(PHOTO: WAZARI)

Or, happy phone dictionary day. Which according to wikipedia, is today. IPDD is intended to celebrate the existence and continued use predictive text mobile phone dictionaries. Sure, this may seem random, but considering that something as bizarre as a kitchen garden get its own International Day, and given that I love to text, I say why not.

I’m in favour because the phone dictionary seems to me to be one of the missing links between a computer and setience. It’s idiosyncrasies seem too off-beat to be pre-programmed. When I try to type in perfectly reasonable word such as ‘how’ it offers ‘inx’ which means nothing to me. If you mean to invite someone for a peaceful pint you could find yourself inviting them for a riot instead. My phone wont learn my name and only ever offers me ‘lathe’ instead of Katie. Despite typing in the name ‘Fulham’ on a regular basis, it prefers to label the borough of SW6 ‘Fujico’. I end up writing texts to my cousin ‘Parag’ (Sarah) or my best friend ‘Rabi’ (Rach). If I try to type Trafalgar (for the central square in London) it offers ‘upbealiar’ which is manifestly not a word. Even a relatively simple word caused my mum to come a cropper. I spent a year assuming she was displaying a dry wit in her messages, when in fact she had simply not realised that you could scroll through the predictive text suggestions, and choose the most appropriate option. She therefore signed each and every text ‘love nun’. Happy International Phone Dictionary Day, Mum. Aint technology great.

Australia is a weird place - in an evolutionary sense. It broke off from the continental pack waaaay back (45 million years ago) and proceeded to give rise to lots of wacko animals. I mean they have MARSUPIALS and like the PLATYPUSES. It’s nuts.

So it’s hardly surprising that all our bog standard horses, dogs, cats, rabbits and frogs wreak havoc on their oh-so-different fauna and environment. I mean does anyone remember the rabbits? In the 1950s the Aussies tried to wipe them out with a deadly virus (of course it didn’t really work and became a text book example on the evolution of virulence - really deadly pathogens are less successful because they kill their hosts before they can infect a new individuals). And the cane toads. THE CANE TOADS. Introduced to control a native beetle pest, they quickly became a pest themselves.

I digress. These days they are having mad problems with wild horses, called brumbies Australia (a word that will always make me think of a favorite childhood movie, The Man from Snowy River..rent it). They tear up the ground, cause soil erosion and lots of other enviro problems. Solution? Shoot them, shoot them all.

Yes, from the country that brought you the 3,000-strong kangaroo cull, we now have the “let’s shoot horses from helicopters and let them die in agony” campaign. Nice.

The funny thing about this is that everyone seems to agree that the horses gotta go...it’s the method of dispatch at the center of controversy. Fair enough. Wild horsey contraception is indeed more humane that shooting the horses from the air, which certainly does not guarantee a quick kill. And that’s just not nice. And if someone - aka the government - had just dealt with the brumby problem long ago, this shoot-fest would be unnecessary.

They are certainly right. It’s not like this is Oz’s first brush with invasive species. Yes, they have a particularly bad lot in this respect: isolated for millions of years and then invaded by the English with all their colonial creatures. Also, biological control (using one animal to control another) is notoriously hard to predict. But they should REALLY keep a better eye on crap like this. At least they aren’t introducing lions to kill the horses, or some sort of deadly horse virus. I guess they have made some progress, even if it is still shooting helpless creatures out of window.

So I just spent an awful lot of time reading a couple of posts and hundreds of comments over at the Tierney Lab blog at the NYTimes. In a nutshell: John Tierney (wonderful science writer, especially in psychology) wrote a post about the Harvard School of Public Health giving an award to NYC Mayor Bloomberg for banning trans fats. The award was given by Walter Willett of HSPH, the most influential epidemiologist studying trans fats and the biggest academic critic of their use.

So yay for Bloomberg, because trans fats are totally evil right? I mean they raise bad cholesterol, lower good cholesterol, cause inflammation and raise the risk of heart attacks by 23% when we eat just 2% of calories in trans fats.

But trans fats aren’t so super evil according to Tierney. He goes on to write that a lot of scientists aren’t convinced that trans fats are the food from heart attack hell, citing this article in the NYTimes from 2005, which kind of vaguely says that all these really important science organizations don’t think trans fats are any worse than plain old saturated fats like butter and lard (yummmmm), as we don’t quite know the ramifications of lowered “good” cholesterol.

