I'd like to be, Under the sea...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8408233.stm

Truly splendid! I'd heard about crows and badgers being able to use tools, but an invertebrate? Well, I always knew my ex-boss could wield an axe, so maybe tool use in invertebrates isn't all that uncommon. But this example is rather splendid: an octopus with a coconut shell. The above links to a video. I watched it about 3 times, all the time thinking: how cool is that?

I'm... so ronery, so ronery...

Happy birthday to the XMM-Newton observatory. Gets pretty lonely up there, I'm sure. In case you were wondering, it's a big ol' telescope with X-ray capability, so it's been able to pick up some pretty pictures like the supernova below. Apparently its the oldest one recorded.

On another note, the climate change conference is underway in Copenhagen. The funniest thing I've seen from this so far is Barack Obama pledging to cut emissions by 15%, with China saying something like "is that all? We can do better than you, we're going to cut by, erm, 30%!" I look forward to the counter bid by the US. Only this time I think the Republicans might be getting in the way. Bah.

I want one of these for Christmas

Imagine, if you will, a nightclub.

The lights! The music! Wow!

Quick swig from a bottle of beer, then it's off to cut some rug. Off we go, putting some moves together, yeah! (OK, so I have the co-ordination of a new-born giraffe, but I JUST DON'T CARE!)

Look up at the ceiling. That's quite a cool glitterball... Wait...

IT'S A TRAP!!!!!!!

It's all too complex for me

I have to admit that my maths is pretty poor. I can cope with basic algebra, I can do quadratic equations and if I think about it long enough I can differentiate and integrate. Where it all goes wrong for me is that bit about complex numbers. I mean, i = sqrt/-1? What's that all about, eh? I mean, I can't even find the ascii code that does square root, that's how bad it is.

However, I am rather in awe of the mandelbrot set, that rather fantastic fractal function which gives rise to this bad boy here.

However, that pales into insignificance when you see what these folks have been getting up to. They've done some extra mathematical wrangling and applied an extra algorithm or two to create an approximation of the 3D mandelbrot set. The results are somewhat breathtaking, to say the least.

To be honest, it kind of reminds me of the growth in the centre of that dodgy orange I talked about last month - while the overall shape is rather different, the fractal nature of said growth could not be denied. If I knew more about how to do the mathematics I'd be very interested to know what possible numerical wrangling could come up with a similar model.

In the meantime, here's one possible version of the 3D mandelbrot set. Pretty, isn't it?

Crunch! Bang! Smash!

A Higgs Boson goes into a church, but is stopped by the priest.
"I'm sorry, you can't come in here," the priest says.
"Why not?" asks the Higgs. "Without me you can't have Mass."

...

Is that tumbleweed I see rolling across the screen?

Anyway, the Large Hadron Collider has been doing it's thing for nearly a week and so far no bits of bread have fallen into the mechanism, nor has a black hole swallowed Switzerland. Nor has a hypothetical Higgs appeared with the sole intention of wrecking the machine just to remain undiscovered, etc. etc. What has happened is that some collisions have taken place, and the folks at CERN are now starting to crunch through some data.

However exciting this may be, it could pale into insignificance compared to the massive collision that is taking place as we speak. Oh, did I mention it was on a galactic scale? It would appear that a "dark galaxy" - a barely discernible yet rather huge cloud of hydrogen (with rather a lot of matter within it to hold it together) is colliding with our own galaxy. Apparently this is not the first time it's happened; the very same dark galaxy did this around 70 million years ago. How cool is that?

A mammoth problem

Here's a story in the BBC about mammoth poo and how it provides clues as to why they became extinct. Well, it doesn't actually say why they became extinct, it just says that a meteor can be ruled out.

The thing is, I know the answer. I was already aware of elephants having certain... erm... needs, as this video shows, and some time ago it led me to this inescapable conclusion: the mammoth died out because it didn't reproduce. Basically the hairy blighters spent too much time playing with themselves and not actually having sex.

Then some bright spark invents the spear and lo! Humans kill off the mammoths, who are distracted by their own masturbatory antics, and yet another species dies out.

World Hunger and World "Leaders"

Well, the G8 leaders have bottled it once again. Ban Ki-Moon and Jaques Diouf of the UN have been addressing the World food summit and of all people, only Silvio Berlusconi of the G8 leaders have actually turned up to see what was going on. Do you suppose he got lost? Well, that's rather unfair, actually; the man has actually done something commendable for a change.

