Month: May 2012

Wellcome to Brains

As I was in London earlier this week for the Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist exhibition opening at The Queen’s Gallery it seemed churlish not to take in the Wellcome Collection’s fascinating Brains exhibition too, which dovetailed nicely with the bizarre view that Leonardo and his contemporaries had of brain structure.

Anyway, here’s the exhibition’s video trailer, and yes they do have some samples of Einstein’s brains. Apparently, he wanted to be cremated but someone took his brain and donated it on his behalf to science.

Brains is free entry and runs until 17th June at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road, London. Leonardo is on until 7th October, I believe booking for Leo is essential.

Buck House, Queeny, classically speaking brains, and book publishers

So, as I was saying, I was at Buck House earlier this week. I know, you’re thinking the knighthood is well overdue, but I’m afraid I was only there for breakfast, not with Liz and Phil, but with Rachel Woollen, Martin Clayton and others from the Royal Collection and fellow blogging types, including Tim Jones, Jo Geenan of Visit London, and iPad app creator Max Whitby of TouchPress. The “Bloggers’ Breakfast” was a nice excuse to see the new Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist collection and to try out the accompanying iPad app created by Whitby and colleagues. A fascinating way to start the day.

As we left the collection, just after 10 am, when the “public” began to arrive, we were greeted by high security as it was almost the hour for the aforementioned Liz and Phil (QEII and the Duke of Edinburgh) to head off in their carriage to the House of Lords for the State Opening of Parliament. It seemed churlish not to take a few snaps (you can see those on my Facebook page here) before departing to the sound of a multi-gun salute that caused not a few shivers and noisy remarks among camera-wielding American tourists heading to Buckingham Palace who’d missed all the pomp and sight of the Queen not five minutes earlier, presumably through circumstances beyond their control or sheer ignorance.

Up to Green Park tube and a quick link to Leicester Square to meet up with the mighty Tim Lihoreau Creative Director and More-Music-Breakfast presenter at ClassicFM whose studios look out over the Square’s glitzy cinemas and the newly installed pavement fountains (we’re unsure as to whether they will be illuminated water jets, it’s likely). A quick tour of the studios of Classic, Xfm, Heart etc all in the Capital Radio building and a little sushi on the terrace and discussions of all things technical and otherwise. Science certainly meets art here in the high-tech digital audio realm.

After lunch, a visit to the Wellcome Collection to take a look at Brains, their fascinating exhibition about probably the most complicated object in the universe – the human brain. Followed by a cuppa with my book publisher Olivia Bays from Elliot and Thompson to discuss my progress on Deceived Wisdom and the international book tour…well maybe not that last part, but certainly we covered the ins and outs of the evolving contents list. A dash from Euston Road to King’s Cross station was in vain, but catching the later and slower, stopping train back to Cambridge gave me plenty of time to download and edit photos.

The rights and lefts of Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist

A 5:30 am start is not the usual modus operandi of this freelance journalist but with an invitation to a Bloggers’ Breakfast at Buckingham Palace in London to see the launch of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the BH Gallery scheduled for 8:30 am an early train from the outskirts of Cambridge was needed.

Leonardo da Vinci is, to some, nothing more than a great artist, but to us scientists, he was a pioneering polymath. His ground-breaking studies of the human body, which are now on display in the largest-ever exhibition of his anatomical work, were centuries ahead of their time. The exhibition launches almost 500 years after Leonardo’s death and features 87 pages from his notebooks, including 24 sides of previously unexhibited material.

After Leonardo’s death in 1519, many of his drawings remained unpublished and were effectively lost to the world until the 20th century. Meanwhile, Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius published his treatise, De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body) in 1543. This tome would become the most important work on anatomy ever published and to this day anatomical history is divided into pre- and post-Vesalian periods.

