Category Archives: Education

Fight to curtail antibiotics in animal feed

Consumer advocates have been campaigning for years to curb the use of antibiotics in agriculture, citing studies that show that 70 percent of all U.S. antibiotics are administered in low doses – not to treat disease, but to promote the growth of pigs, sheep, chicken and cattle.
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But as early as 1963, British researchers tied the emergence of drug-resistant strains of salmonella in humans to antibiotics fed to cattle.

Geothermal Power in Alaska

Geothermal Power in Alaska Holds Hidden Model for Clean Energy, how it works:

1) 165 F water, pumped three-quarters of a mile from Chena’s 700-ft.-deep production well, enters the evaporator. After circulating through pipes, the water, now 135 F, is reinjected into the reservoir at a well 300 ft. from the power plant.
2) The refrigerant R-134a fills the shell of the evaporator. Heat transferred from the 165-degree water causes the refrigerant to vaporize without the two liquids actually coming into contact.
3) The vapor is expanded supersonically through the turbine nozzle, causing the turbine blades to rotate at 13,500 rpm. This turns a generator at 3600 rpm, producing electricity.
4) 40 F water, siphoned from a shallow well 33 ft. higher in elevation than the plant, enters the con-denser without the aid of a pump. It circulates through pipes before being returned 9 degrees warmer to Monument Creek.
5) Vapor exiting the turbine fills the shell of the condenser, where the 40 F water returns the refrigerant to liquid form.
6) A pump pushes the refrigerant back to the evaporator, generating the pressure that drives the entire cycle so that it may start anew.

Weird Creatures

EDGE Amphibians – the world’s weirdest creatures just got weirder

This year ZSL [Zoological Society of London] scientists have assessed all amphibian species according to how Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) they are. “The EDGE amphibians are amongst the most remarkable and unusual species on the planet and yet an alarming 85% of the top 100 are receiving little or no conservation attention and will become extinct if action is not taken now.”
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1) Chinese giant salamander (salamander that can grow up to 1.8m in length and evolved independently from all other amphibians over one hundred million years before Tyrannosaurus rex)

2) Sagalla caecilian (limbless amphibian with sensory tentacles on the sides of its head)

3) Purple frog (purple-pigmented frog that was only discovered in 2003 because it spends most of the year buried up to 4m underground)

From Ghost Writing to Ghost Management in Medical Journals

Ghost Management: How Much of the Medical Literature Is Shaped Behind the Scenes by the Pharmaceutical Industry?

As discussed below, a substantial percentage of medical journal articles (in addition to meeting presentations and other forms of publication, which are not the focus here) are ghost managed, allowing the pharmaceutical industry considerable influence on medical research, and making that research a vehicle for marketing.

Ghost writing and honorary authorship are not in and of themselves scientific problems, though they become so when they shape science to meet particular interests [1]. Some honorary authors are senior professors and chairs of departments, who are added to articles because of local academic politics rather than at the request of drug companies [15,16].
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It has been repeatedly and firmly established that pharmaceutical company funding strongly biases published results in favor of the company’s products [17–19]. Ghost management amplifies that bias, because when one set of commercial interests exerts influence at multiple stages of research, writing, and publication, it will shape the resulting article.

This PLoS published essay includes 52 citations of studies in this area.

While they are clear to distinguish drug company influence on authors and other influence, I can see no justification for honorary authorships. Why can’t people just be honest. Is that really too high an expectation for scientists? Academic politics should not trump truth – especially for scientists. I can understand that traditionally claiming authors that were not actually authors has not been uncommon. But what reason is there to be dishonest in this way now? I don’t know of a good reason. Therefore it seems to me this practice should be seen as any other dishonest practice and those interested in finding the truth should stop making dishonest claims of authorship.
Continue reading →

Thinking Slime Moulds

Those amazing slime moulds

In other words, science has shown how unicellular organisms like the slime mould have the ability to learn and remember. Memory and learning seem to not be limited to us humans and can be found, as expected from an evolutionary perspective across organisms.

