Episode 7: A Sausage Dog's Love

My own significant other of the Canis lupus familiaris variety is here for her cameo appearance;

This is sausage face. Her face is not the sausage feature after which she is named but is merely the face of the attached body which is distinctly sausage like. Her official title is Belle-Feline but has other aliases such as sneaky, sausage face, sausage roll, belle the smell, creepy sneak and weasel features.

Generally everything she does is sneaky due to her weasel like nature. She enjoys scrounging for the tiniest of scraps with all of her efforts. And absolutely loves whatever it is you have.

Miniature Daschunds have been bred to have these distinctive features as it better enables them to hunt badgers down badger holes. Belle has recently developed a newer adaptation into converting these inbred skills into ‘bin hunting’. Distinctly more rewarding and less dangerous for ones sneaky face;

I am sure many people have come home to such things if not worse. So why do we even keep pets?

“Dogs have important jobs, like barking when the doorbell rings, but cats have no function in a house whatsoever.”
~ W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog's Purpose

There must be advantageous reasons why humans keep members of another species for an extended period of time purely for entertainment. Apart from a few inter-species friendships developed by animals in zoos, there is no conclusive evidence of this happening among any other animals in nature.

Here are a few contenders in the debate;

Religious – Keeping pets isn’t a modern phenomenon, as early as 3500BC animals were kept domestically by the ancient Egyptians. Dogs were revered as a symbol of the Jackal god Anubis. Cats were also worshipped religiously; they were esteemed as demi-gods and were property of the divine pharaoh.

Practicality – Moving through the ages it can be considered almost instinct to use animals for doing things we cannot do ourselves. For example, horses have a use in work for being used to pull carts for transportation of people and goods. Cats are also useful for controlling rodent populations.

There is also the obvious need of keeping animals like cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs for foodstuffs such as meat, eggs and milk.

Even in modern times animals have a practical arm in the everyday lives of many people like sheep dogs, guide dogs and sniffer dogs.

Status Symbol – Pets can be considered almost as a supreme ornament. Not very long ago only the wealthy could afford to have an extra mouth to feed. In developing countries now this is still obvious, people who can’t afford it do not introduce a furry member of the family for fun.

Exotic pets are also a status symbol of the good condition of your bank balance. Queen Elizabeth I had a Guinea pig, you didn’t just go and buy one in Pet World then, she was probably the owner of the only guinea pig in Britain at the time.

Although it isn’t entirely common now, in history, hunting for sport was a favourite past time of the upper classes. For this purpose they kept dogs, horses and of course game specifically for their entertainment.

Birds also have the X Factor for entertainment, having a delightful rowdy canary would be enjoyable before the invention of the radio!

Of course none of this really answers why 48% of homes in Britain, 20% of Japanese and 63% of American and Australian homes have at least one pet. People aren’t picking up all that poop for nothing!

“Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.”
~ Jerry Seinfeld

Psychological – Although anyone who has ever even seen one knows animals have feelings, humans are the only animals to have such a massive range of emotions linked to our consciousness.

Our desire to own and care for these creatures must be rooted in our emotions. It’s an absolutely simplistic answer but is just a simple fact, we have a pet because we love them and they love us back. Animals have shifted from food to friend.

No human on this earth is as unfailingly excited to see me when I come home as my Belly Belle.

Interestingly, animals respond better to sounds ending in ‘eeee’, probably explains why when I shout “BELLE-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” down the hall she comes bounding down like a prize horse in the Grand National.

Finally,

Having a pet around gives us a living presence that makes us feel comforted and wanted, they give all their time and affection without any ulterior motive, all for only the very basics of life in return. Also, dogs like to wag their tails and not their mouths which is an advantage over many human companions.  

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

~ Anatole France

 I will try to remind myself of this as I clear up the remainder of the bin contents from the floor...

You are nobody until somebody a sausage dog loves you.

