Dorothy Hodgkin is possibly the greatest British female scientist. A bold claim, but what makes her so great? As May 12th was the 100th anniversary of her birth, I thought I’d take a little look at the achievements that mean Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin is the only British woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and is rightly revered by the Royal Society- who award a research fellowship in her name, and even included her in the set of commemorative stamp as part of their 350 year celebrations (you really know you’ve made it then).
A picture of the New Hodgkin stamp produced to celebrate the Royal Society's 350th anniversary
Quite frankly, Dorothy Hodgkin helped develop and revolutionise an entire branch of science- Protein crystallography. As a small molecule crystallographer myself, I have often taken small pot-shots at our ‘large molecule’ friends, but there is no getting away from the fact that Protein crystallography is at the forefront of biological research today, being instrumental in driving the development of new pharmaceuticals and therapies.
To quote Isaac Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology (a gripping read), ‘For her doctoral labours, she studied the X-ray diffraction of crystals of the digestive enzyme pepsin. That fixed the direction of her interests and she spent her later professional life on the determination of complex organic structures through X-ray diffraction’. And you can’t get more complex than proteins. Continue Reading »
Having taken on a new job with an educational charity in addition to continuing my PhD part-time I have found that time is seriously lacking! Therefore I have decided to consolidate my blogging efforts into just one place….here. Hopefully this is successful. This is the first post I wrote for my own blog, as this has now been removed I am re-publishing it here as it still amazes me (and many of the students who I speak to on Outreach days) Happy reading!
Humpback whales are known to participate in an unusual hunting technique. Although the habit has been visually identified from the air and also from the perspective of the whale via a “Critter Cam” (Crittercam Reveals Secrets of Marine World, National Geographic News, Sept. 25 2009) little was actually known about its mechanisms until recent years.
Bubble net viewed from above
This phenomenon is known as bubble net feeding and is unique to humpback whales. Whales, either individually or in a group, employ bubbles in a hollow cylinder to trap fish (see figure below). These cylinders can be up to 30m in diameter. The whales produce the bubbles by emitting air through their blowholes. The fish are consumed in one go as a whale rises from below with an open mouth, in an act called ‘lunge-feeding’.
Schematic of a humpback whale creating a bubble net.
When this was first seen it was understandably difficult to interpret. After all, bubbles are prevalent in the upper ocean why would fish be so unwilling to travel through these bubbles? Only recently, by exploring the acoustics, has the scientific understanding of the process been expanded.
At the same time as the bubbles are emitted the whales call out. This sound has been described as “haunting” and “beautiful” by fishermen who have heard the noises from the surface. It is believed that it could be an interaction between the bubbles and the sound which creates a boundary that the fish are not willing to cross. Sound can be trapped within bubbles. If this is occurring in the bubble nets the walls of the cylinder would concentrate the sound, leaving the inside of the cylinder almost silent. It is believed that the fish are more likely to stay in what they perceive to be the “safe”, quiet centre of the cylinder than travel through the “wall of sound” created by the bubbles.
In addition to the bubbles trapping the sound they also create a difference in the acoustic quality of the water. This is something which you can hear for yourself when making a cup of instant coffee (this is one for the adults to try or help out with). When you make your next coffee fill the cup with hot water and tap the side of the cup with a teaspoon. Add your coffee granules and, before stirring, tap the side of the cup again with a teaspoon. Does it sound the same or different? It should, and always has done when I’ve been making coffee, sound different; the sound is deadened after the coffee has been added.
What has this got to do with humpback whales I hear you thinking!? Well it is all to do with bubbles! This experiment only works with instant coffee granules, due to the freeze drying process by which the granules are made. During the process, where brewed coffee beans are dehydrated, air pockets get trapped in the coffee granules. When the coffee is added to water the granules dissolve and the air in the pockets is released, forming bubbles in the water. This deadening of the sound caused by the bubbles was utilised in a bid to protect migrating salmon, when bubble screens were erected to reduce noise from pile-driving activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Imagine all the sounds in the world around you suddenly being muffled, would you fell comfortable?
However the bubble nets work they are an incredible feeding technique, and a fantastic application of scientific principles…even if the whales have no idea how interesting they are!
