Category Archives: Science

Bioprospecting

I’ve been thinking about There Will Be Blood (based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!) and its relationship to present day. In the movie, a ruthless oil prospector risks life and limb looking for mineral wealth – and in particular, oil. The complete lack of technology is staggering. For the first half of the move (set in ~1900) the main character is literally digging for oil with a shovel. And after a great deal of  labor and conniving, he becomes fantastically wealthy. It reminds me of Charles Steen, about whom I read in Uranium by Tom Zoellner.  Another ruthless bastard, he got rich in the Uranium mining boom in the 1950s.

Firstly, let me say that out of a million bastards with shovels, only a tiny percentage had the cunning and physical prowess to make it big. And only one of those actually stumbles on to a big enough claim to be rich. One in a million. In 100 years, there are maybe a dozen examples of rich men who started out with determination and a shovel.

Having said that, what’s out there for future prospectors? Not oil or uranium or any mineral. In places where such things are abundant and land is cheap, a major corporate interest will take it over from any tiny private party who might get in the way. Think I’m joking? “The oil giant Shell has agreed to pay $15.5m (£9.6m) in settlement of a legal action in which it was accused of having ­collaborated in the execution of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni tribe.”

Maybe the future is in bioprospecting. Imagine exploring the antarctic seeking the rare octopus whose venom will lead to a better understanding of protein folding at cold temperatures – and from there to cold-adapted vaccines, storable antibodies, and cures for major diseases, etc. Maybe it’s happening now.

Printing Organs

I’ve loved the idea of 3d printing for a long time. I’ve followed the RepRap for a while. Open Source Hardware strikes me as a compelling idea – anybody who has read Feynman’s memoirs knows that playing with building thinds is important for any young scientist.

Well, here’s a new awesome application to the idea of printed 3d materials: printing organs. The idea is that a computer prints a scaffold impregnated with human cells which then grow into the desired organ which is then implanted. The current state-of-the-art is printed veins, but other things are coming soon!

Cheers,
Peter

Short post: Green, compensatory ethics

There was an article in the Guardian that talks about how “green” consumers may be more likely to engage in socially irresponsible or unethical behavior due to a phenomenon called “compensatory ethics.” I take that to mean that if a person feels good about himself for one reason (he only buys fair trade organic coffee, for instance) he won’t feel as bad about himself if he steals from the barista’s tip jar.

In the words of Dieter Frey, a social psychologist at the University of Munich quoted in the Guardian piece, “at the moment in which you have proven your credentials in a particular area, you tend to allow yourself to stray elsewhere.”

Does that mean your hippie friends are cheaters? No – but it does explain why my vegetarian roommate was habitually rude and inconsiderate.

NatureBlog picked up on it too!

Cheers,
Peter

Coffee makes us happy

 

As if we didn’t already know, coffee makes us happy. Actually, any warm drink would do, it seems. And it’s not so much happy as it is cooperative and trustful. It’s Science!

Neuroscience Marketing reminded me of this phenomenon. I saw it first in a documentary about making decisions. It seems that the NYT noticed it a few years ago when it was published in Science.

What’s the gist? Well, it seems that if you handle a cup of hot coffee you are more apt to trust and accept people. They tested this by giving people either a hot or cold beverage for a minute. Then they asked people if they would hire a new acquaintance or not. Subjects were statistically more likely to hire the candidate if they had a hot beverage relative to a cold beverage.

Surprising? Maybe. Bear it in mind for interviews, I suppose.

Cheers,
Peter