Archive for December, 2007
It’s been an absolutely cracking year for SciencePunk, which was the first full calendar year of operation and a jam-packed one at that. The site gathered pace for the first half of the year, breaking the million-hit mark in June. Then, rather splendidly, some like-minded cats saw my site, and decided to give me a job. Which was nice. Now I’m a science punk 24 hours a day (yep, I dream about science, baby), and I get paid for it, which makes me the luckiest person I know.
For the geeks amongst you, and so that if you decide to insult my traffic figures, you don’t end up embarrassing yourself:
Traffic, not including spiders, robots and worms (oh my!):
115,300 unique visitors, who downloaded an impressive 377,500 pages and clocked up an astonishing 2,668,150 hits! SciencePunk also elicited 430 comments (plus a lot of spam, vaporised by my ruthless gigawatt laser defence shield). Thank you everyone, it wouldn’t be anything without you.
December 31st, 2007
In the 60s, space travel fired the imagination of the planet. People envisioned exploring new worlds, holidaying on the moon and commuting through the asteroid belt. Now, forty years on, where have we got up to? Answer: a group of scientists throwing a cat in zero g. Really struggling to see the real world applications of this one, guys…
I’d like to see the funding proposal for this one. I imagine it goes something like this:
OBJECTIVE: Take the parabolic flight aircraft up for a spin, and throw Henderson’s cat around.
HYPOTHESIS: Dunno, seems like a fun thing to do. Plus, I hate cats.
December 28th, 2007
It was too much to hope for to get through the season without someone, somewhere, attaching their name to a bogus scientific formula and calling it news. Ever since McVities paid Dr Len Fisher to come up with a formula for biscuit dunking, advertisers have seen the “perfect formula” story prove irresistible to media editors. Len Fisher, to his credit, performed some proper science to back up his equation, but this diligence didn’t follow on to the many scientists who were willing to pick up a cheque for attaching their name to some spurious nonsense.
First gong goes to Warwick Dumas from the University of Leicester, for allowing a shopping centre to talk him into releasing the formula for perfect present wrapping. Quite humorously, the press release went out with a typo, rendering his formula even more nonsensical:
2(ab+ac+bc+c)
Any schoolchild will immediately recognise this gives the surface area of a conveniently box-shaped gift, plus a mysterious extra ‘c’ - this was supposed to be C2, translating as “a little bit of overlap to tape down”. Dumas insists his formula will help reduce wasted wrapping paper, though it’s hard to see how, given that he’s stated nothing more than common sense - that the present needs enough paper to cover it, and then a little more. He gets quite defensive about this, as you can tell from his replies on this blog criticising his equation. Whether his research is an extension of previous work performed by Dr Sara Santos at the University of Manchester is hard to say. At least Santos seemed to put some thought into it.
Next up is Prof. Rudi Dallos, who has furthered humankind’s sum of knowledge by “revealing” a formula for the perfect Christmas. Where Dumas opted for simplicity, Dallos has gone to great lengths to make his equation as complicated as possible. Quite humorously, this one was also printed with a typo, seemingly to no great detriment.
Typed out, Dallos’ formula looks like this: PX = 8F x 4P + £23 x 8F + 3G +2W +2W:3C + 5T:1NR divided by 3D. Hang on a second! This formula comes pre-loaded with values. This poses quite a problem to me, because it suggests that the formula was written around these values … almost as if Dallos wanted all these variables to be represented. Hmm… Still, he’s wrong, because this Christmas perfection is a dividend of the number of days spent with your family, so the less days spent with them, the more perfection you can achieve. In fact, you can have an infinitely good Christmas by not spending any time with your family at all! To Dallo’s credit, this story was cooked up to promote a new book from the Children’s Society, but I still don’t see why he couldn’t have sat in a tub of baked beans, or something that didn’t involve abusing science.
You can see more formula-news-nonsense here.
December 26th, 2007
Because it’s Christmas Day, a little festive science for you. Merry non-denominational winter solstice festival, everyone!
