Grotesque Science

Call me conservative, but I find this article highly disturbing:

Baby Formula that Fights Fat

"Infant formula and other baby foods that provide permanent protection from obesity and diabetes into adulthood could be on shop shelves soon, reports Lisa Melton in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. The foods will be supplemented with leptin, the hunger hormone. Those who take the foods early in life should remain permanently slim."

In plain language, the science behind this article boils down to this:

Through time, humans have evolved to get the maximum amount of energy out of a minimal amount of food. From an evolutionary viewpoint, this makes perfect sense: your chances of survival go up. Energy expenditure is a very strong drive in animal life and evolution. A cheetah needs to be successful at his kills, because he loses a lot of energy on the chase of prey. The energy lost at acquiring prey must be far less than the energy gained by eating the prey, otherwise there is no point chasing. Likewise, your survival chances increase if you become more efficient at getting energy out of the food you managed to catch.


These days, we no longer have to struggle to find food. In the Western World, food is no longer scarce and processed foods are far richer in energy (fat, sugar) than most other natural sources of food. So, because we are so efficient in terms of energy acquirement, we get fat. That is to say, those making no effort at a balanced diet and exercise regime, get fat.

Instead of working on incentives to drive people to think more consciously about their diets, scientist have decided to take a short-cut:

Leptin is a hormone that regulates energy metabolism. By giving leptin to babies, you re-train their bodies to become LESS efficient at getting energy out of food. So their body, on all accounts, becomes inefficient at dealing with food. They can eat lots, but their body will only absorb small amounts of energy, and will therefore be unlikely to become fat.

I am all for investigative research, if it aims at explaining how our bodies work. But when that knowledge is used to undo years of evolutionary fine-tuning, I start to feel slight shivers down my spine. The product is expected to be on the shelves in a year's time. I wonder how many people will choose to feed it to their new-borns. I fear there will be rather a lot. Ignorance rarely is bliss.

GM Cockrel

Could someone maybe please take some time out to genetically engineer a cockrell with a snooze-time that surpasses the 30-second mark?? Because seriously... while I'm all in favor of the return to the countryside, I would be tremendously grateful NOT to be roused by a "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!!!" every other half-a-minute at 5 a.m.

I'm sure there's a market for expended-snoozetime-cockrells... Get in!!

Women's Warped Sense of Time?

What does a lesbian bring on her second date?

A moving van.

This joke is funny simply because it's so painfully accurate. It's the stereotypical lesbian image: Girl and Girl meet, fall in love, start wearing each other's clothes, move in, adopt cats. All in the space of 6 months. But stereotypes are generally rooted in reality, and this one no less so. Based on personal experiences and observing some of my gay female friends, I would have to conclude that the stereotype is not too far off the mark. As a group, we have a tendency to move fast.

During a recent phone conversation about this topic with Jo (yes, the hot girl I mentioned a few posts ago), we both acknowledged that the two weeks that had passed since her visit, did appear so much longer than just two weeks. And it made me wonder whether maybe women simply have a different and unrealistic perception of time. If women perceive time differently than men do, then the time-perception of a lesbian couple is bound to be skewed. Perhaps men and women in heterosexual relationships balance each other out in this aspect, allowing them to move according to a more accurate timescale of relationship-events. While the warped-perception-of-time of two women in a gay relationship would merely aggravate the situation and therefore enhance the speed at which things move forward within the relationship.

So, I decided to browse Science Direct for a while to try and hunt down a few publications on gender differences in time perception. I found lots of publications that seem to confirm that women indeed tend to OVER-estimate duration of time, while men generally have an accurate sense of the time passed.

In light of this, it's probably no coincidence that the words "Bed" and "Death" are consistently preceded by the word "Lesbian". Lesbian Bed Death is a term used to describe the phenomenon of declining sexual activity about a year into a lesbian relationship. It's a bit of a scare-mongering term in the lesbian community and whether this concept is purely mythological or not, it is still highly debated both socially and academically. I personally think the whole phenomenon is largely exaggerated. The concept of the declining sex life is as much a straight as a gay issue in long-term relationships and depends highly on the individual couple. But I suppose that the warped sense of time could account for some instances of Lesbian Bed Death. If women systematically over-estimate the duration of time passed, then a year might indeed feel like a lot longer and I would guess that the emotional timeline would therefore reach the general long-term slump a tad sooner too.