Leonardo’s drawings are quite astounding as is the fact that all of his writing is a mirror image of what you would expect. This was not, however, meant to deceive or hide information. Indeed, at the time the dissection of human bodies was perfectly well accepted by the Church and the law. This was the renaissance after all, and Leonardo very much wanted the knowledge he acquired and his lifeworks to be published. Gallery curator Martin Clayton told me that the true reason was nothing less mundane than that Leonardo didn’t want to smudge his ink because he wrote left-handed, something not uncommon among those who could write 500 years ago.

Leonardo’s dissection of human tissues (usually male cadavers of executed criminals) and those of animals are quite astounding in their accuracy and his famous dissection of a human skull displays, to the modern anatomist’s eye, an insight into what cuts would best reveal the inner details perfectly. The understanding of many physiological processes, such as breathing (the lungs, Leonardo though, simply cooled the heart), the brain had three chambers, the purpose and flow of blood (arteries carried blood from the heart, the liver made blood and secreted it into the veins) were, to put it kindly, totally wrong.

There was also the question of sex and how the spirit or soul fitted into the process of conception. In his earlier work, Leonardo showed the penis having two tubes one of which carried the material part of the male seed, the other carried the “animal spirit” down from the spine and into the woman. This was obviously an attempt to explain the duality of the human condition – mind and matter – and to reconcile the newly emerging science with the fictions of creationism. Leonardo correctly abandoned the two-pipe system in later work.

As to pregnancy itself, given that female cadavers were less readily available than those of deceased male criminals, Leonardo’s work on the anatomy of a pregnant female was informed by his work on the dissection of a cow. His drawings show the multiple placentas, the ovaries placed beneath the uterus and the enormous suspensory ligaments within the female, all of which are perfect for bearing a growing calf, but are simply not present in women.

One image that is missing from the collection is, of course, the Vitruvian Man, perhaps one of the most iconic and famous works of art. The Vitruvian Man was drawn after Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. He had suggested that somehow the perfect man could, with arms and legs akimbo, transect a perfect circle and a perfect square. In his work, Leonardo measured lengths, ratios, and angles but could not find those perfect ratios suggested 1500 years before. Instead, Leonardo obtained odd fractions 5/11’s, 7/17th’s none of which seemed to point to the perfect circle or the perfect man and he turned back from what is essentially a research dead-end. If you want to see Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man in the flesh, as it were, it is housed at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, Italy, but only occasionally displayed.

Despite Leonardo’s various misconceptions and his Vitruvian U-turn, his dissections and drawings are nevertheless highly precise, incredibly detailed, and literally centuries ahead of their time. The exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist brings his cadavers to life at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 7th October 2012.

An astounding iPad app is also available for download from the iTunes store. The app not only allows you to zoom in on very high-resolution scans of the different works but has accompanying text as well as a reverse magnifier for Leonardo’s writing. Poke his text and an English translation appears too. Very much worth the price especially as it includes all 268 human and animal anatomical drawings by Leonardo in the collection. The app includes video commentary and modern, interactive anatomical models.

With thanks to Rachel Woollen of the Royal Collection for the invitation to a fascinating exhibition.

Exergy, existentialism and the environment

Exergy is perhaps an unfamiliar concept. Energy we can fairly easily get to grips with, it’s a measure of the ability of a system to do work. Work is what causes a system to change its energy state…hmm…first law of thermodynamics. But, what is exergy and where does it fit into the energy equation?

By definition: the exergy of a system is the maximum useful work possible during a process that brings the system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. If we consider the surroundings of a given system as being that reservoir, then exergy is the potential of the system to cause a change as it comes into equilibrium with its environment.

Now, Enrico Sciubba of “La Sappienza”, the University of Rome, Italy, has used the concept of exergy as an ecological indicator, a way to measure our environmental footprint. He points out that conventional measurements of material and energy balances do not take into account the loss or discharge of exergy. They also usually fail to account for other factors such as the detrimental effects toxicity, pollution and other “externalities” including labour intensity, economic capital, and environmental remediation costs, might have on those energy balances. Extended Exergy Accounting has been mooted as a possible solution to those shortcomings allowing us to consider the complete lifecycle and impact of various processes.