Episode 6: Rainbow Roses and Genetic Proposals

You can’t get blue roses.

You can however get these;

Rainbow Roses – These pictures aren’t modified, I know because I took them. These are in fact my very own valentine’s flowers from my one and only (see there’s me with them in the bottom left with my uber shoulder padded jacked, I was having a power day in work *power shoulders*).

Rainbow Roses I have decided are the most beautiful flowering fantastic-ness I’ve ever had in my possession, if every colour symbolises its own range of emotions surely they are the flowery embodiment of a relationship?

These of course do not occur naturally, obviously or by now there would be so many planted in my garden you would see it from space. This is a human manipulation of plant biology with a dash of chemistry.

I finished my exclamations of astonishment, gratitude and thanks with multiple kisses and swiftly started my technical examination of these beauties, they clearly weren’t sprayed and they certainly didn’t grow that way so, what? Did a magician trap a My Little Pony with its rainbow tail in these flowers of mine?

This is how it’s done, Simplicity at its finest, turns out no My Little Ponies were harmed;

·         Obviously you cannot use a coloured rose, they have their own pigments and enzymes and would just stay that colour or turn brown. (You know all colours together make brown. Think about it.)You have to start with a white specimen. The Venezuela Rose is a ‘Hybrid Tea, cream rose’ which shows up all the colours perfectly.

·         The rose is cut at full bloom diagonally in order to expose the greatest area possible for water uptake by exposing a higher number of xylem vessels.

·          The cut flower is then ‘Stem-dyed’. 4 beakers of Red, Blue, Green and Yellow water soluble dyes are prepared separately. The flower stem is slit vertically into 4 pieces and 1 end placed in each beaker.

·         Wait a few hours...

·         And by the beauty of transpiration, ta dah!

 

Blue Roses – I’m afraid I reeled you in with a porky pie just now. Blue roses are no longer condemned to the realms of legend with unicorns and leprechauns, but have been created in much the same way as my rainbow numbers for decades now.

However, this century, a feat of genetic engineering has created something much better.

We can’t make unicorns they said. We can’t make leprechauns they said. But instead they proposed to create the eternal symbol of mystery – the Blue Rose.

Culturally they have been associated with hope against unattainable love.

Molecular geneticists proposed to create the Royal of Roses by altering its genetic makeup – DNA.

Roses simply do not grow in blue colours as they lack a gene to create true blue pigment - Delphinidin. So the gene for the colour had to be stolen from the Pansy and the gene for the enzyme DFR was taken from the Iris. The enzyme is required to complete the delphinidin synthesis reaction.

Additionally to this the gene for the flower’s own pigment synthesis needed to be switched off. Cue RNAi, one of the most powerful biological tools discovered in the past 25 years. RNAi is as specific as the DNA sequence and can directly target specific genes to act as a switch in production of the protein created from that gene. In this case, an RNAi sequence was created to effectively silence the DFR gene that occurred naturally in the rose, creating the red colour and letting the new DFR gene which varied slightly to work instead.

Below you can see my rainbow rose, bottom left depicts a blue rose created using the same principle with dye, but above that is a photograph of a genetically engineered blue rose.

Truth is it’s not ACTUALLY blue. It’s a sort of mauve/lavender colour, this is because the RNAi didn’t completely block the rose’s natural colour synthesis and instead added a little red tinge to the blue.

But still its bluer than any other roses, and seeing as it grows this way it can answer ‘why yes, I’m a natural blue’ ;) to all those admirers.

Inspiration - My encounter with my own flowery creatures inspired my tentative steps into the floral and colourful realm of workwear;

I don't think any ponies were harmed in the making of this skirt either. Although I can say nothing for my workmates retinas.

Episode 5: Beauty and the Geek

Welcome to the Day of Love 2013!

Also known as singles awareness day.