Whatever the case, gay women seem to have developed a good sense of humor about this little "quirk" of ours to "move fast", as it's become a bit of a standing joke within the community. I'd say humor is always the first step towards awareness. Whether or not the awareness will be able to restrain us from renting out the U-Haul on a second date, is another matter entirely ;-)


References:

- Wittmann M et al. 2003, "Sex differences in perception of temporal order", Percept Mot Skills 96(1):105-12
- Krishnan L et al. 1984, "Perceived time: its relationship with locus of control, filled versus unfilled time intervals, and perceiver's sex", J Gen Psychol 110:275-81.
-Dolu N et al. 2004, "Sex-related differences in time estimation and the role of expectancy", Int J Neurosci 114(7):805-15
-Eisler AD et al. 1994, "Subjective time scaling: influence of age, gender, and Type A and Type B behavior", Chronobiologia 21(3-4):185-200
-Espinosa-Fernandez L et al. 2003, "Age-related changes and gender differences in time estimation", Acta Psychol (Amst) 112(3):221-32

The Sunday Struggle #6

I've had a very relaxed week and weekend so far, so I doubt this Sunday will be much of a struggle, but here's this week's hot tips:

(1) MindPicnic: This site is highly addictive. It will show you a tiny section of the Google Earth maps and asks you to pin-point/guess where exactly on Earth this image was taken from. It then tells you by how many miles you guessed wrong. I discovered last night that it's an excellent chat game: find yourself a competitive chat-mate and challenge them to beat your closest mileage. (Beware of competitive swearing *cough* Jo *cough*)

(2) When Objects Work: A Belgian company attempting return to Minimalism. Successfully so. I particularly like Yindigo Monchizuki's design:

(3) God's Debris: Disco sent me this link as a Sunday Struggle suggestion and this is exactly what I will be doing for the rest of the day: finishing the book. It can be downloaded for free here. A synopsis of the book:

"Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage."

( 4) Andreas Gefeller Photography: This is absolutely stunning photography and most definitely the kind I would place on my wall. Birdseye perspectives rendered into entirely new visuals.

(5) Sunday quote to entertain my fellow physicists: "Physics is to Math what Sex is to Masturbation" by the legendary Richard Feynman ;-)

(6) My RSS feed list has grown expansively the last two weeks and for those of you looking for good blogs out there to follow on a regular basis, here's my suggestions:

FlyBottle
excellent, down-to-earth, philosophy blog

Apparent Dip
brilliant blog kept by a geologist with a broad interest.

Science Freak
comprehensive and fun Physics blog

Experimental Philosophy
scientific/neurobiological take on philosophy

Better Living Thru Design
the latest design features

Olelog
blog on Earth Science, aimed at a more scientific audience.

Cosmic Variance
particle physics collective blogging with a twist

Eureka Alert
current events newsflash on just about any field of science.
(warning: this site blogs about 15 posts per day on average, so highly time-consuming)

Mt.Ruapehu Collapse

I'm in Vienna at the moment for a wee family visit and while I normally read the newspaper over breakie, it takes more than one strong coffee in the morning before I dare attempt ploughing my way through a german newspaper. So I am always greatful if others cut my struggle short by pointing out the significant events for me (thx dad):

Mount Ruapehu Collapse Imminent

Last October, I spent 10 days in Taupo (NZ) whilst waiting for the snowstorm at the Tongariro Crossing to clear. The first signs of renewed activity at Mt.Ruapehu broke out on the day of my arrival there and I had somewhat foolishly hoped that this would herald a wee miniature natural disaster for me to explore while I was there.

While Mt.Ruapehu is one of the world's most active volcanoes, the issue at hand is not the risk of a sudden violent lava eruption but rather the overspilling of its crater lake. These last two decades, the Ruapehu crater (which is about the size of 23 football fields) has filled up with water and volcanic debris, and the walls of the crater now look set to collapse. When this happens, it will trigger what is known as a Lahar.

