CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

How synchrotrons could aid crop protection

Image courtesy of Diamond (www.diamond.ac.uk) 

2003 saw construction begin on a facility representing the UK’s largest investment in science for over 40 years. Diamond Light Source opened in 2007 and is an impressive structure on the South Oxfordshire landscape, 10 miles or so from where I’m sitting in CABI’s head office. It is a synchrotron and without synchrotrons scientists couldn’t have carried out groundbreaking research as diverse as studying the life cycle of the deadly malaria parasite in living red blood cells or following the crystallisation of pure cocoa butter to find out the optimum conditions for chocolate manufacture¹. Last week saw the 100^th structure to be identified by Diamond².

Is it a bug’s life?

Avid followers of …handpicked and carefully sorted…. will recall my previous blog on bees and the debate on whether neonicotinoid insecticides should be banned or not. Well, unsurprisingly, the debate continues. A media release from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) on 11 September called for an “independent and comprehensive assessment of the impact of neonicotinoids”. This is in response to a call from Buglife for the suspension on the use of these chemicals.

Current science on Arctic warming and its global effects

Over the past few decades, the Arctic has warmed at about twice the rate of the rest of the globe. This has resulted in destabilisation of important Arctic systems, including sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, mountain glaciers and aspects of the Arctic carbon cycle. A peer-reviewed report dealing with the subject was produced by WWF and brings together top climate scientists who assessed the current science on Arctic warming and its global effects. Read on to find out more.

Leonardo Da Vinci's water theory: the bedrock of hydrology

Water is the driving force of all nature (Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452-1519)

Whilst screening a pile of publications, I recently came across a new book entitled Leonardo Da Vinci’s Water Theory: on the origin and fate of water. As Da Vinci himself, the book is fascinating, revealing and inspiring. Leonardo Da Vinci’s water theory opens up a new history to the study of water. Over 200 years before Newton, Perrault and Halley, Da Vinci was doing hypothesis-driven science and describing and classifying hydrological processes. For example, he came close to the modern definition of the hydrological cycle, recognising that water passes through the major river systems countless times, summing up to volumes much greater than those contained in the world’s oceans. I’m sure not many people are aware of his astounding contribution to hydrological science, so I thought I’d blog about it. Read on to see more highlights of the book.

The curious research of Mark Button

I thought the hand picked readers might want a little distraction from A/H1N1 virus flu (the flu previously known as swine flu), so I thought how about a blog on toenails for a change? Well, it’s about a research paper I came across recently, which used toenail clippings to detect human exposure to arsenic (As). Read on if you want to find out more about Mark Button’s research.

Express Yourself Genetically: Say It With Flowers

 

Is it a plant or is it animal? Is it an artwork or is it a science project? Is it a profound statement or just messing about? These are just some of the questions unlikely to be answered by Edunia, a transgenic flower with artist Eduardo Kac's own DNA expressed in the red veins.  It is part of an exhibition "Natural History of the Enigma" at the  Weisman Art Museum, in Minneapolis.

The Edunia has red veins on light pink petals and a gene of the artist is expressed on every cell of its red veins, i.e., Kac's gene produces a protein in the veins only. The gene was isolated and sequenced from Kac's blood. Kac sees the petal pink background, against which the red veins are seen, as evocative of his own pinkish white skin tone. The result of this molecular manipulation is a bloom that creates the living image of human blood rushing through the veins of a flower. The gene Kac selected is responsible for the identification of foreign bodies. In this work, it is precisely that which identifies and rejects the other that the artist integrates into the other, thus creating a new kind of self that is partially flower and partially human. Molecular biologist Neil Olszewski at the University of Minnesota collaborated with Kac on the project.

In 2002 Kac exhibited ‘Alba’, a transgenic albino rabbit: She contains a jellyfish gene that makes her glow green when illuminated with the correct light. Alba was created by French scientists who injected green fluorescent protein (GFP) of a Pacific Northwest jellyfish into the fertilized egg of an albino rabbit. This was not the first transgenic GFP animal, but probably the first to grace an art gallery.

Kac says "Natural History of the Enigma" is a reflection on the "contiguity of life between different species. It uses the redness of blood and the redness of the plant's veins as a marker of our shared heritage in the wider spectrum of life."

