Just A Theory

Darwin’s children’s drawings on display

Charles Darwin used sheet after sheet of paper when writing On the Origin of Species, since redrafting before the days of Microsoft Word meant writing the whole thing out again. Only a handful of these draft papers have survived, mostly because Darwin gave his used sheets to his children for use as drawing paper.

Battle of the Vegetables

Next week one such sheet will go on display in a new exhibition at Cambridge University Library. Named “Battle of the Vegetables” by Library staff, it depicts a battle between one man riding a carrot and another on what could possibly be a stale potato.

Did Michael Jackson’s death contribute to climate change?

Duncan Graham-Rowe of the Guardian asks whether we should consider the carbon cost of all the increased web activity following the singer’s death. I’ve discussed the carbon cost of Googling before – 0.2g per search, according to the company’s own figures.

As one commenter points out, if you added up the tiny contributions of all the tributary Tweets and YouTubes they probably wouldn’t exceed the Jackson’s personal carbon footprint, considering the lavish life he led.

The Guardian’s James Randerson also chimes in to say the point of the article isn’t really the carbon cost of Jackson’s death, but to highlight the issue of unsustainable internet growth. Whilst this is a problem, I can’t imagine that alternative methods of information distribution are any greener. As with many climate change conundrums, the answer is far from clear.

What’s on alien TV?

Webcomic Abstruse Goose has this rather nice image of what aliens might be watching on TV. When TV signals are broadcast some of them radiate out from the Earth, and could be picked up by any extraterrestrials out there. Like all electromagnetic radiation, the signals travel at the speed of light, so depending on how far from Earth the aliens are it’s going to take them a while to receive our latest programmes.

Whilst inhabitants of the relatively near Sirius system might have been enjoying episodes of Family Guy and The Sopranos for the past few years, everyone out in Aldebaran is still waiting for coverage of World War II to arrive. I just hope any aliens out there will forgive us for polluting space with broadcasts of Big Brother…

With all the World Conference of Science Journalists fun, there’s obviously been a lot of news this week that I’ve had to ignore. Rather than letting it slip away without comment, I thought I’d once again abuse the Weekly Roundup category for the next few days. A bit longer than my usual Roundup format today, because I’m basically cramming two blog posts in to one:

Electro-hypersensitivity: because when you make up a medical condition, it becomes real

Maybe it’s just because I own more electronic doo-dads than anyone really needs, but when ever I see people complaining that electricity/wifi makes them ill, I get annoyed. The Daily Mail published just such an account, from Sarah Dacre, who suffered from unexplained headaches and digestive problems for seven years.

Her medical problems increased over the years, and it wasn’t until 2006 when she was diagnosed with electro-hypersensitivity (EHS) by a “specialist [she] found on the internet” that she was able to over them. She moved to a country house in Kent, and was miraculously cured.

It’s a good thing that, unlike the rest of the country, Kent isn’t bathed in radio waves. And doesn’t have mobile phone masts. Or electricity. Hmm.

There is no scientific evidence to show the existence of EHS. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. A meta-analysis of studies looking at the phenomenon found that those who claimed to suffer from the condition could not tell if the electromagnetic field they were being subjected to was real or not. I don’t know what caused Sarah Dacre’s medical problems, but this ain’t it.

Vegetarianism as a way of avoiding cancer? I’d rather eat a burger

Vegetarians ‘avoid more cancers’ says the BBC headline. A study published in the British Journal of Cancer looked at cancer rates in over 60,000 Brits, and found that those who were strictly veggie or only ate fish were at a much reduced relative risk of developing cancer.

Ah, cancer and relative risk – we’ve been here before. I’m not going to do a full look at the stats, but let’s take bladder cancer as an example. The research showed that compared to meat eaters, vegetarians have a relative risk of 0.47 for developing bladder cancer. In other words, cutting out meat more than halves your chance of developing the disease.

Halves it from what though? As always, I refer you to the excellent Cancer Research UK for some numbers. For every 100,000 people in the UK, each year 16.9 will develop bladder cancer. That means roughly 10,000 people each year over the entire population. If we all stopped eating meat – and only if we all did – around 5,000 a year would avoid the disease.

Maybe I’m just too attached to eating meat, but changing the eating habits of an entire country in order to effect such a small change doesn’t really seem worth it. Though, us all cutting out meat would effect other cancer rates as well, so it’s not just 5,000 who are being spared. Should we change our diet of the back of this study then? Lead author Professor Tim Key doesn’t think so:

“At the moment these findings are not strong enough to ask for particularly large changes in the diets of people following an average balanced diet.”

Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking I just ignore all health advice. Some risk factors are worth changing your habits for. Every year, around 35,000 people die as a result of lung cancer. Almost 90% of these are a result of smoking. Saving 31,500 lives a year by banning smoking seems a pretty obvious thing to do.