The former UN head, Kofi Annan criticised the G8 leaders most vociferously. And Ban Ki-Moon and Diouf actually took part in a Even the Pope got involved. Incidentally, that website is called "TOTALCATHOLIC.COM" - surely the next step in Action Movies? 'His name was Tony. He had a mission. He was a TOTAL CATHOLIC.'

What can we, as poor, simple folk do? Well, in the west we could try switching to a vegetarian diet, after all the production of cattle, fowl and other meaty products is actually really inefficient way of getting food down our necks. We could try to switch off the odd light here and there to reduce energy consumption (and indirectly reduce climate change). That's all a matter of personal choice, of course, and I would hate to be the one to force anyone to make that choice. While I am vegetarian, I do forget to switch the odd thing off (if you do read this, you might argue that I should have switched my computer off. Ha bleedin' ha.) What we can all do though is to visit http://www.1billionhungry.org/ and give it a click. Listen to what Diouf has to say in his video. Sign the petition. Perhaps something will be done.

Super!

Sorry it's been so long. I've been busy writing a review about smoking and the myocardium which may or may not get accepted some time next year. Plus the wonky shoulder and codeine have ganged up on me and caused me to dribble like a baby for various reasons. However, I'm doing a little better now and feel up to ranting for a bit here.

And what a rant it is, too, even if I say so myself. First of all came the Trafigura / Carter-Ruck thing, which really got my goat. In case you've been living under a rock, this was where Paul Farrelly MP asked a question in the House Of Commons, Trafigura found out about it and called in Carter-Ruck to take out a super-injunction against the press to prevent even a mention of a question being asked.

Needless to say, once the general public got wind of this (through Private Eye and Wikileaks, among others) Carter-Ruck and Trafigura quietly withdrew their injunction and denied any attempt to prevent freedom of speech.

But then another story in the Eye caught my attention. Now, I've linked to the Simon Singh affair before in this blog but briefly, said protagonist suggested that the Chiropractic Association's claim that chiropractor's practices were little more than quackery (my words). Specifically, Singh suggested that they promoted "bogus" treatments. The response was a slap from Justice Eady and a libel award in favour of the CA. Lord Justice Laws has since allowed Singh to appeal, but such is the WHOLLY BLOODY STUPID nature of the UK's libel laws that even if Singh appeals he will be tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket.

In a similar case, one Dr Peter Wilmshurst has also been given a legal kicking regarding his gentle query as to NMT's cardiac procedure (thanks, Dr Aubrey Blumsohn).Yet more cases seem to be popping up daily.

Now that David Nutt has been given the chop by the UK government for stating a few well-researched points about legal and illegal recreational drugs one can't help but feel that science is being stifled in the UK. No longer can we trust to fact: should a statement of fact be disputed purely as a matter of opinion as seems to be the case with many of these legal wranglings, how long before we revert to the dark ages and place our faith with priests, imams and witchdoctors? A tad extreme, perhaps? I'm not so sure these days.

Codeine and crunchy shoulder

Yet another tumble on the bike. Wouldn't you know it...

This is my affliction, and I've been given a bucket full of painkillers to help me rest it.

As a result typing is a very long and laborious process - it's my right shoulder, see? - so it's taken me, oh, 6 hours to write this.

Also in the news: Wikileaks helps give Carter Ruck and Trafigura a bit of a media beating. Nobody likes to see that.

"I pinch..."

Another well-worn path, featuring a delicious crustacean.

This one's a 50-year old lobster, weighing 3.7kg and 75cm long. Holy crap, you wouldn't want to mess with one of these without help. Or rubber bands.

And the picture? It's not the Big Lobster in New Zealand I don't think. I've seen the real one, and had a photo taken of me with it, but I can't find the pic. Yeah, yeah. I know, pics or STFU.

"We were just talking about that..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/oct/07/saturn-ring-nasa

So where the hell did THAT one come from? How did we not see it before? I mean, it's blimmin' massive!

WTF is that? Part 2

Lunch is a jolly affair normally... plenty of banter with colleagues, the odd food fight, complaints about the canteen... But usually pretty harmless.

So today I was asked to peel an orange by one colleague (the duty normally falls to someone else but he's away in Manchester today, obviously 'avin' it large) and I grudgingly acquiesced. Taking the aforementioned fruit I dug my well-bitten nails in and got peeling.

I noted that it was a bit squishy, had it been lying around for a while? Yes indeed, for a couple of weeks, no less. OK, sayeth I, just be aware that it might not be all that nice.