The amoeba Physarum polycephalum is quite a performer as it has been able to navigate mazes and solve simple puzzles.
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Nakagaki, T., Yamada, H. & A. TÃ³th. “Intelligence: Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism” Nature 407, 470 (2000).

The plasmodium of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large amoeba-like cell consisting of a dendritic network of tube-like structures (pseudopodia). It changes its shape as it crawls over a plain agar gel and, if food is placed at two different points, it will put out pseudopodia that connect the two food sources. Here we show that this simple organism has the ability to find the minimum-length solution between two points in a labyrinth.

What Are Slime Moulds

Members of this class are commonly referred to as slime moulds. These have thought to belong to both animal and fungi kingdoms at one time or another. It’s now known that they are quite unrelated to animals and fungi and now are classified in the Kingdom Protista.

However slime moulds do exhibit characteristics of both fungi and animals. In the feeding stage, the slime moulds moves about as a mass of protoplasm (the plasmodium) feeding on bacteria, spores, and other organic matter much like an amoeba. When the food supply is exhausted or other unfavourable conditions occur, the plasmodium changes, taking on the appearance of a fungus.

IT Employment Hits New High Again

Damn the Economy! IT Employment Rises to New Heights

Unemployment among business-technology professionals has fallen to a decade low as the size of the IT workforce has risen to a record level in 2007, according to CIO Insight analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Joblessness among American IT workers averaged 2.1 percent last year, down from 2.5 percent in 2006. That’s the lowest unemployment rate for IT pros since the government began using the current method to track employment in 2000, when IT joblessness stood at 2.2 percent.

In 2007, according to our analysis, 3,758,000 workers in the U.S. held IT jobs; another 79,000 people who consider themselves business-technology professionals were unemployed. IT employment grew 8.5 percent last year. By this calculation, IT managers and staffers represent nearly 2.6 percent of employed U.S. workers in 2007.

Synthesizing a Genome from Scratch

In the new study, scientists ordered 101 DNA fragments, encompassing the entire Mycoplasma genome, from commercial DNA synthesis companies. These fragments were designed so that each overlapped its neighboring sequence by a small amount; these overlapping stretches stick together, thanks to the chemical properties of DNA. Researchers then bound the fragments piece by piece, eventually generating the full 582,970 base pair Mycoplasma sequence.

Elbaite with Albite

Photo of Elbaite with Albite, Na(Li, Al)₃Al₆(BO)₃)₃Si₆O₁₈(OH)₄, at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington DC, by John Hunter.

Science and Engineering Instructional Webcasts

doFlick offers user-generated educational, technical and instructional videos on science and engineering. Examples include: Simple Circuits – How to do a basic leak test in vacuum systems – Bacteria in the Human Mouth – Transverse Standing Waves – Pulsed Layer Deposition Overview

The site offers a short videos on science and engineering topics (plus some other topics as well). The site fills a niche that is different that any other site I have seen. The videos are largely tips on lab or engineering techniques or edited labs. These are videos that might appear on network TV but they are exactly the type of resource that makes the internet great. Lets build this resource: upload your own webcasts. There is a great advantage to short targeted online videos (compared to full course lectures – which are also great) because the short targeted videos allow for targeted linking specifically to the video content you want to link to.

This is definitely worth adding to your bookmarks. Or you can just bookmark our directory of science and engineering videos.

Fancy Camera Flash Trigger

Some neat discussion of the engineering behind the RadioPopper P1 is included on the site:

The RadioPopper was designed to solve specific problems faced by event and wedding photographers. Most of us already own a pair or more of the various pro flash units from our camera manufacturers. These flashes are tied closely to the metering systems of our cameras
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Radio flash triggering devices allow a more consistent triggering means – but they lack any ability to dynamically adjust the flash power as the situation changes.
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With RadioPopper you’re no longer forced to choose between usability and reliability. Enjoy all the utility and features built into your existing Canon and Nikon flash units while overcoming the single weak link of the wireless system – the “line of sight” infrared communication setup.

The radiopopper blog has interesting posts and discussion. Via: Engineering for the People – Radio Triggers