Category Archives: science

natural history, personal, photography, pleasures, science, topographical

Summer in England

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How do you know it’s summer in England? No not because the sun is shining. Because it’s raining! It really is almost that predictable.

We’re on holiday for a couple of weeks at present; a badly needed break. Unfortunately we failed in our attempts to go away because we were unable to find anyone to feed the cats (none of our 3 cat feeders is available, nor is our local cattery; they’re all on holiday too!). So we’re staying home and trying to go out for days. But it’s raining! – nice steady summer rain which looks set for the day.

The two top things we want to do are go to London Zoo (I’ve not been since I was a child) and go to Kew Gardens. Both are largely outdoors. Which ain’t too much fun when it’s peeing down with rain. There are few things more miserable, in my mind, than being out for the day in the rain.

At least the rest of the week looks good. Meanwhile we’re at home doing a few odd jobs around the place and not much else.

Update, 1735 hrs. And it is still raining; don’t think it’s stopped all day! We’ve spent the day pottering about and clearing out all the old toot from our wardrobes.

beliefs, current affairs, medical, science, sexuality, thoughts

Sex Education

There’s an interesting article in last week’s issue of New Scientist in which Hazel Muir questions why it is that governments (indeed whole societies) ignore scientific evidence when making policy. Of particular interest to me was the comments on federal funding of sex education programmes for teenagers. As the full article isn’t available to non-subscribers, I give you a couple of telling paragraphs …

Among other requirements, the [abstinence-only sex education] programmes must teach “that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects”. A 2004 report commissioned by a Democratic congressman concluded that four-fifths of the curricula contained false or misleading information, such as hugely exaggerating the risk of pregnancy or HIV transmission when condoms are used.

“The origin of this programme was not in science or research by any means, but in an ultra-conservative, ultra-religious ideology,” says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a non-profit organisation in Washington DC that champions informed decision-making about sexual behaviour. “You could almost see the abstinence-only movement as the sexual health equivalent of creationism.”

Several studies, including a Congress-funded randomised controlled trial involving more than 2000 teenagers, showed the abstinence-only programmes were no more likely than conventional sex education to prevent or delay teenagers having sex, or reduce their number of sexual partners. Yet Congress continues to fund the programmes. Peer-reviewed studies of more than a dozen well-considered programmes for scientific sex education show these programmes can both make teenagers delay having sex and increase contraceptive use if they do have sex: “But how many of these would be eligible for federal funding? Zero,” Wagoner says.

Now why does the US have the highest rate of unplanned teenage pregnancy in the western world? Makes you think, doesn’t it!?

beliefs, current affairs, environment, food+drink, memes, science, thoughts

Agriculture Policy

I’ve posted before about the need for a paradigm shift in agriculture policy (see here and here). There is an article by Jeffrey D Sachs in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American which picks up on this theme – although to my mind he doesn’t go far enough. As the article isn’t (yet) online, here is an edited version:

Surging Food Prices and Global Stability
Misguided policies favor biofuels and animal feed over grain for hungry people

The recent surge in world food prices is already creating havoc in poor countries, and worse is to come. Food riots are spreading across Africa, although many have gone unreported in the international press. Moreover, the surge in wheat, maize and rice prices … has not yet fully percolated into the shops and … the budgets of relief organizations … In early 2006 a metric ton of wheat cost around $375 on the commodity exchanges. In March 2008 it stood at more than $900 …

Several factors are at play in the skyrocketing prices … World incomes have been growing at around 5% annually in recent years … leading to an increased global demand for food … The rising demand for meat exacerbates the pressures on grain and oilseed prices because several kilograms of animal feed are required to produce each kilogram of meat. The grain supply has also been disrupted by climate shocks …

An even bigger blow has been the US decision to subsidize the conversion of maize into ethanol to blend with gasoline. This wrongheaded policy … gives a 51% tax credit for each gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates a minimum of 7.5 billion gallons of domestic renewable-fuel production … overwhelmingly … corn-based ethanol, by 2012. Consequently, up to a third of the US’s Midwestern maize crop this year will be converted to ethanol, causing a cascade of price increases … (Worse still, use of ethanol instead of gasoline does little to reduce net carbon emissions once the energy-intensive full cycle of ethanol production is taken into account.)

The food price increases are pummelling poor food-importing regions … Several countries … have cut off their rice exports in response to high prices at home … Even small changes in food prices can push the poor into hunger and destitution … some of the greatest famines in history were caused not by massive declines in grain production but rather by losses in the purchasing power of the poor.

