Sam Talks About...

The debate between whether cats or dogs make better pets has been raging for years, I wouldn't be surprised if ancient wars were waged because one emperor was a dog lover and another was a cat lover.  Thankfully, scientists have weighed in and have studied what cats and dogs really think of us.  In one  study , scientists trained 12 dogs to lie still in an MRI machine and measured the brain's response to the scents of a familiar human, strange human, familiar dog, strange dog and itself. The method used is called functional magnetic resonance imaging and uses the differences in the magnetic properties of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood to look at where oxygenated blood is going to in the brain. An increase in oxygenated blood is thought to indicate an increase in brain activity in that area. They looked at a region of the brain called the caudate nucleus, which is highly linked to positive expectations and reward.  This is part of how they trained th...

Pangaea is the name given to the super continent that existed up until about 100 million years ago, when it started to break up into the continents we know today. This is all very exciting, but what is more exciting to me is how we even came to know about this in the first place. I found most of this information in a fantastic book by Bill Bryson called "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" which I thoroughly enjoyed reading, in fact probably so much that I have no doubts that I will try to emulate his style of writing in this post and it will most likely end up as a concise summary of one of the chapters from this book.  Pangaea with  the current boarders of today In 1908, when geology was still in it's infancy, a wealthy American geologist named Frank Taylor was among the first people to notice that the facing coastlines of Africa and South America appeared to be extremely similar, in fact they were identical. He went on to develop the idea that the contin...

In a recent publication in Nature a vaccine was created against a mutated IDH1 gene that prevented growth of brain tumours in mice, with human trials next in the pipeline. But what does this actually mean?  First, this mutation is found in about 70% of gliomas, a brain tumour that appear to be made up of glial cells (the support cells of the brain), these tend to be quite slow growing, however Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of cancer possible. Around 5000 people die from brain tumours in the UK every year, with a much greater proportion of children developing brain tumours than other forms of cancer.  What is IDH1? The IDH1 gene is involved in metabolism, and plays a role in the production of a chemical called 2-oxyglutarate (2OG), which is essential for the function of other proteins that regulate a process called DNA methylation, which helps to control the expression of many different genes. When IDH1 is mutated (almost alw...

Art and Science are obviously at completely opposite ends of the academic spectrum, so you would be forgiven for thinking that being a scientist is nothing like being an artist. While there are some differences, there are actually a great number of similarities between the two fields, far more than you might suspect if you do not work in either field. There are also many great scientists who are also great artists (Da Vinci anyone?) or at least art enthusiasts ( eg Einstein). There are obvious things, such as design (which is both artistic and scientific) and using science to create art, but what I'm trying to get at is that being a scientist or an artist requires many of the same attributes and will often result in a fairly similar experience. 1- They Are Free Thinking Both Artists and Scientists are often free thinkers, not content with following the masses and often uninterested in mass media. both will often come to their own ideas about the world, often discussing their w...

Death is scary, fact. But I recently learned something that makes me a little less scared and I want to share it with everyone. But first a quick warning, it may change your opinions on what happens when we die although this doesn't actually conflict with any other notions of what happens after you're dead because you aren't technically dead yet.  Okay let's start off simple. Hallucinogens are chemicals that can warp our sense of reality, particularly our sense of time. This is why people who experiment with drugs can feel like they have been tripping for hours or even days when it wasn't really anywhere near that long.  When you normally hear the word hallucinogen you'll probably think of things like ecstasy or LSD, but in fact we actually produce the most potent hallucinogen right inside our brains! A tiny pea sized piece of brain tissue deep in the middle of your brain called the pineal gland to be precise. The pineal gland plays an important role in ...

When I was thinking about doing some research related work, I looked to see what was out there and found very little information that actually came from people who had actually done a year in research or had a job in research. So I thought that, as I'm coming to the end of my year in research, I'd share a little about my experience and what I've learnt from other people's experiences aswell.  Get ready to use on of these pipettes, A LOT The Supervisor Most supervisors are generally nice, fair and very very very busy. Some of them may expect a lot of hours from you (but that's just because they are so passionate about their field) while others are more lenient, however they are always always very busy. Some supervisors can be a bit critical and not be great teachers, but most of them are very good teachers and understand that this is still a learning experience. Having a good relationship with your supervisor can only be helpful (particularly when it ...

Evolution, the great divider, the topic probably accounts for about 80% of all arguments on the internet. But why? Simply, it's a lack of understanding compounded by an unwillingness to look at evidence that might differ to your opinion. While I can't really do anything about the unwillingness, I can certainly help with the lack of understanding.  First, a little introduction on what evolution actually is, as a lot of people don't really know. Evolution itself is just another word for change. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a very good explanation of how the species we see today came about; through the creation non-random survival advantages by random mutations in the genome. For example, an animal in an environment full of grazing animals that carried a mutation that gave it a slightly longer neck, enabling it to eat from places that others could not reach would put it at a selective advantage, meaning it is more likely to survive and reproduce than o...