p2 ssk turn) can create a product with a shape and function (an enzyme, or a sock).
The genetic code is almost identical in every single living thing: that means you and your cat and your pot plant and the bacteria eating your teeth. All those leaves and brains and hair and having-more-than-one cell fripperies are just modifications of a basic mechanism, billions of years old, for taking DNA information and making it into protein activity.
If you do not find this breathtaking then you are dead inside and you should probably stop reading this and quit your job and lead a life of solitary contemplation in a turf hut until you are capable of human feeling.

The code also turns out to have some weird quirks. Think of Morse code, which was designed for speed: the most frequently-used letters in English are represented by the shortest signals in Morse (E=. and T=-). The genetic code doesn't do that, but it does show other signs of being optimised for its purpose.
Imagine a language called Cookbookese, in which the word for raisin was zob, and the word for sultana was zop, and the word for currant was zod. It would have the advantage that if your mum were telling you a fruitcake recipe over a crackly phone line, and you misheard her, your cake would turn out OK anyway. The genetic code works like that: similar amino acids have similar "names", so an error in transcription or translation is unlikely to cause huge problems.

And remember that I said "almost identical"? There are minor variants here and there. Certain fungi and some structures inside other cells, for example, use a very slightly different code.
Researchers studying the genetic code are currently asking questions like: How did the code evolve its features? How does it ever change at all when it's so central to how life works? Are there other ways in which the code is special?

Thing B. Genome Sequence.

This link goes to a genome sequence, and here is part of another. Each is a string of letters representing the information in the DNA of a particular organism. Sequencing a genome - and if someone says "decoding" or "unscrambling" they are talking down to you - is a huge project and a big step forward, but it's not really a discovery in itself; we make the discoveries afterwards using the new information we have.
When a new genome sequence is published, we can work out what a small proportion of it means because we know the genetic code, and there'll be a bit more whose function we can take a good guess at. Other stretches of it will appear to be meaningless, or self-promoting and repetitive - the molecular equivalent of "Re: Fwd: fwd: REALLY FUNNY!!!! pass this email on to 5 friends and make their day!"
And some of it we simply don't understand at all. RPM at Evolgen has some splendid posts on genome analysis if you want to know more.

If you have grasped the concept that Thing A, a genetic code, is different from Thing B, a genome sequence, consider yourself enlightened, and pledge to swear loudly at the telly next time you hear some patronising or scientifically illiterate toshmonger get it wrong.

Thank you.

After four days of NaNoWriMo

2007-11-04T03:39:00.000-05:00

I've already written myself into a corner and have no idea what to do about the plot. So I'm flinging new characters into the mix, seeing which ones come alive, and hoping they'll eventually decide on a plot for themselves.
I'm not all that good at this, but it makes a wonderfully refreshing change from the agonise-over-every-nuance, type-one-word-delete-two kind of writing I've been doing at work. Hurrah!