Writing in the appropriately named International Journal of Exergy, Sciubba explains how Extended Exergy Accounting is not merely “another measure of cost”. It is, he claims, the only true measure of cost based, in a lifecycle sense, on the global consumption of primary resources. It’s very much a cradle-to-grave measurement, Sciubba says allowing researchers and decision makers to assess natural and anthropogenic processes with a metric that reflects the “cost” of a resource-to-final-use and disposal. It offers a holistic rather than deconstructionist approach to environmental considerations and policy that avoids simply sweeping the carbon and pollution under the proverbial carpet and reveals how more clearly than other metrics how dwindling resources are, of course, entirely finite.

There are gaps in what EEA can achieve, admits Sciubba. For instance, its foundation in thermodynamics means it cannot be used to pass moral judgements or resolve problems of choice, ethics or politics. However, it can provide a more solid and realistic frame of reference on which to make such decisions.

Research Blogging IconEnrico Sciubba (2012). An exergy-based Ecological Indicator as a measure of our resource use footprint International Journal of Exergy, 10 (3), 239-266

The health benefits of giving, joining in and having a plan

Helping others, joining in and having some kind of life plan or at least goals, aspirations and ambitions seem to make for enhanced mental health. Certainly, it’s a better strategy than popping supplements and introspection. There is even some scientific evidence that spending money on others, rather than yourself, makes you happier, as does laughter, singing, socialising, taking part, all apparently good for the immune system in ways we are only starting to understand. There is even growing evidence that making plans somehow keeps the mind and body healthy.

How far such notions go is a matter for further research. For instance, it is probably stretching it to say that being active and having a positive outlook can ward off cancer, Alzheimer’s or other diseases. However, it might be that the immune boost one gets from being mentally and physically active and engaging with other people offers protection that is simply not available through popping pills or navel gazing…

Indeed, writing in 2010, Alzheimer’s researcher Patricia Boyle demonstrated that: “Greater purpose in life is associated with a reduced risk of AD and MCI in community-dwelling older persons.” Reference. Meanwhile, here’s how to buy happiness.

You really don’t know how to dry your hands properly

In “rest rooms” everywhere there are millions of people trying to dry their hands, assuming they washed them after using the facilities. Most of them will grab 3, 4, maybe half a dozen squares of paper towel, assuming there isn’t an “hot” air electric dryer (that’s a whole different story) and still not get their hands properly dry.

The key is – Shake. Fold.

Shake your hands twelve times. Why twelve, it’s the biggest number of just one syllable in English.

Fold a single square of paper towel in half and dry.

We could save millions of tonnes of paper wasted on drying our hands.

Next year, toilet paper.

How to become a medical writer

I get a lot of emails from people hoping to break into the field of science writing (and medical and technical writing in general), whether as a journalist or in science communication. Often they’re fresh from university, or just writing up, and like me, didn’t fancy staying in the lab. Often they have a clear idea of what they want to do and have specific questions about breaking into the field. I can usually give a few personal pointers, for what they’re worth, and more generally send them off to the ABSW and NASW websites both of which have “So you want to be a science writer” advice sheets (at least they did last time I checked).

Sometimes however, the questions seem so shallow or worse broad that I wonder whether the person is even vaguely cut out for an investigative job of any kind. For instance:

“I would like to work as a Medical Writer. I have publications in international journals. Who shoul I contact?”

Aside from the typo, where do you start? What does the questioner mean by medical writer? Secondly, is publication in academic journals a prerequisite for taking on that role? But, more importantly, who should they contact almost implies that they imagine there is some kind of career oracle at the top of the hill who dispenses careers in any given field. Or, were they expecting me to give them a list of contacts at medical magazines to whom they could send their CV (or Character Map). I really don’t know. I hope I don’t sound like I’m being harsh and smug, but there’s seeking advice and then there’s being almost irrevocably naive.

Oh, okay, okay…I’m just being harsh. I sent the questioner a hopefully helpful response…and wish them luck in their career, of course…