Smoking is also the major preventable risk factor for bladder cancer, which leads to about 5,000 deaths a year. Yes, roughly half of these could potentially be avoided if we all went veggie, but eradicating smoking seems like a much more effective, less costly and less disruptive way to cut cancer rates.

To look at it another way, you don’t see anyone suggesting we ban cars, which would save around 3,000 lives a year. It’s a fair comparison I think, since given the choice between a life of salads and cars, or sausages and trains, I know which I’d go for!

It’s over! Whilst tomorrow will see many of the delegates going on a variety of trips, today was effectively the end of the WCSJ. It’s certainly been an interesting week, and today was no exception.

I began this morning with a session on the future of science journalism. Hosted by Robert Lee Hotz, science columnist for the Wall Street Journal, it was probably the highlight of the week for me. Discussing the issues were Laura Chang, science editor for the New York Times, editor of The Times James Harding, former editor-in-chief of Scientific American John Rennie, and Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s head of newsgathering.

Common themes were that the current problems of science journalism are shared by general journalism and the wider media. The combination of the internet and falling advertising revenues will bring about a “mass extinction” of media outlets, according to Rennie. Those that want to survive need to evolve.

Chang told us about the NYT’s efforts to become an information portal in addition to a news source. Information about health forms a big part of this, and page views for the NYT website Health section have tripled as a result.

It’s not just health that gets the hits however. Both Chang and Unsworth mentioned the Large Hadron Collider as a massive science story – indeed, the BBC’s coverage received so many views that their stats counter broke!

Whilst this is all good to hear, it’s unclear how it makes any money. Of course, as Unsworth pointed out the BBC don’t need to worry about this, but everyone else must come up with new business models. No one had any real answers – if they did they would be implementing them – so the future of science journalism still remains uncertain. Even so, it was great to see such excellent speakers speculating on what might happen.

After this it was back to the book stall for a bit before I went to steward a session on the coverage of climate change and it links science, policy and politics. Again, because I was working I couldn’t make very good notes. One of the speakers was Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC, who made a very good point about the real environmental story: us.

The growth of the world’s population leads to an increase in resource use and more and more expansion in to natural habitats. Climate change and other problems can be linked directly to this issue, but we rarely see articles calling for a slowdown in growth.

Next was my final stint on the book stand. Everything was reduced to £1 and I managed to shift all of the books, though eventually we did end up giving the last few away for free. These rather unpopular volumes still took a while to get rid of, despite not costing a penny!

The last event of the conference was the farewell party. For some unknown reason this was Wimbeldon themed, which meant us stewards had to change from our garish orange polo necks to white ones, and don a tennis visor. Slightly silly, but I guess that’s just how these things work.

I’ve had a great week. It’s been hard work, but good fun, and I got to witness and take part in many thought-provoking discussions. My whole body aches, I’m extremely sleep-deprived, but I’d definitely do it all again. The next conference is to be held in 2011 and hosted by Cairo. I’ve no idea what I’ll be doing then, but I hope I can attend!

Another action-packed day at the WCSJ! I began this morning on the registration desks, welcoming delegates who had not yet registered and directing various lost looking people to where they needed to go. This was followed by another few hours roaring trade on the ABSW book stand, where various science books were now being sold for the low, low price of three quid.

After a brief – and I mean literally five minute – lunch, I went along to the ABSW’s session on how to publish a popular science book. Chaired by Sara Abdulla, Chief Commissioning Editor at Nature, and featuring the author John Gribbin, agent Peter Tallack and Penguin editor Will Goodlad, the session focussed on moving from an idea in your head to a published book, and all the steps in between.

All the panellists stressed the importance of writing a detailed outline that you can peddle to agents and publishing companies. This allows you to present your ideas in full without having to write the entire manuscript first! Anything that helps you stand out from the crowd is an advantage, especially in a world where, according to Abdulla, up to one million books are looking for an agent at any one time.

Part of the discussion revolved around books written by scientists versus those written by science journalists. Publishing companies like to have a “name” behind the book to increase marketability, and the book buying public supposedly like to hear about research directly from the scientists doing it. Having said that, there is still a place for journo’s who want write something more substitutional than a feature piece.

If they can’t find a publisher though, they could always do it themselves. On the topic of self-publishing, the panel were mixed. Goodlad thought it was a good idea – despite the questioner asking if it made him worry for his job – simply because there are so many books out there, and traditional publishers can’t put them all out. Gribbin meanwhile said he was “too lazy” to self-publish, and the general consensus was self-published books can’t achieve real commercial success.

