21 January 2011 late night

It is snowing again. Yuck.

Posts
Science
Betelgeus will eventually explode (supernova) and will become visible in our day sky. It will probably happen in the next, oh, 1,000,000 years or so.

Biology Yes, last year a laboratory produced gene (based on a natural pattern) has been embedded in DNA, and passed on. Now, a pattern developed in the lab was inserted..and worked!

Synthetic biology garnered national headlines in May 2010 when a team led by J. Craig Venter announced it had created the world’s first “synthetic cell.” The group used computers to copy an entire bacterial genome that, when inserted into a cell whose own genome had been removed, “booted up” the cell, which then passed the synthesized genome to its offspring.

This accomplishment was no small feat but the new genome, although man-made, was almost entirely a replication of one that already existed in nature. Now, a new study published January 4 in PLoS One has shown that DNA sequences designed in the laboratory and distinct from any found in nature can, when inserted into cells missing genes necessary for survival, “rescue” some of those cells.

They were not random sequences, explains Michael Hecht, a professor of chemistry at Princeton University who led the research. Instead they were intentionally patterned to code for amino acid arrangements, which can fold into relatively crude three-dimensional protein structures that are distinct from any natural proteins. In the past three decades scientists have refined methods for designing entirely new proteins from scratch, and they have shown that some can even catalyze reactions. “Since proteins are basically molecular machines that work in cells,” Hecht says, the next logical question was: “Can you get one that you design from scratch to work in a cell?”

Allergic reactions: there are some men who are allergic to their own semen; orgasm actually causes an allergic reaction in them! At least one of the stories has a happy ending; the doctors attempted to desensitize one man by using a very dilute solution of his own semen…and the technique worked!

Religion A philosophy of religion professor has come to the conclusion that theism is an intellectually indefensible position.

Parsons hung up his hat on September 1:

I have to confess that I now regard “the case for theism” as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position—no more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds who aim to fool us with claims they know to be empty. No, theistic philosophers and apologists are almost painfully earnest and honest… I just cannot take their arguments seriously any more, and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it.

Emphasis mine. Yes, good people believe some rather strange things, and if someone thinks that some deity intervenes in the affairs of this universe, that is indefensible; IMHO it is every bit as indefensible as:

see more funny videos

Now if someone gets comfort and inspiration from a good story or wants to speculate on “what lit the match” of the universe, well, who knows? I sure don’t.

Education Some college students don’t learn a thing in college. No, that isn’t a shock. What is a shock is that faculty really don’t have much say in the matter:

What did you learn at univerity? Not much, it seems, according to the data in a new book titled Academically Adrift. The book is reviewed in the latest issue if Inside Higher Ed [Academically Adrift].

The data aren’t surprising. The authors of the book show that 36% of students failed to learn anything after four years of college. Of those who did learn something, the gains were very modest.

Why don’t students learn?

The main culprit for lack of academic progress of students, according to the authors, is a lack of rigor. They review data from student surveys to show, for example, that 32 percent of students each semester do not take any courses with more than 40 pages of reading assigned a week, and that half don’t take a single course in which they must write more than 20 pages over the course of a semester. Further, the authors note that students spend, on average, only about 12-14 hours a week studying, and that much of this time is studying in groups.

But here is the kicker:

None of this is news my colleagues and me. Problem is, there’s not much we can do about it. If we increase the rigor of our biochemistry courses and start demanding more of our students then the result won’t be increased learning. It will simply mean that undergraduates will avoid biochemistry courses. In fact, that’s already happening since the University of Toronto has developed dozens of new programs that will award degrees in the biological sciences without ever forcing students to take a rigorous course.

This brings up a question that I often ask my students. If university is supposed to be difficult (rigorous) then it’s likely that some students won’t be capable of completing a degree. In an ideal setting with expertly taught, challenging, programs, what percentage of the incoming class of students should expect to complete a degree? Clearly the answer can’t be 100% because that bar is way too low. Should it be 50% as it was in many universities in the past? Lower?

I know that if our department were to raise standards, our “client” departments would scream bloody murder.