Grey light — and probably a crazy blackbird — woke me this morning, unable to breathe through my nose. I made myself a mug of Earl Grey (black, couldn’t be bothered looking for lemons) and went back to bed, to doze fitfully, dreaming of missing brothers and daisy chain bracelets.

With sunshine streaming in, sky broken by a single contrail, I was rudely forced out of bed to make coffee. I know there’s a party this evening, but all I wanted was another five minutes with the cool side of the pillow.

Coffee pot on, checked email. A message from Martin about Friendfeed rooms for an up-coming event. I considered telling him to check the conversation with Maxine and Corie, and opened Friendfeed.

Imagine my state of mind when I was greeted by this:

I think I need that coffee. Or at least a stiff (shut up) drink.

(Explanation)

My little Sophie

has a cold, bless her. She’s finding it difficult to breathe naturally. She was a little bit worried that she would forget to breathe through her mouth, as opposed to her blocked nose, in the night.

As I kissed her goodnight, she said,

“Mummy says there’s a part of the brain that helps you remember to breathe at night.”

“That’s right,” I said, words like ‘autonomous’ and ‘medulla oblongata’ and, strangely, ‘hypothalamus’ all jostling for attention. But before I could say anything, she continued,

“But why isn’t there part of the brain that helps you not to worry about not remembering to breathe?”

I sympathize. Perhaps I should send her to talk with Noah?

Immodestly points southward.

Last week I found myself in front of about 40 incredibly bright people telling them that Social Media is a waste of time.

The venue was a rather spiffy Hotel & spa (and damn if I didn’t forget to take my swimming trunks) in extensive, goose poo-covered grounds just outside Nantwich.

Just outside Nantwich

The event was the RIN ‘s joint consultative groups away-day, attended by librarians and scientists and humanities-types (humanitarians? No, that can’t be right); an eclectic bunch of researchers and facilitators from many disparate disciplines but all intent on examining ways to improve the process of research in the UK—to inform policy, in fact—and I was giving the keynote speech [1], at the behest of the incomparable Branwen.

As the taxi driver kept reminding me, there was just one road in and out: so I had to make it good.

I saw people scribbling furiously, or determinedly tapping on their iPhones, as I threw up slide after slide (using the completely brilliant Keynote Remote application) saying that Web 2.0/Social media is crap and no one should use it. Actually that’s not true—I said why researchers weren’t using it, but in a deliberately provocative way.

And people got very het up and asked questions bordering on the furious. But it was a good night, and I did get to explain, before they tore me limb from limb, that I considered my brief was to be deliberately provocative in order to promote discussion. Discussion was, indeed, provoked.

The next day we had a number of parallel sessions to decide on what the RIN should spend fifteen thousand quid. There were some fascinating proposals and I had the huge honour of sitting on a ‘Dragon’s Den’-type panel to judge the three proposals that made it through the first round of voting, together with Jenny ‘researchers are too busy to faff around LOLing’ Rohn.

The winning proposal was to do with—well, I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say at this juncture so I’ll just say it wasn’t Open Access but a proposal to look into equal access to published literature, for all universities and HEIs in the UK. And it was driven, quite forcefully I might add, by David Shotton. So you know it’s going to be good.

A good time was had by all, and I was completely stoked to be asked to join the Life Sciences & Medicine Consultative Group as a result of scaring everyone.

But the really big news is that I was fortunate to be at Jenny’s table that evening for dinner, and that was a special place to be because she’s a complete whizz at trivia: our table won the subsequent pub quiz, despite me not remembering ‘”Esk”:http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/picture.aspx?id=11765&name=on-the-esk-whitby’. But I did get ‘Survivor’, ‘Eucalyptus’ and ‘Harvey Keitel’, so I think I’m ahead on points.

Continue reading →

Some might say there’s no such thing as centrifugal force.

Such people are probably not molecular biologists, cell biologists, nor any other kind of scientist who has to separate very small things on the basis of size, mass or density; or all three. Because when you spin something round it does tend to move away from the centre of spinnage. That’s spinnage, not spinach. Thank you. And wet-wranglers know that heavier, denser things (quiet at the back, Steel) move faster under this force we call ‘centrifugal’. Even nuclear physicists have worked this out.

Now the thing is, when you’re trying to separate things that are very small, you tend to have to have quite a reasonable centrifugal force for this to work. And the smaller the size differential, the higher this force needs to be if you’re to do it in a reasonable time. So if you’re separating cultured mammalian cells from the trypsin solution, you spin at with a relative centrifugal force equivalent to an acceleration 400 times that due to gravity (or g — not to be confused with Gee), for about two minutes. If you want to separate bacteria from their culture media, you’re looking at about two thousand g for five minutes, or thirteen thousand g for thirty seconds. (It’s not just a matter of real cells being bigger than bacterial cells: if you spin real cells too hard they tend to get a bit upset.) But when you want to separate F-actin from G-actin, it pays to be able to reach one hundred thousand g. You can do it at less, about twenty thousand, but then it takes half an hour to an hour instead of ten minutes. Let’s not forget plasmid DNA from a solution of ethanol and acetate — sixteen thousand g for ten minutes is good, here.

And the point of all this is that you need quite sturdy and expensive equipment. Consider a rotor that is about a foot across, developing thousands of accelerations due to gravity, spinning at say twenty thousand revolutions per minute (this is not uncommon for polymerized actin; or indeed caesium chloride density gradients, which I haven’t done in 15 years because there are much better ways of getting the same result, but anyway). The circumference, or the distance travelled by a single tube in this rotor, is going to be ∏ × 0.3 m = 0.94 m. Call it a meter. It travels this distance 20,000 times a minute. That’s 1,200 kilometers an hour. 745 mph. In other words, Mach 1 (near enough). Which is why laboratory centrifuges — at least, the ones that go at a reasonable lick — are not only big and sturdy, but also evacuated (otherwise they’d be much noisier, and hotter, than they already are).

