Australian Bioscience News & Views

Big answers, bigger questions

In a surprisingly real good news story, it appears humanity has been able to decrease the damage we did to the ozone layer with CFCs etc.  Of course, it's taking longer than we first predicted it would, but never the less, it's happening. Being able to clean up after our selves is a good sign of progress towards intelligence ;-) Of course, the flip side of that is the increasing use of gases which speed the greenhouse effect. I'd rather not focus on the negatives today though.

A further sign of progress, even if I'm a little too dull to follow it, is that the Poincaré conjecture  was resolved by full mathematical proof recently. That itself is not evidence of our growing wisdom as a species, what is good news, is that a mathematics institute in the USA lavishly rewarded the humble person who did the work. I have heard that he may not accept the prize money, but I hope he does.   

Closer to home, Rick Shine received a well deserved Eureka while the collective intelligence quotient of the moviegoing public is drained away by this tasty little morsel called (turn your PC speakers right down before clicking)  ... Snakes on a Plane.  To add to the depression this induces, I learn that the film was better until the voting public on the internet got their hands on it. Where's an eyelash viper when you need one?

Cooperative thinking

Humans are not the only creatures willing to lend a helping hand. It's not even limited to primates, but I'm not up for a long meander down memory lane.

Hopefully we can develop a few more cooperative behaviours soon.

Insulin inhaler approved for market!

Now in Europe, the UK, and USA, diabetics may inhale their insulin (in the form of Exubera TM )instead of injecting it!

Control issues

Australians do not have the right to choose a dignified, self-administered death, and Americans are losing the right to choose. Cancer patients can't get RU 486 into Australia. I would not recommend suicide or abortion, but I will defend the right to openly discuss and choose them if a person feels it necessary.  Life is complicated, and I don't pretend to know all the answers, so I'm quite negative about denying other people actions they feel are required.

Sydney Harbour Week is coming, but the news reports say that the fish are too toxic to eat. I hope no one has been poisoned, and I dread to think of birds eating those fish. One of my favourite birds came to mind as I watched the news.

Watching world affairs from my  desk, I note that while South America moves to the left politically, the Commonwealth (& former) countries move to the right. We do live in interesting times, and I wonder how they will appear to future historians.

When pigs fly ...

When something is mighty unlikely to happen, I've been heard to exclaim 'when pigs fly' ... but it seems I'd better come up with something new soon. After all, a team in Taiwan have developed fluorescent green pigs recently ...

They are transgenic, expressing 'enhanced green fluorescent protein' which originally comes from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish, and is now commonly used as a marker of gene expression. That means, when a scientist is trying to insert new genes into an organism, their gene of interest is packed up with this gene that makes things fluoresce green under blue light. Then, if the insertion was successful the cell (or whole organism eventually) glows under blue light when the genes are being expressed. Neat trick!

Bird Flu

While I think this week's editorial in New Scientist may be a little harsh, I very much understand the frustration behind it. It would be such a total waste of the new early warning system we have of zoonotics and potential pandemics if we don't start assisting less wealthy countries to have veterinary, health and other infrastructure to implement the best possible methods to protect their people and animals.

Mind you, we should be prepared to take those simple, effective, yet sad measures too, if it becomes necessary. Some of my workmates have prepared to make sure they can get Tamiflu too, if it becomes necessary. I'm hoping that's too paranoid.

A 2004 study* in Holland sampled all commercial free range poultry flocks for low pathogenicity bird flu (not like this current H5N1 nasty), does provide some good news that sentinal flocks near waterways used by migrating birds might be a fine idea. Those who like their eggs free range, will be pleased to know many laying farms had recently converted to free range in Holland.

* A cross-sectional serological survey of the Dutch commercial poultry population for the presence of low pathogenic avian influenza virus infections
J. J. de Wit, G. Koch, T. H. F. Fabri and A. R. W. Elbers
Avian Pathology (December 2004) 33(6), 565-570

Cloning fraud uncovered

It seems that a number of the big 2004 & 5 cloning breakthroughs weren't :-(

Larry Ellison brain burp

While reading through stacks of brochureware at work, I found this humdinger of a truly stupid quote from Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO (Oracle AppsWorld 2001 conference in

New Orleans

quoted in http://www.oracle.com/corporate/analystportal/insider/idc_oracle_lifesciences.pdf ):

"The computing industry is about to become boring," Ellison said. "We've had three major generations of computing: mainframes, client/server, and Internet computing. There will be no new architecture for computing for the next 1,000 years."

His media people should be hung, drawn & quartered for letting that one through .... either that or they have a very wicked sense of humour ... but marketing people don't appear to find those sorts of things funny usually :-( 

At the time Mr Ellison was no doubt trying to impress with his appreciation of the recent stellar advances in biotech. Still, the average bio-geek does NOT want to hear that there will be no major advances in IT! It's the science equivalent of saying that while there are ace advances in nails, hammer technology is not about to improve at all. Improving biotech without updating computing architecture would ultimately ('if the extremes of the function are examined', as my dad likes to say) end in the situation where too much complex data would be generated for our antiquated information systems to process.

Besides which, it strikes me as uncommonly depressing news that the CEO of such a large IT company can not dream of wonders beyond our reach for the future of computing architecture. Does the thought of molecular computing not inspire him? Or the concept of a UI so virtual that the user only 'sees' it in their mind and controls it there ... or - well I'm sure there are tonnes of other dreams the real architects are having that might work, but you see my point. I can only hope that Mr Ellison has updated his perspective since 2001 .... The article still remains unmolested on the Oracle web site though ... someone please supply him with some diamond shape blue pills for the lack of enthusiasm please!!!!

What makes you you?

There is much to be said for how much genetics contribute to essential characteristics. To see what a genetically diverse bunch we are, check out the Genographic Project. Height, eye and hair colour, sometimes weight, maybe temperament can be down to genetics. Susceptibility for everything from cancer to high blood pressure, with depression in some cases, can be attributed to genes. (recent articles)

Sex and maybe gender are determined by genes. If you don’t follow why I treat sex & gender as separate things, my thanks go to BC Holmes for providing a succinct synopsis of a small part of the complexities of human sex and gender variation.

It’s a tangled web though, as environment plays a big role. How much probably depends … I’ll think about exactly what it depends on and get back to you. Susceptibility to some types of cancers may be genetic, but environmental factors are just as often the culprits. Diet certainly impacts on weight, temperament, and at the extremes, even intelligence. Childhood environment influences adult height too. Many of us would count at least a couple of those factors in when describing ourselves J (recent articles)

Behaviour is a sticky subject. Religion and politics all have much to say on behaviour, and in my opinion often unwisely even more to say on the sciences of human behaviour. Still, controversy aside, a good approach to ethics can save a lot of bad science getting useless column inches.

Presence or absence of a soul – I’d better leave that to someone I find a great solace in times of office pain, in a very enlightened post on cloning J

Most of us recognise our friends’ faces, and consider that an essential aspect of who they are. While some of us can't put a name to a face to save our lives.

All in all, in my view it boils down to the fact that there are a multitude of factors that make up the essence of a person, and saying that any specific idea, behaviour or invention will bring on ‘the end of the world as we know it’ is just not sane!

Longer needles needed for fatter buttocks

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald (nicked from Reuters) is both hilarious & really frustrating!

Longer needles needed for fatter buttocks