Tip for science journalists

I think this one pretty much speaks for itself. Happy late Thanksgiving everyone!

From SMBC .

My New Favorite Scientist: Tycho Brahe

 

Today, scientists are typically stereotyped as being quiet, even-tempered, and polite, and there may be some truth to this: it takes a cool-headed person to not get frustrated with the slow, tedious processes involved with the scientific method. 

But in the old days, things were different. The only people who got to be scientists were super-privileged eccentrics with way too much time on their hands. They were like the Richard Bransons of their day,. As you can imagine, some of these men (and sadly it was mostly men) had pretty crazy lives. None were as crazy as Tycho Brahe.

Over at io9 you can read a short biography of the 16th-century astronomer. Let's just say it involves copper noses, psychic dwarfs, duels over mathematical theorems, and a possible murder plot involving the King of Denmark. Check it out.

If you want to make his life seem EXTRA epic, listen to this song from the Nerdtastic film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World:

The trippy world inside the cell

My friend Cathy sent me this video with this message:

"This is ballin' and I thought you'd enjoy it too. I'm not endorsing drug use of course, but......if you ever choose to do drugs, this is the kind of trippy stuff I imagine you'd have a blast with."

As you watch this, keep in mind that ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING INSIDE YOU RIGHT NOW.
Fullscreen recommended. 




Now that we're being total nerds, I'm gonna go ahead and point out a few things that the video got wrong.

Did you notice how the necessary proteins seemed to float through the empty void and land directly on the spot they were needed? That's not what happens. In reality, the cell is completely and utterly packed with proteins and other molecules, with water filling in any available nook and cranny. And the only way complimentary molecules "find" each other is because they're jittering back and forth a zillion times a second. I think we can forgive the animators though: nobody wants to watch a quickly shivering glob of goop.

The second thing to remember is that the processes are not as smooth as they appear. In real molecular interactions, proteins don't always bind and stay put; they often screw up and unbind when they're not "supposed to". The end result comes about because of a net tendency of the molecule to, in this case, bind more often than unbind.

Finally, the clips are probably not showing these processes in real time. Most of these interactions occur at much faster rates.

If you want to read the article that went with the video, you can find it here.

@NU: Researches glimpse ancient RNA interaction

Northwestern researchers from the Mondragon Lab have produced a picture of how two ancient pieces of RNA machinery interact.

RNase P structure. From Kazantsev, A.V. et. al. (2005).

One of the most popular theories of the origin of life describes a world before proteins, where RNA (a close cousin of DNA) acted as the mover and shaker of the first organic systems. Small pieces of that original system continue to function in our cells today. With the help of "powerful X-rays produced by the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory", Northwestern researches from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences have shown, for the first time, how RNase P cleaves the transfer RNA (tRNA) essential for protein translation.

For more details, check out the press release.

Nerdgasm of the week

This video is all kinds of nerdy. Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, singing the Elements of the Periodic table:



The song was originally written by the humorist Tom Lehrer, who was big in the '50s and '60s. Here's another classic by him:



Kind of reminds me of when my hometown government started gassing the Canadian Geese which were running rampant all over the place. The letters to the local newspaper got pretty intense, with people drawing comparisons to the holocaust. I thought it would be interesting if they published an article titled "Goose Holocaust a Huge Success!"  but they decided against it.

Nerd Power

My friend Aly sent me this lovely quote. My advice: get jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can't-control-yourself excited about something you love today.

On the Origin of Burittos

Photo by yummiec00kies via Flickr.

I recently got the opportunity to have dinner at an excellent Indian restaurant, courtesy of a friends parents (who happened to be Indian themselves). At some point during the dinner I asked how so much of Indian cuisine ends up spicy, and was told that it came from peppers. I thought this was interesting, since peppers are New World plants, so they've only been available to Indian cooks for a few hundred years. The same is true for tomatoes in Italy, or potatoes in Ireland. These delightful plants arrived in the various cuisines of Europe, Asia and Africa via the "Columbian Exchange".

But this exchange was a two-way street, with cooks in the Americas receiving a boatload of new animals, fruits and vegetables for their tables. So it got me wondering, how much of my favorite cuisine, MEXICAN, bears the stamp of the "Old World"?

Chipotle is probably my favorite restaurant ever. Nothing can compare to the satisfaction of finishing a perfectly wrapped burrito from this clean, fresh-focused establishment. So I decided to hop on Wikipedia and see how many ingredients from my normal order can trace their origins back to the Americas. Here's the breakdown:

From Wikimedia Commons

Tortilla: NOPE. Made from wheat flour. First known cultivation of wheat can be traced back to Turkey in the 9th millenium BC.

Chicken: NOPE. The chicken was first domesticated in South East Asia over 10,000 years ago. The cow and the pig also have Eurasian origins, so no matter what mean you get at Chipotle, you're eating an Old World animal.

Black beans: YES! Both black and pinto beans are varieties of the "common bean" which has been cultivated in the Americas for 6,000 years. It was one of the "Three Sisters" that made up the bulk of agricultural practices in North America, along with squash and maize.

Cilantro-Lime Rice: NOPE. Rice was first domesticated in the Yangtze River Valley 8-10,000 years ago. Both cilantro and lime are also Old World imports.

Tomatillo-Red Chili Salsa: YES! The tomato family is native to South America and was cultivated in ancient Mesoamerica. And chili peppers have been eaten in the Americas since 7500 BC. There might, however, be a few Eurasian/Afircan spices in there that I don't know about.

