Category Archives: science

beliefs, ramblings, science, thoughts

Cargo Cult Ethics

Yesterday I came across an article on the Farnham Street blog which talks about, and reproduces, Richard Feynman’s 1974 commencement address at Caltech entitled “Cargo Cult Science”.
As always with Feynman it contains good stuff, explained simply. Let me pick out a couple of quotes:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist … I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen …
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out.

This is about how to do good science — indeed any good investigation. What Feynman is saying in the article is that in doing an investigation one has to publish the full scenarios. Whatever the outcome, why could it be wrong. If the experiment didn’t work, why might this be. And importantly, show that you understand, have accounted for, and can reproduce any prior work and assumptions on which your work depends.
Being Feynman this is all explained quite simply with lots of examples, often drawn from his own experience.
But it is wider than this. It is something Feynman touches on but doesn’t highlight. It is essentially about being open and honest; being ethical. Feynman is applying it to scientific enquiry but, as you can see from the quotes above, it should apply equally to any enquiry, aka. life.
Feynman’s address is an interesting 10 minute read even for non-scientists.

amusements, science

Oddity of the Week: Sperm

There is a surprising diversity of size, shape and number of sperm produced by different species.


Just as an example, sperm length varies by several orders of magnitude, and in general the larger the animal the smaller the sperm. For instance porcupine sperm is just 0.0003 cm long. Compare that with the sperm of fruit flies which is 6 cm in size — that’s some 20 times the length of the fly! This only works because the fruit fly’s sperm is like a ball of string which only unravels once inside the female’s reproductive tract (which is longer than the sperm!).
For more amazing facts about sperm see The Biggest Sperm Come In The Smallest Packages – And Other Odd Facts About Male Sex Cells.

history, links, natural history, science

Your Interesting Links

So here we are then with another round of links to items you may have missed the first time round.
Science & Medicine
It seems that humans are not the only animals who have personal names, but we are probably the only ones who gossip.
Its well known that dogs will eat anything, but why are cats such fussy eaters?


The more we look at them, the smarter crows turn out to be. But are they smart enough to fall in love?
Talking of being smart, it appears that those of us who sleep late are smarter and more creative.
But then you die. Here’s what happens to your body after death.
Meanwhile it seems health experts are explaining drug-resistant bacteria so poorly that people aren’t believing them.
Sexuality
Just beware the rodeo! The sexual positions most likely to cause penis fractures.
But avoid that and researchers have worked out that the happiest people have sex just once a week — and it’s good.

This article on sex for the elderly shows just how tricky it is to maintain the well-being of people in care.
Environment
George Monbiot in the Guardian tells us there’s a population crisis, but it isn’t the one we usually think of.
Meanwhile one way round the population crisis would be to make humans smaller.
You’ve probably heard of guerilla gardening, well now here’s guerilla grafting — activists are grafting fruit-bearing branches onto ornamental city trees. Excellent idea!
Social Sciences & Business
The class system is dead; long live the class system. Apparently the UK is still class ridden, but in today’s society the classes are different.
Why the internet is like a series of lead pipes. Very interesting comparison.
From pipes to streets. Clever cartographers add fictitious trap streets to their maps. Here are some trap streets in London.
Art & Literature
[NSFW] A Japanese museum is aiming to confront the taboo of shunga head on. Is it art, is it pornography, or could it be both?
The British Library is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland with a new exhibition. IanVisits takes a look.
History
In another new exhibition the Wellcome Collection is featuring Lukhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet’s Secret Temple. IanVisits again takes a look.
Returning home again, did you know that, once upon a time London was the motor manufacturing centre of the UK?
People

Nothing highly salacious to leave you with this time, so here’s the obituary for Roy Dommett (with accordion, above), a true British eccentric. The video is just excellent! [With thanks to Bruce for alerting me to this.]

natural history, science, words

Word: Aposematic

Aposematic
A zoological term applied to usually bright colouring or markings designed to warn or alarm, and thus to repel the attacks of predators.
According to the OED the first recorded use was as late as 1890 and the word is derived from the Greek ἀπό apo away + σ̑ημα sema sign.
Wasps are a fairly classic example of aposematic marking.