"A Lahar is a type of mudflow composed of pyroclastic material and water that flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley. They have the consistency of concrete: fluid when moving, then solid when stopped." (source: Wiki)

New Zealand is absolutely geared towards professional monitoring of its volcanic landmarks and the installment of early-warning systems will allow documentary makers to record the event when it happens. This will undoubtedly lead to some spectaculair footage and valuable scientific data. I can hardly wait. *Psyched*

- Mt.Ruapehu (The Calmer Days, 5/10/06) -

For more of my volcanic piccies click here, here or here

The Brits and their Alcohol

Was watching Graham Norton on BBC2 this evening and he played around with worldmapper (brilliant site by the way!)...

The map above demonstrates the alcohol consumption per country depicted by adjusting the relative territories of each country accordingly *grin*

Ouch

Doesn't this just strike a little close to home?!

The Cult of Genius

Beware: Rant On The Way

I came out off the geek closet at work today. I'd received a few comments on my supposed use of expensive words (apparently the word "contamination" is classified as expensive these days) and on the fact that I was reading an English book during our breaks. So, I finally decided to out myself. Told all about how I've been living a double life and how I hope they will accept me for the geek that I am *grin*.

The response was really surprising. I had anticipated little more than a few shrugs and a stone-cold banishment from the social room. But instead, people started coming to me with more and more questions the further the day progressed. At first, it was just one of the girls. She told me she'd never had a chance to study, but had always been interested in science and its relation to things like religion, spirituality etc... We had a very pleasant conversation about this topic and I noticed that the others around us were listening intently, despite not participating.

After a while, someone else moved a little closer and said: "Would you mind if I asked you something? I've always wanted to know... birds... the way they all fly together, like... do you know how they do that, or is that not something you've studied". It's funny that this question should've come up, as it's the token example of Emergence in Complexity Studies. So I got VERY enthusiastic and explained as far as my limited knowledge stretched.

After that, the questions just kept coming from all corners. It'd turned into a game. They were testing my knowledge, but also, asking questions to which they'd apparently never found the answers themselves. And I have to say, the questions were interesting and insightful.

One of the questions though, turned the game into a rather poignant realisation. The person had been to see the doctor last week and was diagnosed with a virus, but was told by her doctor that there was no reason she shouldn't be at work. She said she couldn't remember the name of the virus, and hadn't really understood the doctor's explanation. She was worried, but afraid to ask him for more info, because she felt stupid. So I asked her if she could describe her symptoms and I said that while I was no doctor, it DID sound like a standard bout of mononucleosis. She said that that wasn't the word he had used, so I ventured a guess and said: "Well, did he maybe call it the Epstein-Barr virus?" She instantly recognised it and said: "YES!!"

It made me realise how seriously wrong we are. Us scientists, doctors, people responsible for communicating facts to laymen... we have got it seriously wrong. If a doctor doesn't sense that he should use less jargon when dealing with people who have no medical background and sends them home without answers because they are afraid to ask... then seriously, he shouldn't be a doctor.

I'm the first to admit that while I have some very libertarian-socialist viewpoints, I believe that a liberal/capitalist system is far more workable for everyone in our current global climate. We will always need people who do menial jobs... jobs that keep our economy floating. And sure, not everyone is up to the task to do high-flying jobs, but I very strongly believe that it is important that we keep including everyone into our information dispersal systems. Regardless of "status" (if you can call it that), people should always be made to feel that they belong. That they matter as much as the next person does. Because if we don't, we are re-widening a gap between the different social groups, our grandparents fought so hard for to close. Perhaps the gap will be less about money, but more about the possession of information.

The people I work with have thousands of questions. Interesting questions. And they are eager to listen if only someone would explain it to them in an understandable way. They might not read books, or browse the Internet for answers, but they like getting answers to things that pop into their heads during the experiences of every day life.

And I was thinking... maybe the government or several scientific institutes should subsidize something like an Info-Crew. Like a group of scientists/medics/experts who visit factories to work alongside the people there for a day or two, to just chat with them during work and over lunch breaks. So they get conversations going in an informal manner and people can just fire away their questions. No teaching. No lecturing. Just an easy access point to get answers to THEIR specific questions. It would certainly help to re-align the opinions about science and medicine. We'd probably start re-gaining our credibility if people felt that they OWNED the science as much as the researchers do.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

To apologize for this rant, I shall leave you with a little gem of an mp3: Metric - The Twist. Just click the file name in the box below to start listening. (Cool text as well)


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Weird Creatures

I was talking to someone about weird animals today and I remembered an episode in David Attenborough's Life of Birds where he captures the Lyre Bird on film. Not many people seem to know about these birds.