The festive season is in full swing. The high street is full of fraught parents fighting their way to the shelves at Toys R Us, and baffled husbands debating whether an ironing board cover or a pair of socks is the best way to say “I love you” on December 25th. Kids are earnestly practicing their parts as Angel Gabriel or Donkey Number 2 for the school nativity. Yep, it’s Christmas time again, which means office parties and family gatherings a plenty.
What we really need at this time of year is a scientific explanation for why we’re having such a good time, as well as science-related party tricks and trivia to wow our loved ones and make us look incredibly cool. Especially in the unlikely event that all of our friends and family are fellow science geeks. So here we have a smattering of Christmas science from Neutrons for Breakfast…
Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate
From turkey, stuffing and Brussels sprouts to Christmas cake and never ending piles of chocolates, it’s pretty clear that the festive season wouldn’t be the same without ludicrous volumes of food. I mean, whoever heard of Christmas without a box of Cadburys Roses or a massive Toblerone? But why does chocolate taste so delicious, and how does it give us that warm glow?
Chocolate contains caffeine, which we all know can give you a buzz. It also contains an amino acid called tryptophan, which tells the brain to step up its production of serotonin and puts us in a better mood. And yet another ingredient touted as a mood enhancer is phenethylamine, a molecule that seems to be lacking in people suffering from depression.
However, chocolate contains pretty small amounts of these chemicals, and in some cases the body probably breaks them down before they reach the brain to do their magic. So it is debatable whether they are the real cause of chocolatey deliciousness.
On the hunt for the truth behind chocoholic cravings, chemists in California ground up chocolate and did all sorts of complicated things in the lab to see what they could find. They came across three chemicals that act as cannabinoid mimics and may lead to feelings of euphoria, either on their own or by joining forces with the other magical ingredients we’ve already mentioned.
So there we have it – I give you all permission to eat loads of Christmas chocolate and be really happy, because science says so.
Christmas tipple
The office Christmas parties may have been and gone, but we still have Christmas Eve in the pub, or a few sherry fuelled afternoons playing scrabble with Granny, to look forward to. For the moment we shall step away from the negative side of alcohol and think about some good old Christmas cheer.
Once that glass of mulled wine has passed your lips, it travels to your stomach and on to your intestine. The ethanol is absorbed, gets into the bloodstream, and makes its way to the brain where it starts to play havoc with the nerve cells. Much like an inconsiderate boss popping up at your desk when you’re in the middle of a very important facebook chat about Friday night, ethanol messes up essential communication systems. In this case, we are talking about communication between cells.
When ethanol interrupts signals between cells it affects things such as your senses, balance, speech, regulation of your body temperature and your pain threshold. It also gets at part of your brain called the cerebral cortex, affecting the bit that moderates your behaviour. This might explain why a few G&Ts will have your usually shy and retiring best buddy dancing on the table, singing into her empty beer bottle.
Scientists have also found that after drinking alcohol we find everyone else more attractive, male or female, regardless of our sexual preference. That’s right, there is scientific proof for the existence of beer goggles. And this even holds after small volumes of alcohol that are not enough to affect our general mood.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: a case of mistaken identity
The image of Rudolph and his fellow reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh brings a warm glow to the hearts of children across the land. But Gerald Lincoln and David Baird from the University of Edinburgh recently made the shock announcement that Rudolph is in fact a girl! It turns out that only female reindeer still have antlers in the festive season, as males shed theirs earlier in the winter.
For many years scientists around the world have been desperate to solve the mystery of Rudolph’s shiny nose, a very important matter for medical science. Lacking a bit of Christmas spirit, a few years ago Odd Halvorsen from the University of Tromso gave a rather depressing diagnosis that his nose, sinuses and lungs were probably under attack from parasites! Lovely. Perhaps the real explanation, now that we know ‘he’ is actually a ‘she’, is simply over-zealous application of blusher.
And finally… science-related party tricks
Impress your friends and family, and possibly set fire to the Christmas dinner table, with these 10 top party tricks.
The earth’s oceans contain complex currents, and in several places these form rotating systems. It’s a lot like the convection you might have learned about in school. Water is warmed at the equator and begins to move steadily north, taking the place of colder water. Once it gets too far north though, it loses steam, cools down and ends up being pushed back towards the equator by more northerly bound water. These circular currents are called gyres.