amusements, history, links, science

Your Interesting Links

So soon already here’s another rag-bag of links to interesting articles you may have missed the first time round …
Quite a long time ago Scientific American posted an interactive Periodic Table, but they have been doing some updates to it. Click the element for some basic information. May be helpful for those with yoofs studying chemistry.
So ladies, what if everything your doctors told you about breast cancer was wrong? Find out some of the realities ad decide for yourself whether you should have that mammogram. [Long read]


Staying with jiggling lady-parts … here’s why scientists are saying you should throw your bra away.
Moving down the body, Belgian sexologist Goedele Liekens is on a mission to sort out prudish British sex education. And not before time, says I.
In another medical piece, scientists now think that anything up to 25% of our genes work in sync with the seasons. And that may mean our central heating and artificial lighting are screwing our physiology which expects winter to be different to summer.
Here are just two of many recent pieces which have looked at the sleeping patterns of hunter-gatherers and compared them to our modern habits. Seems they aren’t so different as we thought. First from the estimable Ed Yong in The Atlantic and the second from IFL Science.
And now for the obligatory piece about our feline companions. It seems our cats aren’t so emotionally distant as we think and they do seem to be able to sense our moods.
So at last to the history section …
It’s right what they say: you don’t know what you’ve got until you look. An historian has found the earliest known draft of part of the King James Bible hidden away in a Cambridge college.
Those of us who live in London love to moan about London Transport. But have you ever wondered what London’s public transport was like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries?
Back in the 17th century lots of amateur natural philosophers (what we would now call scientists) were experimenting with lenses and looking at the microscopic world. Mostly they didn’t understand what they saw and had to get artists to try to draw it for them.
Returning to London, here’s a brief history of Georgian London (1714-1830).

And finally here’s something totally mad … A Steampunk-themed café filled with kinetic sculptures has opened in Romania.

history, links, science

Your Interesting Links

Lots of science (though hopefully nothing hard) and lots of history in this issue of links to items you might have missed the first time round.
The more scientists look, the more they realise that many of us are not just a single person but may contain elements of another. In other words many of us are chimeras and it is common amongst many species.
Meanwhile up the Himalayas biologists have found some 211 new species in the last few years: that’s 133 plants, 39 invertebrates, 26 fish, 10 amphibians, one reptile, one bird and one mammal. The latter is a noseless sneezing monkey. We still really do not know what’s out there!


We know crows are intelligent. In fact they are so intelligent that they not only recognise human faces, but they mourn their dead and will remember the identities of anyone who is a threat.
Periodical cicadas spend 13 or 17 years underground and then emerge all at once for a frenzy of singing and sex. Now scientists are beginning to understand how they keep track of time.
OK, so how small is the smallest insect? Well the smallest free-living insect is less than a third of a millimetre — almost too small to see with the naked eye. But it isn’t definitively the smallest, because even at this size it has smaller parasites living on it. Which is sort of mind-boggling.
As so often we return to the subject of nuclear accidents. Understandably there is a lot of research looking at the long-term effects of the Chernobyl accident on the wildlife and how it is doing after the people left. Somewhat counter-intuitively it seems to mostly be thriving.
Now a little light chemistry. Here’s a simple explainer of the nasty niffs our bodies produce.
OK so now a swift switch to technology. Britain’s telecomms infrastructure is in such a state that it is a wonder it ever works.
And on to even more historical technology. Archaeologists think they have probably found the wreck of Henry V’s warship the Holigost buried in mud of the River Hamble.
Another set of history nuts is proposing to build a Tudor warship on the banks of the Thames at Deptford (which was indeed a big Tudor and Restoration shipbuilding centre).
From Deptford it isn’t too far a stretch to the world of Shakespeare. And historians are now suggesting — based on decent evidence — that much of Shakespeare’s play writing was funded by some dodgy deals done by his father.

