Images from the Deep

A 10-year international project to map life in the oceans marks the end of one of its most productive years. Scientists with the Census of Marine Life (CoML) have catalogued creatures from giant mammals to tiny parasites.

See more incredible pics here

Add comment December 11th, 2006

Infect. Evolve. Go back to school.

MINDistortion.net have produced neat-o science fun action in the form of Infect.Evolve.Repeat, a Flash game which puts you in the seat of Intelligent Design’s mystic Designer, choosing how to modify your virus to make it more successful. Will you increase latency, reproductive rate? Or perhaps build immunity to antibiotics?

Wait a second, immunity to antibiotics? For a virus? Can’t see the benefit of that myself, but I guess the Designer moves in mysterious ways.

2 comments December 10th, 2006

Magnetic Water

Those folks over at Geek24.com have reposted a video and recipe from Undeniable Facts illustrating how to make “magentic water”. This scores might highly on the old Bad Science Scale as it involves two quackery favourites, water and magnetism, although there’s no suggestion of any medical benefits (missed opportunity there, guys). In case you need any convincing, take a look at the video. Notice anything? If it looks like they’ve just fixed a glass of water and a camera to a box and are tipping the whole thing around, that’s because they have.

Let’s have a look at the recipe.

First, get a glass and put about one half cup of water in it. Grab four limes and squeeze the juice into the glass. Next, get about three sizable leaves of spinach and submerge them in the water. Place the glass in your refrigerator (otherwise the water will turn green), and leave overnight. The next day, carefully fish out the spinach leaves, get a powerful magnet, and go to town!

Now, I’m sure there are some fancy chemistry arguments that can explain why this won’t work, but first, consider this. Do magnets work on cabbages? I don’t think so. Do magnets work on cabbage soup? Again, I’m guessing not. Thirdly, if the iron in the water could really be affected by a magnet, would it distort the water or simply be pulled out of solution?

Ok, time for a little science. The venerable source Wikipedia says:

Iron is essential to all known organisms. It is mostly stably incorporated in the inside of metalloproteins, because in exposed or in free form it causes production of free radicals that are generally toxic to cells. To say that iron is free doesn’t mean that it is free floating in the bodily fluids. Iron binds avidly to virtually all biomolecules so it will adhere nonspecifically to cell membranes, nucleic acids, proteins etc.

Now, it’s important to remember that nothing I’ve posted here conclusively proves that this wouldn’t work. But that’s not the point. Geek24 were panned for reposting this fluff, and in response stated:

Yes, the video does look fake, it might as well be an illusion as you point out or perhaps a clever computer generated video like this . But, that’s exactly why we want our geek friends like you to tell us what you think of it?

Thus we underscore the difference between keeping an open mind and keeping an open and critical mind. You don’t want you mind so open that your brain falls out. Indeed, you have to wonder why Geek24 would give space to this whilst ignoring the far, far more awesome ferrofluids - fluids that really are distorted by magnetic fields. They’re quite beautiful, as you can see from Project “Protrude, Flow” by Sachiko Kodama and Minako Takeno

Add comment December 9th, 2006

Reinventing the square wheel

There’s an almighty fuss going on across the world’s science blogs in response to a BBC report that one Dr James Anderson has discovered a way to divide by zero. He achieved this by inventing a new number, nullity. What is nullity equal to? Well, everything! From -infinity to infinity. How useful is this? Not at all! Is this even a new idea? No!
I’d comment further but there are far more elegant debunkings going on here and here.

1 comment December 8th, 2006

P.W. Joller faces up to his Strath claims

Continuing on from my harrying of Alex Wong and the Strath® cats, it think it is time to take on those crackpot studies that sully the good name of food supplements. Enter Dr Peter W. Joller, author of no less than eight different studies on wonder-elixir Strath®. Let’s stop to look at “Influenza and colds in winter: Prophylaxis with a herbal yeast preparation in comparison with influenza vaccination”, which appeared in, yes, you guessed it, the Swiss Journal of Integrative Medicine.

Continue Reading Add comment December 7th, 2006

Eight-legged Freaks

How awesome are octopi? Ha, it’s a rhetorical question! I already know that octopi are totally freakin’ awesome, because I have not one, not two, but three Awesome Science Videos of octopi for you.