There are 5 main gyres in the world’s oceans
Oceanic currents are surprisingly strong, and in the not too distant past scientists began to discover that a century’s worth of plastic rubbish has been collecting in them. The scale of the problem is horrifying. The great pacific rubbish gyre, for example, is approximately the size of Texas and contains roughly 3.5 million tonnes of rubbish; old fishing nets, plastic bottles, crisp packets, ice cream tubs and wedges of polystyrene are among it’s dubious inhabitants.
Plastics like polystyrene will almost never be broken down in the seas as nothing natural has enzymes the correct shape or acids strong enough to disrupt their strong chemical bonds. Unfortunately what does happen quite readily in rough seas is mechanical degradation of the plastics. Over a few years in the water they can be broken down into really quite tiny pieces, so small that they can be ingested by most of the diverse life living in our oceans. Once inside the creatures, they basically stay there forever. As the animals ingest more and more plastics they become dehydrated and are eventually overcome.
Luckily sights like that shown in the picture above are extremely rare. Most of the plastic is the size of grains of rice, and since the sun bleaches most of the colour out of it, there is little tangible rubbish in most of the patch. It’s the small size of the waste which, scientists have started to realise, makes it so dangerous [1]. It’s not just that the wildlife becomes dehydrated. Many toxic organic chemicals are not soluble in water, so usually don’t do too much harm to fish (relatively speaking). Conversely, they do ‘dissolve’ in plastics; especially in porous ones like polystyrene. This means the world’s gyres have been slowly turning into something of a pea soup – only here all the peas are extremely small and have been loaded with deadly poisons.
A crate marked with South Korean characters floats in the mid pacific
Styrofoam (polystyrene) juxtaposed with crabs..
Despite suggestions that we should claim this new trash continent for humankind (I can just see the stars and stripes being plunged into a buoy) and start sending package holidayers there, no one has yet come up with a credible solution for dealing with it (ideas in the comment section please science fans).
There is a glimmer of good news though. This week the now legendary Barac Obama unveiled his new plan to begin streamlining America’s use of the oceans which come under American jurisdiction, an area 20% larger than the country itself [2]. The report candidly doesn’t give away any new cash and doesn’t really deal with pollution as a specific issue. Rather the Whitehouse staff have created a new ‘National Ocean Council’ who will coordinate the efforts of various regional US authorities. This should mean that at least oil exploration missions and endangered species protection schemes, managed by separate authorities will no longer bump into each other and, overall, it should lead to less polluted seas in America’s exclusive economic zone. On the other hand the report has no mention of how to respond to the enigma of the garbage patch. I think that’s because no one has any idea how to, and since the mid pacific does not ‘belong’ to anyone, I wonder how long it will be before anyone tries to fix it?
Notes
1. I should mention that the photos on this post were taken from freelance journalist Lindsey Hoshaw’s blog.
To take your mind off this cold winter weather I want you to think back to the summer, when you were relaxing outside in a pub garden with a crisp, cool pint of beer. A yellow and black winged beastie buzzes its way over to your drink, and you jump up screaming and wildly flailing your arms (yes, you, with the pint). You then realise that it’s only a hoverfly… panic over. But have you ever wondered why a hoverfly, with its yellow and black stripes, looks so much like a bee or a wasp?
What is a mimic?
A mimic is a species that physically resembles another species. Mimicry is rife right across the tree of life. For example, several species of butterfly look remarkably similar to the pipevine swallowtail (below left), and in the aquatic world it is all the rage to look like a cleaner fish (below right). Plants even get in on the act, as insect-eating species produce glistening droplets that look just like nectar, or patterns on their leaves that resemble flowers. And cunning fungi are able to grow parts that look like the pollen grains and pollen tubes of their host plant.
Mimics and their models. Can you tell which species is copying which?
What’s it all about?
Mimics do not appear simply because it’s fun to look like a bee (although clearly it is); their copycat characteristics have come about for very important evolutionary reasons. Animals wear the warning stripes of other creatures that actually have something to back it up, such as a nasty sting or bite, or chemicals that are toxic or distasteful. This way they should get the same protection from predators, who have learnt to steer clear of the bright yellow stripes or bold coloured spots.
Of course, protection from predators is not the only reason to mimic. A fish called the sabertoothed blenny (above) copies the colour and body shape of a cleaner fish, and even dances like it. Other fish are happy to get up close to the cleaner fish as it picks off parasites from their scales and eats them (yum), so the disguise allows the blenny to get in close and take a bite out of its unsuspecting prey.