Now by all means I should be spending the time alone playing World of Warcraft with some cyber friends a la Sheldon Cooper.  However, I have found a young gentleman who clearly just can’t get enough of the geek. So much so in fact that he sealed the deal a few months ago with an extremely old transparent crystal of tetrahedrally bonded carbon atoms aka a diamond.

Apart from the chemical classification of a diamond, what does science have to do with valentines and love? I’ll give you a multitude of reasons;

St. Valentine’s Day – So what’s it all about? The feast of St. Valentines can be attributed to a number of early Christian saints called Valentinus. Stories range from him being jailed for marrying soldiers to their sweethearts, who were forbidden to do so, to him writing to his own sweetheart during imprisonment. It has also been linked to the Roman feast of fertility Lupercalia. The most important theme throughout all the possibilities is the Romance.  It is the traditional day on which you put all else aside to express your love to those you hold dear. Most of these expressions of love will follow the traditional pattern;

Symbols of Valentine’s day;

Red Roses – The most common rhyme to find on Valentine’s Day starts ‘Roses are red...’ The rose was strongly linked to the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite and the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Isis. Because of this we have developed a very ancient link with red roses as a symbol of eternal love. It appears constantly in romantic literature;

“O MY Luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June:

O my Luve’s like the melodie,

That’s sweetly play’d in tune.”

~ Robert Burns

The colour red is longest and warmest ray in the visible light spectrum. It is likened to fire, power, life force and survival. It is the most energising colour and as such as linked to enormous passion. So psychologically both the flower and the colour are the most symbolic representations of the expression of love. However not all expressions of love are desirable, Kissing Disease for example. Your love might be contagious but it’s also infringing upon my immune system.

 Chocolate – For a more physical embodiment of science’s role in love; Aphrodisiacs. Although many aphrodisiacs are probably effective due to the placebo effect, a few actually can be chemically attributed with affecting passion. The King of aphrodisiacs has to be chocolate. It includes anandamine and Phenylethylamine (PEA) which are a psychoactive feel-good chemical and ‘love chemical’ respectively. PEA releases dopamine in the brain and can peak feelings of excitement, attraction and euphoria. It also contains tryptophan which is required for Serotonin production, another feel-good chemical of the brain.

Other foods with apparent aphrodisiac side effects include, asparagus, almonds, avocado, bananas, basil, figs, garlic, oysters and honey. Although links to these foods are probably more due to their actual vitamin and mineral content which are necessary for healthy reproductive systems than any psychological effect. Some of them are also obviously comically shaped...

So if you really want to express your love include these in your menu, a few appropriately placed oysters and champagne wouldn’t go amiss!

I of course included none of these. I’m making my Valentine Chicken wings, Seafood Paella, Pavlova and some Kopparberg because he told me they’re his favourite. No analysis required.

 

Clothing – And not necessarily lingerie you sneaks. A common way now to express love is dressing up and going out to dinner together. Don’t underestimate the power of a LRD (Little Red Dress), as we mentioned before the colour red ignites strong feelings. And he’s not going to take you to the Ritz dressed like a hobo on holiday.

Finally, if your Valentine’s day involved all these lovely expressions of eternal love you may be feeling;

In Love – I’m not even gonna go there. Although experiments show you can base how attracted you are to males on how different their MHC complex (immune system) is to yours [see the facts here - http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/5/668.full] we all know it’s just not like that. Unless you’re a crazy person, Science is going to leave that frontier well alone.

To fall in love you need to have the perfect mix of chemical and physical conditions... with a little bit of pixie dust... take the second star to the right and... head on into infinity and beyond...

Yeah. Disney is better at describing it than Science. Go watch Beauty and the Beast.

Episode 4: Charles Darwin and The Pancake

What do Charles Darwin and a Pancake have in common?? Not the start of a bad joke but today in fact is what they share. Today is both the celebration of the father of modern Biology and of the humble pancake;

-          Tuesday 12^th February 13

Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) – ‘Shrove’ means being forgiven for wrongdoings and traditionally people would go to Church to confess their sins before Lent which starts the next day (Ash Wednesday). As Lent is a religious fasting period all luxury foods such as Eggs, Milk and sugar are to be abstained from and pancakes are the perfect way to use them up!