In anticipation of a future in which Edunias can be distributed socially and planted everywhere, Kac created a set of "Edunia Seed Packs", which are included in the exhibition. The "Edunia Seed Packs" contain actual Edunia seeds and are part of the permanent collection of the Weisman Art Museum.

George Gessert, another genetic artist, points out that this is the continuation of a trend, with Edward Steichen exhibiting hybrid delphiniums at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. More recently, Suzanne Ankers made sculptures of chromosomes and Dave Powell has bred  "artcats" specifically for exhibition in galleries.

Those negatively disposed to transgenic organisms are likely to see this as further evidence of scientists fiddling about with things that they shouldn't for no good reason. Others may see it as artists just finding another medium to work with - the DNA of living organisms. So expect to find pipettes and Petri dishes alongside the paintbrushes in your local art shop.

Find out more: http://www.ekac.org/nat.hist.enig.html

Gamburtsev mountain range mapped

It’s old news that there’s a mountain range under the Antarctic ice, but what’s new is that scientists have now mapped it. Named after a Soviet geophysicist, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains were discovered in 1957, but the size and shape of them remained unknown until now. In The Guardian last week, it was reported that in average temperatures of a harsh -30⁰C, a seven-nation research team worked for weeks around the highest point on the Antarctic ice sheet to map the mountain range, which exists under 2.5 miles of ice and is as big as the European Alps.

I predict more breakthroughs than ever in 2009!

It’s customary in the New Year to look into a metaphorical crystal ball (as any rational scientists would have obviously dispensed with the real thing). In doing that, I can confidently predict that the number of scientific breakthroughs will reach an unprecedented level this year. How can I be so sure? A study of the level of “breakthroughs” reported using that specific (plural) term in CAB Abstracts shows that there’s been a fairly steady upward trend from 10 in 1992 to 50 in 2007

Is this not a cause for unconfined rejoicing? Well, possibly. There is more research being published and indexed in CAB Abstracts every year (which is obviously, in the words of our sponsor, why you should make it part of your regular search routine). But it could also be case of researchers getting more cavalier or possibly desperate in their use of the term?

While breakthroughs have gone up, it’s noticeable that “paradigm shifts” have risen at an even faster rate in CAB Abstracts. “Scientific revolutions” are remarkably sparse – but why revolve when you can paradigm-shift? Searching on Google Trends suggests that paradigm shifts are way ahead of scientific revolutions in media coverage, but it’s pretty much evens in terms of Google searches, perhaps an indication that it’s a term people like writing even if others aren’t out there looking for it.

As with many style guides, The International Food Information Council warns journalists against using “hyped or loaded terms" such as “scientific breakthrough" to attract public attention. Nik Brown from the University of York considers some of the problems in his paper Organising/Disorganising the Breakthrough Motif: Dolly the Cloned Ewe Meets Astrid the Hybrid Pig”. He quotes two analysts who say “The ‘B’ word - breakthrough - divides scientists and journalists as no other… no word better signifies the crosscurrents and undertows that can sink the communication process. And none better reveals the cultural divides that separate the two professions”.

It’s obvious that a story in the news or in a journal that describes a dramatic new understanding of something is more exciting than “Scientists today reported that they probably now had an incrementally better knowledge of a very narrow area, subject to confirmation by repetition and peer review and that over time this combined with lots of other studies might make a difference to something”. However, the latter is more lifelike: the moments of genius with cartoon-style light bulbs appearing over scientists’ heads are as rare as those old-style light bulbs will soon be. But that doesn’t mean scientists aren’t collectively achieving remarkable things that eventually can change the world.

So, returning to the New Year theme, I hereby resolve to not use the word "breakthrough" in my news or blog articles this year. Expect this to last as long as my other resolutions.

How about some gold for Christmas?

After reading about everyday playful behaviour, such as humour and day-dreaming in the last blog by fellow ‘hand-picked’ blogger Dave Hemming, I was sitting here day-dreaming of a white Christmas and the three kings, and their myrrh, frankincense and gold. When I thought of gold I remembered screening Computers & Geosciences the other day, when I came across an interesting article, which I thought might be of interest for those of you who want to give something different this Christmas – how about finding your own gold deposit in time for Christmas? The article describes quantitative analysis of geo-scientific data to determine areas most likely to contain mineral deposits and is aimed at the mining industry. However, I can’t see why we all can’t have a go too. Read on to see how it’s done.

Gold nugget (Google images)