In the case of the fungi, faking it as a pollen grain gives them unrestricted access to the ovary of their chosen plant, providing an ideal route of infection. And the plants mimics? They use their pretend nectar or flowers to lure in their insect prey.
This phenomenon is called Batesian mimicry. It is named after the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates (right), who came up with his explanation for copycats after observing butterflies in the rainforests of Brazil.
When all copycats are equal.
Brazil is clearly the place to be if you want to have a biological theory named after you. Another adventurer who spent a lot of time there was German biologist Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller (right). He discovered a different type of mimicry called… wait for it… Müllerian mimicry.
He set out to answer a big question: how come there are plenty of species that resemble each other and have distinctive markings, yet which do have the dangerous sting or the crafty lifestyle to back it up? For example, why is yellow and black so popular with poisonous stuff?
Let’s say you start out as a big bunch of species, who all use toxic poison or venom as your defence against predators. It makes sense that you would all evolve the same visible markings to warn of this. If you all use the same (or a similar) system, predators will learn to avoid it whatever type of creature you are, and those of you who match that critical signal more closely are more likely to survive. You survive, you have offspring, and so the cycle continues; this is natural selection at its best.
Back to the humble hoverfly.
So, next summer when your picnic is disturbed by a hoverfly, before you dismiss it as a harmless insect, perhaps you could think of all the evolution it had to go through to get its stripes. And give it a pat on the back for doing such a good impression.
I have been inspired by Josh’s comment that there might be a few readers (biology geeks perhaps?) who relish the thought of a bacterium of the week to add to their molecule of the month. So I thought I would begin by waxing lyrical about superbugs.
Unless you have been locked in a darkened room for the past decade you’re sure to have heard of the dreaded superbug MRSA. But what is it, what can it do to us, and is it really very super?
First things first, what is MRSA? Those four ominous initials stand for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. It is a type of bacterium, with the scientific name Staphylococcus aureus, that causes a whole host of life threatening diseases but can’t be killed off by the antibiotic methicillin. Or, it has to be said, by pretty much any of the antibiotics we throw at it.
And what can it do to us if we catch it? You may simply have a superficial infection of the skin or the soft tissue beneath it, perhaps a boil or impetigo, and make a full recovery. However, in some cases bacteria spread into your bloodstream and to other organs in the body. The list of ensuing diseases does not make for very pleasant reading:
Septicemia – blood poisoning
Endocarditis – infection of the heart valves
Necrotising pneumonia – infection of lung tissue
Toxic Shock Syndrome – bacteria can release a potent toxin into the body and cause fever, sickness and organ failure
Tragically, many people will know a friend or relative who caught MRSA during a hospital stay as the bug infects around 2% of all patients. But where does it come from in the first place? And how has it become an antibiotic resistant superbug?
A body full of bacteria
It may not be a very pleasant thought (my apologies to anyone reading whilst eating their breakfast), but the human body is covered inside and out with millions of microscopic bugs. This includes things like bacteria, viruses and fungi. Amazingly, there are actually 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells. They live on your skin, up your nose, in your mouth, throughout your gut, and most of the time they are completely harmless. In fact, we could not survive without them.
Among these millions of germs is one particular type of bacteria called – you guessed it – Staphylococcus aureus. It makes its home on the skin and inside the noses of 20% of people, but most of them will never know. In a few people, however, the bacteria find a way to get inside the body. This might be via a cut such as a surgical wound, or where a medical device is inserted – perhaps a drip or catheter. When this happens it is bad news; devastating news if there are no antibiotics around to combat the infection.
DNA: the key to antibiotic resistance
One of the amazing things about bacteria is how they get their DNA. Whereas we, like other animals, inherit all of our genes from our parents, bacteria can also pass useful segments of DNA from one to another, even to bugs of a different species.
Scientists discovered one such segment, called a cassette, containing several very important genes that protect the bug from antibiotics. If you are a bacterium and a neighbour sends over the cassette, you can incorporate it into your genome and – voila – you are resistant. You are now a superbug.
How super is MRSA?
Humans and bacteria seem to be locked in an arms race. As fast as we can develop new treatments or prevention measures, the bugs find a way to get round them and keep infecting us. But as long as scientists keep up the research into new treatments, and continue to unravel the story of how the bugs are doing such a good job of making us ill, there is certainly hope. MRSA may be super at getting round our defences, but we are fighting back with the product of our human brain cells.
