An Oxford graduate student by day and a scientific activist by night, Nick Anthis isn't letting his Ph.D. research in protein structure get in the way of defending scientific and social progress.
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On Monday, I attended an interesting lecture sponsored by the 21st Century School here in Oxford entitled "What Is Science For?". You can see a discussion on the event here and read a pdf summary of it here. The lecture was co-presented by scientist John Sulston and philosopher John Harris, and it was introduced by Richard Dawkins, who also moderated the Q&A afterward. As the summary focuses on, the event was partially a debate on the purpose of science, with Harris proposing a utilitarian view and Sulston defending a focus more on the intrinsic value of inquiry and discovery (and the unexpected utilitarian benefits that often emerge from such endeavors).
However, I would have entitled the event something more like "Science for a Brave New World", as it was more of an exercise in futurism than in basic philosophy. Much of this was from Harris' far-fetched discussion about science's role in eventually creating immortal humans or--in his view more likely--a new race of intelligent beings to succeed humans. More relevant to, well... anything... though, was the discussion on the role of science in improving our world. The point was made that in order for science to fulfill its potential of doing the greatest amount of good for our world, not only do we need to nurture scientific inquiry (through public funding of science and effective science education), but we need to also regulate science in a way to protect against unethical and harmful applications, and we need to ensure that the fruits of scientific discovery are distributed as broadly and as equally to society as a whole as possible.
This just in: John Edwards has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. It's a little late (since Obama has had the nomination all but wrapped up for a couple of months now), and I'm not sure what kind of an impact this will have, but I still find this exciting.
Although I've been an Obama supporter for a while, John Edwards was still one of the most exciting candidates in the race this year (and that's saying a lot, considering how groundbreaking this presidential race has already become). I find him to be honest and genuine, particularly in his dedication to tackling poverty. He also embraced the netroots/blogger contingent more than any other politician in the race, and I hope that the Obama campaign will now take on some of these attributes of Edwards'.
Regardless, I think that endorsing Obama was a natural choice for Edwards. Obama represents change and a departure from the negative politics we've so grown accustomed to--key positions of Edwards' as well. The only question for me, really, was when would the endorsement come? It's disappointing that Edwards decided to play it safe for so long, but at least now he's made the right choice.
Tom Holder--one of the founders of Pro-Test and now the head of a new organization Speaking of Research--has a released a five-and-a-half-minute video primer on animal research. It's short, but it still manages to touch on most of the basics, so it's definitely worth a few minutes of your time:
You can file this one under "should have been done about twenty years ago." From the Mail & Guardian:
Lawmakers on Tuesday debated legislation to remove former South African president Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) from an apartheid-era United States terrorist blacklist.
Several members of the House of Representatives immediately expressed support for a Bill aimed at removing from any US databases "any notation that would characterise the ANC and its leaders as terrorists".
As the media circus over Jeremiah Wright continues, it should give us pause that the media hasn't decided to focus on John McCain and his embrace of a wide range of religious bigots. Although McCain once called these men "agents of intolerance" in 2000, he has since done a total flip-flop and openly embraced them in the 2008 campaign. Compare this to Barack Obama, who has now fully renounced his former pastor--as he rightfully should have. Whether this slanted coverage is due to racial bias, or just to the fact that these outrageous conservative white religious figures are so ingrained in our political culture that we no longer question their role, is immaterial. Either way, this is indicative of a very screwed up situation.
Of course, since the media isn't bombarding you with McCain's associates' words 24/7, you'll have to seek them out yourself. If you are interested, though, there are two good sources to check out from today. Frank Rich has a detailed op-ed on the subject in The New York Times, and here on ScienceBlogs, Effect Measure lets you see what two of these "former" agents of intolerance--John Hagee and Rod Parsley--have to say in their own words. The highlight, in my opinion at least, is Hagee's assertion that Hurricane Katrina was God's response to a planned gay rights parade in New Orleans.
Even better, though, was when Jerry Falwell--just two days after September 11, 2001--placed the blame of the attacks squarely on the shoulders of "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way." Check out the video:
A week after a major report found widespread Bush Administration political interference with science in the EPA, the Chicago Tribunereported late this week that the Administration has forced the resignation of Mary Gade, head of the EPA's Midwest office:
SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago.
Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.
This morning, I had to wake up to anotherarticle about John McCain's and Hillary Clinton's proposal to temporarily waive the gas tax this summer. That's it. I'm just going to have to come out and say it: this is a really, really, really stupid idea. Period.
I'm not an economist--far from it--but you don't have to be one to see the flaws in this plan. I'm not going to go into the details too much here, but for more check out this article from the Washington Post or this op-ed from Thomas Friedman. Also, Jake has a nice summary at Pure Pedantry. The intended purpose of this gas tax suspension is to supposedly lower the price that drivers will have to pay at the pumps, putting more money in the hands of consumers, encouraging an increase in gas production, and hopefully stimulating the sluggish economy. This is a total pipe dream, though, as basic economic theory dictates that under these circumstances, cutting out the taxes is unlikely to significantly reduce prices at all (see links above for details). Instead, steady prices and decreased taxes will just lead to larger profits for the oil companies. Such fuzzy, counterproductive, and industry-friendly economic logic seems perfectly at home in the Republican Party, but Democrats should be aghast that Clinton is even considering such a proposal.
When the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) last week released a report detailing widespread political interference in science at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I almost didn't blog about it, since the fact that political interferenceruns rampant in the Bush Administration shouldn't be news to anyone. And, since this interference is occasionally motivated by political or religious ideology but much more often driven by the disproportionate protection of the business interests of the Administration's industry supporters, one would expect political interference at the EPA to be particularly severe.
And, in its much-anticipated report on the EPA, that's exactly what the UCS found. In fact, the offenses were so egregious that I would be remiss if I didn't put up something on my blog about it. The report is based primarily on a survey that was answered by 1,586 EPA scientists. You can find the full report and more information about the report at this link, but here are the key findings (from the press release):
Earlier this week, I wrote about the Chinese ship carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe that was turned away thanks primarily to the actions of the South African dockworkers' union. A news story from the Mail & Guardian today gives a pretty good indication of just how those weapons might have been used if they had made it to their intended destination:
Zimbabwe's army is supplying militants with weapons to intimidate voters to ensure that Robert Mugabe wins a possible run-off in the presidential election, Human Rights Watch said.
In a statement released late on Tuesday, it said military forces had equipped war veterans with weapons and trucks to scare Zimbabweans into backing Mugabe.
"The army and its allies -- 'war-veterans' and supporters of the ruling party Zanu-PF -- are intensifying their brutal grip on wide swathes of rural Zimbabwe to ensure that a possible second round of presidential elections goes their way," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
Last Thursday (April 24), the Senate unanimously passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA, H.R. 493) in a landmark vote. The goal of this bill is "to prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment," and it therefore would help fill this gaping hole that exists in our current protection of employees' and patients' rights.
The bill was passed by the House roughly one year ago by a vote of 420-3, and although it was scheduled for debate in the Senate, it wasn't voted upon until last week. Now, the Senate has approved the bill 95-0, with five senators abstaining. Disconcertingly, three of these five are the three remaining presidential candidates--Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. Fortunately, all three have expressed support for such measures in the past, and Obama and Clinton were even co-sponsors of S. 358--the bill that was scheduled for debate but never voted upon in 2007. Obama also released a statement applauding the bill's passage. I'm going to assume, then, that these three senators were just busy campaigning that day, although I'm still disappointed. This is, of course, not as bad as what happened in the House, where three Congressmen voted against the measure. All were Republicans, and one of them was crazy ol' Ron Paul. Go figure.
Now that the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang--which was delivering arms from China to Zimbabwe--has been turned away for good, there are two significant aspects of this story upon which we should reflect. The first is that the true heroes of this tale are the unionized dockworkers, who catalyzed this turn of events by their initial refusal to unload the cargo. The second is that there are deep political ties between Zimbabwe and China, which make this picture much less black and white than it would appear to be on the surface.
