The Small But Mighty Seed

I like to listen to audio podcasts.  I use a lot of them for my own "professional development".  These include science as well as other types of podcasts.  One of my favorites is Science Friday.  This is a two-hour podcast that originally airs on NPR every Friday.  I am at work when it is on live so I subscribe and listen to the podcast.  Sometimes I get behind like I have this summer.  I am just about to catch up now.  One of the shows I listened to aired originally in May and I finally listened to it last week. It was on the importance of seeds.  Ira Flatow interviewed three people on this segment.  One was Thor Hansen, the author of The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History.  There is an excerpt from the book on the Science Friday website.  The small section is very interesting and very well written.  He is a biologist and has written several books that look like I should read them.

The second section of the interview was with Cary Fowler, (Advisor, Former Executive Director The Global Crop Diversity Trust) and Sandy McLeod (Director/Producer, “Seeds of Time”).  They discussed a new documentary about the program to try to save seeds and seed banks around the world.  This goes along with an earlier Science Friday interview with Fowler about the Arctic 'Doomsday' Seed Vault.  This is a seed bank located on an island about a thousand kilometers north of Norway. It is a vault was dug into the side of a mountain.  It is surrounded by the mountain and a layer of permafrost.

These seed banks contain important genomes that we may need in the future.  A lot of the varieties in the banks are no longer planted, but they may contain genes to resist drought and extreme heat that we may face in the future with climate change.

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Who is the Real Atticus Finch?

Although I have watched the movie several times I had never read Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. So with the publication of her second novel Set a Watchman, I decided to read them both.

I have always loved the movie. Gregory Peck is one of my favorites and his portrayal of small town lawyer Atticus Finch is one one of his best.  Atticus was a hero in Mockingbird but he turned out to be a racist in Watchman.  I must say I was really disappointed. I don't know what the critics are saying but I think Watchman was not quite as well written as Mockingbird but it was pretty close. I know that Mockingbird took place in the 1930s but it made me feel like I was at home as a child.

I grew up I a small town in central Texas. I swear that the people in the books must have lived in my town or at least clones of them. This was also a time of segregation.  We had “colored” schools, drinking fountains, separate places to sit at the movie house, etc.  I sometimes equate my Father with the Atticus Finch in Mockingbird. He was one of the few people in town that was not a racist. He treated all people with respect. He was a small town newspaper editor. The black people, who had been deprived of a good education by Jim Crow laws, often came to him to help them with complicated forms and advice..  They knew they could count on him to treat them properly. He was also the local Justice of the Peace and treated them fairly in court.  We lived near the black part of town and most of my best friends were black kids. We played all the sports and listed to rhythm and blues music together.  I still love those rhythm and blues!  I and my family were often called names like Atticus in Mockingbird.

Even though it was hard at times, I wouldn't trade what my Father taught me for anything.  Think I will go watch Mockingbird again and see who I hope is the real Atticus Finch.

Our Cousins the Yeast

Recently a group of scientists at the University of Texas published a very interesting paper, Systematic humanization of yeast genes reveals conserved functions and genetic modularity, in Science Magazine.  They found that a number of genes from humans could be inserted into yeast and get the same metabolic function.  It seems we have several thousand genes in common with our cousins the yeast.  The research group tried over 400 human genes and about half of them worked when placed in the yeast.  They first had to knock out the yeast genes to allow the human genes to work.  So be more respectful to that bread and beer from now on!.

You can hear an interview with one of the researcher on Science Friday.

Optimism and the Future?

In the last year I have read a couple of books with an optimistic view ofthe future of the world.  These are The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley and Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

I have read other works by Ridley including the excellent Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.  He is an excellent writer. 

This is the first book I have read by Diamandis.  He is apparently a well-known entrepreneur and the author of several books.  He was involved with the creation of the X Prize.  You can read more about Diamandis at http://www.diamandis.com/.

I am mostly an optimist but tend to be pessimistic when it comes to the outlook for our environment.  These guys seem to think that we will “create and invent” our way out of the problems.  I certainly hope they are right but am not sure that this will happen.  Anyway I recommend these for reading concerned with this topic.  You may be more optimistic after read these.
 

Interstellar

Whew, I just finished watching Interstellar.  Yeah, I know most of you have watched it months ago.  I don't go to the movies much.  I usually wait until they show up on Netflix or Amazon Instant Video.  I watched this on Amazon.  I am really glad I didn't watch this at the movie theater.  Nearly three hours long!  That is a lot of trips to the rest room for an old guy.  So this way I can pause it and not miss anything.

Pretty amazing movie.  Blackholes, relativity, etc.  I enjoyed it--even with Matthew McConaughey being a tu guy. 

I am a long time sci-fi fan.  Of course started with the original Star Trek.  Also Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and Frank Hebert's Dune series.

I was wondering about the science in Interstellar.  They had an explosion in space and were true to form with no sound, so that was good.  It seems to be pretty good overall from what I can tell--not being an astrophysicist.

There is an interview on Science Friday that you can listen to.  I downloaded a sample of Kip Thorne's The Science of Interstellar.  Will see how that reads--Thorne is on the Science Friday interview. 

Some other good articles I found include:

• ‘Interstellar': Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Film’s Science
• Parsing the Science of Interstellar with Physicist Kip Thorne