Category Archives: Science

Nobel Laureate Initiates Symposia for Student Scientists

The video shows a portion of Oliver Smithies’ Nobel acceptance lecture. See the rest of the speech, and more info, on the Nobel Prize site.

As an undergraduate student at Oxford University in the 1940s, Oliver Smithies attended a series of lectures by Linus Pauling, one of the most influential chemists of the 20th century. It was a powerful experience, one that sparked the young scientist’s ambitions and helped launch his own eminent career.

“It was tremendously inspiring,” says Smithies, one of three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2007. “People were sitting in the aisles to listen to him.”

Now Smithies, who was a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1960-88, is taking it upon himself to expose a new generation of undergraduates to this sort of experience. Using the prize money that came with his Nobel Prize, Smithies is funding symposia at all four universities he has been affiliated with throughout his scientific career: Oxford, the University of Toronto, UW-Madison and the University of North Carolina, where he is currently the Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Each university will receive about $130,000 to get things started.

“He wants the symposium to be a day when we bring the very best in biology to campus to interact with the students,” says geneticist Fred Blattner, who is in charge of organizing the symposium at UW-Madison and who collaborated with Smithies when their careers paths overlapped in Wisconsin.

The first of two speakers at the UW-Madison’s inaugural Oliver Smithies Symposium will be Leroy Hood, director of the Institute for Systems Biology, located in Seattle. Hood is a pioneer of high-throughput technologies and was instrumental in developing the technology used to sequence the human genome. More recently, Hood has focused his efforts on systems biology, the field of science in which researchers create computer models to describe complex biological processes, such as the development of cancer in the body. He is also at the forefront of efforts to use computer models to help doctors tailor drugs and dosages to an individual’s genetic makeup.
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Put a Little Science in Your Life

Put a Little Science in Your Life By Brian Greene

And when we look at the wealth of opportunities hovering on the horizon — stem cells, genomic sequencing, personalized medicine, longevity research, nanoscience, brain-machine interface, quantum computers, space technology — we realize how crucial it is to cultivate a general public that can engage with scientific issues; there’s simply no other way that as a society we will be prepared to make informed decisions on a range of issues that will shape the future.

These are the standard – and enormously important – reasons many would give in explaining why science matters.

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations – for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth – not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

Excellent article by the author of The Elegant Universe.

New Iron Based Superconductors

Research Suggests Novel Superconductor Is in a Powerful Class All its Own

discovered surprising magnetic properties in the new superconductors that suggest they may have very powerful applications — from improved MRI machines and research magnets, to a new generation of superconducting electric motors, generators and power transmission lines. The research also adds to the long list of mysteries surrounding superconductivity, providing evidence that the new materials, which scientists are calling “doped rare earth iron oxyarsenides,” develop superconductivity in quite a new way
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Early this year, Japanese scientists who had been developing iron-based superconducting compounds for several years, finally tweaked the recipe just right with a pinch of arsenic. The result: a superconductor, also featuring oxygen and the rare earth element lanthanum, performing at a promising -413 degrees F (26 K). The presence of iron in the material was another scientific stunner: Because it’s ferromagnetic, iron stays magnetized after exposure to a magnetic field, and any current generates such a field. As a rule, magnetism’s effect on superconductivity is not to enhance it, but to kill it.

Iron based superconductors might resist magnetic fields over 100 Tesla

The new superconductors seem like they will be able to make improved MRI machines and research magnets, a new generation of superconducting electric motors, generators and power transmission lines. Tesla is a unit of magnetic field strength; the Earth’s magnetic field is one twenty thousandth of a tesla.

Saving Fermilab

Fermilab was once the premiere particle physics research lab. It is still a very important research lab. But, I have said before, other countries are the ones making the larger efforts lately to invest in science and technology centers of excellence that the US was making in the 1960’s and 1970’s: Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership, Investing in Technology Excellence, etc..

I have also said that the past success of the US has left it in a still very strong position. For example, the anonymous donor that saved Fermilab with a $5 million donation likely benefited from the successful investments in science centers of excellence in the past (few countries – maybe 30, can rely on large donations from wealthy individuals, to sustain centers of excellence and I don’t think any approach what the USA has now – Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Standford, MIT…).

