inkycircus

Bling, snow leopard-style

Imagine if you will the exchange between scientist Ashley Spearing and the snow leopard shown in this photo.

"Sit still for a second while I attach these fetching blue earrings to your ears."
"Rowr. Ffft."
"No no, stop trying to bite me. Put your claws away. Ouch, that hurt. I said claws away. This looks good, I promise. It suits you. Ow OW stop eating my head. Fine, fine off you go then. But we'll always know where you are now so you can run but you can't hide..."

The leopard was thus decorated when it was fitted with a GPRS collar that will let the scientists track her movements. The collar will stay with her for 14 months, beaming back lots of useful information about her whereabouts. Snow leopards are shy and elusive creatures and usually (wisely) stay well away from intrusive humans. This means that they are adept at avoiding being made into nice warm designer coats, but it also means that they're a bit harder to protect. It's hoped that information from the GPRS collar will help conservationists know how much space the leopards need, so it'll be easier for them to maintain protected areas. So that covers what the collar is for, but what are the matching earrings for? Answers on a postcard...

You can see a snow leopard in action pursuing a its lunch down an improbably steep rocky slope at the BBC page here. And the original blue earring tag story at BBC News here. And more photos are here at the BBC, and here at the Snow Leopard trust.

Ask a Nobel Laureate. No really

So Scientific American (which has been looking suprisinginly young n ' fresh in the online department these days) has launched this new thang: ask a Nobel Laureate.

Yeppers..you can ask them anything. Boxers or briefs? Will bananas become extinct? Do you like pudding? What, exactly, is string theory and why can't I see any?

The Laureate is your oyster. So go ahead and crack one open.

McDonalds are patently insane

McDonalds are trying to claim the "method and apparatus for making a sandwich" as its intellectual property. Yes, that's right. They're trying to claim a retrospective patent on how you put filling in bread.

Two things strike me about this. Firstly, and most obviously, this is crazy. You surely cannot patent something as ubiquitous as making a sandwich. Surely. Even though everyone has their own ideal way of making a sarnie (margarine v butter, fresh bread v toasted bread, salad v no salad, mayo v no mayo, ham v cheese, wagyu beef and foie gras etc etc etc), it's barmy for McDonalds to want to retrospectively claim rights on all this.

Secondly, a little mystery is good. If you describe something too much or think about it too hard, you ruin it. Case in point some of the phraseology of their scientific patent (which you can read in more detail at Guardian Unlimited here). It mentions things like a "cavity" where the filling goes (cavity in what? ew) and "condiments such as liquid or semi-liquid cheese". Now I like a nice plate of cheese-on-toast with melted gruyere as much as the next person, and I feel strongly that a cheese burger only really works if the cheese is nice and melty, but called the cheese "semi-liquid" makes me feel queasy.

And the patent apparently runs to 55 pages. What's wrong with the world!

(FYI - If you are a meat-eater and want to eat the best sandwich ever bar none, I suggest you pay the cafe in the Museum of Modern Art a visit. Their pulled pork sandwich is To Die For.)

(PHOTO: WORDRIDDEN)

Smile and the world smiles with you

Isabelle Dinore, recipient of the the world's first partial face transplant, has learned to smile again. Ok, so it's not a full on ear-to-ear grin yet, but she can close her lips, the scars are nowhere near as visible and she looks so so much better. Apparently she can now pass unnoticed through crowds, and rarely even gets looked at let alone stared at. This picture shows what she looked like when her face had healed but not fully recovered and what she looks like now - to get the full before and after effect, you'd have to have seen the way Isabelle looked pre-surgery. If you didn't see it on the BBC Horizon programme, take my word for it - she was pretty terrifying. The Royal College of Surgeons have already given the go-ahead for full face transplants in the UK, and this should encourage the doctors and potential patients that the rewards of such pioneering surgery can be massive. More via BBC News here.

Taking science out of the lab...

ANOTHER ROCKING FRIDAY NIGHT ON THE TILES... (PHOTO: KIMMARIE)
A group of scientists from the University of Adelaide in Australia have just successfully proved that you can get much stronger results testing a phenomenon in its natural setting than testing it in the lab. To do this, they had to keep a close watch on a group of subjects who were regular users of MDMA or Ecstasy. The subjects took the pills then went about their normal Friday night business, except for having to have their blood pressure, heart rate and temperature measured, and having to give a blood sample every hour.

The story over at ABC is written from the point of view of the clubber - like it might not be their idea of fun to be followed around by a bunch of scientists. I feel more sorry for the scientists. How much of a square would you feel turning up in a white lab coat at a nightclub, surrounded by a sea of wild partygoers? All credit to them, their results were really interesting, and the white coat thing is actually probably an inaccurate and inexusible stereotype. But even if downing some pills and going out for a bit of dancing is not your idea of a perfect Friday night, you'd be forgiven for thinking at some point during the night 'how much of a nerd am I sitting here waiting for my ecstatic guinea pig to turn up and not out there having fun myself?'.

The Snow Monster

Anne and I grew up in Vancouver - a city that, while in Canada, actually gets little snow. Even less that actually sticks. For every winter morning that saw even a few centimeters of good solid accumulation, us school kids would wait by the radio, hoping for classes to be canceled. It didn't take much. Us West-Coasters aren't know for our snow-driving abilities. Our pansy-assed school canceling still makes my Ontario friends laugh. That is until they brought in the ARMY for a snow storm during my first winter living in Toronto...the university was closed and we played football in a field of near waist-deep fluffy stuff. It was awesome.

