Next week is the last teaching week of this semester. I have been revising almost from scratch both of my second year courses, which at times has taken most of my waking moments. Most of my teaching is this semester, so I have been crazy busy. But I have had time to add a small new bit to my final-year biological physics course. This is on the fact that many aspects of our bodies, and the diseases that afflict them, are controlled not by a single gene, but by many.
Author Archives: Richard Sear
Computational physicist at the University of Surrey. My research interests are in COVID-19 transmission, especially masks, soft matter & biological physics
Creating a paper trail to prove an article is on the web
This post is a slight lament at good intentions turned bureaucratic drag. In what we must now call the good old days, the final stages of publishing a scientific paper were free of paperwork. You would just check the proofs of your article, then sit back and wait for it to appear, whereupon your coauthors and you could sit back and bask in a warm glow.
Why oh why did it have to be sausages? Why is it sausages?
This week’s devastating news is the declaration that sausages, bacon, etc cause cancer. Sigh. Why couldn’t it have been cabbage? The news was triggered by a report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. There is an interesting blog post on this by Cancer Research UK (CRUK).
Maths paper beats physics, with a thousand times as many authors
There has been head scratching over a paper on the Higgs boson with 5,000 authors. That is a lot, think my record is about 12 or so. Five thousand authors means a 29 page long author list, plus 4 pages of actual physics. This does look a bit silly. High energy physics is now done on an industrial scale, but all who contributed need to be credited in the conventional way — on the author list.
Plum porter and what looks like massive overkill in our lymph nodes
I have just returned from a network meeting on structures inside cells, in Cambridge. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was quite wide ranging and including a lot of quite diverse stuff going on inside our cells, and included a talk on part of our immune system.
Moore’s Law in reverse
Moore’s Law is that, roughly speaking, computer chips double in speed every two years. It is approximate of course but indeed the power of computers has increased exponentially over the last fifty years, transforming our society. Moore’s Law is pretty well known, but until a talk at a workshop in Vienna this week, I had not heard of Eroom’s Law.
Five hours of questions on fourteen courses
Yesterday was the third of this year’s open days for prospective students. I was on campus for about five hours, fielding questions from prospective students and their parents. It was fun, and it is a real pleasure to help people. Particularly if the parents did not go to university themselves the whole business of applying to university can be a bit intimidating and confusing. So, on Open Days staff and students are there to help.
How your calculator works is surprisingly controversial
The calculator to the left is solar powered, via the little solar panel at the top right. Small cheap solar panels like those in calculators are made from amorphous silicon, because its a lot cheaper than its more efficient but pricey, cousin crystalline silicon. In crystalline silicon the silicon atoms are arranged in a regular crystal lattice — as it happens the arrangement is similar to that of water molecules in ice.
The global village and our poor estimation of risk
I am reading Risk by Dan Gardner. It is largely about how rubbish people are at estimating risks. This is nothing new, we have had good data how badly we estimate risks for decades. And arguably politicians and marketers have been exploiting it for a lot longer.But the book is well written, and is clear on why we should expect this: because we are the product of evolution.
Naturally sweet
After years of being dimly aware that there are two types of diet Coke*, the Coca-cola company has decided to further confuse me by launching a third: Coke Life. Coke Life’s tag line is “sweetness from natural sources”. The source is shown to the left, it is the stevia plant. This produces an extract, also called stevia, that contains a bunch of molecules called steviol glycosides, that taste very sweet, so only small amounts are needed to sweeten drinks. So although if you drink Coke Life your body will metabolise the steviol glycosides and so produce energy, as such small amounts are needed these calories are pretty negligible.
Chance & Necessity 