Category Archives: science

medical, natural history, science

Oddity of the Week: Victorian (Medical) Oddities

Warning: not for the squeamish.
Conjoined piglets and two-faced kittens! Oooo-eerrr!
In the 19th century, bodies (both human and animal) were hard to come by, so medical and veterinary schools abandoned many dissections and taught their students using remarkably odd objects like waxwork embryos and exploded skulls as well as preserved specimens like this octopus.


The Guardian has a gallery of more interesting examples at www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jul/09/victorian-oddities-two-faced-kittens-conjoined-piglets-in-pictures
Enjoy your lunch!

history, links, medical, science

Your Interesting Links

Another of our irregular round-ups of links to items you might have missed the first time.
We all drop our dinner down our shirt — some of us more than others — but how often do we stop to think about the chemistry behind stain removal?
I’m almost always warm and yet I know plenty of people who, unless sitting on a tropical beach, are always cold. So why do some of us feel the cold more than others?
While talking about people it seems that some people can’t picture things; they can’t conjure up mental images, almost as if their “mind’s eye” is blind.
Which leads me on to an interesting three-part article from Maria Konnikova on sleep: falling asleep; why we sleep; and on waking up (or not). [Long read]
More human wonders … Why do some people collect lint in their navels but others don’t? Spoiler: hair and clothes.
Apparently broccoli is bad for you, like, really toxic bad. Or then again, maybe it isn’t?
A list of links wouldn’t be complete without some reference to our feline friends, now would it! This attempts to explain what your cat is trying to say to you.
And while on language, here’s an interesting infographic on the world’s 23 most spoken languages — they’re spoken by over half the world’s population.
If you’re like us you love the iconic Le Creuset cast iron cookware. David Lebovitz does and he managed to get a tour of the Le Creuset factory.


If you had to think up a new use for recycled plastic, I bet you wouldn’t dream of a plastic road. Well the Dutch just did!
Shuffling quickly now from the modern into the historical … Here are five interesting facts about Lewis Carroll.
And from Carroll’s love of logic and puzzles to the secret codes on British banknotes.
Going backwards, someone has found, dumped in a skip, a wonderful collection of photographs of the construction of Tower Bridge dating from around 1890.

Next our friendly blogging London cabbie takes a look at the curious history of Craig’s Court, off Whitehall.
And even further back here’s an alternative view of the Middle Ages.
And finally back down to earth. Critics claim that pornography degrades women, dulls sexual pleasure, and ruins authentic relationships. But does it? Seems the evidence suggests the critics are wrong.

amusements, science, words

Oddity of the Week: Yi qi

Scientific names can be wonderful for many reasons. [There is] a bird whose name has rhythm, a fish with a fascinating etymology, and a butterfly named for a pioneering (and amazing) woman in entomology. Today’s entry is Yi qi, a newly described dinosaur whose name is interesting in origin and sound, and also wonderfully and surprisingly short.
Actually, the dinosaur is pretty wonderful too. Yi qi was a feathered theropod dinosaur … about the size of a large pigeon. In addition to feathers, it has two really odd features: a bony rod extending from each wrist, and sheets of membranous soft tissue that are preserved near the arms [which seem to be] wing membranes …
… two things about Yi qi‘s name.
First: why “Yi qi” (pronounced “ee chee”)? Yi means “wing” and qi means “strange” in Mandarin … So Yi qi is the “strange winged” dinosaur …

Second: what’s up with just four letters? We’re used to scientific names being long … and difficult to spell or pronounce …
So is Yi qi the shortest scientific name? Well, for an animal no shorter name is possible, because according to the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature … genus and species names must have at least two letters each … As it turns out, though, the race for the shortest name is a tie***: the Great Evening Bat is Ia io, also just 4 letters (and the only scientific name I know without consonants). Yi qi and Ia io have a few things in common besides the succinctness of their names: both are from China, both are flying predators, and both fly on membranous stretched from their arms.
*** With honourable mention to the Australian sphecid wasp Aha ha, at 5 letters.
From Wonderful Scientific Names, Part 4: Yi qi

history, links, medical, nudism, science

Your Interesting Links

OK, so here’s another round of links to interesting items you may have missed the first time. As always we start with the nasty, hard, scientific stuff and then it’s all downhill.
First here’s a long-ish piece on the fascinating world of chimeras. Although the article concentrates on humans, much the same applies to all animals and there is an interesting paragraph which explains how tortoiseshell cats are always female.


