Gin and twin studies. Good science?

    

Rare footage of the first ever twin study carried out by Johannes Kupler  in 1542 at Gutenberg University. Several important features can be seen here:  1. The attendance of the local superhero. This was commonplace at the time due to  concerns regarding the propriety of the tests. Note the application of "Cooling off water" by Domehead, one of the local Friends of Justice. His sidekick Pointhyead is showing the test subjects the sort of gap that there should be between them. 2. Note the presence of Kepler on the right behind Pointyhead, a traditional place of standing for researchers in the presence of superheroes. He may have a few fortifying Gins from the look of him which is understandable due to the "Make or Break" nature of the superhero visit. Kupler's assistant Jane of An Gee-la stands behind Domehead and looks disapprovingly at the older scientist perhaps realising that he is not in the best "frame of mind' to explain the experiment and  that she will have to do all the work to earn a "thanks for technical help" in the final paper.

The nature of the twin study appears to be a comparison of the ways males and females can find their way through a maze like bed structure. This was a contentious issue of the day and may have eclipsed Orb  Studies in some Italian universities. Guido Artemintini of Bologna published perhaps the definitive paper on the subjects "Who isth best beteweenth ye sheets, if ye knowth what I means, and I think ye do"

                                   

Mithradites, he died old

Blessed as we are at Riddled Manor with an over-supply of trivalent and pentavalent arsenic compounds -- entirely due to realgar and orpiment having such really cool names , not to mention being pigments of an unparalleled yellow (and not at all connected with a Mythbusters test of the theory that Napolean was killed by fumes from his arsenic-green wallpaper. Also, don't worry, Christmas Ale is supposed to be that colour), blessed as we are, we were terribly excited by the news about an organism that has seemingly become dependent on arsenic for its metabolism.

The organism in question -- an extremophilic but otherwise bog-standard gammaproteobacterium,* not an Archaebacterium or anything exotic -- had been cultured in the lab with more and more arsenic in the agar medium, and less and less phosphorus, until it evolved a tolerance for the toxin. The researchers reckoned that it was actually using arsenic atoms as substitutes for phosphorus (i.e. with redesigned DNA and RNA chains, and ATAs instead of ATP in its energy economy). Sadly, other researchers have cast nasturtiums on their claim.

Naturally one's immediate thought is to rewrite Strong Poison for the bacterial market. The plot would involve one strain of prokaryote inviting another strain over for dinner, and then (when the dinner guest expires painfully with all the symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning) using the alibi that both diners shared the omelette, with the host remaining unscathed -- so the police should direct their impertinent questions elsewhere. Eventually the only other suspect is cleared when it emerges that the murderer spent many months building up a tolerance for arsenic. All ends happily with conjugation. If the heirs of Dorothy Sayers take exception then they should feel free to kiss my Danish arse.

There is some question as to whether mammalian tetrapods can develop sufficient tolerance for this plot device to work in the Eumetazoan subkingdom. Bergen Evans ridiculed the whole notion of arsenic immunity, though his skepticism was based on the idea sounding silly rather than on any empirical evidence.

Bergen Evans at left

On the other hand, even if you doubt the authority of the N Y Times from 1854,** then I refer you to recent studies from 1906, 1916 and 1945, cited in the Handbook of Pesticide Toxicology. Sadly, no human research; also an unpardonable lack of twin studies. Have I mentioned that Christmas Ale is on the house for readers who happen to have a twin?
On the prehensile tail, chronic exposure to arsenic in the drinking water (liberated into the groundwater by adverse soil chemistry) is apparently a Bad Thing, i.e. carcinogenic and teratogenic. Or so I was informed by a young lady from New York (whom we met on the bus back from walking Tiger Leaping Gorge), who is working in Bangladesh as a sort of public-health residency, encouraging villagers to choose the least arsenical of whatever water supplies are available to them.

Jane resorted to more and more emphatic ways of showing her disapproval of people who used the "On one hand / on the other hand" construction to create the impression of uncommitted neutrality.

I am inclined to cut Ms. Sayers a great deal of slack in this dispute since as well as providing much of my toxicological knowledge, her novels also introduced me to the Kai Lung cycle, and to the poetry of Thomas Lovett Beddoes.


* A member of the Oceanospirillales order, i.e. related to the microbial endosymbiont of the bone-eating snot-worm.

** Citing a Dr Tschudi writing in "a French Medical Journal" and translated by "a writer for the Boston Medical Journal".

SUSPICIOUS CODA:

The Nominal Determinism theory of science vindicated again

Heavily pigmented subjects for twin study

In important recent research not from the Riddled Research Laboratory, it emerges that when Scottish people consume a few extra pieces of fruit or vegetable per day to break the monotony of their usual porridge-and-deep-fried-Mars-bars diet, then other Scottish people can detect the slightly less anemic, slightly yellower appearance of their skin, due to the carotene and such as. The effect is subtle but detectable as long as subjects do not include Scotspeople who spend time in the sunlight, of whom there are so many. This is good news for colour scientists looking for twin studies; not so good for the proprietors of tanning parlours. The first author's name is predictable:

The authors further claim that the vegetable eaters were also seen as healthier and more attractive. News reports have been focusing on this part of the study. Sadly, it turns out in the small print of the Methods section that Whitehead et al. built the assumption that yellower = sexier into their staircase scaling procedure, which would have gone all cattywumpus for subjects who leaned the other way and found albinism more of a turn-on.