I became aware that the little ball of citrussy delight was coming apart in my hands. I looked down and saw...

WTF is that?????? SERIOUSLY?

I'm guessing it's a kind of tumour. There were no signs of any insects or anything, although a fungal infection could be possible. I don't have access to microbial culture facilities but whatever it is, it's VERRRYY INNNTERRRESSSSTING!!!!

WTF is that? Part 1

I meant to post this rather interesting thing about geckos and the incredible detaching tail some time ago but never got around to it. Reminded me of snakes, in that if you decapitate one the head retains a biting reflex for a while, and the main body can still lunge. A former colleague of mine and I used to joke about getting hit by a bloody stump... Instead, today my attention was drawn to this rather jolly article on Wikipedia: WTF is that? Seriously?

Seems like the sort of thing you'd find from the stories of HP Lovecraft. If you find a match with any of those creatures, let me know!

Oops

Fell of my bike again yesterday. This time I have nobody else but myself to blame for rolling around in the gutter shrieking like a girl...

I've come a cropper about 4 or 5 times now, been hit by a couple of cars, slid on ice... but this time I just clipped the curb, locked my brakes and landed in a pile of horsesh!t. That's London for you.

Anyway, I really should read more of this. Full of top tips on how to survive on 2 wheels, apparently.

Ringpiece!

A cheap joke for a rather interesting story. Wired.com has a piece about the rings of Saturn (see what I did there...), in that the 30-foot thick bands of rock and ice that girdle the planet are not entirely uniform.

In a nutshell, every fifteen years or so Saturn reaches its equinox, which results in some very different light angles, reflections and suchlike, and the latest one has allowed folks in Colorado to study the rings in some detail. In so doing, they've found some areas to be thicker than others, caused by the gravitational pull exerted by Saturn's moons. Pretty cool stuff.

From one ring to another: Ever wondered what makes gold and copper so different to the other shiny metals? Why one is yellow, another orange? As it turns out it's all to do with electrons; yes, that old chestnut again. See for yourself: these folks explain it all far better than I ever could.

Of course, ever since people began rummaging in the dirt we've always had a fascination for a bit of bling. I suppose with gold being so unusual a metal it became more than an object of fascination, it became currency. Copper, too, would once upon a time have been a prized material: copper ingots were used for trading a heck of a lot, as was lead of course. And yet, my Grandmother remembers when Aluminium was considered rare and precious: we now know it's probably the most abundant metal in the earth's crust. I reckon that's a result of all the takeaways we eat.

I thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'm here all week.

Isn't technology wonderful?

I saw this story on Reddit of all places, as you do, and was immediately fascinated: someone claims to have imaged the s- and p-electron orbitals in a single carbon atom. Then I saw the comments below the story: shurely shome mishtake seemed to be the order of the day: why are they not sp- hybrids? Anyway, the paper has only just been accepted by Physical Review B so it may be a while before we see the details. However, sp- or no sp-, it still seems incredibly exciting. We shall see.

Also, I see that the folks at the European Space Agency have basically given NASA a resounding "meh" following the latest Hubble images (see previous posts), and gone and released some of the images their own Planck telescope has started to capture.

Lest we forget, Planck is the coldest object in the sky, chilled to -273 deg C (can't do the ascii), designed to answer some of the most complicated questions posed by astronomers. One idea is that a model of the initial expansion of the universe may be accurately determined. So, from the very small to the very large; how splendid. Have a good weekend!

My word!

Something in the Indescribable today: the legend of a man-eating bird!

Apparently the Maoris had this legend: a raptor big enough to catch and kill a child or small adult, called a "Haast's Eagle," or "Te Hokioi."

It's been extinct for 500 years, which might come as a relief, but even so I shouldn't wonder that such a creature would have been a truly amazing sight. Let's face it, a bird with a 3m wingspan would have been seriously scary. Here be dragons, and all that.

Busy, busy, busy

Dreadfully sorry, it's been rather a long time since my last post. I do have an excuse though, my book has been progressing very nicely and I'm about 1/3 or maybe even 2/5ths of the way through. I don't think it'll be finished by the end of the year but who knows?





Anyway, I'm not the only one who's been busy, those rather splendid people working on the Hubble telescope have been doing stuff since the big beast itself was upgraded. Look at this, for example. And taken from the same site...

All very pretty. Well, who knows, in a few years time we may even get an upgraded version of the Deep Field video. In case you haven't seen it, here it is.

Personally I think it is the most humbling, yet the most incredible and uplifting thing I've seen in a long while. Well, since this, anyway.

