June 2008 Archives

Wales for Africa Links Group Conference

I attended the "Increasing the impact of health links" conference. See how Wales is linking with African countries: wales.nhs.uk

See also the ABM University NHS Trust link pages: swanih.org.

Won 3&4 at Langland Bay GC.

What great views. And I must buy a 3 wood to keep out of the long grass.

Rockpooling & lunching

Hunting for crabs.

Annabel got two teeth (must take photos).

Rhi Leaves

What's happened since my last blog? I must have been busy, or boring.

Rhi left! Bye, bye Rhi. See you, er, next week in Leeds.

Embryology podcast 16

Rhi finally badgered me into recording a neuroembryology podcast, now available from the medicine page of this website and from iTunes. It will either be the last or the penultimate podcast episode that we record before Rhi geographically leaves us next week!

Swansea-Gambia Link Talent Show

The Swansea University medical students (and friends) staged a talent show on Friday night. An awesome night of genuinely surprisingly strong talent entertained for almost 3 hours with live dance and music. They made a fair few quid for the Swansea-Gambia charity link, and I hope to be able to add some photos and the total amount raised to the Link's website later this week.

I hear videos of some of the acts are already appearing on YouTube.

Garden (after the weekend).

And this is how it looked after the weekend. I will next screw the boards down, cut the end to level, add an end piece, stain, lay edging for a slightly raised flower bed, and lay the soil and compost. I wonder when?

Garden (before)

Guess how my Father's Day weekend will be spent!

Cosmeston Triathlon 2008

Leading, originally uploaded by samwebster.

The Cardiff Tri Club's Cosmeston triathlon was held on Sunday, and we all had a very early (5am!) start. The race began at 7am, and the first man was back by just after 8am I think. It was a glorious, hot, sunny morning, and the early morning light was great for taking photos of the swim.

I've had lots of requests for photos, and unusually many of the competitors have also asked for copies of the wider, scenic shots rather than just of themselves. That feels good!

I really must buy a fast, long lens before next year's races though. This year the sun was too strong and in quite the wrong direction for me to get the photos I wanted of the cyclists with the lenses I had, unless I moved myself further down the cycle route, much too far away from the rest of the action. It would be great to get in-your-face images of your masks of pain on the bike leg!

Evolution caught in the act?

A 20 year experiment appears to have observed the chance development of an evolutionary innovation. 12 populations of E. Coli, derived from a single bacterium, have been cultured separately and observed. Sometime around the 31,500th generation of just one population the bacteria became able to metabolise the citrate in their culture medium. E. coli cannot normally do this.

The lead scientist, Richard Lenski, has regularly taken some of the bacteria from each population and stored them so that he can try to study the bacteria at any point during the study. He can go back in time and analyse (and regrow from frozen) the bacteria before, during and after any mutation. This ability to metabolise citrate seems to have occurred through one or more mutations, and would provide evidence against creationist arguments that this is impossible.

This fascinating work adds yet more evidence to the theory of evolution, and has built upon existing evidence that chance mutations occur (but are more easily recognised when they give negative effects). The work may take a very long time to reproduce given the tiny probability for multiple genetic mutations to occur and give a positive effect upon an organism, but the bacteria stored by Dr Lenski will demonstrate the timeline and how exactly the citrate mutation came about.

Read more at New Scientist.

And much more from Carl Zimmer's blog.

Blount et al., 2008. Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli. PNAS 105, 23; 7899-7906.

This work is very important. This tiny bacterium is telling us about our place in the universe.

Sleeping through

Annabel has slept through the night a couple of times recently. She's loving solid (read: mushed) food, although nothing too carroty. This seems to be helping keep her full now that she's getting bigger, and she slept from about 9pm to 7.30am the other night. Fantastic!

She's over 6 months old, and it looks like I'm going to be losing my home study again soon. I'd better start looking at other corners in the house that might fit a small desk.

Get ready!

Steve Jobs is about to start talking in San Francisco. What's coming?

This morning

Summer's back for a couple of days. This was my view cycling to work this morning.

Beach babes

Reading

Disparate coffee table reading in our house.

iTunes Films in the UK

You can now rent and buy films through iTunes in the UK! I've been waiting for this for ages, but I'm a little suprised that Apple managed to organise it already. I was expecting an Autumn release.

We never rent films from local DVD shops any more, and switched to the Amazon model of online/by post DVD rental a while ago. I like the Amazon idea because we could use one site for rentals, purchases and a wish list. We don't watch as many films as we used to though (kids, work, busy, busy, busy) and the films that we had on the shelf on rental for Amazon often weren't exactly what we were in the mood for when we did get time to sit in front of the home cinema gizmo. We watch far more films on the Sky Movies channels. We very rarely buy from Sky Box Office channels though. I think we feel that we already give too much money to Sky, and that the films on Box Office will soon be on Premiere anyway. The first idea is a bit daft, considering that I'll happily pay Apple...

So what is Apple offering? You could already buy TV programmes from iTunes, that I could watch on my Mac or, more likely, watch from my iPod touch. They're now offering films to rent or buy, to download from the iTunes store. The reason that I like this so much is that I can now browse a catalogue of films (about 700 initially) and pick a film that suits my mood. Excellent. I can rent new films for £3.49 and older films for £2.49. Unlike the TV programmes, that I always felt were too expensive, this is a spot on price point for me. I love the idea of sitting down to watch a film that I've been meaning to watch for years (like THX 1138, for example) and paying a couple of quid for the convenience. That's cheaper than many pints of beer, and I'm not allowed out to drink beer.

I have big boxes full of DVDs in my house. We have hundreds of films that we used to watch over and over again when we had time, but nowadays just sit in a cupboard. So I think the watch once rental model really suits us. It would be nice though, if after watching a particularly good film you could pay the difference between the rental and purchase prices to keep it forever. I haven't seen any indication of that yet.

It'll be "I Am Legend" for me tonight, I think.

Video podcast

Rhi and I are adding video podcasts to the embryology stream on iTunes. They're teaching core bits of anatomy, instead of embryology, and we start off going over some of the anatomical triangles of the neck in paint.

They're in .m4v format at the moment (MPEG4). I haven't decided how to put them on this website yet, but I will do.

The future of prosthetics?

Take a look at Dean Kamen's new prosthetic arm he and his team have invented. It's a robot arm that replicates the movements allowed by the shoulder, elbow, wrist and hand, and is controlled via the user's muscles elsewhere in the body. Guess why it was nicknamed "Luke".

Wired article.