It was reported on April 16 that a Chinese ship slated to dock in Durban, South Africa, was carrying 77 metric tons of arms bound for landlocked Zimbabwe. This was particularly striking since not only has Zimbabwe been engulfed in a political crisis for several years, but the situation has intensified considerably since the March 29 presidential election results have been actively suppressed by president Robert Mugabe, who is widely believed to have lost the election. In the midst of such a volatile situation, and given the history of Mugabe's government, it would not be a major stretch to worry that these arms could be used against his political opposition. Recent reports indicate just how severe and violent the crackdown on opposition supporters and journalists has become.
The South African government, though, which under the leadership of president Thabo Mbeki has been particularly accommodating to Mugabe, initially refused to intervene. Here's one account from the Mail & Guardian:
Molecule of the Day has a post up about isotopically-enriched food that caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the idea is wildly outrageous, and, secondly, this is something that actually gets joked about quite a bit in an NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) lab.
Any given element can come in various isotopes, which differ in the composition of their nuclei. The nuclei of different isotopes of the same element have the same number of protons, but they vary in their number of neutrons. Because the number of neutrons in a nucleus does not significantly affect the chemical properties of an atom (except in a few specific cases), the various isotopes of an element all have virtually the same chemical properties. Only certain nuclei are visible in NMR experiments, and three of the most commonly used are 1H, 13C, and 15N. With the exception of 1H, these are not the most abundant isotopes of these elements (12C and 14N are, but neither is NMR-active).
To perform NMR experiments on proteins, then, we often have to produce proteins that are isotopically labeled with 15N and/or 13C. Isotopically-labeled molecules are not cheap, but simpler molecules are cheaper than more complex molecules. Therefore, it's advantageous to produce our proteins in simpler organisms, such as bacteria, which can synthesize all of their own amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) from simple molecules. More complex organisms--such as humans--can't do this. One gram of 15N-labeled ammonium chloride costs about $15, and 1 g of 13C-labeled glucose costs about $60. On the other hand, 1 g of 15N- and 13C-labeled amino acids costs about $2,000, so there is quite an financial incentive for producing isotopically-labeled proteins from simple precursors in simple organisms. (None of these isotopes are radioactive, which is a phenomenon that only occurs when the nucleus of an isotope is unstable.)
When someone asks the question "why are veins blue?" a likely response is that they're blue because the blood in veins is deoxygenated. While it's true that venous blood vessels carry a lower concentration of oxygen than their arterial counterparts, this isn't the reason for their blue appearance in your skin. Still, when someone invariably responds to the veins-are-blue-because-they're-deoxygenated argument with the observation that "I've never seen blue blood before" one might then hear the slightly more sophisticated-sounding but increasingly far-fetched claim that we don't ever observe blue blood because it is immediately oxidized upon contact with air. (Check out thesebeauties from Yahoo Answers to witness these arguments yourself.)
Wrong. Blood is never blue. Ever. Period. (And, this is an excellent example of why you should never ingest information from Yahoo Answers uncritically.)
The bright red color of arterial blood stems from a complex that's formed between hemoglobin, iron, and molecular oxygen. This complex mainly absorbs higher energy (shorter wavelength) blue and green light, leaving behind primarily just red wavelengths for our eyes to detect. However, even when blood is largely depleted of oxygen, it is never blue: it's more of a deep maroon color. And, although I have not participated in a surgery myself, those who have (including my girlfriend, a veterinary student) assure me that in surgery, veins within the body do not appear blue either. So, not only is blood not blue, veins on their own aren't either. "Blue veins", then, are a phenomenon unique to the skin.
The arguably wacky premise behind a New York Times article this Saturday is that the Large Hadron Collider (LHR)--slated to be the world's most impressive particle accelerator when it's up and running later this year--could inadvertently produce an Earth-destroying black hole. Or, that's at least what a couple of guys in Hawaii think, and they're pursuing a lawsuit in federal court there to stop it. (Note: the LHR is located in CERN... in Switzerland.)