He then goes on to quote Elizabeth Whalen from the American Council on Science and Health, which essentially agrees that trans fats don’t seem dramatically more scary than regular saturated fats and that all those trans fat free! labels might do more harm than good because all the hype around this issue might make people think said food is “healthy.”

He basically says that the trans fat ban is all hype and based on “questionable science.” Erm.

His readers took the opportunity to point out that Whalen and the ACSH have corporate funding from many food companies and have often been accused of being apologists for the no-so-healthy foods they make. I’ve researched them a little and yes they seem to err on the side of “it’s not SUCH a big deal....” on many health topics, but I think they still have enough medical research credit to make their opinions interesting and useful, even verging on sensible. Hype and horror is always bad, surely.  Erring on the side of caution, however, is just as sensible in certain situations. Like trans-fats.

But I digress. My original point in all this was to give my perception of the science of trans fats.

My real fear of trans fats came from a monkey study by Wake Forest University researcher Kylie Kavanaugh. I interviewed her last year for this story and she freaked the crap out of me. She conducted a study on monkeys (peopley enough for me!) and found that those who ate had 8% of calories from trans fats in their diet (the average US consumer eats 2-3%) gained more than 7% of their body weight over 6 years. The control monkeys ate the same number of calories, and the same amount of total fat (just not trans) and gained 1.8%.

What’s more...all the trans fat flab went straight to the monkeys bellies, scary scary belly fat. What’s MORE, the amount of calories supplied was designed specifically so they wouldn’t gain weight at all (here is a link to the full paper, which was published this summer; the original report came from a conference in 2006).

That’s just creepy. 

The available evidence suggests that trans-fats are not good for you. Some epidemiological work suggests they are even worse than saturated fat. Until the FDA changed the labeling laws in January of 2006, trans fats were lumped under the healthier UNsaturates category. And while the NYC ban might have been premature, a little nanny state-esque, I still think it’s good: at least then I know there aren’t BAD (trans or saturated) fats where there is an alternative. If chefs/cooks can’t use unsaturated fats as a replacement for baking or frying, then they’ll use butter or lard...which is either slightly better or the same.

Does the ban deserve a prize? I dont’ know.  Only hindsight, 500 more studies and ample room for paradigm shifts will tell us whether Bloomberg and the NYC Health Commissioner were brilliant and forward thinkers or autocratic suckers lookin’ for a medical scapegoat and some political points. 

(PHOTO: Jasper Greek Golangco)

Last month I was writing some stuff for New Scientist about animal societies - their hierarchies, their squabbles, their loves and cooperative labours lost - and how they are kind of like us. It will be published sometime soon, so sorry for the vagueness.

Annnnnnyways. One point that I touched on very briefly was Robert Sapolsky’s pioneering work on the physiological ramifications of living at different rungs on the dominance ladder. Sapolsky, a Stanford University neurophysiologist, worked primarily with baboons in Kenya, showing that the baboon’s social rank can determine how stressed they are - as measured by levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids, the best know being cortisol.

Exactly who is stressed out (high or low ranking) varies on a number of different things, both between and within speices. For example, different baboon (or gorilla or chimp) troupe leaders have different dominance styles; those who keep their power by constantly physically attacking their underlings are often pretty stressed out. Leaders who govern with just the threat of violence all the time - intimidation - are pretty likely to stress the crap out of their subordinates.

No matter who is stressed out, though, the health effects are the same. Chronic activation of the stress response (which is supposed to kick in only sporadically to help you out of a tight spot..ie the fight or flight reaction), takes a serious toll on the primates’ immune system, can exacerbate heart disease and diabetes and just generally suck.

The human literature has shown similar findings. Very stressful jobs - defined as those that DEMAND a lot but give very little CONTROL - can lead to heart attacks, and then some more heart attacks.

I bet you’re wondering where I am going with all this. Well here you go: I woke up with a dreadful cold on Friday. I am stressed out of my mind at the moment, really deep down existential life crisis kind of stress. And I just don’t seem to be getting any better. I really FEEL like a stressed out primate, panting away under the constant threat of some big bad baboon busting my ass (at least metaphorically). Let’s just cross our fingers and hope that I don’t have a coronary tomorrow.

