science and natural history

Absolutely JessM.

Baggy, just noticed your comment on 14th July - another area we agree: that human beings are animals! Lots of human primates seem to forget this; or appear not to have realised this in the first place. Most other animals, however, seem to have no problem identifying humans as animals......

Well done you for volunteering. Not designed to encourage participation, the e word. Doctors used to refer to women having first babies in their thirties and forties as "elderly primiparae" . A hit every time. Not sure if they still do. What is wrong with the word "mature"?
I always think that the animal rights brigade should offer themselves as subjects for experiments. Perhaps they do.
Also i think a lot of the times when horses, dogs and cats used is for veterinary medicines - go figure - so how does that play on the barricades?
Interesting that fish numbers have shot up. I went to a study day on blood cancer research and they were saying that zebra fish were proving extremely useful in the kind of genetic research that they need to do to find better treatments for these conditions. They were also doing clever things with genes - cross checking existing drugs against leukaemia genes. If you can find an existing drug that turns off a leukaemia gene, you can potentially have a new treatment really quickly. They were getting excited about an antiworming drug.
I am against medical research on chimpanzees though. I think they are, in a sense, people.

I too have taken part in a couple of drug trials - in my case a short one to see which of three oestrogen blockers patients found most acceptable to take after a lumpectomy and a 5-year one called Post-operative Radiotherapy In Minimal-risk Elderly (PRIME for short) where you were randomly assigned to get/not get radiotherapy after same lumpectomy. I drew not-get and after 5 years was still hale and heart (Now almost finished year 6 and going strong).

The word I disliked most about the title of this one was "Elderly"

With you there, Baggy and Annobel. If the welfare of the animals is paramount, and there is a genuine need for the knowledge gained, then there is much to be gained from experiment. If it is possible to conduct the same research on tissue in a petri dish, it should be done so. That must be cheaper to use anyway.

One key thing is to have lines drawn on what is acceptable and what is not, and inspect all those licensed to use animals frequently, randomly and unannounced.

Another is for the public to know exactly what is involved in the administration of individual research, so that they know what is what - good and bad.

Edinburgh Zoo's brilliant new Budongo chimpanzee house and its Living Links exhibit double as behavioural research facilities for wildlife students and experts, with observation chambers and interaction points. When it was reported in the press that there would be "experiments" some people immediately imagined chimps strapped into torture chambers and forced to have terrifying experiences. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I think I agree with you, baggy. I know that I and some of my nearest and dearest must owe our health, if not our lives to medicines developed in the course of animal experiments, so it would be hypocritical of me to object to this. However, on inessentials such as cosmetics, it's a whole other story. Interesting to hear about the falcon on RAF Benson. I wonder how the RAF is getting on with the red kites, now endemic in that part of Oxfordshire. Perhaps they are picking off the pigeons.
OMG I'm running late. See you later.

I've just read the article. I'm not opposed in principle to animals, including humans, being used in scientific experiments (I've taken part in some myself, as a subject) but I am opposed to cruel practices. I don't think household products of any kind, including human cosmetics, should be tested on animals. On the other hand, some experiments, such as ones DH was involved in with spiders (you'll all have heard of Oxford's dreaming spiders ), are purely observational — scientists gathering information by observing animal behaviour. DH also based his Ph.D thesis on observations of animal behaviour, mainly birds in the wild though he did 'use' a pet falcon (bred in captivity, which he bought legally) for some aspects of the research. One of the falcon's 'uses' was to be flown over the airfield at RAF Benson to clear the runway of birds that would damage aircraft by being sucked into engines. They would also, of course, be 'damaged' in the process so this, I feel, was a perfectly acceptable use of an animal, on a par with people keeping pets for their own comfort and/or use as many of us do.

Animals being used in experiments in the news this morning.http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/13/animal-experiments-rise
Numbers gone up 1%. Not, maybe the most catchy headline.
What do we think then folks? For or against?

