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Two forthcoming books

By on February 17, 2008 in Science

These 2 books from Martin Rowson look like they’ll be good when they are published over the next few months:

1) The Dog Allusion: Pets, Gods and How to be Human

From the Amazon page:

As with dogs, so with gods – by and large, you should blame the owners.’ A particular trait, common to all human civilisations, is the worship of non-human entities with followings of devotees who claim that their reverence can transport them to transcendental heights of complete and unfettered love. Do I mean God? No – I mean Dog. Dogs and other pets we’ve been keeping and loving since we began walking on two feet. But why do we love God – and pets – so much when their capriciousness sometimes suggests that they don’t love us back? In this wise, witty and highly topical book, celebrated cartoonist and novelist Martin Rowson argues that rationally, the whole enterprise of religion is a monumental and faintly ridiculous waste of time and money. But then again, so is pet-keeping. What both do, however, is tell us a lot about who we are, which is perhaps a more important question than whether God exists and if so, if he is indeed great.

2) Fuck: The Human Odyssey

From the Amazon page:

Award-winning cartoonist Martin Rowson tells the story of Earth, from the Big Bang, the emergence of life, the death of the dinosaurs, the dawn of civilization, the invention of the wheel, the Trojan War, the Crucifixion, the Fall of Rome, the Black Death, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, World War One, Nazism, consumerism, the Cold War, 9/11 and beyond to the End of the World, in sixty-seven beautiful, savage, splendidly satirical images, all with only one word in the captions.

Thanks to the Richard Dawkins site for The Dog Allusion pointer.

Don’t double dip!

By on February 3, 2008 in Science

The Seinfeld TV show had a bit about not double dipping. Here it is from YouTube:

Giggle. One of the best shows ever. It seems that this has inspired a study to see if double dipping is unhygienic. Read about it over at the Nature Journal blogs.

Mathematics

By on February 3, 2008 in General, Science

I’m not very good at mathematics. I don’t mean standard stuff such as adding, subtracting etc. No, I mean the more abstract stuff like trigonometry, algebra and, especially, calculus. In order to really understand the science behind the current models of the Universe (General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory) you need to be able to understand the math. I don’t and I need to rectify that. So I’m going to start taking a series of Open University mathematics courses later this year. The initial courses will be:

After doing those I’ll decide whether to continue with pure mathematics courses or go down the physical sciences route.

The frozen north 2

By on January 13, 2008 in General, Science

A previous post contained some pictures of frozen northern Canada. These were taken in the northern hemispheres summer. I flew the same route this weekend in winter time. The GPS system in the flight entertainment system is wonderful for tracking the flights progress. I had a look out the windows at the back of the plane when over the Baffin Sea just past the town of Godthab in Greenland. The sea in this area was frozen. However there were huge. long cracks in the ice. I wonder if this is normal for this time of year? If anyone knows drop me an email or post in the comments.

I forgot to take my camera on board with me on this flight, so no pictures of the cracked ice.

Click picture for larger view of map

Asteroid could hit Mars next month

By on December 29, 2007 in Science

This will be interesting if it happens. The tracking system that looks for asteroids and near-Earth objects that could hit Earth, has found an asteroid that might hit Mars on 30th January 2008. Current data gives the odds of it hitting Mars as 1 in 75. Further measurements will narrow it down. Could provide a nice show and a peak under the surface of Mars due to the crater it would leave. Here’s hoping it does hit. And near one of the Mars rovers. More details at New Scientist.

Update: New data puts the chances of this impacting Mars as 1 in 25, or 4%. Though still small the odds are getting better.

Revolution

By on December 22, 2007 in General, Science

I’m currently reading The Living Cosmos by Chris Impey. I’m only about 20% into it but so far it’s an excellent book on the subject of astrobiology. It contains and interesting tidbit about the adoption of the work revolution to mean changes, paradigm shifts etc. It stems from Copernicus’ book On the revolutions of the celestial spheres, in which Copernicus outlined the evidence for the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun, and not the other way around. This was such an Earth shaking change in humanities thinking that Revolution came to be used to describe great changes.

Click picture for larger view

Stem cell research breakthrough?

By on November 24, 2007 in Science

There has been a lot of hoopla and news coverage recently about the results, from teams in Japan and the USA, who used chemical manipulation to produce cells that resemble stem cells. Many groups that oppose the use of embryos in research have proclaimed that the new results mean that there is no longer any valid reasons for using stem cells derived from embryos. They are mistaken for several reasons (ignoring the fact that they opposed the research using embryos anyway).

The results from the latest research do not equate to a medical breakthrough (as some have claimed). What has been published are the results of research on using transcription factors to reprogram skin cells into a state that resemble a stem cell. However both groups used viruses as the vector to introduce the genes to produce the transcription factors into the cells. It’s very unlikely that virally modified cells will be permitted for use in human trials and treatments. So the current research will not be directly translatable into human treatments. More work will be required to find other ways to introduce the transcription factors. Also the fact that the resultant cells resemble stem cells does not mean that they are stem cells. There could be biochemical limitations and side effects that have still to be discovered.

Talk of the end of research using embryonic stem cells is premature. We need to pursue all lines of research, including using embryonic stem cells. Given that many embryos are left over after human fertilisation, and that these will be discarded anyway, then I can’t see what the problem is with using them for research. If we accept the processes that produce the embryos (and we should) then simply discarding the unused ones when they could be used for research is just daft.

All avenues of research need to be kept open and funded in this area. We don’t know which technique will prove to be the best. As Einstein once said:

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?

To paraphrase. If we knew the best outcome then we could pick the research line that leads to it. But we don’t, so we have to research on all fronts. And that includes using embryonic stem cells and other techniques like nuclear transfer and animal/human hybrid cells. Plus any other techniques that researchers haven’t thought off yet.

New course: Natural and artificial intelligence

By on September 18, 2007 in Science, Technology

Just got electronic access to the first few books for a new Open University course that starts on 6th October. It’s a 3rd level computing course called Natural and Artificial Intelligence. It covers traditional AI research and how ideas from biological systems and evolution are shaping AI ideas. Finished the introductory book already. Good stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the course. Also start the recently introduced course on evolution next February.

The exam for the AI course is sometime around 14th June 2008. I’m hoping that means it’ll be in the week after Saturday 14th and that it doesn’t clash with WWDC 2008. It looks from the Moscone Center web page for June 2008 that there are non Apple events on in the Moscone West on the weeks beginning 16th and 23rd June. Looks like the event listed as Corporate Event from Sunday 8th June to Friday 13th June in Moscone West will be next years WWDC. I’ve got enough British Airways air miles for a free flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, and enough Marriott Rewards points for almost a week in a hotel. So should be able to do WWDC next year pretty cheaply.