I think it’s time for a bottle of red wine.

(P.S. Sorry for the self indulgent. Aren’t sick people so selfish, grumpy and boring?)

Sure we all know that space is full of noise. I, for one, think of fuzzy noises. Like the fuzzy snow you get on TV. Case in point.

But this particular batch of sounds released from Nasa is like a self fulfilled prophecy of what the collective 1960s SciFi fan base would have conjured up when the words “freaky unearthly space reverberations invade your brain.” It’s equal parts wacky and eery.

Take for example the bleeps and blots of sound as Cassini-Huygens’ descended into Titan’s atmosphere. At first they’re erratic and fun, but turn into a fever pitch of a Geiger counter running off the chart.

But the eeriest by far are the sounds of Saturn’s radio emissions. Cross the sounds of Cylon ship with those of a cetacean, add plenty goosebumps, and you’re almost there.

There’s a longer loop of Saturn’s song that resembles a symphony of bottle rockets let loose, slowed down 10x, and then stuck in a haunted house, where wispy ghosts moan and pull at your hair.

(Thanks Kurt!)

I’ll say this really quietly to avoid annoying people but (Christmas is coming) and there are presents to be bought. And do I have the selection of gifts for the scientist who has everything. I even have budget choices. Ok so there’s only two choices, but that counts.

Option one - Conserve the Budget.
It takes guts to tell someone you love them. Soft, plush guts in fact. Like this fluffy heart and this lovely liver or these cuddly lungs.  But when urine love (sigh - their joke, not mine), only a kidney will do.

Option two - Blow the Budget.
This one isn’t quite so lovable, but we forgive it because it is unique. For the bargain price of $1554 you can be the owner of the only space rock documented to have caused a fatality on earth. The Valera Meteorite brought about the untimely end of a cow in Venezuela in 1972. How about that for a bolt from the blue! (sorry).

NB: The plush organs are the easier option in more ways than one, because the meteorite is technically no longer for sale. It got sold as part of an auction last week. Along with a mailbox dinged by a meteorite (which sold for $82,750), the rock wot dinged it (a bargain $7,700), and the big seller of the day, a Siberian meteorite that was a product of history’s largest known meteor shower for the eye-watering sum of $122,750.

Sure it’s cute but does it work?

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society has called for a total ban of Dolphin Assisted Therapy, or DAT.

The Dolphin Assisted Therapy industry has flourished in recent decades under the guise that interactions with dolphins will heal ill and disabled people. It sounds nice. And uber fluffy. I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t want to pet a dolphin and become BFF with one and swim through the deep blue sea hugging its fin and grow up to become a marine world animal trainer with a really really perky pony tail? I did, since grade two.

According to the Dolphin Assisted Therapy website “Dolphin Assisted Therapy is not a miracle” but a “feeling of a joy and harmony during the treatment sessions in the hearts of children, their parents and support team is a guaranteed outcome.”

According to the WDCS and scientists, the only thing therapeutic dolphin petting does is stress out dolphins and increase their captive numbers. Just earlier this month some 28 dolphins were captured in the Solomon Islands and shipped over to Dubai where they are believed to be employed as schmealers (as in healer, schmealer).

I think Big Willy’s producers just got fodder for a golden sequel. Can’t you see it? Dolphin loving kid has magical experience with dolphin but it’s SO magical that he stages dolphin uprising in all those dolphinarium’s in Florida and the Mediterranean. Or he injects them with the same virus that turns Britain into an aggro zombie nation in ‘28 Days Later’ which would mark the beginning of the dolphin gore film genre. Dolphins with fangs and wild eyes exacting revenge on the measly bipeds… can’t you see it now?? 

Does everyone still remember the Hunger Site? You know, that website where if you just clicked a big button on their main page you would give food to hungry children? The site has expanded to included several other charities - breast cancer, animal rescue, child health, literacy, the rain forest - but the principal is the same. You go to their site, click, and advertising sponsors pay for a small donation towards your cause. It’s win win win win win. Kids get food, you feel good and big companies get some seriously feel good press.