Immediately following this session was another that asked “Is the growing influence of PR on science journalism in the public interest?” Ben Goldacre was there, along with Simon Denegri, Chief Executive of the Association of Medical Research Charities, Andrew Jack of The Financial Times, and John Clare, Managing Director of Lions Den Communications. It was chaired by Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust.

I was actually working on this session as a steward thus I wasn’t able to make notes, so please forgive my lack of details. Goldacre gave his usual entertaining spiel, pointing out stories masquerading as science that had been manufactured by PR agencies, whilst Denegri and Jack were made slightly less inflammatory comments. Clare had a decent go at defending the PR industry, despite technical difficulties that left him without his Powerpoint presentation for a while, and me running about in search of a technician. I’m not sure how much of it I bought though.

The audience responses were interesting. The journalists complained that PR often won’t let them speak to the scientists they want to, especially if the story is bad news, and that their editors force them to write up the PR-produced stories as news, else it will be passed to a non-specialist and end up even worse! Also present were various press officers, who complained that they don’t like being tarred with the same brush as PR, and that “P” is badly defined anyway. It made for an interesting and heated session – not just because the room was sweltering!

After some more book selling and some general milling about I head off, along with everyone else, to the Gala Reception at the Natural History Museum. Whilst a very impressive location, the acoustics weren’t quite suited to the various speeches given, and it was hard to hear what was being said. The food however was excellent, including a mini fish and chip canapé!

Another enjoyable if lengthy day then. Tomorrow is the last proper day of the conference, and I’ll try to blog as much as I can. See you then!

Apologies for the lateness of this blog post, but I’ve only just got in from the post-WCSJ pub trip. I spent most of today on the Association of British Science Writers stand selling books – quite successfully I might add – but I did get to see some of the rest of the conference. As it’s late, I’ll resort to bullet points:

• Science Minister Lord Drayson gave his and the government’s support to the WCSJ.
• The BBC’s Pallab Ghosh believes that science journalism can change the world.
• The panel discussing whether science journalism is in crisis concluded “yes”, “no” and “maybe”. They stressed that whilst traditional funding models (i.e. advertising) are drying up, “new media” offers new possibilities. How these possibilities are funded, I’m not quite clear.
• Quentin Cooper of the BBC’s Material World gave entertaining introductions to conference sponsors, who were as exciting as you might expect.

That’s about all I managed to scribble down during my day’s escapades. I’ll try and come up with something a bit more substantial tomorrow!

Last week I had a cold. It was one of those ones you get after you haven’t slept properly for a few nights (and in my case, because I’d been pushing myself to work hard for once).  I felt terrible, but being British, a man, and generally lazy I made no effort to go to the doctor. And, of course, I had no Lemsips, Beechams or any kind of medicine at all in my flat.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because my Chinese flatmate Will gave me some medicine. When he first offered me some I half expected a herbal remedy. But no, he produced a packet of tablets which consisted of two types: white tablets for the day time and black tablets for the night time.

I’m the kind of person who always reads the label on medicines. Not because I understand the technical jargon you find on them, I just find it reassuring to pretend I’m capable of deciding what the tablets might do to me. In this case though my knowledge of the Chinese language (i.e. none) prevented me from undergoing this ritual.

As a result I was apprehensive about taking the tablets. Which I found worrying in itself, because I completely trust my flatmate and know he wouldn’t give me anything dangerous. So why was I afraid, and what was I even afraid of? What’s more, I was more apprehensive about taking the black tablets than the white tablets. I thinks it’s probably because I’ve never taken (or even seen) a black tablet before.

In the end I just took both the tablets anyway, after realising that a) I was being irrational, and b) I felt so crappy that I was prepared to try anything. But because I couldn’t read the ingredients I wasn’t really convinced they would work, and instead thought ‘at the very least the placebo effect might kick in and make me feel better.’

When I told Colin this story we both got a bit unsure of whether the placebo effect can take place if you’ve already considered that the thing you are taking might work as a placebo. I’ve had a similar thought before about headache tablets. If I have a headache and take two headache tablets I always start to feel better about 20 minutes later (the only exception being when I’m hung-over).  But, I always ponder, is this simply because I assume they will work, stop worrying about my headache and get on with things. Or is it because the paracetemol, caffeine and so on in headache tablets actually works on me. I imagine it’s mainly the latter, but live in fear that if I ever lose my confidence in headache tablets that they will no longer work on me.

In the case of the Chinese flu tablets, I did feel better the next day. It might be because of the stuff in them, or it might be because of some placebo effect. Or it might be that I had a good nights sleep for once. But I still decided to not take any more, and left it up to time and nature to get me better.

So what is the point of this rambling parable? Well, I feel like I learned a few things. First, being able to read labels makes me feel much happier about taking medicine. Second, black tablets are slightly intimidating. Third,I don’t care if its a placebo effect thats getting me better as long as I feel better. Finally, I should buy medicine before I get sick.