Despite cries of "propaganda" from the plaintiffs, scientists aren't having any of that, and are trying to put all of this to rest with plenty of boring science speak:
The Large Hadron Collider is designed to fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together. Nothing, indeed, will happen in the CERN collider that does not happen 100,000 times a day from cosmic rays in the atmosphere, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
...or it would have been a bunch of boring science speak if the article hadn't originally read "The Large Hardon Collider is designed to fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together."
Hard-ons? Banging? OK, scientists, now you have my attention. So, what is this Large Hardon Collider thing, anyway?
The tide could be turning against animal rights activists who demonstrate on campuses around the nation. Today marks the launch of Speaking of Research (SR), a student outreach organization, which aims to rally students and faculty in support of lifesaving medical research using animals.
Speaking of Research seeks to challenge animal rights dominance of the issue by participating in talks and debates on campuses across the country in the coming months. The groups website, http://www.speakingofresearch.org, provides students with the information and encouragement to enable them to speak out on the issue.
Animal rights activism is now at an all time high in the United States. Several university researchers have recently had their homes attacked by protesters while other scientists and their families have been threatened by mail, email and phone.
Tom Holder, founder of Speaking of Research, said: Students played a major part in changing public attitudes toward animal research in the UK, and we believe that American students can do the same. Animal research is responsible for most of the lifesaving treatments we take for granted, from anesthetics and asthma inhalers to penicillin and insulin. Its time to stand up for science, reason and the belief that a small and sometimes violent minority should not be allowed to dictate the future of medical research.
Scientists and Engineers for America has announced a workshop for scientists interested in running for office or working on a political campaign. The workshop will be held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on May 10th. Despite the focus of my blog, I would have still thought that training scientists to run for office would be quite a niche area--to say the least. However, considering how fundamental science and technology are to the issues that elected officials face today (from scientific funding to energy and the environment to agricultural policy), having more scientists in office is clearly something to be desired. Therefore, despite my surprise that such a workshop is happening at all, I think it's a great idea.
This video describes the workshop in more detail:
My favorite quote from the video: "If you can learn nuclear physics, you can learn politics."
You can see the agenda of the day-long workshop here. The program includes Joe Trippi (of the John Edwards 2008 and Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaigns), among others. Registration hasn't opened yet, but if you're interested you can enter your information here, and you'll be notified when registration does open.
As demonstrating and rioting against the heavy-handed Chinese occupation of Tibet increased in intensity this weekend, it's not surprising that China cracked down using one of its favorite tools: internet censorship. As of sometime Saturday, the Chinese government had already blocked YouTube in response to protest/riot footage on the site, and recent reports indicate that Google News has also been blocked. The government's crackdown has already caused the loss of about 80 lives, and it's doing its best to prevent footage of the crisis from reaching the rest of China (through internet censorship) and the rest of the world (by blocking access to Tibet for journalists). As the 2008 Beijing Olympics rapidly approach, China will be under increasing pressure to improve its deplorable human rights record, which currently includes pervasive censorship, violence against Tibet and its own people, and financing genocide in Darfur. Hopefully other nations will use this as leverage to encourage change for the better in China
Beyond all of this, however, I found a couple of additional aspects of this story particularly interesting. Firstly, it should be pointed out that the primary target of the current censorship campaign is Google (owner of Google News and YouTube). This is interesting because Google has already come underfire (and rightfully so) for so readily agreeing to self-censor its sites in order to do more business in China. Surely, Google would have been subject to much more censorship if it hadn't acquiesced to the government's demands--but it could have at least still claimed the moral high ground. Instead, Google has in effect legitimized Chinese censorship, and it doesn't have much to show for it since--as the recent events show--the government will still censor anything it doesn't like.
The other interesting aspect is that the Chinese block of YouTube occurred just two days after the Turkish government did the same thing. I was actually in Turkey at the time (on vacation with my girlfriend, Meredith), and I can personally vouch for the fact that the entire YouTube site was inaccessible as of Thursday night. The block was instituted after a video insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was found on the site. Atatürk (who was born Mustafa Kemal but later took on the name Atatürk, which means "father of the Turks") was the first president and the founder of the Republic of Turkey. Atatürk is ubiquitous in Turkey: his portrait hangs in almost every building, his face is on all currency, and monuments to him and places named after him abound. And, it is a crime in Turkey to insult him.