In France and USA they call it Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) which you would think has nothing to do with anything except eating which they’re both great at. Actually though it is the pre-reformation term used for the day in which all the yummy fatty foods are eaten up before lent.

For a personal touch, this is my pancake, which is in fact a pancake-imposter known as a Crêpe, if we’re using the correct nomenclature. As you can see, I like the ‘roll it up, slice it up, eat it up’ procedure.

Shrove Tuesday can fall anywhere between 3^rd Feb-9^th March as it falls exactly 47 days before Easter Sunday and Easter is calculated upon the cycles of the moon. This year it has a happy coincidence of falling on Darwin Day! So we can all celebrate being geeks and getting fat!

Darwin Day – ‘is a global celebration of science and humanity’. It promotes a deeper sense of respect and appreciation of all life and to promote a common bond among all peoples on earth.

Specifically, it celebrates the life and achievements of Charles Darwin, possibly the only naturalist, in my eyes, to be as impressive as David Attenborough in describing scientific concepts to the world. He wrote ‘On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ in 1859 with over 20 years of documented research.

Even though he gave rise to understanding the importance of genetics in natural selection he chose to marry his first cousin, nonetheless his lifetime contribution to science is unrivalled. One could write multiple theses on Charles Darwin so read more about him and his day here; http://darwinday.org/about/ and spend just a few moments today whilst enjoying your pancakes appreciating the beginning of understanding life.

Finally,

You’re wondering why my ‘episodes’ (sounds like I’m mentally unsound...) went 1, 2, 3a then 4... where’s 3b??  Coming up!

Episode 3a: The Battle Against Uggs and Contamination

Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

A war on 2 fronts. Kaiser Wilhelm’s nightmare, and mine.

Longer than any war in history is the daily battle of how to be stylish and not interfere with your work.

Scientists have the same what to wear to work dilemma as every other female on the planet but we have extra contenders to consider. We have PPE (personal protective equipment) which can range from gloves and hairnets to safety shoes and protective suits. You can spend any amount of time in a day taking these on and off and so struggle to not look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards when you’re not in PPE.

Sometimes I look in magazines and think, Yes that would be an absolutely delightful work outfit... if I only had to wear those shoes for 30mins while sitting down and if mini-skirts and bare legs were acceptable in the workplace. This is not sex and the city and any classy outfit I put together is immediately destroyed by black tights, cardigan (labs are controlled at temperatures which can only be described as constantly freezing) and this year and every years Winter staple – the coat.

Infact, the delights of our western European climate mean that actually the move from winter to summer wardrobe means you can wear courts instead of boots without getting frostbite in your toes and you drop the coat from furlined and chunky to a nice rainproof mac.

And so I rage battle every day to balance practicality for work and a little sophisticated style.

“You cannot climb the ladder of success in the outfit of failure”

~ Zig Ziglar

 

The biggest pitfall of workplace fashion has to be the Ugg boot. I have never invested in a pair because I see it as dangling over the precipice of a slippery slope into eventually not even brushing my hair and perpetually shuffling around the lab with my feet looking like a hoof on a cuddly toy horse. I KNOW they are comfy and very good for their designed purpose. So is my onesie and I don’t wear that to work. I won’t give in!

I’ll give you an example of the daily battle;

1 – Winning; I try to look professional and still look my age. Heels but ‘sensible’, stylish but not overdone, Classy but comfortable. If I accomplish any one of these things in an outfit I feel successful.

