Weird Science: it’s Friday!

Unbelievable as it may be for a scientist, it seems that I need to get out more.  The scientist larval stage, or “grad student” is rarely seen outside the labs, but last night I ventured outside my known territory in the company of a few other larvae.  When not in the lab, the larval stage of the scientist doesn’t tend to move very far, stopping to rest and refuel at bars for long periods of time before continuing on. 

One of my fellow grad students brought up something truly awesome last night: A study covered in Nature News on condom breakage.  Being the completely immature teenager that I still am, I shared this with everyone in my lab, and now I’m going to share it with you!!! 

Warning: pictures of condoms and the mechansim may be NSFW, depending on who you are.

Über Coca, by Sigmund Freud

Most people know Sigmund Freud as the founder of psychoanalysis, as well as originating the idea of the role of the unconscious in conscious thought, and of course for “sometimes a cigar, is just a cigar.”  But were you also aware that Freud was one of the pioneers of research into the properties of cocaine?  His review on the properties of cocaine, published in 1884,is described as “the definitive description of the effects of cocaine in humans” (Dyke, 1981).  It’s amazing how few people actually know this.  The people in my own laboratory, which focuses on the study of stimulants, had no idea that Freud was one of the first to publish on it.  So I dug up his original 1884 publication (republished in 1984 in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment), and now I’m taking a whack at it, for the edification of anyone who wants to read it (I did a previous post on the modern pharmacology of cocaine, how it works, and the addiction process).  And besides, who doesn’t think cocaine is interesting?

More Classic Science Papers

SFN is generally a great organization to belong to, and I love their resources (though going to the annual meeting is the equivilant of salmon going home to spawn, I have never been checked out as much in my LIFE as I am at the annual meeting.  Neuroscientists don’t get out much).  Barn Owl pointed me toward a set of classic articles that SFN has!  It’s not quite as comprehensive as the on I posted on previously for psychology, but it’s got some nice ones on the history of action potentials (a lot of Hodgkin), and a bunch of stuff on synaptic function (especially the work of Katz).  It’s some really cool stuff.  Who knows, maybe I’ll cover it some day! 

Right now posting is taking a back seat to trying to get my grant progress report in on time.  I must be the ONLY PERSON left in the UNIVERSE who doesn’t qualify for eSNAP.

Awesome Site!

I was talking about historical atricles with my post-doc, and he pointed me towards this great site, which has all the classic articles in the history of psychology!  It’s pretty sweet, though it doesn’t have the original Phineas Gage publication, it has all of the ones by Broca, most of Freud, Darwin, Dewey, Hall, and even Aristotle.  Being the huge geek that I am, it is very possible that I will be posting on some of these just because I think they’re cool.  Check out the site!  It’s a great resource, and everything’s free!

Check it Out!

Skullsinthestars has posted my Phineas Gage post on his challenge!  I hope he’s also willing to post the next one, I found the original article that Freud wrote on the therapeutic uses of cocaine!  Right up my alley, that one.  Check out all the entrants over at the challenge, there’s some cool stuff there, including the original Beadle and Tatum experiment by ecoli (I wish I’d thought of that one), Otto Weiner’s experiment on the polarization of light by skullsinthestars, a report on the earliest axons in a bird embryo by guadalupe storm-petrel, and even more on geology and biochemistry.  I expect there will be a big flood of them being put up soon, so keep checking!  Most of these are papers on which a lot of modern science is based, so it makes for some very cool reading!

Passage of an Iron Rod Through the Head

When I joined in the historical article challenge from skullsinthestars, my first thought was that I wanted to write on Phineas Gage.  Alas, for I am but a young science blogger, and I should have known better.  Phineas Gage is, after all, one of the most famous patients in all of medicine, and one of the founding cases of neurology and modern behavioral neuroscience.  So there are many bloggers, most far better than I, who have been there before me (for instance there’s an excellent post over at neurophilosophy, as well as one at Restrospectable).   Phineas Gage is even known in the modern media, and was mentioned in a recent episode of In Our Time, and is of course covered in every Intro Psychology class in college.  So for the challenge, I’m doing something else, and it will happen (and has to happen soon!  I didn’t realize the deadline was so close!). 

Oldies but Goodies

Oldies but Goodies

There’s a science bloggers challenge going around from Skullsinthestars! I actually don’t know who this is (I hope he’s not famous or I shall be horribly ashamed), and I heard about it via Coturnix over at scienceblogs, a blogging site that I can only hope to aspire to one day. But the challenge is this:

My “challenge”, for those sciencebloggers who choose to accept it, is this: read and research an old, classic scientific paper and write a blog post about it. I recommend choosing something pre- World War II, as that was the era of hand-crafted, “in your basement”-style science. There’s a lot to learn not only about the ingenuity of researchers in an era when materials were not readily available, but also about the problems and concerns of scientists of that era, often things we take for granted now!