ScienceBlogs is inviting each of its blogs to name two "Super Readers". These "Super Readers" will have access to a new del.icio.us account, where they'll be able to tag three ScienceBlogs posts of their choice per week. These will go on to a feed on the homepage, which I believe will replace the most active/most emailed feature currently in use.
So, who are my "Super Readers"?
Well, I have some ideas, but I don't know if you'll be interested. So, if you are interested, let me know by email or in the comments of this post. I'll pick my two "Super Readers" based on a combination of timeliness, interest, and merit. So, even if I think you'll be a great "Super Reader", I won't necessarily pick you unless I think you're interested. Also, I'll be out of town for the next week, so don't be worried if you don't hear back from me for a little while.
Thanks in advance for your participation, and if you are interested, please let me know!
Back when I was at Texas A&M University, I knew plenty of Democrats who would vote in the Republican primary instead of the Democratic one. Although I refrained from such activity, their rationale was totally reasonable: in such a conservative area, the real contest was almost always the Republican primary. By the time the general election came around, the winner was already a foregone conclusion: it would be whichever candidate had the "R" beside his name. These crossover voters preferred a moderate Republican to a right-wing extremist. Fair enough. And, they probably helped keep local politics more moderate than they would have been if the hardcore conservatives had their way.
Of course, I've often heard people bring up the other type of crossover scenario: sabotage. Couldn't Democrats go and vote in the Republican primary for the most outrageous candidate, causing the Republican Party to nominate a much weaker opponent to take on in the general election? Or vice versa? While theoretically possible in a state like Texas with an open primary system (any voter can vote in the primary of his or her choice), I found it unlikely that enough voters of one party could be mobilized to ever pull this off.
I think I've just been proven wrong.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton had a pretty good day at the polls, winning Rhode Island, Ohio, and the Texas primary. Barack Obama won Vermont, and it looks like he's going to win the Texas caucus. Although Clinton didn't win big enough to make a significant dent in Obama's delegate lead, these were certainly psychological victories for a candidate increasingly being written off. Obama might have sealed up his nomination by winning Texas outright, but that dream has just been squashed...
Last Thursday, the Royal Institution (in conjunction with Nature Network London) sponsored a panel on science blogging at the London Apple Store. The panel was a pretty good cross section of the science blogosphere, featuring three bloggers who have followed differing career paths and write quite different blogs. Ben Goldacre is a physician and journalist, and his blog Bad Science is devoted to taking down pseudoscience. Jennifer Rohn is a postdoc, and on her blog Mind the Gap she mostly writes about life as a scientist. And, finally, Ed Yong is an information officer for Cancer UK. On his blog Not Exactly Rocket Science (which just recently moved to ScienceBlogs), he exclusively writes about peer-reviewed research.
I arrived at the event about 20 minutes late, and although I'd like to blame it on the rush hour traffic encountered on the bus ride from Oxford to London, it was really my fault for trying to cram in one last experiment before I took off. This wasn't a huge problem, thanks to the setup at the Apple Store, where the back of the lecture theater opens up directly into the store (although this meant fairly frequent interruptions from shoplifting alarms and speakers turned up too loudly in the store). Unfortunately, I missed all of Ed Yong's opening statement, and some of Jennifer Rohn's.
When I arrived, Jennifer was discussing her career path--which took her from science, into publishing, and back again--and how that related to her blogging. She ended by positing that she thought science bloggers should be even more narcissistic--meaning that they should blog more about their lives as scientists. Narcissism seemed to be one of the main themes of the night, as Ben Goldacre, also gave it as one of his primary reasons for blogging: the ability to write about what he likes. In general, Ben said that he blogs for control. As someone who's written quite a bit for major papers, he knows just how much editors can screw up stories. He said that while he can't stop the media from saying stupid things, he can contribute to the dialogue on science positively. He sees the value of science blogs as giving "unmitigated science straight from the experts."
An Oxford graduate student by day and a scientific activist by night, Nick Anthis isn't letting his Ph.D. research in protein structure get in the way of defending scientific and social progress.