I always thought it was written "Liar Bird" because that's basically what the animal is. A liar. It mimics all the sounds around him, very much like a human beatbox. I found the clip on YouTube after a bit of searching and if you scroll on through to about 2 minutes or so into this 4 minute clip, you will actually hear the Lyre bird make the sound of a picture camera, a car alarm and, more poignantly, of chainsaws cutting down the forest.

Faffing & Geekiness reach all time high

Some PhD students clearly have far too much time on their hands: How Gay is your Starsign

Also, since I no longer live in Britain and therefore can't participate in any of the exciting competitions myself, I have decided that my brit-based scientist friends have to participate for me. It's Famelab auditions again! Jim, Ann, Od, Lynn, Fi, Bino, Rob... get in!

One I can and will try for (and would recommend to anyone with an interest in public understanding of science): Science in School Webzine.

Competition

Now here's a competition one could really sink their teeth into ;-) Check out the first prize...

New Scientist and Audi have teamed up. And as usual in New Scientist competitions, one needs to write no more than 250 words... I think I know what I'll be doing with all my spare time this week ;-)

Wrong Way to Employment

Hmmm.... well, I guess there's no point applying for a job with GSK anymore. They *might* be on to my blogpost "Spinning Words".

- Excerpt of my webstatistics -

Disclaimer: I do appologize to all the sincere scientists that work there. No need to tar everyone with the same brush.

Spinning Words

I know this is a familiar story: "Drug company 'hid' suicide link".

"Panorama reveals that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials. And that GSK-employed ghostwriters influenced 'independent' academics."

But while we've all seen programs or read articles that have focussed on the topic of drug trial manipulations and the aggressive marketing style of some Pharmaceutical companies, this documentary takes on a slightly different perspective. It explores how the manipulation is achieved: through clever strategic use of spin-doctors and ghostwriters with a knack for "re-phrasing" the specifics and how their skills are used to reel in supposedly independent academics. It focusses largely on the power of word and perception.

I am interested in this topic for quite obvious reasons, but also because most -if not all- of the freelance translation work I do on the side, involves documents related to phase I and phase II clinical trials. It is interesting to study the wording in certain documents and I can only hope that if any of my family members or friends ever were to face the decision to participate in a drug trial because of health reasons, they will be guided through the sometimes ambiguous wording by someone who's got their best interest at heart.

Moreover, how do we keep ourselves from conveying the wrong messages? Language is clearly a very subtle, powerful tool. Are we always that concious of our choice of words? If I trawl through the archives of this blog, I am sure to find misleading statements, while I might not purposefully have written them in as such. We inherently rely on our own common sense and that of those nearest to us, to be corrected in our use of language and to be pointed out the hidden messages behind the facade of linguistics.

I think all of this pinpoints a process that underlies many misgivings and failures in democracy: the manipulation of language in politics, science, medicine, trade, economics, sales and education. And by extention, their (ab)use of the most powerful forum of words: The Media.
A fact that was worded incredibly well in Manufacturing Consent:


“Media is to a democracy, what violence is to a dictatorship.”


To watch the abovementioned BBC documentary, Click Here. (35-minute feature)

Addendum: I would like to point out that while the documentary itself reports on manipulation, it in itself is not entirely devoid of somewhat ambiguous, sensationalist spins.

Penguin Pooh

You can just imagine the conversation on this researcher's first dinner date:

"So what's your research on??"

"Well..."

A diagram of his paper:

Man, did I chose the wrong topic ;-)

Pulling Hairs

I am much too tired to write a complete typical Pew rant about the following, but I rather suspect this topic will be picked up by more blogs over the next few days. I hope they manage to word the frustrations better than I can at this very moment.