And from Coturnix: Put it in a proper historical, theoretical, methodological and philosophical context. You can always go back to blogging about the latest research or latest creationist idiocy tomorrow.

I have got to do this challenge! I’ve got ideas, and they’ve been kicking around in my head for a while now, so hopefully this will go up very soon.

I really shouldn’t have thrown out those peppers

This isn’t really a scientist post, but it is an interesting topic to me.  According to several studies and two recent articles in The New York Times, the US is throwing out almost a quarter of its food.  Not only that, but donations to food banks are already down 9% (clearly the recession is already making us see to ourselves).  The Times articles also linked me to an interesting blog on wasted food.  All these articles are accompanied by pictures of things thrown away.  Because the apple has a bad section (guilty…), the yogurt sat out for a few hours and is all icky and warm (guiltier…), and because the one edge of the cheese was bad (due to my extreme obsession with cheese, I am not guilty of this one).

Alliance for Science Announces Winners of National High School Essay Contest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mary Detweiler,
The Alliance for Science
info@allianceforscience.org
Falls Church, VA — May 17, 2008. The non-profit Alliance for Science announced the results this week of its second annual National High School Essay Contest. Students were asked to write a 1,000 word essay on either “Agriculture and Evolution” or “Climate and Evolution”. Neal Desai, a 10th grader at the Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, Missouri won the top prize. Neal’s insightful essay addressed the tradeoffs between the benefits obtained from genetically modified crops and the potential risks. For example, he noted the benefits of “Golden rice”, which produces beta-carotene which our bodies convert into vitamin A. “In my trips to foreign countries, I have personally seen the form of blindness and weakened immune system described as symptoms of vitamin A deficiency,” he wrote. But he also acknowledged that the money spent on bioengineering might have been better spent distributing vitamin A capsules to those in need. The essay also voiced concerns about developments in sterile-seed technology, which requires farmers to buy fresh seed from the manufacturer every year, and could adversely affect biodiversity if the trait were to escape into the wild.
Second place winner Frances Ellerbe of Columbia, South Carolina, addressed the issue of whether natural evolutionary adaptation could keep pace with rapid climate change. She noted that in the case of the American Beech, it could not, owing to the narrow climate band in which it grows, the slow migration rate, and the fact that this species takes 40 years to produce seeds.
Third place winner David Martorana of Honolulu, Hawaii, gave his personal account of receding beaches and shrinking coral reefs, both linked to global warming. He noted the grave impact on commercial agriculture and the fishing industry that could result from rapid climate change.
Fourth place winner Marleigh Higgins of Brookline, Massachusetts, provided a personal viewpoint that came from a summer spent on a tree nursery in rural Madagascar. She observed how the traditional slash-and-burn agriculture, called Tavy, was leading to rapid deforestation and the destruction of habitats. She lamented the rapid loss of biodiversity, particularly given that scientists have recently learned of the potential medical use of native plant species.
The Alliance for Science awarded a total of $1,000 dollars in cash prizes, with a top prize of $300 going to the top student. The sponsoring teachers received an assortment of books, DVDs, and educational software. These included author-signed works provided by Brown University biology professor Dr. Kenneth Miller, a textbook author who gave expert testimony critical of intelligent design at the 2005 Kitzmiller, et al vs. Dover Area School District trial.
The Alliance’s contest director Dick Lessard said “We were impressed by how seriously the top students took this contest. They probed beyond the obvious and their essays reflected a genuine appreciation for how a detailed understanding of science can help inform public policy debates”.
Full text of the winning essays can be found at the Alliance’s website, http://www.allianceforscience.org/essay. The website also describes plans for the 2009 essay contest, designed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of British naturalist Charles Darwin. The essay theme is titled “In Darwin’s Footsteps”, and asks students to write an essay about a modern-day scientist or group of scientists whose work exhibits the same qualities and virtues as Darwin demonstrated during his career.
The mission of the Alliance for Science is to heighten public understanding and support for science and to preserve the distinctions between science and religion in the public sphere.
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For more information, please visit The Alliance for Science. From there you can find out more details about the winning essays, download the press release, learn about next year’s topic, and how to donate to the prize fund.

Angiotensin-(1-7)

It’s that time of year.  The time of year when you can’t get anything DONE in the lab because you’re forever going to people’s dissertation defenses.  Not that this is a bad thing.  Sometimes it gives me a little bit of hope that MAYBE I’ll get out of here.  Usually it just makes me feel hopeless at all the work I still need to get done. 

But yesterday I got to see one of the girls in my department do a truly fantastic defense.  She is now officially Dr. Menon, and she has definitely earned it.  I watched her seminar with slack-jawed admiration.  She’s one of those people who you wish with all your heart you could be like, and yet she’s so nice and humble about it that you never get truly envious.  Her thesis is the kind of work that makes me proud to call myself a scientist, knowing that I am associated in some way with her amazing dedication.  And what she’s done is going to be BIG.