From the Mainichi Daily News:
KAKAMIGAHARA, Gifu — An aquarium filled with exotic fish here is using an electric eel to power lights on a Christmas tree.
Each time the electric eel at the Aqua Toto Gifu aquarium touches a copper wire in its tank, it sends power that lights up globes decking a Christmas tree.
Officials expect the “eel Christmas tree” to be a popular attraction for dating couples in the lead-up to Christmas Day, when the tree will be removed.
Electric eels are capable of generating electricity in their bodies. They have notoriously poor eyesight and use electric shocks to stun prey so they can catch and eat them.
December 25th, 2007
For some time now we here at the bad science frontline have been seeing adverts for “cosmeceuticals” - a portmanteau that promises all the effectiveness of clinically-trialled medicine, in your make-up. Of course, medical products are strictly controlled and licensed, so cosmetic companies tread a thin line - if their anti-wrinkle creams are too effective, they’ll be classed as medicines and sales restricted. “Cosmeceuticals” sits on that line nicely - more than make-up but less than medicine.
Clearly this was too strict a definition for NaturScience, who’ve branched out into their own trademarked realm of pseudoscience - “quantumceuticals”. These are, according to the press bumf, “the next revolution in health and wellness”. NaturScience’s products seem to focus on being some kinf of buffer solutions:
Alkalark helps reduce acidosis by balancing the body’s ph[sic]. Acidosis may contribute to disease and preventing acidosis by balancing the body’s ph can help you maintain good health.
Err… personally, I think the human body has a well-developed and finely-tuned system for regulating its acidity, and the various different pHs that have to exist in different parts of the body. I wonder, what pH does NaturScience think is optimum for human beings?
That’s nothing compared to what their other products can do, though…
The Weight Loss patch utilized a breakthrough technology that emits nanowave frequencies to support the proper function of the body’s metabolic system.
Say what?! If we were playing pseudoscience-word-bingo here, we’d be beyond full house now. There’s far too much on the NaturSciene site for me to debunk it all, I hope some of you will report back and tell me what you find there.
December 24th, 2007
Robert Krampf makes super-neat short videos of science experiments. They’re so simple, and Krampf is so likeable, you can’t help but love them!
Plus, I have a considerable amount of beard envy going on.
December 19th, 2007
I can’t think of a better form of taxpayer dollars at work than this delightful song: “The 12 STIs of Christmas“. Take a lyrical tour through gonorrhoea, scabies, urinary tract infections and more in this festive warning from the NHS.
From the excellent Lucy and Lucy at MicroPod. You can visit their blog here and their podcast here.
December 18th, 2007
Those wacky euro lab denizens Discover MC TV have just added a new video, “Culture Club”. Follow the trials and tribulations of a group of cells as they discuss the benefits of cryopreservation (”better than DNAge!”) and tensions due to uncontrolled stem cell division (”This petri dish is overcrowded already! We need to start a political movement to preserve our identity!”).
Wonderful, absurd, geeky.
December 17th, 2007
TerraChoice, an environmental marketing company, have created a website entitled “The Six Sins of Greenwashing“. The list has interesting points to make so I thought I’d write about them here. First on the list is “the sin of the hidden trade-off”:
Okay, this product comes from a sustainably harvested forest, but what are the impacts of its milling and transportation? Is the manufacturer also trying to reduce those impacts?
I’m torn on this “sin”. On one hand, TerraChoice are right to point out that ticking one box is hardly making your company entirely environmentally-friendly, and that if an organisation really wants to be “green”, they should implement changes throughout to better minimise their environmental impact. On the other, however, is the fact that all decisions are trade-offs, especially in something as complicated as environmental friendliness. You have to chose whether your child’s pyjamas are going to be flame-proof or non-carcinogenic, whether your electricity production is carbon-neutral or free from nuclear waste, whether using disposable tissues offsets the energy costs of washing handkerchiefs, and so on. The end result being that no process can be entirely “green” or sustainable, especially when the end result has to be an affordable product.