Just to keep things ticking over...

I'm glad the scientific community is keeping abreast of such important issues as the living dead.

But scientists don't appear to be the only ones considering the possibility of zombie attack. Have a look at this.

Some people just have far too much time on their hands.

What's that? Oh.

Woohoo!!!!!

I can't wait! November! Woohoo!!!!

Even more interesting than usual

Ah yes, the humble electron; where would we be without it? Well, we wouldn't exist, for one thing.

For over a century the electron was thought to be indivisible - a single particle, incapable of being broken apart. However people used to think of the atom in the same way, until some bright Kiwi threw a bunch of radioactive particles at a bit of metal. Now we have protons, neutrons, bosons, quarks and of course, the electron. And you couldn't get smaller than an electron, could you? Why on earth folks thought this to be the case when ever smaller nuclear particles have been found (by smashing stuff up in a massive tube) is anyone's guess.

So, a few folks have published some work in Science detailing their experiments to split the electron, and it appears to have worked. Not by smashing things up in a massive tube, however. They actually crammed a whole mass of electrons into a very tiny tube, and electrons being electrons, they found each other so abominally repellent that they burst apart, a bit like a Daily Mail reader confronted with an Azerbaijani immigrant. And from this catastrophic fission the Spinon and Holon were released and identified. Pretty cool, huh?

So we've come a long way since the electron was first identified (did you know people used to refer to them as "corpuscles"? Poor, misguided fools, even if they were fellows at Trinity College). But there are still a whole lot of elementary particles and properties still to be identified and analysed. Fermilab still haven't found the Higgs, CERN is about to power up the LHC again, and Gordon Brown is going to eat his own head. Probably.

There should be more things like this on t'interweb

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Cicada_molting_animated.gif

It's all relative, innit?!!?!

Anyway, I'm in the process of writing a Book. Capitals necessary. It's all about cathode ray tubes and alternative dimensions and it's based in 1913. I'm only a short way into it but I thought I'd say this as I find it all VERRRRRRYYYY IINNNTTERRRRRRRESTING

I was on holiday and...

http://www.moolf.com/animals/one-of-the-rarest-frogs-in-the-world.html

QUICK! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

Oh, it's endangered. I'd best leave it alone. Quite cute in a way. In fact I'd quite happily take one hoALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD

A rather funky explanation of how general relativity works

Pretty damn cool, actually.

I remember drawing lines on an orange to try to explain to someone how there were more than three dimensions in the real world and how Euclidean geometry just didn't work. I also tried to explain things using a lemon suspended in a fish tank: shake the tank but all the pips stay in one place inside the lemon, despite the movement of the lemon.

I wonder if there are any more fruit-based visual aids to relativity?

Watch what you eat, folks!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327171.200-the-calorie-delusion-why-food-labels-are-wrong.html?full=true

A wonderful, wonderful article by those folk at New Scientist who seem to be bucking the trend these days: this highlights the inherent errors in food labeling and points out the need to judge the content of food based on how much processing it has undergone, or the method of cooking.

It’s a particularly enlightening piece, especially when you read about the reptile metabolism experiments: raw steak provided fewer available calories and as such increased metabolic rate… the net calorie intake is therefore lower than that of processed, cooked steak.

The flip-side of course is this: don’t go eating raw meat, it will make you sick.

Mind you, I wouldn’t do that anyway, seeing as I’m a vegetarian. On that note, I seem to remember in the dim and distant past several people criticizing the late Linda McCartney's range of vegetarian food for being overly processed and remarkably fattening.

The moral of the story is this: fresh fruit and vegetables, organic meat, cereals, pulses and nuts are probably a whole lot better for you than the alternatives, and they are even healthier if you are careful about how you cook them. I would suggest that steaming or stir-frying would be better than deep fried.

Duh…

Of course, without cooking and processing food hugely then our brains might not have evolved to the state that they are now. Ya can’t win.

Is Big Pharma bad or just misunderstood?

I saw this article last week, and quite enjoyed it at the time. But then after a great deal more thinking I realised that it wasn’t such a great piece of journalism after all.

Basically it’s a fairly disparaging piece about Big Pharma, and their common practice of filing as many European patents for one drug as possible. It seems a pretty cynical ploy, designed to wring as much cash out of a single molecular entity as possible, and let’s face it Big Pharma is actually a very easy target to get stuck into when you think about it. I know, I’ve thought about it for fourteen years.

