What Zoologists get up to at the Breakfast Table

From the end of a post by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology:

... I'll finish by mentioning the fact that I dislocated my right shoulder - again - on Sunday morning. This time I managed to do it while sitting at breakfast. I was imitating a chimpanzee spearing a bushbaby at the time, my wails of pain assumed by those around me to be my attempts at replicating the calls of a speared strepsirrhine.

He must have a very understanding family.

Unethical ShopOnLion

In the original version of this post I suggested that ShopOnLion acted unethically by continuing to sell the bogus antimalarial Demal 200 after being advised not to do so.   As explained below in the comments this was based on a misunderstanding and I withdraw that suggestion.

The Sense About Science Lecture 2007

Via Ben Goldacre, a link to a lecture by Raymond Tallis in which he defends the value of science and puts pseudo science in its place.  Transcript, slides and an MP3 are available. I particularly liked Tallis ' characterization of pseudo science as parasitic on science.  I think that sums up the relationship exactly.

Deer at Ascot Again

This afternoon, at about 13:30, I was on a train coming into Ascot on the line from Frimley when I saw a deer in the scrubland on the inside of the curve.  I haven't seen any deer there since the drought ended last September.  It was a thin grey deer without antlers, nothing like the stubby dark-brown munjac that I recently saw in central Reading.

Wallace and Gromit do Molecular Biology!

A few months back I came across this wonderful animation in the second half of this video.   DNA replication, one of the fundamental mechanisms of life, is the molecular process by which a double stranded thread of DNA is untwisted and then copied to produce two identical double stranded threads.  Back in 1976-79, when I studied biochemistry at Leeds University, I learnt about DNA replication, but the details of the mechanism were only sketchily known back then (though I do remember the term 'Okazaki fragments'), and I hadn't kept up with the subject since, so this animation came as quite a revelation to me.   In particular I was struck by how parts of the proteins flip back and forth, and how one strand of DNA repeatedly forms a loop which is then realeased.  It reminds me of the knitting machine from the Wallace and Gromit film 'A Close Shave'.

Update on Sat 2007-03-17 by Tristram Brelstaff

This DNA replication mechanism is what Watson and Crick foresaw back in 1953 when they wrote:

It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

There is a way of looking at things in which all the rest of our lives and our bodies are just ancillary mechanisms to help keep this DNA replication going.