Why are some people are left-handed? Apparently some left-handed people have same genetic code abnormality as those with situs inversus, the condition where the major organs are on the “wrong” side of the body.
I’m one of those annoying people who crack their knuckles. Surprisingly scientists have only now shown why knuckles pop when pulled — and it’s all down to physics.
And here’s some more strange finger science. Professor William B Bean measured the rate at which his fingernails grew over a period of 35 years to discover that growth slows as one ages.
Still on new scientific discoveries, researchers have just worked out what sustains the human foetus during its first weeks, and it isn’t the placenta but womb milk.
Staying with food … Why do we crave specific foods? And no, it seems it isn’t because of some deficiency which the craved for food will satisfy.
Have you ever wondered how the medical profession came up with the stethoscope? Wonder no longer: it all started with Laennec’s Baton.
How do you teach trainee doctors (and other healthcare professionals) to do breast and internal examinations? Yep, there are people who use their bodies to make a living as Gynaecological Teaching Associates, guiding the trainees what to do with their hands.
Well after that I think we need a strong gin and tonic!
Italian man starts turning his property into a trattoria; goes to fix the toilet; and ends up years later with a major archaeological site.
Maps are so much more interesting than GPS! Here are 12 amazing maps which show the history, and fascination, of cartography.
Over 250 years ago British clockmaker John Harrison was ridiculed for saying he could make a pendulum clock accurate to a second over 100 days. He has finally been proven right.
The Paston Letters are one of the most valuable, and well known, sources of information on late medieval life in England. Now the British Library have digitised them and put the images online.
Coming a bit more up to date, the Victorians had plans to build a skyscraper taller than the Shard. Thankfully reality prevailed and they didn’t because the science of building materials was not nearly advanced enough.

Let’s end in the realm of human rights. First there is a new, and very powerful, resource which aims to bring human rights to life using beautiful infographics, stories and social media. It’s the brainchild of a top human rights barrister, so it should be reliable.
If, as many would claim, nudity is the ultimate test of self-acceptance. Why are we so afraid of it?
More next time!

books, science

Book Review: 100 Chemical Myths

Lajos Kovács, Dezső Csupor, Gábor Lente, Tamás Gunda
100 Chemical Myths: Misconceptions, Misunderstandings, Explanations
Springer, 2014
This is a science book, but one which should be relatively intelligible to the intelligent layman. It deals with popular, yet largely untrue, misconceptions and misunderstandings about the chemistry in our lives: food, medicine, the environment and industrial process.
The explanations are relatively concise (few are more than three or so pages) and seek to cut through fallacies and urban legends. Because of their concision the explanations are not highly technical, although some basic knowledge of chemistry or basic science will help.
So far, so good. However I found this an intensely irritating read on a number of levels.
Each of the short explanations is self contained, although copiously cross-referenced and with a section of sources and references in the back-matter. Nevertheless the refutations are stated often with little in the way of logical reasoning or explanation; just bald statements which sounded like “we now know that …” or even “we deny it”. Because of this, and the lack of technical detail, I found the explanations often superficial and unsatisfying.
This isn’t helped by the poor illustrations. Although relatively well illustrated the graphics vary between being too small, pointless and lacking helpful captions. The authors do rather assume that one either knows what a chemical structure means, or one is happy to gloss over it, which I find intensely irritating — even as a trained chemist some memory joggers would be helpful.
I also did not find this book a comfortable read. The language is clunky. In a way this isn’t surprising as the authors, and thus the original text, are Hungarian. But the translation doesn’t flow: too often the sentence structure is obtuse; and there are too many instances of just the wrong word being used — it is clear what the meaning is but an inappropriate synonym has been used. In fact the English feels like a machine translation which hasn’t been checked by a native English speaker for flow and sense.
The book was also physically uncomfortable. It isn’t a cheap book and is from a major scientific publishing house; the paper and the binding are good. Nevertheless the production feels like a print on demand product: the board cover has a laminated glossy illustration, rather than a dust jacket, and very sharp corners which made reading in bed rather uncomfortable.
So yes, that’s right, I was not impressed. The book might have been marginally acceptable as a sub-£10 paperback, but for £45 (from Amazon) it is not of the quality — of content or production — expected.
Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

links, science

Your Interesting Links

There is a huge selection of links in this issue, because basically this is month’s worth rather than the usual 2-or-so weeks. So let’s get going with the tough stuff first, as usual …
For those who aren’t scientists, here’s a rough guide on how scientists grade evidence to decide the robustness of their discoveries. [PDF]
This animated GIF shows, diagrammatically, the gestation of a human baby from conception to birth.