Better mating potential

Needless to say there is an Evolutionary Psychology angle here, with the usual plonkers arguing that humans have evolved to detect slight differences in skin yellowness so we can see which members of the tribe have been eating more fruit & veges and are therefore more desirable as mates.

Decisions, decisions.

If the authors had done their job without the pre-assumed conclusions, and found (say) that yellower = less sexy, the same nimrods would have found a Evo-Psych just-so story for that instead (e.g. a less plant-based diet indicated better hunting skills or higher social status; while surviving despite the self-imposed health handicap of eating fewer vegetables was a sign of general fitness). If they had found no association between yellowness and TEH HAWT, this would once again have vindicated the premises of Evo-Psych (what with the bulk of human evolution taking place in Africa among ancestors with melanised skin -- yellowness not an issue -- before the recent mutation that turned some of us into partial albinos).

Potatoes were not counted as a vegetable.
Researchers were sponsored by the Unilever Corporation, manufacturers of fine ketchup-based products, which may or may not be a vegetable.

I get the best spam

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Organizing Committee it is our pleasure to inform you about the 3rd Cadaver Course on Tendon Transfers in Reconstructive Tetraplegia Hand Surgery that will be held between April 6-8, 2011 in Tokaj-Nyíregyháza, Hungary.

Our aim is to provide you with a reliable toolbox of operations that can be applied in the majority of reconstructions necessary in tetraplegia hand surgery. Therefore, much time will be spent on practicing surgical procedures in cadavers.

Wednesday І April 6, 2011

Lectures at the venue in the morning

Surgical techniques on cadavers in the Jósa András Teaching Hospital, Nyíregyháza in the afternoon

Dinner

Thursday І April 7, 2011

Lectures at the venue in the morning

Surgical techniques on cadavers in the Jósa András Teaching Hospital, Nyíregyháza in the afternoon

Wine tasting and dinner in a traditional wine cellar of the famous Tokaj region

---------------------------------------

Cadaver hand surgery --
worst band-name EVAH

I'm not entirely sure how I found myself receiving this advice that by investing €650 I could spend next Easter operating on cold dead hands and drinking Hungarian wine.* I'm sure there are cheaper ways to to fulfill both ambitions.

* It's not as if there are even any twin studies involved.

Skull-blogging: Face-in-the-Frost edition (101 uses for an enticingly high forehead)

Is it just me getting older, or does the Cranial Snowglobe Competition and Absinthe Cocktails night at the Old Entomologist seem to come earlier each year?

Another Kiwi's design used paper rather than fake snow, inspired by the conceit that if you shake up a pile of files often enough, eventually they will settle out in an orderly and properly indexed arrangement. You can tell that AK has lived through a number of departmental restucturings.


I was allowed to enter two snowglobes in the competition, in recognition of my prior work in twin studies, or at least in seeing double. On the left is the 'desert version', using sand, in a hipster revival of those sand pictures from the 80s. I can't remember the theme of the right-hand one because absinthe cocktails.

Greenish Hugh and Space-time Eddie had a combined entry. They reckoned it wasn't salacious because no nipples were visible as long the snow keeps swirling. I blame post-modernism.

Old Jem was simply not clear on the concept. 

At the end of the elimination rounds, with only AK and I left in the contest, there was nothing for it but to prove the merits of our rival snowglobes by seeing who could hold his beard closer to the candle flame without setting it afire.

It turns out that absinthe cocktails are not much good for extinguishing burning beards, and they certainly do not improve the smell. No-one could have predicted that.

(Slaves-of-crystal-brain image updated thanks to Joe in comments)

Life and art and SPIDER ALERT!!!

A favourite book of mine is Dairy of a Nobody about Mr. Charles Pooter. It's pretty gentle humour but I like it and sympathize with Mr. Pooter.
Now, I find that Pooter is not a nobody anymore.He has a spider transfer apparatus named after him. See it in action here. Or not, for those of the arachnophobic persuasion.

The spiders are collected using a contraption called a 'pooter' which sucks the spider up safely into a container.

BUT

Ten years ago, a team of archaeologists from the University of Bradford carried out a major survey of the nearby Chapel Fell cave.
At the end of each day, they took their equipment to a nearby house to store overnight.
In doing so, they accidently carried with them spiders hiding among the equipment.

One would have thought that the maniacal laughing of the spiders would have alerted the scientists. Possibly they were thinking of twin studies that they would like to be doing.

"Research in related areas" ≠ "twin studies"

This will come as a surprise to all of us who believed that the Internet is Made of Cats:

Dear Pro. ,
Considering your research in related areas, we cordially invite you to submit a paper to Modern Internet of Things (MIOT).