Excellent post on the the saving of Fermilab, To the person who saved Fermilab: Thank You.:

The facility has recently seen financial difficulties which have resulted in the layoffs of research staff and dramatic cuts in experiments. The world class research facility has been left to scrape together funds to pay the bills and has even had to auction off equipment and ask staff members to take pay cuts just to keep the lights on in the laboratories.
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Fermilab also has an illustrious history of achievements in the field of supercomputer development and parallel processing. Fermilab has been on the forefront of applying supercomputing to physics research and is one of the top supercomputing centers of the world. Fermilab has claimed the world’s most powerful supercomputer on multiple occasions – although the title is rarely held long by any system due to the continuous advancements in computing. In recent years, Fermilab has been a leader in the development of “lattice” supercomputing systems and has developed methods for efficiently utilizing the power of multiple supercomputers in different locations through more [efficient] distribution practices.

To some, the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN may seem to reduce the importance of Fermilab’s capabilities, but this is not at all the case. Although the LHC may take the title for the overall size and energy levels of a particle accelerator, Fermilab remains a uniquely capable particle physics research institution. Though less powerful, the Tevatron is able to operate for longer periods of time than the LHC and will likely require less downtime for maintenance, allowing for greater access and numerous types of research activities.

11 Science Journalist Fellows at MIT

The Knight Fellowship at MIT has a class of eleven science journalists from six countries this year. All are mid-career journalists who work for general interest news media to improve the public understanding of science. They will take a sabbatical year from their jobs to improve their knowledge by taking courses at MIT and Harvard, interviewing scientists and attending various seminars and lectures during the 2008–2009 academic year. They take up residence in Cambridge in August 2008.

The fellows include: Kimani Chege, editor of TechNews Africa, from Kenya; Sabin Russell, medical writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, from the USA; Teresa Firmino, science and technology reporter for PÃºblico, from Portugal; Jonathan Fildes, science and technology reporter for BBC News, from England; and Rachel Zimmerman, health and medicine reporter for The Wall Street Journal, from the USA.

This is a great program to help some excellent science journalist to get even better. We need more excellent science journalism.

We list the Knight Science Journalism Tracker on the list of our favorite science and engineering blogs.

Bacteria “Feed” on Earth’s Ocean-Bottom Crust

Once considered a barren plain dotted with hydrothermal vents, the seafloor’s rocky regions appear to be teeming with microbial life, say scientists
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“Initial research predicted that life could in fact exist in such a cold, dark, rocky environment,” said Santelli. “But we really didn’t expect to find it thriving at the levels we observed.” Surprised by this diversity, the scientists tested more than one site and arrived at consistent results, making it likely, according to Santelli and Edwards, that rich microbial life extends across the ocean floor. “This may represent the largest surface area on Earth for microbes to colonize,” said Edwards.
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Santelli and Edwards also found that the higher microbial diversity on ocean-bottom rocks compared favorably with other life-rich places in the oceans, such as hydrothermal vents. These findings raise the question of where these bacteria find their energy, Santelli said.

“We scratched our heads about what was supporting this high level of growth,” Edwards said. With evidence that the oceanic crust supports more bacteria than overlying water, the scientists hypothesized that reactions with the rocks themselves might offer fuel for life.

Why doesn’t this stuff make the news over what some celebrity did or politician said… (well I must admit I am just guessing since I don’t actually watch the news or read the mass media much – other than some science, investing or economics content). Oh well, at least you get to read the Curious Cat Science blog and find out about some of the cool stuff being learned every day.

Learning from Leprosy Diagnosis

A Scary Diagnosis Hits Home

The diagnosis that ultimately resulted — leprosy — turned the Blanchards’ world upside down and rippled through the lives of many people they knew or had contact with. It also raised issues that are often confronted when any contagious disease is diagnosed, particularly one with scary connotations: What precautions should be taken to protect the rights of the affected individual as well as the health of the community?
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For the Blanchards, some of the answers lay almost literally in their back yard. Baton Rouge is home to the National Hansen’s Disease (Leprosy) Clinical Center, part of the U.S. Public Health Service.
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About 300,000 new cases of leprosy are diagnosed annually, according to the World Health Organization. Now known as Hansen’s disease, after the Norwegian scientist who discovered the mycobacterium that causes the illness, it affects about 2 million to 3 million people worldwide.