Blocking the action of a gene called Sirtuin-1 reduced the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in rats, scientists have found.

People with Type 2 diabetes suffer from high blood glucose concentrations due to insulin resistance and increased glucose production. To create a similar condition in rats, the researchers put a group of rats on a four-week diet of high-fat, fructose-rich meals.

Sirtuin-1 is a gene responsible for regulating glucose production in the liver. The researchers therefore then blocked Sirtuin-1 in the ‘diabetic’ rats by injecting them with a fragment of genetic information. This fragment – called an antisense oligonucleotide – interrupts and blocks gene expression and can be targeted to specific genes.

After Sirtuin-1 inhibition, the rats were more sensitive and responsive to insulin. The rate of glucose production fell back to normal levels, resulting in a decrease in the blood plasma. Thus the scientists believe the Sirtuin-1 gene is a cause of type 2 diabetes symptoms.

The results of this study are consistent with a recent mouse study which showed that decreased expression of Sirtuin-1 led to better insulin sensitivity. The next step is to develop inhibitors targeted to Sirtuin-1 in the liver, these will be tested in rats before moving on to primates and human clinical trials if successful.

For more information on animal research and this story, please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Using fish, scientists have discovered a signalling pathway that could be used to treat skin cancers (melanomas). The pathway, PI3K (phosphoinositide 3-kinase) had a major effect on the progression of cancerous melanomas in zebrafish. Zebrafish are ideal for studying skin cancer as the melanomas are similar to those seen in humans, and the fish themselves are easy to observe because of their light-coloured, almost transparent skin.

Signalling pathways regulate cell division, migration and death. The pathways form a complex network to relay these various commands to cells. But when the signalling molecules mutate, the result is often excess cell division which can lead to cancer.

The team looked at two major pathways called Ras and PI3K. They found fish often developed melanomas which progressed rapidly if molecules in these pathways were mutated. The discovery that PI3K was directly involved indicates that it could be a suitable target for melanoma therapy.

The mutant zebrafish also passed on the mutations to their offspring. In this they were strikingly similar to the human inherited syndrome FAMM (familial atypical mole and melanoma).

This study highlights a potential target for therapy, but also gives scientists new insights into the mechanisms of melanomas, revealing other possible targets. But further research into these models will be needed so scientists can see whether they’re as promising as this initial study indicates.

For more information on animal research and this story, please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

I will be spending all this week helping out at World Conference of Science Journalists at Central Hall Westminster, so you can expect nightly blog posts on my activities that day. This morning, I headed down to Westminster at noon to begin setting up at the conference. This mostly involved boxes. Lots of boxes.

A quirk of architecture – a flight of five stairs – made moving said boxes an almost farcical affair. To get everything to the exhibition hall, we had to take the goods lift from the ground floor to the third floor. A short circuit of the building later to a regular lift, it was down from there to the first floor. Repeat as necessary.

Besides the various materials needed for the exhibition stands, we also had to put together around 800 delegate bags. This required an assembly line of various leaflets, but when the bags were ready they had to be taken to the reception area. Whilst everyone else toiled away stuffing bits of paper together, the job of shifting them all fell to me. So if you’re attending the WCSJ, when you pick up your nicely packed delegate bag, remember that I personally lugged around every single one of them!

Not much in the way of science then, and I unfortunately had to miss the conference reception at the Science Museum. It’ll be an early start tomorrow, but I’m hoping to blag my way into at least a few sessions. All will be reported in the evening.

Sun in common-sense shocker

Sometimes I worry about being too negative on Just A Theory. With all the examples of media failings I write about, it’s easy to let the good ones slip past unnoticed. As such, I thought I’d congratulate The Sun’s Dr Keith for his recent article on misused medical terms. He informs us that we probably don’t have the flu (it’s a cold), there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown, and most of us are rarely “shocked”, in a medical sense.

New hope for Copenhagen

Later this year thousands of people will descend on Copenhagen to try and come up with a new global agreement on climate change. The United Nations, in conjunction with the International Advertising Association, have launched a campaign to re-brand the conference as Hopenhagen. The idea is to move from “coping” with climate change to a “hope” that action can be taken. A silly bit of marketing? Perhaps. But if it gets people talking, it’s probably a good idea.

Check this out. It’s awesome

“But what is it?” I hear you cry. Created by Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama, the strange substance in this art work is a ferrofluid. These odd liquids combine tiny magnetic particles with water or oil, and a surfactant, which prevents the particles sticking together. Ferrofluids react in the presence of a magnetic field, creating the wonderful structures in the video above.

Whilst they do have their practical uses, like forming a liquid seal in computer hard drives or marking areas of the body in an MRI scan, I think you’ll agree that just looking cool is good enough.