Allegedly old people smell different — not necessarily bad, just different. And yes, this does seem to be a thing because scientists have worked out the probably chemical cause.
Janet Vaughan, who changed our relationship with blood was “a very naughty little girl” at least according to the misogynist opinion of the day. [Long read]
From humans, now, to animals … Tardigrades are so tough it defies belief. [Long read]
Here’s a menagerie of medically useful, but venomous creatures. I can count use of one of these drugs. Can anyone beat that?
Mice. They’re much more common than we think, but here are seven things you didn’t know about Britain’s most common native rodent, the wood mouse.
And while on things we didn’t know, let’s bust a few of the myths about one of our most common crows, the magpie.

Meanwhile other avian predators are interrupting our mobile phone signals. Peregrine falcons are nesting on mobile phone masts, thus preventing maintenance etc. as it is illegal to disturb them. Peregrines 1, Vodafone 0.
Bridging towards history now … a major new study has found that people from specific regions of Britain have tell-tale genetic signatures which show the history of the country. And it isn’t everything you might think!
Here’s the story of London’s dreaded Millbank Penitentiary, which once stood on the site of Tate Britain. [Long read]
And another piece of lost London, the Pneumatic Railway: the world’s second oldest underground. [Long read]
Apparently the name of London, our capital, changed a few weeks ago — and no-one knew.
So to history of our lost colony of America, whose revolution was allegedly fuelled by rum.
Of course talk of the Americas reminds us of the Puritans who founded many of the colonies there. Puritans with bizarre names like What-God-Will Berry and Praise-God Barebone (who gave his name to the Cromwellian “Barebones Parliament”).
Do you ever feel that everything is awful, you’re not OK and you want to give up? If you’re depressive the answer is probably “Yes”. Well here are some questions you should ask before giving up.
Which leads naturally to comfort food … Veronique Greenwood looks at the science behind the perfect chip.
Remaining with food for a moment, here are six things you likely didn’t know about chopsticks.
Our penultimate item is, as seems traditional, on sex. Here are seven reasons why scientists suggest you should have sex daily.

And finally one for the engineers amongst you … this humongous 28.5-litre Fiat S76 has been rebuilt and the engine starts for the first time in 100 years. And here it is actually running. Just see the smoke and the flames!

amusements, science

Oddity of the Week: Erectile Ears

So what can marine animals actually hear? Seals are among the first to have their ears tested. They have developed different hearing mechanisms for land and sea and hear well in both environments. For example, seals have erectile tissue in their inner ear, which swells up with blood when they are underwater. “It’s like the penis of a man,” says Ron Kastelein at the Sea Mammal Research Company in Harderwijk, the Netherlands, who did the hearing tests. The blood in the engorged tissue helps conduct sound waves to the inner ear, allowing seals to hear a slightly greater range of frequencies in water than on land.
From New Scientist, 11 April 2015

natural history, science

Fruit Fly

I was looking at a fruit fly (actually probably more likely a fungus gnat or sciarid fly) a couple of days ago. It was about 2mm long walking up the side of my tea mug.
flyAside from the ability of flies to walk up vertical, shiny surfaces (and indeed walk upside down on the ceiling) I marvelled at how Nature can make something so tiny which can function at all.
Look at the legs. They’re as fine as silk. How do you pack into such a tiny diameter an exoskeleton, muscles, nerve fibres and some rudimentary circulation? It defies belief.
And the antennae are much the same. And the wings.
What’s more … How on earth does anyone dissect such a leg or wing to understand the structure? I just cannot get my head round that. Just how do you do such delicate work?
It does make one see how people can believe in intelligent design — for surely engineering something this intricate just isn’t possible. And yet that is exactly the marvel Nature has achieved via evolution.
Incredible!

science

Oddity of the Week: Moon

Did you know that the moon has a tail? Turns out, it has two.
Data from NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), which spent seven months orbiting the moon in 2013 and 2014, has revealed a tail of nanoscale dust particles.
The finding follows the discovery of the first lunar tail in 1999, when ground-based telescopes spotted a faint stream of sodium gas stretching out behind the moon.
Anthony Colaprete, who leads LADEE’s spectrometer instrument, thinks the second tail is the result of dust particles thrown up when asteroids crash into the surface and are pushed away by the sun’s radiation pressure.
From New Scientist, 31 March 2015