Where it is left untreated, Hansen’s disease is a leading cause of disability and devastating deformity. It remains endemic in Bangladesh, India, Brazil and elsewhere. In the United States, roughly 6,000 people have the disease. One hundred to two hundred new cases are reported annually, and, like BB Blanchard, about two dozen of those new patients have never been beyond U.S. borders.
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How transmission occurs is a mystery. Humans and the armadillo are the only two creatures known to get the disease. No one knows where the microbe hides in nature, although the suspicion is that the leprosy mycobacterium may be airborne like its bacterial cousin, tuberculosis.

Most people think of leprosy as a skin disease. But the rash that BB Blanchard had and the disfiguring lesions often associated with it are just a symptom. The mycobacteria burrow into nerves, where they often remain undetected for years or even decades.

Women Choosing Other Fields Over Engineering and Math

graph of science and engineering degrees by gender in the USA 1966-2005

The graph shows college degrees granted in the USA. This topic sets up one for criticism, but I believe it is more important to examine the data and explore the possible ideas than to avoid anything that might be questioned by the politically correct police. An import factor, to me anyway, is that women are now graduating from college in far higher numbers than men. And in many science fields female baccalaureate graduates outnumber male graduates (psychology [67,000 to 19,000], biology[42,000 to 26,000], anthropology, sociology [20,000 to 8,000]) while men outnumber women in others (math [7,000 to 6,000], engineering [53,000 to 13,000], computer science [39,000 to 11,000], physics [3,000 to 900]).

Data on degrees awarded men and women in the USA in 2005, from NSF*:

Field	Bachelors		Master’s		Doctorate
	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men
Biology	42,283	25,699	4,870	3,229	3,105	3,257
Computer Science	11,235	39,329	5,078	12,742	225	909
Economics	8,141	17,023	1,391	2,113	355	827
Engineering	13,197	52,936	7,607	26,492	1,174	5,215
Geosciences	1,660	2,299	712	973	243	470
Physics	903	3,307	427	1,419	200	1,132
Psychology	66,833	19,103	12,632	3,444	2,264	211
Sociology	20,138	8,438	920	485	343	211
All S&E	235,197	230,806	53,051	66,974	10,533	17,405

What does this all mean? It is debatable, but I think it is very good news for the efforts many have made over the last few decades to open up opportunities for women. I still support efforts to provide opportunities for girls to get started in science and engineering but I think we have reached the day when the biggest concern is giving all kids better math and science primary education (and related extracurricular activities). Also continued focus and effort on the doctorate and professional opportunities for women is warranted.
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High School Student Isolates Microbe that Eats Plastic

WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags

Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment.
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First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.

After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.

Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 per cent less.
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The inputs are cheap, maintaining the required temperature takes little energy because microbes produce heat as they work, and the only outputs are water and tiny levels of carbon dioxide — each microbe produces only 0.01 per cent of its own infinitesimal weight in carbon dioxide, said Burd.

“This is a huge, huge step forward . . . We’re using nature to solve a man-made problem.” Burd would like to take his project further and see it be used. He plans to study science at university, but in the meantime he’s busy with things such as student council, sports and music.

Life Far Beneath the Ocean

Huge hidden biomass lives deep beneath the oceans

Recently, he and his colleagues examined samples of a mud core extracted from between 860 metres and 1626 metres beneath the sea floor off the coast of Newfoundland. They found simple organisms known as prokaryotes in every sample. Prokaryotes are organisms that often have just one cell. Their peculiarity is that, unlike any other form of life, their DNA is not neatly packed into a nucleus.
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Where cells living so far beneath the sea floor could have come from remains a mystery. They may have been gradually buried in sediment as millions of years passed by, and adapted to the increasing temperatures and pressure, he says.

Another possibility is that they were sucked deep into the mud from the sea water above. Hydrothermal vents pulse hot water out of the seabed and into the ocean. This creates a vacuum in the sediment, which draws fresh sea water into the marine aquifer.

It is important to understand the way the cells got down there, because that has implications for their age. The cells are not very active and according to Parkes they have very few predators. “We find very few viruses, for example, down there,” he says. “At the surface, if you don’t divide you get eaten. But if there are no predators, the pressure to reproduce decreases and you can spend more energy on repairing your damaged molecules.”
Ancient life

This means it is conceivable – but unproven – that some of the cells are as old as the sediment. At 1.6 km beneath the sea, that’s 111 million years old. But in an underworld where cells divide excruciatingly slowly, if at all, age tends to lose its relevance, says Parkes.

More very cool stuff, this stuff is fun.