So when I got an email from a particular ARC Australian Research Fellow saying

Yesterday i discovered a fault with the Sorvall Evolution centrifuge on level 5 (floor-standing model). The “cone” upon which the rotor is seated had become partially dismantled.

This morning, i was alarmed to find that my “out of order” notice had been removed. Tape covering the start button had been removed and the centrifuge had been operated. Foolhardy and potentially dangerous
behaviour.

I too was somewhat ‘alarmed’, if not ‘gibbering’, as well as ‘grateful I’d left the city, indeed the country’. Now, I know the centrifuge in question, and although the lump of metal that makes up the rotor doesn’t travel at Mach 1, it is a heavy lump of metal and goes bloody fast. And you’ll all recall that E = ½ m × v². Which leads directly to this sort of metal fatigue

Flying metal fragments damaged walls, the ceiling and other equipment. The shock wave blew out the laboratory’s windows and shook down shelves.

The email was followed up by the safety officer, who informed us

[ARC fellow] is absolutely correct when he says not to operate an ‘out of order’ centrifuge.This is very dangerous, and also could make an existing problem more serious and more expensive to fix.

which is slightly understating things.

Note also that NO-ONE should use one of these large centrifuges on any of the floors unless they have first been instructed in proper practice by the equipment/room custodian, or a senior member of your lab who knows what they are doing.

That’s the MMB screwed, then.

Last week, Martin interviewed me about my new job at F1000. Rather gratifyingly, not least because I know certain people were watching developments with interest, Richard Akerman (a technology architect and information security officer; whereas I’m an information architect but not, unfortunately, a technology security officer) kicked off a storming discussion over at FriendFeed.

Some very interesting points are made, and I’ll try to keep an eye on the discussion at Friendfeed (much to certain other people’s disgust) and attempt to field the slings and arrows of outraged OA-ers.

Continue reading →

As requested …

Ian (Brooks 2009, private communication) wondered why it was so quiet on the internets. Today’s a holiday in the UK: traditionally it’s May Day but that’s a bit too communist for peaceful folk so we call it the Spring Bank Holiday. In Europe they also have a holiday around now, usually on the actual 1st May, called Tag der Arbeit (‘day of the work’ i.e. ‘Labo[u]r Day’) or Erste Mai or something like that.

And it’s Star Wars day, too. And as Eva points out it’s also Dodenherdenkin in the Netherlands.

So I’m just going to point to a couple of random things.

When you start talking about something, in this case social media, you start to see it everywhere. Andrew Spong invited me to join STweM, which looks kinda interesting; while there I read about Novartis and CML Earth. This appears to be a social-media type support group for sufferers of chronic myeloid leukemia. Which sounds like a brilliant notion, and a good use of SM. I’m neither patient, medical doctor nor support group so I can’t really play with the site, but this looks like just the sort of thing the tools should be used for.

Andrew (I think, but it’s not clear) gives an interesting critique of CML Earth, and anyone really interested in SM should take a look. I’ll certainly be paying close attention when I get back to work tomorrow.

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You might remember last year that Encyclopaedia Britannia decided to do something about shitty Wikipedia. They offered free subscriptions to anyone who wanted to cite EB articles on their blog. I took them up on this and it was reasonably useful. Then as the freebie ended they wrote to me offering a renewal. I tried to take them up on this, but got directed to a credit card form. Ha ha. Fair’s fair: a couple of days later I got another email saying, essentially, ‘Whoops, we cocked up there. Here, have another freebie.”

And that was good, except I was about to move halfway round the world (again) and didn’t do anything about it.

Today I got a third email, subject “Renew your complimentary Britannica Online subscription”, saying, “Although your subscription has recently expired, we would like to offer you a chance to regain immediate access to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Reactivate your subscription now by following the steps below”.

Nice. Except they want me to pay for it.

So, do I try to find the previous email they sent, wait for another “Whoops, we cocked up there” one, or just forget about it?

One of the things that’s been exercising my mates Eva and Cameron, and myself (and passim) since last year is social media (or ‘Web 2.0’) and how it relates to scientists; scientists to it; and the rate with which Li-Kim can down martinis.

I’ve been invited to give the keynote at next week’s Research Information Network Consultative Group meeting (Life Sciences & Medicine) and this issue has been niggling me for a while. I’ll be talking on social media tools and how scientists might benefit — if they might benefit, in fact — and I hope to be able to spark a heated discussion and some worthwhile project ideas. Big ask, and I’ll be doing some serious thinking this weekend.

This afternoon, just after the dev team here at F1000 came up to me with something that I’ve been hassling to get for ages (mad props to them. I’ve always claimed that Friday afternoons are the best time to try new stuff, and these guys have really come up trumps) I read about something else entirely, and a ready-made aphorism popped into my head. I don’t have a scanner so I can’t show you how I wrote it down, but here’s

Grant’s First Law of Social Media

Social media tools must work off the bat and have a defined value before most scientists will use them.

Corollary

Any social media tool that is launched into the wild but requires user contribution development to make it work will fail.

Discuss.

This has been on my radar for a week, but I’ve suddenly realized the closing date is tomorrow.

Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography competition.

Small World is regarded as the leading forum for showcasing the beauty and complexity of life as seen through the light microscope. For over 30 years, Nikon has rewarded the world’s best photomicrographers who make critically important scientific contributions to life sciences, bio-research and materials science.

Unfortunately I don’t have access to the kit anymore (any lonely cell biologists want to invite me over for lunch?), although I’m tempted to enter Mercedes Benz just for fun…