Well there’s a new kid on the web with a similar strategy, except focusing instead on carbon emissions. The site is Carbon Neutral Search. In essence, the team will buy carbon offsets equivalent to the emissions generated by an average Google search, which by their reserach is about 17.5 grams. They calculated this figure in two parts; first the amount of energy used by Google servers for your average search (.0044 grams CO2) plus the energy used by your typical computer during the roughly 15 minutes it takes to search and review results, they say.

For every search (it’s powered by the Google custom search), they buy 100 grams worth of carbon offsets..yes, that’s exceeding the 17.5 grams you actually used, but hey, they are just generous like that (or carbon credits aren’t costly enough, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms).

I emailed the developer of the site, Gareth Davis for some of the particulars above. If you go to the search home page, you’ll see that it has a distincly dark color scheme and Davis was indeed inspired by Blackle (Katie blogged about it previously). Blackle is a Google-clone search site just like Davis’s that uses a black background to reduce the energy requirements of computer displays thereby saving energy/carbon. Davis figures that Blackle gets about 800,000 search per week, but the ad dollars don’t go to the cause.

Hence his desire to start up Carbon Neutral Search. It’s not the catchiest name, and not the prettiest site, but the search seems solid (no crappy Yahoo search here) and why not? I mean really?

Now it’s all about habit breaking - changing bookmarks, homepages, and not typing in that oh so easy http://www.google.com (who are going carbon netural themselves, see). Davis is hoping to develop a browswer toolbar application shortly, which would be great because that is where I enter 80% of my searches.

Mmmokay. So, I, like everyone I know, am obsessed with Google Maps. I just love ‘em. Love love love. Mmm, mmm, good.

Annnnnyways. I am all lookin’ up stuff about Google and their carbon neutral plans and I stumble upon Google Transit, which you all have probably heard about because you’re cooler than me. But whatever. It launched earlier in October. And I see that my one and only hometown of Vancouver BC is one of the cities searchable on Google Transit. So of course I look up my bus ride home (is dark and rainy, the bike is no more fun) and TA DA! It gets it right. What’s more, the search delivers the next three departures and is SO MUCH LESS ANNOYING than the Translink (Vancouver bus co.) trip planner.

(I’d show you the lovely map it generated, but then you would all know where I work AND live and that’s just creepy..and there are enough creepy people on the bus in Vancouver already. I mean really.)

Now you could be all BAH! other people have done this (like Hopstop) and ARG Google and their monopoly on the world!, but the goodness for me is that I already know how to navigate the Google map system. I am familiar with the interface and their directions. Also, they are particularly good at finding addresses when you type them in wrong. Maybe I am getting old, but I LIKE that. And the Google maps are so pretty. And handily movable with that hand. Oh that hand.

Also, they give you the total cost in public transportation tickets versus the cost of gas to drive. For example. If I wanted to go from Mountain View (home of Google) to a nice hotel in Union Square in Downtown San Francisco, it would cost $9.55 to take the bus/train/subway and $18.64 to drive. And that doesn’t include parking. Of course the public option takes twice as long and you can’t choose the radio station..but hey.

There aren’t many cities yet available with the system, as I think the individual transit systems have to make their data in some way compatible with the Google searchings. But more are being added. Like Duluth. And Tampa. And the whole country of Japan (I mean have you ever tried to take the Subway in Tokyo?). They are still missing some biggies - New York, LA (ha ha), Chicago, Boston, DC. Philadelphia, but they’ll succumb.

My cat, Boots. No way would I poke her full of needles for some other nameless cat.

When your pet has to have an op, you’re only too aware of the dangers. It’s hard to operate on animals because they’re smaller, more fiddly, and they can’t tell you where it hurts, plus if they start bleeding, there’s no back up pet blood bank to draw upon. Some people seem to think that it is a situation that required remedying, but I’m not so sure I agree. I know how horrible it is to lose a pet, but there is no way I would have taken my cats blood to save the life of another pet. I give blood because I want to, I know lots of people who could give and choose not to, and that’s the key point - choice. My cat hated having blood tests, and because she was inherently better than any other cat (because she was mine) I wouldn’t have hurt her for the sake of other cats. Perhaps other pet owners will be more altruistic than me, but I rather doubt it.