Fifty years after the death of Shakespeare we come to the heyday of Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys, who knew Deptford shipbuilding well. A new exhibition (from 20 November) at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich will explore London in the time of Samuel Pepys.
Pub quiz question: When did London first have horseless buses? Yes it is a trick question because the answer is a lot earlier than you think for it was when Charles Dickens was a teenager, back around 1827.
Around the same time there were several proposals to straighten out the River Thames, none of which came to fruition. IanVisits investigates.
Coming into the beginning of the 20th century, here is a collection of colour photographs of Russia in 1907-1915, before the Revolution.

IanVisits again, this time taking a look in the WWII tunnels under Clapham Common.
My penultimate choice is a bit more serious. Here is Michael Shermer, of Skeptic magazine, on Do We Need God? Unsurprisingly his answer is “no”. Equally unsurprisingly I agree with him.
Finally here’s the best offer you’ve had all year (again from IanVisits) … Get felt-up at an erotic show in Soho.

history, links, medical, science

Your Interesting Links

OK, so here we are again with another instalment of links to interesting (well, I found them interesting) items you may have missed the first time round. There’s a long list this time, so lets start with the hard(er) stuff and then it’s all down hill.
The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, which measures its success against a National Happiness Index, is planning to invest in the widespread use of electric vehicles. And why not, because of its mountainous terrain Bhutan has copious hydroelectric generation.


Now here is something I’ve known for a while and find quit disturbing: many widely used forensic techniques have never been subjected to scientific scrutiny but rely for veracity on the original testimony of some long-forgotten, apparent expert. Which to me means that any conviction which has relied on forensic data could well be unsafe. And yes, that includes fingerprints.
Herring Gulls. Love them? Or hate them? Either way they provide a valuable service.
How many microbes do you think there are in your house? Yep, thousands. That’s thousands of different species! Here are three stories about the research: from the BBC, from the North Carolina State University research team and from one of the study leaders, Rob Dunn.
Meanwhile in South Africa a team of very small archaeologists have found thousands of bones, apparently from an unknown hominin species, in a virtually inaccessible cave.
And so to the medical … Ovarian cancer is nasty because it is so hard to detect. But (as I have been saying for ages) if women were to lose their fear of saying ‘vagina’ the rate of early diagnosis could increase dramatically. We (everyone, men and women) just have to become more comfortable with our bodies, and talking openly about them, for the good of our health!
“What’s a uterus?” This stunning level of body ignorance and illiteracy is demonstrated in an article in the Guardian from an Australian oncologist.
Now here is a medical affliction which is really frightening: sudden death syndrome.
So what is it like to be permanently like a robot; not being yourself either physically or emotionally? It’s called depersonalisation disorder and is apparently quite common but almost totally misunderstood.
It’s a good week of strange afflictions (they’re not all diseases as such). Here’s another: aphantasia. Which is basically living without any mental images; no mind’s eye; no ability to conjure up a picture of your loves ones; nothing.
Back to the more mundane … Why is it that many of use sneeze when going from the dark into (bright) light? That’s right: no-one really knows, but there are some ideas.

On the chemistry of plums, prunes, chewing gum and constipation.
Apparently we have bees all wrong. Royal Jelly seems not to be what makes a queen bee, but it’s what the royal larvae aren’t fed (and which is fed to workers) that forces them to become queens.
We all seem to like bees but hate wasps. But some people do like wasps despite having been stung about the privy parts. Yes, I too like wasps despite never having had more than an odd sting on the arm.
A couple of weeks ago, George Monbiot created a stir by admitting to eating a roadkill squirrel. And then repeating the exercise on live TV. Seems to me this is rather more honest than getting someone else to rear, slaughter and butcher a pig for you.
Still on the wild world, there’s a fish which is older than the dinosaurs: the lamprey. And it is returning to UK rivers after 200 years. Though it is unlikely that any time soon there’ll be enough to have a surfeit of lampreys like Henry I — which is probably as well as they are quite nasty creatures.