… measures should be taken in response to the food price crisis. First, the world should … fund a massive increase in Africa’s food production. The needed technologies are available – high-yield seeds, fertilizer, small-scale irrigation – but the financing is not. The new African green revolution would initially subsidize peasant farmers’ access to better technologies [… and …] help farm communities establish long-term microfinance institutions …

Second, the US should end its misguided corn-to-ethanol subsidies … Third, the world should support longer-term research into higher agricultural production. Shockingly, the Bush administration is proposing to sharply cut the US funding for tropical agriculture studies … just when that work is most urgently needed …

beliefs, current affairs, environment, medical, pleasures, science, thoughts

Stress

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Jane Matera is a counsellor with Diabetes UK and she writes an interesting article in the charity’s latest magazine about her theory that type 2 Diabetes is often triggered by people not dealing sufficiently well with the stresses of life.

I’m not going to delve into that subject here – I’m hardly qualified to do so, except by having type 2 Diabetes myself. What interested me as much in Matera’s article is that she actually spells out the stresses we face in modern life compared with earlier generations. Not a surprising list but interesting to see it gathered together in one place.

Humans have always had stress. The hormones involved in the fight or flight response protected early humans from the dangers of the prehistoric world. Some degree of stress is creative, stimulating and necessary to a life fully lived. But […] our bodies are only equipped to cope with short bursts during periods of acute danger.

In our society, I feel there are many everyday stresses that might have been unthinkable 50 – or even 10 or 20 – years ago. They are accepted as immutable facts of life [and] not challenged or much discussed.

This normalisation means we maybe living for long periods […] at a level of stress […] considerably too high for our minds and bodies to safely cope with. And this is at a time when the traditional human support structures – such as the community, work security, the extended family, stable relationships and religious faith – have changed, been depleted or are not available to us.

Common modem stresses that have been normalised include:

  • long-distance commutes, either through heavy traffic or at the mercy of public transport when we are most tired and vulnerable, either at the too – early start or exhausted end of the day
  • the working world of short-term contracts, constant appraisal and machine-led environments may seem practical and economical but can take a human toll
  • the pressure on mothers of even young children to work outside the home to meet the demands of an inflated mortgage
  • mechanisation, which means humans are forced to adopt methods of communication and behaviour dictated by the machine rather than those that are innate
  • mobile phones, iPods, ATMs, etc., disconnect the individual from human contact
  • the fear of a terrorist attack – not a new phenomenon, but one that seems intensified of late in urban areas
  • the completely rational fear of air travel, which is seen as neurotic because of its ubiquity.

How do we fix it? Unless there is a paradigm shift in society and the way our economy works sadly I suspect all we can do is to mitigate these stresses in ways which work for us individually. And hope this is enough to keep Diabetes – and depression – at bay. I see no magic panacea.

Food for thought.

current affairs, environment, food+drink, science, thoughts

Redesign of Farming

Some weeks ago I wrote about an article in Focus (a UK popular science magazine) about what some see as the pressing need to redesign our farming paradigm (see here). I was heartened over the weekend to see that several luminaries, including Professor Tim Lang, have taken up the cause in the RSA‘s quarterly journal – albeit in a more measured way, but that’s as one would expect from such an august institution. The gloss to their article, The root of the problem, reads:

Food security has risen up the political agenda, but sufficiency of supply is not the whole challenge […] Instead, we should look at ‘food capacity’ and the sustainability of our models of production and consumption.

Good to see the issue is climbing up the agenda. All we have to do now is get agribusiness and our vested-interest politicians to take note.

beliefs, books, current affairs, medical, memes, personal, science, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

One Word Meme

This meme has managed to insinuate its way into here, so I’d better respond to it.

There’s only one rule: you get only one word.

Yourself: Depressed
Your Partner: Sexy
Your Hair: Greying
Your Mother: Ninety-Two
Your Father: Dead
Your Favorite Item: Camera
Your Dream Last Night: Anxiety
Your Favorite Drink: Beer
Your Dream Car: None
Your Dream Home: Tidy
The Room You Are In: Study
Your Fear: Poverty
Where Do You Want To Be In 10 Years: Retired
Who You Hung Out With Last: Friends
What You’re Not: Fit
Muffins: Mules
One of Your Wish List Items: Japan
Time: Midday
Last Thing You Did: Email
What Are You Wearing: Nothing
Your Favorite Weather: Sunshine
Your Favorite Book: Dance
Last Thing You Ate: Tablets
Your Mood: Lazy
Your Best Friends: Local
What Are You Thinking About Right Now: Sleep
Your Car: None
Your Summer: Seaside
What’s on your TV: Politics
What is your weather like: Raining
When Is the Last Time You Laughed: Yesterday
Your Relationship Status: Happy