When I thought deeper about it though I must confess I actually feel some sympathy for the companies – never in my darkest days did I think that would be possible, but another recent Grauniad article brought this home. Paul McCartney still has to pay royalties to the Michael Jackson Estate if he wants to play any of the Beatles back catalogue, apparently. If one looks at it as a question of ownership and copyright then things seem a little clearer.

A drug I worked on many years ago had been developed by Bristol Myers Squibb; it had been disclosed in the literature and so they owned that little piece of metabolic pie, so to speak. But then they sold it to another company because they could not or would not pay for a phase III trial. As a consequence they lost ownership of a rather nifty drug but in return for stacks of cash, and the contract they signed basically gave away the patents for that drug. I can’t remember who picked up the tab, but on a personal note I know they’ve got a winner there, whoever they are.

Let us use a different analogy: JK Rowling writes a book, has a few characters in there who all appear rather distinctive: a boy wizard with glasses and a scar, a big hairy man, someone who cannot be named, that sort of thing. If I were to write a book with the same (or at least startlingly similar characters) and somehow it got into print I would then have to pay Ms Rowling a substantial percentage of my earnings from that book, simply because I have breached her copyright.

The European patents that drug companies are filing are essentially a way of reinforcing that copyright – it is actually all too easy for a chemist with a decent knowledge of how patents work to find a way around the filing and create a “novel” molecule. The eighties and nineties were full of “me-too” drugs, so I don’t really need to go into details. Therefore Big Pharma takes great care to detail as many synthesis steps, as many analogues and as many disease targets as is relevant and possible. They are all too afraid of someone doing a “patent-bust” and creating another me-too.

There is a humanitarian edge to this as well. The European patents are there to try and (futilely, some might say) block the production of generic drugs. Let’s say a company by the name of Astra Zeneca makes an Antimalarial drug, runs the trials and sells it to 3rd world governments. All well and good. Now supposing a factory in another country starts churning out generic copies of this drug which the governments buy at a quarter of the price? Not only would AZ be cross about the cut in income (it will have cost a lot to develop and trial the damn thing as well!) but there would be an additional worry.

Many of these generics are poor quality or low dose, which can all too frequently lead to drug resistance and the rise of “superbugs”; malaria is but one example. Big Pharma at least is required to undergo bioequivalence and quality control testing. Plus, as evil as Big Pharma is, it doesn’t want to lose patients.

Hence my sympathy with Big Pharma this time around. Unfortunately the Grauniad is guilty of shoddy journalism this time.

I have to wait over a month for this! Bah!

I'm rather excited by this:

ASHES CRICKET 2009

I can't do any worse than the current team...

Funny old week...

Massive outpourings of grief over the death of some 50-year-old mentally ill man.
Mass hysteria over a strain of a common virus.
National panic over weather that would not be out of place in New England (see the weather back in January as well).
Human males to become extinct.

It's all going to pot. On a more serious note,
do crabs have rights? Surely it depends on how delicious they are?

Blind with rage.

Got knocked off my bike last night. So I'm a bit cross at the moment. It was some bloke in a BMW I think, so I'm more than happy (despite my gender) to suggest that the artificial sperm idea might actually be a good idea. Down with men!

One step closer to unification

A couple of years ago I was given the most excellent book, The Trouble With Physics by Lee Smolin.

Briefly, it outlines many of the problems that String Theorists have faced: what was once the most elegant of potential Great Unification Theories lost itself and couldn't be reconciled with many of the various theories and proofs that had gone before. Depends on how many dimensions you can fit into an atom. Probably.

I don't claim to understand any of it, but it's a cracking good read if you like this sort of thing: Brief History of Time, etc. Anyway, there's a group at Leiden University who claim that they can actually marry String theory with Quantum theory , all to do with materials becoming super-conductive at high temperatures, rather than extremely low ones. And while we haven't exactly been given the answers to the universe, these findings do actually demonstrate that String Theory may have a place in physics after all.

Oh, and if you happen to go to Amazon to look for Lee Smolin's book, have a look at this one as well for a bit of light reading and mighty amusement. Be sure to check out the reviews. And make sure you wear your 3 wolf T-shirt while you're doing so. It will make you the greatest theoretical physicist ever.

Perhaps not.

The lie that is BMI

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439&sc=fb&cc=fp

Having worked for a few years in obesity / cardiovascular biology and also struggling with my own weight and health, I came to the conclusion many years ago that the Body Mass Index was a big ball of dung. For the life of me I couldn't get to a BMI of less than 27 - it became an obsession - even though I was dieting, exercising and doing everything right. But the article I've linked to points out very succinctly that the BMI does not take into account tissue content. Bone and muscle all contribute and therefore should be adjusted for.