Climateprediction.net quite cleverly teamed up with the BBC to carry out what has been labelled the largest and most important Climate Change Experiment. I am all in favor of the idea of involving the general public by making use of their computers to distribute experimental/theoretical computations that would otherwise take years to complete in a single lab. NASA started a similar project a few years back as part of the SETI-project. I think it's brilliant.

However. There's as always a downside to such "popularisations" of science.

I dare assume that most of us are aware of the chaotic principles underlying the Earth's weather system. Most of us also know that when it comes down to the current forecasting models, the probabilities of the forecast being accurate drops off sharply after day 5 into the forecast. That is why most MetOffices generally dont give out weather bulletins more than 5 days ahead of time.

Whilst I am aware that slightly different probabilities are involved with larger scale, whole system predictions, it is safe to assume that due to the non-linear nature of climate, any prediction in the long term needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The actual methods of calculation and the reasoning behind the conclusion-forming is explained on the BBC site, and I would suggest you all have a look at it. I am fairly confident most amongst you will raise a few eyebrows when they then check the actual result page as displayed on the BBC site.

To state that Britain SHOULD expect a 4 degree rise in temperature by 2080 is simply absurd. It is the type of uncautious generalisation seen all too often in the media and makes me feel embarassed to be a scientist. Because we let the media get away with it. I am all the more annoyed because I generally regard the BBC as one of the last remaining flagships of genuine journalism out there.

I believe a little nuancing is desperately needed in the whole climate change debate. There are most certainly problems that urgently need to be dealt with, but before we all jump on the "end-of-time-catastrophe" bandwagon, let's just point out a few other bits of science that seem to tell a somewhat more balanced story alltogether...

In terms of glacier melting, I have two very fine examples right here:

A New Alpine Melt Theory

Too Cold to Snow?

Helen Margerison, who wrote the latter, was a 2005 New Scientist Essay Competition finalist and as such, I actually saw her present her findings at an award event in London. It stunned me at the time, because this sort of information generally doesn't get spread out over the newspages. It is far too nuanced. Far too "unexciting". Just pay attention to her statement that "... the odd thing about glaciers in the Dry Valleys is that they don’t melt when the climate gets warmer, they actually begin to grow..."

It's a sad time when people only care about environmental issues if there's a doomsday scenario attached to it. I'd like to believe that even if we nuance the situations correctly, people will still realise that we are doing some serious damage and that action is always justified, whether we are causing these natural events or not.

Scent of a Woman

Contrary to what my nickname may suggest, I am all in favour of smelling nice. I am not averse to a few sprays of perfume, or a good scrub in the shower. I change my clothes on a regular basis and I take a toothbrush at hand at least twice a day. Mom raised me well.

However.

For no reason in particular, I thought back of some publication I read a while ago about the role of scents in the game of seduction and attraction. Several studies seem to hint that the scents people produce help us all to attract the genetically most advantageous partner. Our biology seems to drive us to find partners that have MHC genes (major histocompatibility complex genes) not too similar and not too dissimilar to ours. These genes produce proteins that attach to our own cells in our body, so that our immune system knows they are our own and should not be destroyed. Finding a partner with similar MHC genes, though not exactly the same, seems to increase our chances of producing offspring that has a better survival rate in this world.

So that's the science bit.

I now wonder what the effect is of our societal obsession with smelling nice. I assume that our natural scents are covered up by the perfumes, deodorants and soaps we slap on ourselves each day. If scent has such an evolutionary importance, it might determine more than purely a compatibility of genes. Maybe it determines who is most likely to stick with us in the long run (this is a far stretch, but one should never assume). By dowsing ourselves with the latest fashionably hip Eau-de-Cologne, we may inadvertently be confusing our own radars.

In that respect, I am all in favor of a few sweaty T-shirts here and there. If you dig deep in your own memories, and trace back to a moment of intimate passion with someone you loved intensely, I'm sure you'll find that the natural scents you smelt then, were anything but gross. Quite to the contrary. They were enticing, seductive, energizing... I think that's what it's all about.

I have yet to figure out how all of this translates to Gay attractions, for the absolute evolutionary drives to procreate with your partner of attraction are somewhat dust in the wind here. Having said that, as a lesbian, I can only conclude that the scent of some women drives me mad too. There might just be a little more to do with scents than purely the Darwinian principles ;-)