This is how I typically start the day,

See starting off alright, little bit of animal print, a few accessories, sensible long sleeved top for winter and I can remain as such doing office work until I actually have to do the practical part of my job, so morph into exhibit 2;

2 – It’s a draw;

Don’t get me wrong, getting your lab coat on feels all professional but is joyless for actually thinking you may look half decent. I do however rate this a draw because the shoes count for about 50% of an outfit in my eyes so we’re on the front line but we’re fighting back. However,

Sometimes even shoes can’t save you;

3 – Lost; Sometimes unfortunately, even small graces can’t be met and a venture into the cleanroom for R&D work is inevitable...

 

I don’t even have words for this. If you ever complain again ‘oh I can’t believe he/she/they saw me looking like that...’ just pause for a moment and remember this picture. Yea, don’t feel so bad now do you. Ugh.

Anyway,

I have to wear all my correct PPE to avoid contamination of myself and my work and also not give up on fashion and slide into dangerous Ugg boot territory. I lose a few battles but the war continues, I’ll keep you updated!

Episode 2: A Mistaken Identity

People have a strong belief that Scientists always believe they are correct. This is a serious misconception as really we work tirelessly to devise new ways of proving everything wrong.

A theory, or hypothesis as we like to call our musings, is merely accepted until proven incorrect. A bit like innocent until proven guilty. Hypotheses (what you are trying to prove) are put on trial (experiment) and if the most up to date findings support your hypothesis, you claim this accepted as the correct detailing of events... until research advances in such a way as to prove you wrong and put forward the new accepted theory.

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

~ Thomas A. Edison

 

Well said Tommy. So REALLY, the universe and everything in it is just described the best way we know how at that time, as you can imagine, jumps forward in technology and advancements in research lead to the unveiling of some quite cataclysmic mistakes.

 

Some of the absolutely greatest discoveries have been made by accident; here are some of my favourites;

1.       The microbiologist in me just couldn’t have a discussion on scientific mistakes and not mention Alexander Fleming.

Who is this you ask? He has probably impacted your life on a scale you can’t even imagine. Mr Fleming, quite accidentally, discovered Penicillin. No one has come close to a discovery in health anything like it since. Imagine how many times you yourself in a single lifetime have had a course of antibiotics, less than 100 years ago every single one of those infections could have killed you.

Clearing away contaminated Petri dishes (pictured) in 1928, he noticed that the offending mould contaminating the plates had killed off the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus in the dish.

And actually the only reason he even thought of looking for a substance that could kill bacteria and not harm the body was because, one day, 6 years earlier, his Mucus (snotters, let’s face it) accidentally fell into a Petri dish of bacteria and killed them off.

No exaggeration, you are probably only alive today because someone didn’t sniff in time to catch the drip on a bad day at work.

2.       My second favourite accident incorporates my second favourite thing – fashion. Sir William Henry Perkin, a notable chemist with not a very notable barber.

“Women transform into birds of paradise at night.”

~ Kurt Geiger

 

Have you ever watched a documentary about life pre-1900s life and noticed how drab and boring everything looks, as if everyone’s favourite colour palette is brown/beige/grey? This wasn’t a lack of creative designer inspiration but actually they just no physical way to create the bright and vibrant colours we see in nature. Fabrics don’t just grown on trees in a variety of neon and pastel hues to delight our S/S runway collections. They are dyed. Ding ding cue my next favourite mistake Mr Perkin!

 

In 1856 Perkin was hotly pursuing a groundbreaking new treatment for Malaria. His Experiments aimed to extract a compound called quinine but ended only with a nasty brown precipitate. Round 2 and attempts with aniline give a black precipitate. Clearly having an open mind about where this was going, add a dash of alcohol aaaaaand... no cure for malaria BUT the little mess had turned a wonderful purple colour.  Boom. The first inexpensive synthetic dye in the most coveted colour and symbol of wealth at the time, purple.

 

Perkin was an avid Painter/Photographer and realised the significance of the discovery and we have a new age of synthetic dyes and extremely happy fashion industry. His hobbies also prove my point that Scientists a)are sometimes remotely normal and have other hobbies and b)that we actually quite enjoy making mistakes.