Why, in that case, have doctors failed to dismiss the BMI in favour of something like impedance or DEXA to measure body content combined with serum cholesterol and blood pressure? Maybe this is what they're doing, but every clinic I walk into STILL has that damn BMI chart. Burn them! Burn them all!

Some rather funky photos, including that volcano one again

The Grauniad's put some satellite photos from NASA up on its website, rather good ones, too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/jul/03/satellite-eye-on-earth-june?picture=349739629

YEAH GOD DAMN

RRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRR

A quick trawl of the stories I find VERRRYY INNNTERRRESSSSTING

They’ve found more creatures that perished in Noah’s Flood in Queensland, apparently. That’ll be dinosaurs, then. We have Banjo, a carnivore, Matilda and Clancy, two herbivores, all named after Waltzing Matilda but not nearly as wonderfully named as Muttaburrasaurus.

On a slightly related note, as I was looking at the various diseases that are afflicting the nation (Ronnie Biggs has MRSA, everyone!) there was an article about an extremely ancient alternative therapy: ground up dragon bones used in Chinese medicine. Those guys!

Seriously, we’re all going to die. How many cases of Swine Flu in August? Take care, Ronnie Biggs, you’re not a healthy man. You’d have thought with all this hot weather flu wouldn’t be an issue, but now it seems even the buses are turning into incubators.

One final thing, and I honestly thought this was a joke story, but it seems the Scots are keen to recycle the oil from the deep fat fryers. First thought, very good, very ecologically sound, I thought it was a biodiesel alternative, but no. I was wrong, and so is this. I mean… as a tanning agent? Wrong on so many levels.

Slight qualification

OK, maybe not ALL over 50's. But it's on a par with the fluoride in the drinking water thing.

Lies, damned lies and statins. Well, maybe not lies...

Oh, my eyes! There’s no cure for looking at the Daily Mail, is there? Oh, I feel so dirty.

I couldn’t help but spot this article, recommending the compulsory treatment of the over 50’s with statins, a group of compounds known to inhibit hydroxy-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase (HMG-CoA reductase), an enzyme key to the production of cholesterol in the body. The chap responsible for this mass-dosing plea in the UK is the heart czar Roger Boyle, who has been championing the prescription of statins since… well, since he was appointed.

There is no doubt in my mind that statins can benefit people who are:
1) Male
2) Diagnosed with atherosclerosis
3) Have high (>7 mmol) serum cholesterol
4) At risk of heart failure

…but I think a general catch-all 50+ strategy might be flawed. Malcolm Kendrick makes a pretty good case against here.

Boyle does not appear to be an advocate of that old favourite, diet and exercise. Certainly he would appear to side with the drug therapy side of things. I’m almost tempted to try a bit of investigative journalism to see if he’s lobbied by any drug companies.

By the way, Simvastatin is a good example of the grapefruit juice effect. Patients on this particular statin are very clearly advised not to eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice. Ever.

I’ll have the gralefrit please. Followed by the balm carousel.

Obviously the death of Michael Jackson is very sad. For three young children to lose a father is a tragedy, and one must feel for them and the remaining Jackson siblings. It is sad to note that they appear to want to lay blame somewhere (which may or may not be justified, and may or may not lie with his doctor) when I can’t help but feel if Jackson had received help from his family 25 years ago then his might have been avoided.

What I found interesting was a story I found in the Metro this morning, suggesting his grapefruit intake may be responsible in a way. This is not the first instance of such a thing, either. The mechanism of action is interesting, and one that has been of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry for some time: grapefruit juice, or at least one of its components, is a potent cytochrome P450 inhibitor. The P450 enzymes are heavily involved with one of the major pathways of drug metabolism, and make up a substantial part of the screening cascade.

The triazole antifungals were the drug family that first brought the P450 enzymes to people’s attention (if memory serves). Several studies were carried out looking at fluconazole and voriconazole and their breakdown pathway (P450, needless to say) but interestingly voriconazole (Vfend) also activates the P450 pathway, that is to say it contributes to its own clearance. Studies with Vfend and grapefruit juice show that the half life of Vfend is greatly improved.

Antifungals are not the only drug class that are affected. Various HIV drugs, the antiarrhythmic amiodarone, and as is now apparent to the general media, painkillers.

