There’s a Lot of it About
Did I mention there are a lot of microbes in the world? I’m sure I have. Well, it now appears there are even more than previously estimated. By a few orders of magnitude. Ha.
read moreFan Trouble.
Like it or not, fans are a part of nearly every writer’s life nowadays. Usually they stay unseen, unheard and unheeded, but they’re always there. We may go for months without giving them a second thought, but when they make themselves noticed, we’d do well to pay attention. Which is what happened to me late last night. The one in my laptop conked out suddenly, so that when I turned on my trusty ol’ x31 all I got was a laconic black and white message saying “fan error” – then darkness. I...
read moreYou know…for kids!??
(The title, in case you’re wondering, is Tim Robbins’s inane catchphrase from “The Hudsucker Proxy”) I’m back from San Diego, where I participated in the sb&f awards ceremony along with the three other winners this year, who were all very nice, with great books – I bought “The Frog Scientist” for Daniel, who’s a bit young for the story but can already appreciate a good frog photo when he sees one. Julian Slane has some photos of it all (not the frogs, the ceremony) in his blog (thanks...
read moreThis could be nothing…
…or it could be very, very big indeed. One of those things our future grandchildren will simply not understand how the human race managed without. Liquid Glass
read moreDo Not Lick This Blog Post
This list was originally compiled as a “fun facts”-type publicity handout a while back; thought you might like it too. 1) Some microbes can survive temperatures of over 120°C (about 250°F). 2) If you were to place all the bacterial cells found in an average cow stomach end to end, you’d go insane. It’s really really hard. 3) Plus it would stink to high heaven. 4) I imagine the cow wouldn’t be too happy about it either. 5) Contrary to popular opinion, bacteria can and do engage in sexual activity. See chapter 4 of the book for the...
read moreGoing to California
Good Things happening! The American edition of SW has won the (take a deep breath, now) 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) / Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the Young Adult Science Book category. Whew. Long prize name, there. SB&F – or Science Books & Films to give its full name – is an AAAS-published review journal for educators and libraries. I’m well pleased, as you may imagine. Plus, I get to go to the AAAS annual meeting in San Diego in February and...
read moreChemistry in motion:
Professor Ada Yonath has won (with two colleagues) the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hear hear. I was lucky enough to attend a talk she gave a few years ago at a conference, where she presented several film clips of the structure of the ribosome (specifically, the bacterial kind), how it works and its interactions with antibiotic compounds. These were not general schematic illustrations, the kind you usually come across in textbooks and talks, but accurate representations of the crystallographic structure – which made the whole thing...
read moreStand back, everyone.
There are plenty of good things about being a postgraduate student in the History and Philosophy of Science. Being of any use to anyone is not one of them. Unfortunately, my calling offers precious little opportunities for those “man-on-the spot” moments, the ones where you can confidently intervene in a situation and resolve it using your skills. Doctors and nurses have them. Firemen, policemen, lifeuards, veterinarians, plumbers, electricians, lawyers too, in a way. I can easily think of “stand back, everyone”...
read morewaste not.
This article from ScienceDaily explores the high-profile issue of nuclear waste and its removal – this time it’s E.coli who’ll be cleaning up uranium from polluted water. The news understandably generated a flurry of “OMG mutant nuclear bacteria”-type comments in slashdot, god bless them. Anyway, as the article itself notes, the idea is over a decade old – the one thing that is new is that they’ve found a way to use a waste product as the substrate of the reaction, which makes it (potentially) a neat...
read moreNot coming soon to a theatre near you.
“Creation”, a film about Charles Darwin’s inner struggle with belief, is apparently not going to be screened commercially in the US – no distributor wants to touch it, because a film about Darwin and religion is judged as too controversial for American audiences. I haven’t seen the film, so I don’t know if it’s any good; also, films, being visual works tend to simplify complex debates, so I’m cautious . A New Scientist review suggests it might be less than perfect. (then again, they were less...
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