Molecule of the month has unfortunately become more like molecule of the financial quarter of late. Apologies for that. We are back though, and this month’s mouth-watering molecule is cholesterol.
What prompted me to write about it was when a few weeks back I attended a public lecture. This may sound dull, but before I lose you I should say that it involved being cooked a meal, live – think ready steady cook – whilst told all about the nutritional content of the dishes by an informed biologist woman. OK, maybe your first thought was correct. Slightly dull. We did get to eat the food afterwards though.
Anyway, one Indian gentleman was asking all about cholesterol. ‘I’ve heard,’ he rasped, ‘that one shouldn’t be eating eggs anymore if one has a high cholesterol level. Is that so?’
‘What?’ I thought. ‘Surely eggs are OK aren’t they? I mean, they contain cholesterol, sure, but there’s no need to be scared of them!’ Well, at least I was determined of one thing; the readers of B21 would not be such scaredy cats once I was through with them.
Let’s start out with some basics. Cholesterol is a type of steroid. It’s also has a character a lot like that of fats. In chemistry what makes something ‘fatty’ is the proportion of non-polar groups of atoms in contains. This is defined by the type and the connectivity of the atoms. Looking at the structure of cholesterol we can see it is almost entirely composed of just carbon and hydrogen (with just one oxygen). There’s not much difference in polarity (think poles of a magnet) between carbon and hydrogen so the molecule isn’t very polar.
It might be easier to appreciate how non-polar cholesterol is looking at the 3D model below. Atoms in white are hydrogen, grey are carbon (you’ll notice this is most of them). The single red atom is the oxygen.
Three dimensional model of a cholesterol molecule
Like any fat, cholesterol is bad for us if we have too much of it. Cholesterol is recognised as being especially good at promoting the build up of fatty deposits in our blood vessels (see the ‘atherosclerotic plaque’ below). This leads to the vessels becoming clogged up with debris and ultimately a heart attack. Listen to someone who knows a lot more than me talk more about the dangers of having a high cholesterol level here.
So how much cholesterol should I eat? My advice is to not worry about cholesterol specifically, but simply try to eat a sensible balanced diet. It’s certainly not wise to obsess about eating foods which are ‘low in cholesterol” at the cost of ignoring other dietary issues. This would be a shame as most of the cholesterol in our bodies in synthesised automatically from simpler fats. That means even if you consume zero cholesterol but a reasonable amount of other fats, it’s still quite possible to have a high blood cholesterol level.
'Atherosclerotic plaque' Still want to eat chips?
To move on to something less stomach turning than blood clots and dietry advice from a bingeing student, let’s now focus on the truth about some of the quite amazing positive things that cholesterol does for our bodies.
Cholesterol plays an important role in controlling the fluidity of our cell membranes. It sits between the phospholipids – the slippery molecules which make up our cell membranes – at random intervals and controls how easily they can slide past each other.
A cartoon of a fluid-like cell membrane. Spot the phospholipids and cholesterol.
The cell membrane is vitally important for ensuring the right kinds of chemicals can get in and out of our cells. It’s even more important in nerve cells. With life giving nerve impulses whizzing along the neurones, the cell membrane is crucial in insulating the electrical impulses. cholesterol has been shown to form complicated 3D structures within the membrane to beef it up and prevent the electrical impulses leaking out.
So there you go. No need to be scared of cholesterol anymore. If you were.
In a response to the general derision of non chemists to the concept of a ‘molecule of the month’ during ‘Perspectives’ (I can’t see what’s wrong personally), here’s a short clip to prove that Chemistry can be funny(ish). I thank Jonathan Sanderson for telling me about it. Perhaps more on him later.
I apologise for not being as highbrow as my colleague’s previous blog.
As scientists we are a much maligned breed. Many people believe us to be slightly weird. This opinion is not undeserved from what I have observed in my short scientific career.
We often dress in corduroy trousers which are – to other people – quite obviously about 2 inches too short for us. This simple fact seems to elude us, although on the other hand, we might know exactly what a neutron star is why how many times it rotates per day. When you spot one of us approaching you at a friend’s party (you know it’s one of us from the corduroys) looking as though we want to tell you about global warming, you immediately begin talking to the person closest on your left in an effort to look busy (statistically speaking this is an accountant).