Thanks Elegran at least I now that I did not imagine it. It may or may not be true, but it was something that I heard, and not something I'd dreamt! I was beginning to question my memory.

Sorry, link not converted.
Echo-less duck quack debunked - news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3086890.stm

Echo-less duck quack debunked - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3086890.stm

Awesome images of volcanic ash plumes from the Chile volcano Puyehue:

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=51316

well quite.
Here is an interesting science story that could affect people like us. Scanning breasts using warm water. Could be an improvement on those painful mammograms.

www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0810-sound_detects_breast_cancer.htm

Any sound can have an echo in the right circumstances — something for the sound waves to bounce off. Simple.

I am scratching my head over this one. Maybe it is one of those things people say to kids. When i was little i used to say to my Gran "come and play" and she used to say "I've got a bone in my leg"

The duck and echo thing? Well to be honest I don't know it is just something I must have been told when I was younger, and believed. It may or may not be true. The more I think about it now, the odder it seems.

How do we know it doesn't have an echo?

Does anyone know why a duck's quack does not have an echo? I'm sure one of you smart gransnetters will have the answer.

I find it fascinating watching a spider roll up it's prey in the web. I was amazed to see one trapping a wasp, I thought wasps were safe from predators.

Thanks for the input - and we have now moved back to topic which is good!

Yeh - the one that got tangled up wouldn't last very long would it.

DH was writing software to generate spider webs for and academic study when I first knew him. I understand that some of the forces in spider webs have been applied to modern building techniques and design. I think spiders don't get tangled in their webs partly because they can eat and recycle any silk that isn't where they want it, but it's also because they are simply brilliant at their job, both building and then using their webs. The ones that didn't do so well went extinct in nature's usual way of dealing with what doesn't work.

Good morning Helshea. I wonder if we have any arachnologists in gransnet.I'm sure i remember reading about this subject in the past.
My favourite science story of the week was that Uk scientists have found a way to build workable "scaffolds" for stem cell transplant technology. They used a polymer to make a mould of a man's windpipe. Then put it in a bath of his stem cells. Very quickly they had a new windpipe for him that would not cause rejection. The op was quite simple and was done in scandinavia. They have been working towards this for a while - it is a huge breakthrough. very exciting

Back to basics - how come spiders don't get tangled up in their webs?

yeh well there is a difference between annual variability and long term trends.
There is a difference in a long term trend of global warming and the effect this might have on various local weather patterns.
One thing is sure it is a bad idea for a couple of generations to gobble up all the fossil fuels so greedily and leave none left for our descendants. And yes some people will argue that there is lots left. In places like the Arctic where the local environment will be trashed by the industry. Or in shales - but the technology is very iffy.
I am still convinced by the following "big picture":
The natural cycle circulates a certain amount of carbon every year. Imagine it as water running from a tap into a bath and then out of the plughole. For the last 200 years we have been adding more and more water to the bath (i.e. carbon to the atmosphere). But the plughole has not got bigger. In fact, with deforestation and desertification it has probably got a bit smaller. There is nowhere for all this carbon to go. The only 2 options are 1. taken up by photosynthesising plants and 2. dissolving in the oceans and making them a bit more acidic. Neither of these can give us a bigger plughold. So CO2 in the atmosphere will be raised and will stay raised. And in the ancient past, there were times when CO2 was high - the world responded by getting warmer - the poles were steamy and warm and covered in tree ferns and dinosaurs - and sea levels were a lot higher. "Gaia" if she was a person doesn't give a toss whether humans are here or not. What's a few low lying countries when you are working in billions of years?
But yes, this thread is now about the environment...

The computer I saw on TV somewhere was the main Google computer in the USA(?)which seemed like some sort of huge, humming electricity centre, where Google is based. It said it was so enormous that Google itself requires so much energy just to keep going. There are other search machines which use less but Google seems now ready to rule the world. In comparison Murdoch is only a minor player - but that is another thread.

You were lucky I did my physics without a calculator, but at least the in chemistry the elements had simple numbers.