Feel free to allow this to insinuate its way into your mind/weblog as well. 🙂

current affairs, freedom of speech, history, medical, pleasures, science, thoughts

Save GMT Campaign

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For years – and I mean like 40+ years, since I was at school – there have been campaigns and continual sniping to keep the UK’s clocks one hour ahead of GMT around the year. I don’t just not get it, I fundamentally disagree with it. It was tried in the 1960s, when I was at school, and was a complete failure, So we had lighter afternoons in winter coming out of school, but we also had darker mornings and days when it didn’t get properly daylight until 10AM. As someone who suffers (albeit marginally) from SAD I need that early morning light to get me going and reset my body clock.

Jilly over at jillysheep has suggested in a post today that we should preserve GMT all year round. And I have to say I agree. I don’t see the point of continually changing the clocks with the seasons. Every time we move the clocks an hour (in whichever direction) it throws everyone’s body clocks; it isn’t just me who notices it; I hear many people commenting that their body clock is out of kilter with the our artificial time.

Now I can understand why the government thought it a good idea to put the clocks forward in summer during times of war (which if I recall correctly was a significant part of the rationale for its use; tho’ not the original reason for the idea). But I do not see the least necessity for it today. What does summer time give us? Longer and lighter evenings; nothing more. And while I love long summer evenings as much as anyone, in these days of flexible working we could achieve the same effect just as easily by adjusting our working hours if we need to. (Already some of us frequently have to start early or finish late because we are dealing with colleagues or clients on the continent or in the Americas.)

I wonder if anyone has ever worked out the (notional) cost of changing the clocks twice a year on business? I would think it is rather large. And certainly not something worth paying to get longer light evenings when there are other cost-free options available.

There’s the usual good article about Daylight Saving Time over on Wikipedia. What is interesting, that I didn’t know, is that a large swathe of the world has used summer time and has now abandoned it. Basically it is only the “western industrialised nations” (and some of South America) which use summer time. Large chunks of the globe have either given it up or never used DST in the first place.

Anyway … we really should keep GMT alive. It is, after all, a cornerstone of our heritage. Universal time was “discovered” in England, yes at Greenwich, which is why the Meridian is there! Universal time has been a great thing: the world equivalent of “railway time”. But let each country keep its own time zone. And let us keep and celebrate the heritage which is ours and is GMT!

Now who feels like starting a campaign to preserve GMT? Hands off our time zone! 🙂

medical, memes, personal, photography, science, thoughts

Pondering (Thirteen Things) in the Rain


Pondering in the Rain, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 5/52, 2008 week 13.

As I took this standing outside the doctor’s this morning I thought we might have 13 medical things to go with it (mainly for the Flickr “Thirteen Things” group …

  1. I’ve never yet broken a bone in my body.
  2. I’ve had all the usual childhood illnesses except mumps.
  3. I’m short sighted and have worn glasses since my mid-teens.
  4. I have type 2 diabetes.
  5. I had my appendix out when I was 28.
  6. I had glandular fever when I was 32, and had 3 months of a nice hot summer off work.
  7. I suffer from hayfever; and with me the allergy really is to some species of grass pollen.
  8. I have obstructive sleep apnoea; this means I have to wear a mask at night with gentle air pressure pumped into it to keep my airway from collapsing.
  9. I was born with a deformed nail on my right index finger; everyone who noticed it assumed that I had damaged it in an accident. I finally had the nail permanently removed after I did rip it off by accident.
  10. When I was a kid of 6 or 7 I would have a week off school every term with a high fever (nothing else, just the fever). No-one knew why, but our old family doctor eventually suggested my parents take me off sugar; so no sweets for years, but no fever either. I still don’t know why it worked or what the underlying cause was.
  11. I’ve lost count of the number of crowns I have; it’s at least six. But none caused by an accident; all due to teeth falling apart.
  12. I’ve had a cartilage operation on both knees (at different times) and my knees still give me pain. But then apparently I also have the beginnings of arthritis in my knees; not surprising as my father had severely arthritic knees.
  13. I suffer from depression; Churchill’s “black dog”. It’s worse in winter as I am slightly afflicted with SAD as well.