First up is an octopus demonstrating why they are known as incredible escape artists, squeezing its entire body through a tiny 1-inch hole. The speed at which it both finds and exits through the gap, and how it contorts itself to do it, are impressive in equal measure.

Secondly, we all know that octopi have eight legs, but did you know that some like to run around on just two of them? Researcher Christine Huffard and her team observed two different species of octopi running along the seabed on their arms, and published a paper on the phenomenon (online pdf here). Can you imagine a bipedal octopus? You don’t have to, I have the video proof right here.

Thanks to rayatseagal at the Bad Science Forum!

Finally, and in my opinion, the most incredible of all, is a video demonstrating the jaw-dropping ability of an octopus to camouflage itself against its background. How the film maker ever spotted it in the first place is beyond me, but I’m glad they did.

If you liked this, check out this octopus, which can mimic a flatfish, a sea snake or a poisonous lion fish! Wow!

17 comments December 6th, 2006

Intelligent Design in the Liverpool Daily Post

I don’t often read local papers, as they’re generally awful, but I picked up a free copy of the Liverpool Daily Post today just to maintain an open mind.

Unfortunately my low expectations were confirmed by a two page spread on the “debate” surrounding intelligent design, inexplicably titled “Should religion be part of science teaching”. Actually, thinking about it, the title it is brilliant. There’s nothing like calling a spade a spade. This is of local interest after a teacher at Liverpool’s Blue Coat school distributed intelligent design propaganda in a science class. That teacher was Nick Cowan, head of chemistry at the school. This is the same Nick Cowan who is also head of the Christian Institute, an evangelical Christian organisation dedicated to “the promotion of Christian faith in the UK”. To my complete unsurprise, the Daily Post failed to report that last fact (though to be fair, so did the BBC).

The paper’s handling of the debate is to give two opposing speakers equal space to air their views - in this case it was and Dr Richard Buggs and Brian Christian, gunning for and against ID in science classes respectively. Normally, this is the right way to do things. But in this case, the Daily Post have already fallen into the creationist’s hands by giving them a hearing they don’t deserve. There is no debate. There is no science in ID. How many different ways can we restate “this is nothing but well-funded Christian propaganda”? The voxpop comments that accompany the article are equally depressing, and range from ‘missed the point entirely’:

I’d like to see more religious-based teachings taught in school in Liverpool. This can only enhance pupils understanding of the diversity of religious cultures that exist in our ever-increasing cosmopolitan city.
Joel Jelen

to ’suckered by ID spin’:

I feel it is irrelevant whether the subject is discussed in religious lessons or science lessons. There’s no indoctrination going on here, just a broader spectrum of education being offered as should always be the case.
Craig McCoy

If these were the most well-informed opinions they could find, our kids are fucked. But perhaps the Post didn’t adequately explain to them what exactly was at stake. This is the rub with ID - at a brushstroke, it seems pretty reasonable to most people. Without more in-depth reporting, the sinister motives of those behind Intelligent Design will go unnoticed and unchallenged.

2 comments December 5th, 2006

Horizon’s “War On Science”

If you have 45 minutes and a chunk of bandwidth to spare, you could do a lot worse than sit down for Horizon’s War on Science. Covering the birth and propagation of Intelligent Design, it includes interviews with such luminaries as Richard Dawkins, Michael Behe (who coined the term “irreducible complexity”), Sir David Attenborough, William Dembski and Stephen Meyer. All of whom present their cases with great articulation, clarity, charm and persuasion.

See the video!

Some important questions are raised, such as “can a naturalistic worldview ever give us a complete picture of the universe?”, as well as the more pertinent “is ID science?”. Good stuff.

3 comments December 4th, 2006

Dr Tiliopolous responds…

I’m not sure which is worse, waking up in the morning and finding a rightful accusation of libel in your inbox, or googling youself and finding the top hit is a libellous article about you. Either way, you can see the full story here.  Keep posted for further developments.

Add comment December 2nd, 2006

Bio Strath - a Feast of Yeast (Part 2)

Regular readers of SciencePunk will remember my skirmish with MM Networks over their wonder-drug / food supplement Swiss Health Tonic “Strath®”. I was just coming round to their way of thinking when I received this email from the Strath® head office (CC’d to a bunch of other Strath® bigwigs):

Continue Reading 14 comments December 1st, 2006