Do you live with a weirdo? You do if you live with a cat. Here are some tales of feline oddness.
Which sort of takes us naturally onto common beliefs we get wrong.
There are many many very wet places on this planet, but which of them wins the crown for being the wettest place on Earth?
And now to the historical … Just why was Orkney the centre of ancient Britain? Long before the Egyptians built the pyramids or ancient Britons built Stonehenge.
And talking of Stonehenge … archaeologists have discovered an unsuspected huge ritual arena just two miles from Stonehenge.
Westminster is NOT the Mother of all Parliaments. The original quotation is “England is the Mother of all Parliaments”.
Ah yes, the age old mystery of the Princes in the Tower. After 500 years it should be a very cold case but some forensic historians are trying to bring it back to life.
Next up two brief pieces from the History of London website. The first on the Great Plague and the Fire of London; the other on the Civil War and Restoration.
IanVisits is running an irregular series on unbuilt London: great projects that never happened. Here’s his piece on the iron London Bridge that never was.

London took a hammering from the Luftwaffe in the Blitz and after the war it took 20+ years to reclaim and build on all the bomb sites. So why is so much of London being redeveloped now?
Finally here’s the story of the oldest known message in a bottle, and one of the longest running scientific experiments. The bottle was cast adrift in the North Sea around 10 years before the Great War and surfaced again earlier this year!
Hopefully you’ll not have to wait quite that long for the next instalment …

environment, food+drink, history, links, nudism, science

Your Interesting Links

So here we are again with another round of links to interesting items you might have missed the first time around. Again not too much heavy science but a lot of oddities …
Cats vs Dogs. Who wins? Well from an evolutionary perspective scientists have concluded that cats are better.


Since when has a Goth Chicken been a thing? Quite a while apparently as it is a recognised breed with black feathers, black meat and even a black heart. And they are highly prized.
We all know we eat too much animal protein, so it’s no surprise that the trend for replacing red meat with chicken isn’t actually helping.
George Monbiot considers evidence that obesity is an incurable disease and asks why then governments are intent on punishing sufferers.
So what is it like if you lose your sense of smell?
There are lots of medical screening tests available but which are really useful and what are the drawbacks?
Michael Ignatieff looks at the ongoing human impact of the Fukushima accident and subsequent clean-up.
So which shall be the master: the Meridian or GPS? It seems they don’t agree where the Greenwich Meridian is by a small matter of 102 metres. which is fine, apparently.
Galileo looked at a pendulum and thus begat GPS. Or how seemingly trivial observations and inventions can have long-lasting and profound effects centuries later.
And while we’re on inventions, a creative man has built a machine to feed his cat — but only when the cat hunts and finds a hidden ball and puts it in a slot machine!
Mention of Galileo makes us turn to history, but let’s start even further back in time … An English academic working in America has been looking hard at the walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber and thinks he’s spotted the bricked up entrance to Queen Nefertiti’s tomb.
Now here’s an equally puzzling conundrum. Was Shakespeare stoned when he wrote his plays? Well maybe, because pipe remains found in Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon garden have been analysed and found to contain not just tobacco but also cocaine and cannabis.

Struan Bates at www.EnglishCivilWar.org takes a further look at London’s York House Water Gate, this time as represented by various artists.
Has anyone got a couple of million to spare? If so, Dungeness is up for sale — yes, that large expanse of shingle on the Kent coast. And as it’s a very environmentally sensitive area it needs a suitable owner. Now if I can just win the lottery …

After which it is all downhill (or do I mean down the beach?) …
Guys … Do you want to increase your fertility? If so, take a tip from the Scots and wear a kilt!
Don’t want to wear a kilt? OK, so nudism is another option. Here are two items where young ladies look at the experience of social nudity: the first talks of the challenges of being a lifelong nudist and the second tackles nudity in the interests of research.
Meanwhile Amnesty International has found some sense and now backs the worldwide decriminalisation of prostitution. Is it too much to hope the politicians might now listen? Yes, I thought so.
And finally some words from a working, legal (albeit American) prostitute on the misconceptions people have about the job she has chosen for herself.
That’s all. More anon.

history, links, natural history, science

Your Interesting Links

And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more

Yes, we are doing well at present for interesting links to items you might have missed the first time round. Here is the latest instalment, and again I promise you nothing too hard by way of science!
What is it that makes wet dogs smell so? Here’s a brief look at some of the chemistry.

