Ananova - Washermen's threat to politicians

Ananova - Washermen's threat to politicians

50 ships to look out for

Ships in the Spotlight: if you happen to be around a harbour and spot one of these, some people would be interested. Click here for more info.

Asbestos carrier blocked on its way to India

Asbestos carrier blocked | Greenpeace International
Funny, and Goa was looking like such an attractive prospect next year...

Greenpeace sting exposes pirate loggers | Greenpeace International

Greenpeace sting exposes pirate loggers | Greenpeace International

Morning bake

Here's this mornings abomination....it was better yesterday, really. During the fermenting process the sweet and sourdough sort of merged together into this disney-like character. 

Milling

We have made bread . Using the momentum of my suite-mate's latest compulsion, and the bread making knowledge of http://bread.allrecipes.com/ we successfully (well...) created a sourdough and a sweet bread loaf. I personally think the amount of toil and kneading put in was a bit in excess, at any rate it's given the suite-mate a new appreciation for the humble loaf. It gave me the most violent attack of hiccups I've had in a long time - I think the yeast were wreaking their revenge for being pounded for so long. Luckily, I'll get to expose their kind to all sorts of reagents in the lab to reassert authority.
::
My TAing job is going quite well, the first years this time round are probably more interesting than we were, It's a wonderful feeling when they turn to you, as an overflowing reservoir of knowing and wisdom, which causes you to grandiloquently refer them to the manual to which they bury themselves in....I try, I try. The introductory labs are over, and they should have enough skills not to wound each other too badly - Today: Pancreatic enzyme activity.

Gators and Neuraminidase

Tonight's been a documentary night. From the Florida everglades and alligator attacks on humans to the zoonoses of Hong Kong. So let's start with the gators.

Gators

An attack on an islet dwelling Florida resident by a 15 foot alligator sparked off a whole bunch of legislative action against the prehistoric reptilians. Any alligator longer than 4 feet within a certain perimeter of inhabited islands is killed by legal hunting teams. Like a 3 foot fence wouldn't be enough. During the doc, the phrases man-killer, human hunter, and the like were used liberally.
Is it so bizarre to people that creatures that are:

1. carnivorous
2. decked out in millions of years of evolutionary hunting gear and
3 .which take advantage of the stupidity of housing developers

would attack us soft and easily crunched primates? NatGeo has let me down through its latter day sensationalistic backwash. If I wanted that I'd just watch the news. Anyway, the fatal blow to the attacked woman wasn't the bite, but the microorganisms living in the gator's mouth which were practically injected into her bloodstream. Oral hygiene in the reptile has been sacrificed for nutrition - large chunks of meat which are hard for their dental arrangement to handle are allowed to rot inside their mouth until they're soft enough to swallow. A great excuse to fill your cheeks up with food and then amble about breathing heavily at dinner parties . It may also come in handy when attempting to masticate some of the cafeteria food at uni. A materials engineer should take a look at that stuff, spaceflight will never be the same again. On to...


Superflu

Bad news on this front I'm afraid, and not just because of NatGeo's rather tabloid-like presentation of the not so well phrased information. Pharmaceutical companies aren't stockpiling unless someone pays for it and, of course, no one's paying for it. The antiviral that is our best bet to contain the virus doesn't actually stop it infecting, but locks it inside the cells it's already hijacked. If you have no idea what I'm on about and would like to, check out PubMed which I've linked to in the Links section of this site. Searching their free online textbooks should clarify things. The creation of the virus is likely to happen inside border species like pigs, since they can harbour both human and avian (bird) strains of flu. In that environment, the flu viruses can merge genomes and the new 'superflu' (another despairingly panic inducing sensationalism coined by sensationalist panic mongers the world over) is forged. It's natural enough that this would eventually happen, the unnatural part is that it's been made so easy. To me, the whole factory farming trend is creating a good chunk of the problem. Keeping that many animals packed in such deplorable conditions is not just cruel, but provides the perfect conditions for viruses and similar pathogens to mutate and spread very fast. But then, who worries where the meat you get in the supermarket comes from right ?

The Meatrix

Long live free range!

Sources
Gator:http://www.pbs.org/kratts/world/na/alligator/images/alligator.jpg

 

Rampaging Silt

Last night I spent a few uplifting hours in the water tank on top of the house. About a decade and a half ago during a storm the top flew off. The contraption I assembled to act as a temporary regulator and which ended up searching for extraterrestrials was substituted by a carefully sliced water bottle. It worked well. Anyway, our neighbour who has experience with such things came over to fix it, but sadly was unable to access the inlet which was placed about two stories above any sort of surface. So, with the tank partially drained and years of silt murking the universe I jumped in and performed very odd tasks with wrenches, mallets, chisels, buckets, a trowel, a dustpan, and brass fittings. Anyway, we think it's fixed. And no, my life doesn't wholly consist of the water tank, but that's all that seems to make to the internet.