The Journal of Modern Internet of Things (MIOT) is published in English, and is a peer reviewed free-access journal which provides rapid publications and a forum for researchers, research results, and knowledge on Internet of Things. It serves the objective of international academic exchange.

For more information, please visit homepage: www.miot-journal.org.

Focus and Scopes:

1. Technologies and concepts in modern networked things
2. Design of future sustainable technologies linking the physical and virtual world
3. Fundamental and technology of sensors and converters
4. Emerging applications and interaction paradigms for everyday citizens
5. Communication systems and network architectures for the IOT
6. Experience reports from the introduction and operation of networked things in areas such as healthcare, logistics and transport
7. Real world applications and scenarios for embedded web services
8. Novel services and applications in IOT to facilitate environmental responsibility
9. Peer-to-Peer(P2P) technology and its applications in Internet of Things
11. Emerging IOT business models and process changes
12. Social impacts and consequences, such as security, privacy, opportunities and risks
13. RFID technology and its applications in Internet of Things (such as attacks, date protection and privacy-enhancing, cryptographic protocols and integration of secure)
14. Wireless Sensor Networks
15. Wireless mesh networks and cognitive networks
16. Mobile Networks
17. Integration of secure RFID systems
18. Resource-efficient implementation of cryptography in IOT devices
19. Interoperability of heterogeneous systems
20. Tool support for service creation, validation and testing in IOT system
21. Protocols for efficient message transmission to embedded devices
22. Web services executing in mobile or pervasive environments
23. Distributed sensor networks for remote monitoring and surveillance
24. Smart Objects

Above: Smart, objecting

UPDATE: tigris in comments reminds us that the alternative to the MIOT is the Modern Internet of Operators (MIOI), but that is only accessible to people with the necessary thought-control powers.

Drink up the finest drops

I have no idea which Copenhagen brewery could have sponsored this line of research into synaesthesia:

Needs MOAR TWIN STUDIES.

There have been any number of later replications. Irwin, Turrell and Wortz tried it in 1969 (in the LACMA Art & Technology Program) so at least they escape from the unworthy suspicion that they were merely trying to win an IgNobel prize.
Let us find out empirically which tone goes best with the Trotsky Headsplitter Bitter:


The Old Entomologist is also serving Lenin Lager, Mao Mild and Stalin Stout ("A Purge in Every Pint!").

"For the good of mankind"

Someone of a daughterly disposition is asking for a favour. She requires Peeps, for the purpose of pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge in scientific research for which the usual twin studies are not sufficient. She is hoping that someone within the US is willing to order a convenient shippable quantity of Peeps (whatever that is... a metric shitton or whatever), and then ship them across the big water to Upsidedownyland in exchange for reimbursement in terms of the shiny milk-bottle-tops that we use here as currency.

Usual suspects are usual.

UPDATE: Bleg is now noncupatory. Here to thank everyone is a Bonus Turdicken.

Take me to your Leda

It is inexplicable that no-one has filmed The Green Millennium yet. As always with Fritz Leiber's dramaturgy, the storyline is already cinematic.* Also, I can has Coen Bros. production of A Spectre is Haunting Texas plz?** Kthnxbai.

Leiber calls our attention to the cunning disguises favoured by female satyrs:

These disguises are one reason why artistic case-studies of satyrism are overwhelmingly dominated by males. This female example recorded by Rubens is a rare exception (see also less-SFW case studies by Rops and Anonymous). In addition, satyrism is an X-linked recessive trait (like most forms of inherited colour-vision deficiency), so the females in a satyrism pedigree generally display a normal plantigrade phenotype.

That is, mothers and daughters of satyrs are heterozygous carriers of the condition. Explaining voice, Lyonisation of the X chromatin, blah blah.

It comes as a surprise when satyrs manage to sire children at all, given their non-reproductive predilection for flames and large birds. The avian paraphilia may stem from a misunderstanding of the Leda myth, coupled with a failure to distinguish between swans and raptors.


Bonus avian paraphilia:

This whole issue of sex differences is relevant to my interests and is not just an excuse to mention the latest research on the female orgasm:
Greg Laden has an analysis of it; PZ Myers has an opinion. It is a twin study:

Using questionnaire data from over 10 000 Finnish twins and siblings, we found significant genetic variation in both male and female orgasmic function, but no significant correlation between opposite-sex twins and siblings.

Disappointingly, the words "I never thought I would find myself writing to Animal Behavior" do not appear anywhere in the paper.

* Though the MacGuffin is a green cat and who would believe that?
** UPDATE: Bonus A Specter is Haunting Texas news. Teh Wiki sums up the background:

Canada is now North Texas and what is left of civilization in North America is ruled by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual "good ole boys" convinced of their own moral superiority.

In the absence of any interest from Hollywood, we at Riddled Enterprises have decided to step in and make the movie adaptation ourselves.

Currently working on the powered-exoskeleton prop for the Scully character.