This is the message of a paper by Tomasetti and Vogelstein, that came out last week. Unlike a lot of papers in Science it is beautifully written, with a simple idea and a clear message. They start with the simple observation that some cancers are much much more common than others. For example, the American figures they quote give a lifetime risk of cancer of the colon of 5%, and risk of bone cancer of the pelvis of 0.0003%. Why the difference?
Category Archives: Science
My fellow scientists cite my work at random
Although the average number of times people cite my papers is lower than that for a Siamese cat, people do cite my work. And so Google Scholar reckons that at the time of writing my papers have attracted a total of N = 2858 citations and I have a h-index of 27. The value h of the h-index (named after Jorge Hirsch) is the number of papers that have been cited, i.e., referenced, at least h times. I have published 27 papers which have all been cited at least 27 times.
In a dog-eat-dog competitive world, I lose to a Siamese cat
In a post on Surrey’s blog I boasted that I was twice as good as a hamster, according to one common metric for measuring the achievements of an academic scientist. However, I am sadly not superior to all furry mammals, a cat beats me, by that same metric. I average out at about 28 citations per paper I have published. F.D.C Willard*, who was a cat, averages out at 34.
Where does a flock of starlings end and the sky begin?
This shows a flock, also called a murmuration, of starlings at sunset. The hundreds or thousands of starlings are moving almost as if they are a single body, and mostly there is a pretty clear edge to the flock. It is pretty obvious where the flock ends and the rest of the sky begins. As the flock is a three-dimensional object, this should mean that the flock has a well defined surface, which separates the volume of sky occupied by the starling flock, from the surrounding sky where there are no starlings.
The Salmon of Doubt*
I don’t think I am particularly good at reading social situations, but I get by. But I would guess that I am better at reading social situations than a dead salmon. A few years ago, Bennett and coworkers used the latest hi-tech method to study brain activity, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to study the brain of dead salmon. While they were using the brain imaging technique on the brain of the deceased salmon, they showed it pictures of groups of people in different social situations.
Has modern medicine run out of luck?
This week I have mostly been doing 11 contact hours of teaching plus prep for that, and a little reading of James Le Fanu’s interesting if a bit depressing book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine. The 11 contact hours included six on Friday in which rather ridiculously I introduced the beautiful symmetry of the cowpea mosaic virus to two entirely different audiences on the same day — one at 11:00 am and the other at 2:00 pm. I was doing my best at 2pm but it was a long week, so I had probably had a bit more enthusiasm in the morning.
No choice but to be beautiful
The beautiful structure to the left is a reconstruction of the protein shell of the cowpea mosaic virus. This is a virus that infects the cowpea, a type of bean cultivated in warmer climes than the UK*. Viruses are the simplest form of life. They simply consist of a protein shell that contains and protects their genetic material, which is inside this shell. This virus’s coat is made of 120 molecules, of just two different types of protein – shown in green and yellow here. Inside are two molecules of RNA that cary the virus’s genes, plus a couple more proteins.
It’s official, banana skins are dangerous
I love the IgNobel prizes, they’re great. Their stated aim is to make you laugh and to think, and what is better than having a laugh and thinking about something new? This year’s winners were excellent as usual. I particularly liked the 2014 Physics IgNobel.
Giants in Chihuahua
We take crystals for granted, maybe because they are so common. The Earth’s crust is crystalline, as are our cutlery, and even our bones and teeth are partly crystalline. But crystals are remarkable things. Although most crystalline materials are made of many tiny crystals mushed together (our bones are like this), sometimes huge single crystals can grow. There are crystals in the Naica mine in the Chihuahua state* of Mexico that are over 10 cubic metres in volume. This corresponds to maybe 1030 atoms. And in a single crystal, all atoms are on the same crystal lattice, all 1030 of them here. So the relative positions of pairs of atoms in one corner of the crystal are the same as in the opposite corner over 10 metres or more than 10 billion layers of atoms away. That’s a lot of layers, and presumably they grew one at a time. These big crystals may have started growing before the first civilisations arose in what is now Egypt and Iraq, thousands of years ago. The growth of large perfect crystals can be a slow business.
Is British science meritocratic?
I think UK science is pretty meritocratic, certainly few seem to care where you went to school or university. But there have been some alarming newspaper articles on some professions being dominated by those who went to private schools; for example 71% of judges were privately educated. They don’t report figures for science*. And at yesterday’s Open Day a parent of a prospective student asked a colleague and I about how much employers care about where a physics graduate does their degree. We both thought that most would judge an applicant mostly on their merits although the prestige of their university is not completely irrelevant.
Chance & Necessity 