There are definite advantages to being female, and if you’re a cat one of them is that you can have splotchy fur.
Most moths can only make noise by rubbing their legs or wings together, but the Death’s-Head Hawkmoth has a built-in flute. They also eat honey.

We all know that seeds can last a long time just by observing what happens when you turn over an undisturbed piece of ground. But how long can seeds really survive?
And from seeds we’re now on to food … We’re often told that western society eats too much meat and we should cut back. While this would undoubtedly be good for our health, can meat ever be eco-friendly?
Have you ever stopped to think about what cooking oil you use? Well some scientists have and the results may surprise you.
Scotch eggs originated in Scotland, didn’t they? Except they probably didn’t.
Who has ever had hiccups after a meal? Or maybe some other time? But why do we hiccup?
So now to some different aspects of lifestyle. What (if any) are the scientifically proven benefits of yoga? Julia Belluz looks at all the evidence.
I wonder how many of you already know these 9 facts about breasts? No, I didn’t!
How to improve your work-life balance by doing one simple thing? You can’t? Oh yes you can! It sometimes takes a bit of discipline, but I did it many years ago and it worked for me.
Next a couple (more) items — here and here — on why family nudity is actually healthy for kids. Girls especially are more likely to grow up with a good self-body image.
And now a quick shuffle across to the history room where first we find a piece on a little known relic of early 17th century London: the York House Water Gate.
Opening-of-St-Katharines-1828

Slightly later, but still on the Thames, a piece on the creation of the St Katharine Docks and how they changed the working of the docks.
And finally, from boats to trains. Here’s the low-down on the ghost trains of Britain.

environment, history, links, science

Your Interesting Links

So soon already here’s another round of links to items you may have missed the first time — with rather less difficult science in this issue!
NASA have recently had a spacecraft whizzing past Pluto and they have some stunning pictures as a result, like this jaw-dropping colour image.

pluto

Do skin moisturisers do any good? Well maybe. Here is something on how they work.
On a slightly different chemical tack, why is it that many people think blackcurrants smell like cat wee? For me it isn’t the fruit itself that has this effect but the leaves of blackcurrants and flowering currants.
Girls, now do just be careful because it seems that semen has controlling power over your genes and behaviour (at least when it’s applied in the place Nature intended for it).
While on things sexual … just why do we kiss, when most other animals don’t?
Moving slightly away, here are some good scientific reasons why you should go naked. It’s basically what I’ve been saying for many years.
Now what about our pussies? Just why do cats purr? And for me even more interesting is how do cats purr?

Which leads us back to the age-old question: are cats domesticated or still really wild animals?
George Monbiot has been talking about rewilding for a long time, and it is something which does seem to make a lot of sense. In welcoming the new environmental organisation Rewilding Britain, Monbiot spotlights 15 species which could be brought back to rewild these islands.
The hope is that rewilding is not just good for the environment (for instance lynx would easily control our exploring deer population) but that it will enhance and enrich our lives too.
But hopefully one thing rewilding wouldn’t do is to increase is Mother Nature’s ability to rain frogs and other creatures.
From ecology to, well I suppose ethnology … What is the smallest language which would be useful? Well the constructed language Toki Pona contains just 123 words and really does allow you to say (almost) anything.
And now to a few things historical … A rare medieval gold ring depicting St George has been found in Norfolk. I’m glad the archaeologists know it shows St George, ‘cos it sure as hell beats me.
There has been much in the media recently about British slave ownership in 17th to early 19th centuries. Here the Guardian looks at the history and also the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database which is going to be very interesting for genealogists.
And coming slightly more up to date, I bet you didn’t know much of the history of that British institution the red post box. And yes, they were introduced by author Anthony Trollope, who also lived for some years in my home town.
Now we’re reaching the end of our quest and the penultimate curiosity is that a musician has recreated Leonardo da Vinci’s piano, and it is heard for the first time 500 years after Leonardo sketched it. And no, it isn’t All Fools Day — just have a listen to the video; it could easily be a string quartet.

And finally, just because they are stunningly beautiful, here’s a collection of animated GIFs of some gorgeous cactus flowers. Real natural fireworks!