But would you go so far as to say scientists are actually a different class of person from others? One man who certainly believed so was Charles Snow. C. P. Snow tried hard to be a chemist during his early life. Indeed, he must have tried very hard as he eventually managed to publish a scientific paper detailing an impressive new way to make vitamin A in a laboratory. This was not only clever but a useful achievement too, given that little was known about vitamin A at the time and a way to make lots of it, quickly was much needed. Unfortunately Snow’s paper in the prestigious journal Nature soonbecame what is politely called ‘widely discredited.’ In other words he had been wrong – he hadn’t really managed to make vitamin A at all.
Charles Percy Snow, contraversial (failed) scientist, author and politician
Snow was unable to console himself with this embarrassment and for a time he became a shell of his former self. By all accounts he lived for science, relishing the scientific revolution of the mid 20th century and believing it was essential for all men to get involved in this new and exciting race to learn more about the natural world.
With such strong beliefs and a failed career in science behind him it was probably inevitable that Snow would go into politics. This he did, holding various powerful positions within government including an important stint as an advisor for education policy. He also wrote several books during his life. His most interesting work, and that which his later life revolved around, was his seminal lecture ‘The two cultures’ of 1959.
His lecture, which was subsequently published as a book , outlined his beliefs that there is a wide and difficult to breach gap between the two cultures of science and art. Snow accurately observed the beginnings of what is quite apparent today; that it was extremely difficult for the two cultures to communicate ideas from their two disciplines to each other effectively. He believed that those people in power were generally artists. Since it was the scientists – in his opinion – who had the best understanding of how to society problems and how to solve them, he saw the lack of communication between the two classes as one of the biggest hinderances to human progress.
Bringing Snow’s arguments up to date, we might say that without the non-scientific intellectuals in power listening to scientists, we may not be able to implement useful policy changes to prevent climate change. This might be equally impossible though if scientists don’t have understanding of how to make their advice economically and socially feasible. Two way communication is a really important goal then.
I for one think I agree with Snow. Whilst an increased knowledge of our equal and opposite discipline might not create world peace instantaneously, but it couldn’t hurt. Understanding seems to me to be the first step to acceptance, and that is surely what we need more of in our global society.
It seems to me that scientists have an unfair disadvantage when it comes to communication. Well, I suppose I would think that! But hear me out; the arts are surely all about communication by their very nature – writing, sculpture, dance – you name it – these are all communicating ideas or emotions. That means it’s easy for a scientist to engage with art – in an art gallery or by reading a novel – but how often do you see an artist at a particle accelerator? Since art is all about communication from day one, but it’s a skill scientists have to develop in addition to their main business of logic, perhaps we need some kind of training, enabling scientists to make their work approachable to the outside world?
Perhaps there is hope for us yet. It comes, rather fittingly, in the form of education reform which Snow was so passionate about. The situation for GCSE science students is changing to give students more choice as to how they study science.
The first option is a more traditional double or triple award in science. Here students will learn the equations and long words which are vital for those of us who want to be proper scientists. For those children who are left rolling their eyes at the thought of learning the atomic numbers of elements, there is a new ‘applied science’ course, teaching children the value of a scientific approach to decision making, and allowing them to investigate for themselves the impact which scientific issues like GM foods might have on the wider world. This might realise Snow’s vision (and what should surely be ours too) of a world in which the non-science specialist policy makers of the future understand some of the background to scientific debate without having to get caught up in the boring bits.
Last week I had the good fortune to spend an evening listening to a talk by Bill Bryson, author of the amazing science book ‘A short history of nearly everything.’ When asked about how poor his science teachers were at school, Bryson replied that they were indeed awful and that our school science lessons shouldn’t just be geared to churn out new scientists, but to give all the other students a chance to understand what science is all about at the same time. ‘Most people in the room won’t become scientists, but they should still be given the opportunity to experience the wonder of chemistry, the magic of physics…’
"They need a chance to experience the wonder of physics, the magic of chemistry..."
Well I’m chuffed that Bill and the government share Snow’s concerns about science. Not only that, but in fighting the problem with education I think we can be optimistic that by the time the next generation is in the driving seat they will have a good chance of blending science and the arts into a healthy mix of common sense. The ones that don’t have ASBOs, anyway.
Happy reading!
A cartoon of a fluid-like cell membrane. Spot the phospholipids and cholesterol.
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