Only a few drugs have this potential interaction highlighted, but surely all prescription only medicines should point out the risks not just of drug-drug interactions but drug-diet as well. Not all drugs would display this, nor would all patients. But if clinical science wants to tailor therapies for the individual then at least the potential risk should be pointed out to everyone given a prescription-only-medicine. It may take the tragic death of one of the most popular entertainers of the late 20th century to bring this about.

And the Gralefrit reference? Fawlty Towers, I'm afraid.

Truly awful.

Words fail me, I'm afraid. The sheer horror and unpleasantness of the situation in Iran fills me with shock and despair. From a comparatively mundane story in the New Scientist pointing out the mathematical analysis that suggests a fraudulent election to a story that points out some truly despicable events in Tehran.

What is ghastly is that some governments have been doing this for decades, centuries even. But now with the internet removing boundaries daily some atrocities are coming to light far quicker than they might have done previously.

I doubt anyone's got time to listen to a whinge by a scientist, but if anyone out there is reading this, can I urge you to wear a green ribbon? Please? The events in Iran must be brought to the attention of the world, and the world must speak out.

How cool is this?

from New Scientist

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

How did I miss this story?

Betelgeuse appears to be shrinking quite considerably: 15% in 15 years, all without losing it's intensity. While the behaviour of red giants such as Betelgeuse is not fully understood one possible theory is that it's about to supernova.

I say about to: seeing as it's 640 light years away that means it may already have done so, some 639 years ago.

Needless to say the possibility is starting to alarm some folks; there are those who believe that the Mayan Calendar (due to end in about 2 and a half years) is inextricably linked to astronomy. Although what possible link this has to Betelgeuse going pop is anyone's guess. Damn those apocalypse nuts.

I could go on and mention the potential destruction of a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and its implications, but there would be little sense to that.

Whatever happens (or has already happened) to Betelgeuse hopefully we'll have a grand view: Herschelle is up and running and hopefully in a prime position to observe some serious boom. No, the other Herschel.

Nurse, please fetch me some sutures, I seem to have split my sides again.

Love Mussel

Just a quickie! Shellfish lovemaking by crustaceans. This put me in mind of one or two questions from days gone by.

1) Name 3 famous crustaceans in London.

Kings Cross Station, Charing Cross Station and St Pancras Station.

Tee hee.

2) What is your favorite crustacean? Which crustacean do you find the most delicious? I hope it isn't the woodlouse. Funnily enough, I have yet to encounter a crustacean that doesn't feed off the bottom of the food chain. I can't think of a single example of a predatory crustacean, they all seem to be very opportunistic.

Yes indeed.

On the same note, VOTE BENDER! BENDER IS GREAT! ALL THE OTHER ROBOTS SUCK!

I saw the Body Works exhibition by Gunter von Creepy at the London O2 a couple of months ago, and was suitably fascinated and freaked out in equal measures. It was very impressive, although the ghoulish nature of the exhibition really does make the skin crawl. The exhibition was memorable for two things, the first rather obviously the bodies, the second was the indiscreet release of gas by my wife in the gift shop. Nicole, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry to remind you of that fart, but I do find it rather amusing.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing about this is the article I read in a recent New Scientist about growing hybrid hearts. In a nutshell, an excised heart is “decellularised” by digesting it with detergent to leave a collagen matrix, which is then seeded with stem cells. The end result is a fully functional heart ready for transplantation. The main benefit is the ex vivo heart can come from one species, e.g. a pig, and the new heart, grown in collago, if you will, grown from stem cells acquired from a different species, e.g. human.

Theoretically speaking, could you strip an elephant heart and seed the matrix with mouse stem cells? I think we should be told.

Curiously, in the same edition of NS was an article from Natalia Alexandrov of NASA written for the 3Rs committee, outlining the development of a “virtual twin” which could model an individual, thus eliminating the need for animal models and concurrently tailoring a therapy to suit an individual rather than a blanket treatment designed to treat entire populations. Could the combination of the two techniques lead to some bizarre future where there is more than one Ewan McGregor or Scarlett Johansson?

Therapies for obesity

Orlistat (Xenical) is the current big thing in obesity (if you'll pardon the pun). So it's no surprise that other Pharmas are trying to tap into this field. Cetilistat is interesting, not least because the side effects seem to be fewer compared to Xenical, and the efficacy seems to be the same.

