Orange Orange (category:science)

Two more gems from The Best American Scientific Writing 2007, both about molecular biology being applied to something unexpected, and both from Discover Magazine.

First, molecular paleontologist Mary Schweitzer uncovers soft tissue in 65-million year-old T-rex fossils. You can imagine the huge uproar the media raised, running the gamut from whimsical (”Now we can create Jurassic Park!”) to the crazy (”Now we know the Earth is only 6000 years old!”). Craziest thing, though, is that when Schweitzer injected the tissue into lab animals their blood raised antibodies active against turkey proteins. There you have it — definitive proof that God exists, and intends for us to eat stuffed T-rex next Thanksgiving dinner. Please, NSF, fund this woman so our gastronomical dreams come true.

Speaking of which, molecular gastronomy is the next hot thing among techno-savvy chefs in Europe, and apparently, a well-funded field of scientific endeavor in France (maybe Mary Schweitzer should try to get funding from the French for potentially growing dinosaur steaks). How could you refuse a grant to these researchers, after hearing the following mouthwatering description of the coagulating proteins responsible for an egg’s texture?

when an egg cooks, its proteins first unwind and then link to form a rigidifying mesh. But not all its proteins solidify at the same temperature. Ovotransferrin, the first of the egg-white proteins to uncoil, begins to set at around 61 degrees Celsius, or 142°F. Ovalbumin, the most abundant egg-white protein, coagulates at 184°F. Yolk proteins generally fall in between, with most starting to solidify when they approach 158°F. Thus, cooking an egg at 158°F or so should achieve both a firmed-up yolk and still-tender whites, since at that low temperature only some of the egg-white proteins will have coagulated.

“Cooking eggs is really a question of temperature, not time,” says This. To make the point, he switches on a small oven, sets the thermostat at 65°C, or 149°F, takes four eggs straight from the box, and unceremoniously places them inside. “I use an oven in the lab; it’s easier. But if the oven in your kitchen is not accurate, cook eggs in plenty of water, using a good thermometer.” About an hour later—timing isn’t critical, and the eggs can stay in the oven for hours or even overnight—he retrieves the first egg and carefully shells it. “The 65-degree egg!” he announces. The egg is unlike any I’ve eaten. The white is as delicately set and smooth as custard, and the yolk is still orange and soft. It’s not hard to see why l’oeuf à soixante-cinq degrés is becoming the rage with chefs in France. (Salmonella can’t survive more than a few minutes at 60°C, or 140°F, so a 65-degree egg cooked for an hour should be quite safe.)

["Cooking for Eggheads" by Patricia Gadsby]

Did you know that even though one egg white can only yield half a pint of meringue, simply by adding water you can extend this limit several-fold? This is because the egg-white proteins hold air bubbles in a matrix containing water molecules, and the limiting reagent normally is water. I know. I’m moving to France.

Ran across a New Yorker writeup on the story of how Grigory Perelman proved the Poincaré Conjecture, a math problem that has been unsolved for about a century, and is something like this decade’s Fermat’s Last Theorem. This article was in a book–Best American Science Writing of 2007–that I randomly plucked off the bookshelf of a friend. Naturally, being the Internet addict that I am, the first thing I do after reading the article is look it up online, and lo and behold, it has an entire Wikipedia entry devoted to it. Why? Turns out, the piece attracted quite a bit of controversy for the soap opera-esque tale of cat-fighting mathematicians and intellectual dishonesty it covered. The New Yorker was even at one point threatened with legal action by a Chinese mathematician who claimed to have been defamed in the piece, although that has since blown over.

Academic politics and drama notwithstanding, the upshot is, now we have three incredibly interesting–and impeccably written–pieces on the fascinating field of topology from my favorite news sources: National Public Radio, The New York Times, and the article linked to above (and below) in the New Yorker.

Best part of article is when Perelman explains why he refused the Fields Medal for his discovery, and subsequently withdrew completely from professional mathematics. (the Fields is the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and had never been refused since it was first awarded in 1936):

“As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice,” Perelman explained. “Either to make some ugly thing”—a fuss about the math community’s lack of integrity—“or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.”

Russian mathematician Mikhail Gromov then adds:

“To do great work, you have to have a pure mind. You can think only about the mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. Accepting prizes is showing weakness.” Others might view Perelman’s refusal to accept a Fields as arrogant, Gromov said, but his principles are admirable. “The ideal scientist does science and cares about nothing else,” he said. “He wants to live this ideal. Now, I don’t think he really lives on this ideal plane. But he wants to.”

["Manifold Destiny" via The New Yorker]

Another interesting article from the “Best Science Writing” collection (and also in the New Yorker): “The Score” by Atul Gawande, a fascinating history of obstetrics and the techno-ethical conundrum the field finds itself in today, in the age of industrialized childbirth and C-sections.

Finally, some convincing ammunition against all those postmodernists who would have us believe that there are no universals. Au contraire. Enter the universal coiling angle! Ever notice when you roll up a poster that there’s a bit of the paper on the very inside that sticks out almost straight and doesn’t fall in line with the curve of all the other layers? Well, according to research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (brought to you here via Nature magazine, and my recent addiction to it), the angle that that stuck-out bit makes with the rest of the coil is the same, regardless of what material you roll up! Doesn’t matter if it’s a rug, a fruit roll-up or a Radiohead poster — 24.1° is the universal angle! Stay tuned for my next post, where I will argue that this research proves the existence of God and/or extraterrestrial life. Details (and a cool diagram) after the jump.

[via Eppendorf]

There are two computers in the microscope room at my lab. One is for operating the microscope; the other is for chatting with friends.

Which makes me wonder why it is such a fancy, obviously expensive piece of equipment. Maybe it’s so I can open more gchat windows and tabs on Firefox. Cutting edge delinquency with the latest mathematical analysis software and algorithm libraries. Thank goodness for NSF funding.

If I were Tolstoy I still wouldn’t be able to do justice, with words, to the Sisyphean tedium of operating a microscope in a multipoint, time-lapse experiment. Move stage. Focus. Take picture. Click. Click. Click. Wait. Move stage. Repeat 16 times every 6-12 hours.

Then I discovered macros. If you’ve never worked with microscope software before, macros are a language for writing little programs to tell the scope what to do. If you’ve never programmed before, let me tell you, the feeling of power you get from writing macros is divine.

Not that I’ve put my newfound knowledge to any use. The power is theoretical, pure potentiality. That’s what makes it so powerful. I am the Creator! I can tell that scope to move to the right 5 micrometers and snap a photo in 5 different wavelengths. How powerful is that? Almost like throwing lightning, causing floods, or creating Man. If only that power and intention were also omnipotence. Because you see, in the real world, invariably the 5 micrometers are miscalculated, the shutter stays open too long, Man goes off the moment after creation, the ingrate that he is, and eats some fruit you told him not to touch, builds towers you really rather he not build, makes atom bombs and drops them on each other, and so on.

But do I give up? Did other Creators before me give up? Nein! If anything, that big screen filled with macro code is a perfect disguise for the 4 gchat windows directly under it. Alt-tab. Let there be (600nm fluorescent) light!

This is part two of my weekly summer research intern journal. I work in a systems biology lab at Harvard Medical School, where I try my best to not learn anything about science at all. Last week’s post is here.