Cheese: NOPE. The origin of cheese is a bit of a mystery, but it was certainly of Eurasian invention. This particular cheese, a cheddar, comes from cows, domesticated from the wild Eurasian auroch several times in the past 8-10,000 years. Interestingly, the enzyme they use to turn the milk into cheese (rennet) is listed as vegetable-based.

Guacamole: YES! At least, mostly. The bulk of this green gift from God is made from avacado, a plant originating in Mexico which has been consumed for at least 12,000 years. The other ingredients are mostly Old World: onions, cilantro, citrus juice (probably lime or lemon). But the jalapeno peppers are definitely American.

Romaine lettuce: NOPE. Come on, it's right there in the name. Actually, this plant predates Rome as a member of human cuisine: the first depictions of the plant appear on the walls of Egyptian temples, and recent research suggests a Middle Eastern origin.


So there you have it. Beans, Salsa, and Guacamole could have theoretically been cooked up in Mexico prior to the 16th century, but everything else first reached the America via boat. For me, this makes me feel very lucky. Next time you eat a delicious burrito at your favorite Mexican joint, think about all the thousands of years of domestication, artificial selection, trans-oceanic travel and culinary experimentation that brought together that perfect medley of international ingredients.

Explaining Research

Over at my favorite linguistics blog, The Language Log, Arnold Zwicky tipped me off to this t-shirt that is, sadly, no longer being sold by the AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science):

They left out the old "pretend to be choking on a mini-hot dog" trick.

It hits on a serious problem in practical science education. Sure, there are a number of great science educators out there, like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Sir David Attenborough, that manage to make science accessible and exciting to non-scientists. But as scientists we all have a responsibility to help educate people in our everyday lives. I want to make people understand why I'm so obsessed with the way the world works, in  hopes that they'll appreciate it too.

When it comes to individual research, that can be tricky. The first step is to find the right level of techno-babble to use. It can be really difficult to talk fast and loose about your research in plain English, because most sciences are very nit-picky about the terms which can and cannot be used. Yet the language of scientific papers can sound stuck-up and indecipherable to a layperson.

To give an example, this past summer I worked at the Field Museum, looking at the litter sizes of a group of rats and mice from the Philippines. If I'm talking to someone in the Mammals department there, I could say "I'm performing reproductive autopsies on 5 genera of Philippine murid rodents to estimate whether the overall trend in litter size in relation to body mass fits the normal mammalian pattern, using embryo and uterine scars as a proxy for litter size." But when I'm talking to an English major friend here at school, I'd say something like "I cut up rats and mice from the Philippines to see if they have as many kids per litter as other mammals of similar size." Much more digestible.

Then comes the second challenge: making your research seem worthwhile. Many people you'll talk to may have pre-formed ideas about your particular field, your discipline, or science in general. They may think a particular field is pointless. This creates a lot of pressure to impress upon your listeners the importance of the work. Often, the questions we answer in fundamental research are only interesting to people within the field. Yet there's usually some kind of silver lining to be found around your research cloud. For instance, my adviser, who studies the biogeography of small mammals on the other side of the world, has had an integral role in describing and protecting the biodiversity of Philippine forests.

This, of course, ignores that fundamental research in seemingly esoteric fields have yielded some of the most important technological and medical breakthroughs in history. Pointing this out may help convince a party-goer that you're not just a crank in a lab toiling at nothing. It's good to have a few examples ready for this purpose.

Admittedly I don't have all the answers to this problem, but I'd imagine that the more time I spend explaining my research, the better I'll get. Here's to hoping that your scientific conversations go well at your next party: they may decide if you get invited back.

Spotlife: Dictyostelium!

Copyright, M.J. Grimson & R.L. Blanton. Biological Sciences Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Texas Tech University

Dictyostelium discoideum, a.k.a. slime mold, has to be one of the coolest organisms ever. Sure, it looks like a tiny slug-fungus-plant, but it's so much more! This tiny organism has lessons to teach about cell signaling, cell movement, network formation, group selection, and even the evolution of multicellular organisms. And it's got one of the coolest life cycles of anything on earth.

Let's start from the beginning. Dictyostelium normally lives in soil and leaf litter as a single-celled amoeba. They look like most other amoeba you might find crawling around decaying matter in your backyard.

But when food becomes scarce, something weird starts to happen. The hungry amoeba start sending out waves of a common cell signaling molecule called cAMP. When the other amoeba sense cAMP in their environment, they know they'll soon run out of food too, so they start sending out cAMP too, and they head for the place where their fellow amoebas are hanging out. Pretty soon you have a whole mess of Dictyostelium sending out a ton of cAMP, and they all start moving towards the place where the signal is strongest: the center.

Now, you might ask, do they just all make a bum rush for the dead-center like 6-year-olds on a downed pinata? No. For reasons having to do with the wave-like nature of their signaling, they start moving around the central point in a psychadelic spiral:



Far out right? We're just getting started. Once the amoeba all get together, they form a long slug-like body and work together to inch along the ground until it senses light. Then the cells on one end differentiate to form a long stalk that pushes a few, lucky spore cells to the top. Then, the spore cells are released into the air, in hopes that they'll land somewhere where food is more abundant.

So that's Dictyostelium. It's unicellular and it's multicellular. It's a psychadelic spiral-maker. It's a slug, a stalk, and a spore. And it's totally awesome.

Welcome

Hello world,

Welcome to the Daily Nerdwestern. This will be a place where you can be proud to be a nerd. I hope you like it here.