TerraChoice also highlight “the sin of fibbing”, which hinges on products that claim to be “certified organic” but in reality are not. This point stuck in my throat because “organic” is a completely arbitrary notion anyway, and there is no real way to certify because there are no concrete rules as to what constitutes “organic”. This is compounded by #2 on the list,”the sin of no proof”, which singles out companies that do not provide easy ways to verify the claims they make. (In this case they highlight claims of personal care products that claim not to be tested on animals, which is a moot point to us EU residents where animal testing of cosmetics is banned).
I’m still glad the list exists, and while I don’t agree with it all, it does provide some food for though. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.
December 17th, 2007
I think this is probably the coolest video I’ve featured on SciencePunk yet. The fact that the train looks like a Mad Max / GI Joe / steampunk mashup makes this video one hundred million shades of awesome!
In retrospect, I should have tweaked that something like this ought to exist, I just never made the connection. Thankfully, train snow plow videos are in abundance on the internets. Yay!
Here are some picture of train snowplows. They come in lots of designs, all of which look like they’d make freakin’ excellent zombie-smashing tanks.
December 16th, 2007
In a delightful twist of irony, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency has found some herbal remedies to be effective, therefore immediately demanding their removal from sale. But before the home counties wives and hemp-sandaled hippies get too excited, it’s worth noting that the only reason these remedies are effective is because they’ve been laced with high-strength steroids!
So in effect, what we have is a situation where people inadvertantly decide to abandon a qualified healthcare professional who can diagnose disease and prescribe suitable drugs in appropriate quantities, and instead opted for ineffective “natural” herbal compounds sold by a private business. In order to drum up sales, the private companies lace their products with the same drugs that the doctors were previously prescribing, only now the patient is receiving completely unknown quantities of unknown drugs from untrained staff working for an unregulated industry. Wow, alternative medicine sure is a weird way of doing things. Perhaps these people just like to gamble with their children’s health for the thrill of the unknown. I can’t think of any other reason to do things this way.
December 13th, 2007
Clearly inspired by their academic surroundings, some students at Rice University, Texas, have created the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project (Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations). This involves subjecting the cakes to a whole barrage of low-budget yet ingenious experiments to further humankind’s knowledge of these indestructible confections.
Witness the soaring beauty of a Twinkie as it plummets several storeys in the “Gravitational Response Test”, and the not-at-all devastating consequences:
As soon as the Twinkie was released, it began to fall. It fell until it hit the ground. Upon impact, there was a loud “splut” sound (see Fig. 2). A small crack opened on one side of the Twinkie (see Fig. 3). There was no noticeable change in the control.
Visit the site to investigate all of their findings, from the promising results of the Resistivity Test to the highly humorous outcome of their Turing Test for sentience in Twinkies.
So, congratulations to Christopher Gouge and Todd Stadler, you are the latest individuals to be crowned Science Punks! Hurrah!
December 11th, 2007
Tonight Mark Frary, science and technology writer for the Times, was kind enough to invite me to the launch of his new book, The Origins of the Universe for Dummies. It’s billed as “for those who bought Brief History…, but never made it past the first chapter.” - that certainly applies to me. As well as plying me with booze and delicous tiny foodstuffs, he also gave me a free copy which I shall be devouring with equal relish.
So when you ask. “Frank, how much would you sell out and give a thinly-veiled infomerical for?”, I can reply “Two glasses of wine, several canapés, and a book, bitches!”.
Seriously though, this might be the book to reconcile me with physics.
December 10th, 2007
If you’re the kind of person who likes this, you’ll love hugecrab.com.
December 10th, 2007
Cole over at holotone.net has flagged this contest over at Grupthink - “Who is the sexiest scientist?”. There doesn’t appear to be any distinction between real and fictional, or famous and unknown, and currently Christopher Lloyd as “Doc” in Back to the Future is enjoying a healthy lead. But come on, no Jeff Goldblum? He out-sexes every movie scientist there is!
December 10th, 2007
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