I seemed to have lost that love of snow somewhere along the line. Like my Californian father before me, I now strongly believe that snow BELONGS ON MOUNTAINS NOT ON MY ROADS, THANKS. This likely has something to do with car ownership. Or actually having to GO somewhere. Especially because, at this very moment, Anne and I are trapped in Victoria, BC (my car is buried under 2 feet of snow), waiting for the roads to become clear enough to drive, hoping that the ferries don't crap out and that the Vancouver highways aren't filled with frozen solid car-crash victims. Fun. Did I mention that I hate snow?

Now I don't mean to go all Bah Humbug on you people for snow is, yes, silvery pretty winter wonderland fairy dust happy magic (especially on mountains). But I didn't sign up to live in a place that gets snow storms in November. Sort of like the nice people of Tuvalu didn't sign up to live underwater.

Now I know that sea level rise is a more accepted, simpler-to-model outcome of increased global temperatures and melting sea ice, but the connection between climate change and severe weather is becoming harder to ignore. Take this very informative page from Environment Canada (the same people who couldn't predict it wouldn't freakin' stop snowing on the island, hence landing me in this mess, but anyways). According to government figures there were about 20 weather-related disasters in Canada from 1920 to 1929. From 1990 to 1999, however, there were 130. Now sure, disasters are rated by economic impacts and hence with more development there is more stuff to destroy..so you can take that metric however you choose.

Maybe NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder will find the data to show that yes, climate change is totally extremifying our weather. Maybe not. But I have to go and check the weather reports now and warm myself with the angry hatred off all things snowy..except snowy owls...oooooooh and snow leopards..don't forget snow geese! and snow crabs- I'm allergic, but I hear good things...

Sex advice - don't be silly...

I was watching telly the other day, and had a cup of tea and a comfy spot on the sofa so I stayed to to watch the adverts in the commercial break. I learned about no-win-no-fee lawyers, where to buy Jamie Oliver's latest cookery book, and that having sex without a condom can give you gonorrhea or chlamydia.

The last advert was a public health message designed to encourage teenagers to carry condoms. It featured sets of promiscuous young folk getting up to no good. The way that we knew they weren't using protection of any kind was from their outfits - the girls were usually wearing (or had just discarded) clothing printed with the names of sexually transmitted diseases. So one girl was wearing frilly pants with 'Chlamydia' embroidered on them, and another was wearing a stylish belt who's buckle spelled out 'Gonorrhea'. The take home message was also fashion based - "Condoms: Essential Wear".

I wouldn't have thought any more of it had I not seen the story featured on Yahoo! Health News the other day. The story is all in favour of the new advert, and I actually agree that's it pretty good. Public health messages are not known for their stylish design, and the words NHS are a big turn off. This campaign is all about style, and a big part of that is the rather good website 'Condoms - Essential Wear'. In comparison, the NHS sexual health clinic website is a pain to navigate. The other interesting thing about this website is a button entitled digg this. This impresses me - they're trying to appeal to web friendly young people. My only complaint is that I can't find anywhere on the site or elsewhere where you can watch the ad and that seems remiss. There is however a handy button to click to hide what you were looking at.... If you click on it, you get this which is really rather nifty.

I do think, though, that many teenagers probably don't know that GPs give out free condoms. I didn't know that when I was a teenager... The site does have a page saying where you can get them free, but it shouldn't be so subtle. It should be a great big red arrow on the front page...

(PHOTO: WAZARI)

Pluto answers back

Well, Pluto hasn't actually answered back, but website Think Geek have printed up a t-shirt with Pluto's response to its recent humiliating demotion to dwarf planet status. I personally think it would be funnier if Pluto was saying "wtf?" or "whatev" or even "bastards" or "screw you guys" but that's just me... But this one's pretty funny too. And just in time for Christmas...

Fooooooooooooore!

Space research and space study sometimes seems to me like an awfully serious pursuit. Not much room for whimsy. Which is why I like the story about a Russian cosmonaut thwacking a golf ball off the top of the Interntional Space Station. I know he was being paid an "undisclosed sum" to do it so technically it's just the biggest example of product placement ever, but it's still fun. So long as the ball doesn't come swinging back round and make an almighty dent in the space station. NASA's risk assessment are confident that it wont but you never know! Incidentally, US law bars NASA from making money by private funding in a similar way, and I have to say I'm glad. The universe would be a sadder place if the shuttles were called things like "The Big Mac Blaster" or "Shuttle Slurpee". Space Shuttle Discovery is much better.

On the subject of space travel - doesn't the word cosmonaut just sound so much more glamorous than astronaut? Technically they're synonyms, but they mean sailor of the universe and sailor of the stars respectively. Of course, spaceman is the best name of all, but that really goes without saying.

Via BBC News (among others). (PHOTO: NOJMAN)

Baptist....and proud.

GALILEO KNOWS HOW IT FELT

When I was 12, I was on a choir tour around Maritime Canada. We often stayed with generous families from the small towns we visited, which was both awkward and amusing in equal parts. I remember one family very strongly. I was staying with them over the Easter weekend and they were obviously religious. After dinner the first night I was there, the father turned to me and asked what denomination I was. Sensing that "I don't believe in God" was the wrong answer, I replied: "......Baptist?" Born and raised an atheist, Baptist was the only one I knew.

But right now, I am proud to have selected that particular group, if only for this essay by Oliver "Buzz" Thomas. Thomas is a Baptist minister and author of the upcoming book "10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job)." Surprisingly, Buzz talks about the emerging science of sexual preference and asks what this means for religion's generally firm stance on the issue, equating the dilemma to Christianity's rejection of Galileo's blasphemous earth n' sun assertions. I couldn't be prouder even if I was a real Baptist.