This is obviously some years away from market, but it will be doubtless hailed as the answer to all our problems, just like lipitor was. *Ahem*

[mode=soapbox]

I'm all in favour of aids to weight loss, but the fact of the matter is that diet and exercise are the answer. If you don't redress the balance between intake and output you will get sick.

[/mode]

The problem I have with the whole Xenical / Alli thing is that it doesn't address the appetite question. One or two people I know have started taking Alli and they claim that they now feel justified in eating whatever the hell they like. Oops.

Personally when I started on the Prozac I also took the decision to listen to a lot more Radiohead. I thought it couldn't possibly do me any harm. I was wrong.

Ho ho.

This boy is a genius!

http://news.therecord.com/article/354044

Just when you thought your grant was secure...

All hail the Lord of the Night (flikr.com)

It would appear that changes are afoot in the world of science, at least in the UK at any rate.

A couple of years ago the Labour Government set up a department of science and higher education, which was generally received well, if a little cautiously. Now, however, it is being scrapped and science and education policy is to be under the remit of one Lord Mandelson. During the recent reshuffle dear Mandy was given the rather important role of chairing the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. So science, including academic research, is now under the catch-all business group.


If one purely looks at this from an industry point of view then the move makes sense. Well, it would, if the pharmaceutical industry wasn't in dire straits. Another possible outcome to this is a reduction in the amount of independent research going on in the UK as the various lobbyists and businesses have greater say over what goes on in academic groups.

To me this reeks of poor planning - are our young graduates and postgrads more likely to be swallowed up by Big Pharma and Arms Engineering (arguably the two biggest scientific businesses in the UK, both with a question mark over their ethics) or are they going to be trapped into doing research that suits big business rather than charitable work, e.g. the British Heart Foundation or Cancer Research UK to name two medical examples?

Time will tell, but one can only hope that the next government looks at this development very carefully and then consigns it to the skip.

The full story is here.

But I thought Cap'n Bob's body was recovered...

Oh, my sides. I really shouldn't say this, because a) it's in bad taste, and b) it's untrue. But it would appear that some of the late Robert Maxwell's remains have been found.

But seriously, how long will it be before a bunch of crazies suggest that it's false? They've already added their own unique spin on Ida, apparently the poor lamb drowned in some catastrophic flood or something. As yet it's unclear whether she had any of the Mirror Group Pensioners' money.

Hmm, I seem to have switched over into political satire. I do apologise.

Creationist Museum

I'm sorry to say this: coffee actually came out of my nose.
I heard of this about a year ago, but now even the BBC are drawing attention to these poor, misguided fools.

I always had one argument ready that I was fairly sure was watertight: if the universe was created 6000 years ago, then the furthest point in the universe must be no more than 6000 light years away from us. Yet we can measure with some degree of accuracy the distance of some stars. Here's one, the Pistol Star, identified nearly 20 years ago. It is a mere 25000 light years away. But unless Einstein et al. are horribly wrong, 25000LY is impossible because the universe can only be 6000 years old... and nothing travels faster than light... and... but...

Thank goodness god invented willow bark. My head hurts.

Actually, the name "Pistol Star" is pretty fantastic. But not as good as "Just Another Kinase". Or Sonic The Hedgehog, or Human Ether-a-go-go... Or all the other wacky genes / proteins that folks discovered 20 or so years ago. Biochemists have more fun, I reckon. Or they have too much time on their hands.

Goodness gracious me!

What's all this fuss about anatomy? I'm not too bothered that so few people seem to know where their heart is, that's what we have doctors for after all. But is this story actually a criticism of educational standards? Or is it an implicit encouragement for folks to do their own self-diagnosis? Personally I learned at an early age that I had a rubber band connecting my knee and ankle. This valuable information has stayed with me ever since...

Not so Flabulous

I'm rather interested in what Ben Goldacre has to say about stuff. I bought his book earlier this year, and can recommend it to just about everyone. Read it or die.

It's sad to note that many of the issues he deals with tend to be what makes the pharmaceutical industry and NHS the grand institutions that they are.

I do get a bit cross about some things.

This kind of thing in particular.

Everyone's got to start somewhere.

Right, here we go. Just what the Blogosphere needs: another anonymous bitter and twisted individual ranting about the injustices of everything and how nobody understands me and o god im so dprsd lol (sic).

Anyway, all this lol pwnd rofl stuff is not me, not me at all. I'm going to try and keep this as coherent as possible, and in so doing collect a bunch of interesting things that generally have a science theme. I'm a big admirer of Pharmagossip and PharmaGiles but I'm not here to do that. No way, no way at all.