The Journal of Science and Awesomeness – J. Sci. Awe.

I’m writing a research paper this weekend and I’m finding myself looking for an alternative way to publish the research; a way to escape the tyranny of TIFF compression, reference formatting, and writing in Times New Roman or Arial (font size 11). I don’t think such a strictly written format suits the communication of all research. I would actually love to throw CMYK-only caution to the wind and launch my very own peer-reviewed academic journal, which would allow scientists to communicate their research through the medium of short film – something that would be much more appealing to me than the hours of MS Word ahead of me. Here would be my Guidelines for Authors for scientists considering publishing with J. Sci. Awe.:

Impact Factor: “Mind-blowing” (Daily Star)

RESEARCH ARTICLES: Standard research articles may be submitted as short films of up to 15 minutes in length.

Abstract/Trailer: This must open with a promising voiceover that summarises the background, methodology, and main findings of the research. It should include well-known dramatic music that may or may not appear in the main article, and have a tagline that can appear on all promotional material.

Introduction: All relevant background material must be presented as dark and moody footage set to a retrospective narrative, preferably voiced by Patrick Stewart. All citations must be included as street/building/character names that allude to the author(s).

Materials and Methods: Methodology may be included as a montage scene with a maximum length of one aspirational pop or soft rock song or as supplementary footage which will be included as a DVD extra.

Results: All results must be presented as a reconstruction of true events. Primary investigators may be played only by actors of note such as Maggie Smith or Judi Dench. Postdoctoral scientists should be played by respected actors who have featured in at least one period film, e.g. Julianne More or Sean Penn. All other researchers may be played by intelligent Hollywood starlets such as Natalie Portman or any available Gyllenhaal.

Discussion: This section must be represented by character development that vaguely to accurately portrays the impact and relevance of experimental results. Supporting material may be referenced by including appropriate minor characters and/or cameo appearances.

BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS: Short communications may be presented as a film with a maximum length of 3:07 minutes. A linear narrative is not required, but the film should feature abstract clips in rapid succession which, when viewed together, represent your main findings. Discussion/Conclusion must be presented as one word (Helvetica Bold, white) that appears on a black background in the final frame of the film, before fading to black.

REVIEW ARTICLES: We accept review articles from prominent or celebrity scientists who wish to collate and interpret the most recent new findings in their area of research. These may be films of up to 42 mins in length and should follow the talking heads format popularised by the BBC. All review articles must feature at least one contribution from Professor Brian Cox.

Corresponding authors must be available for any and all talk show or comic convention appearances for the month following the article’s release.

Why C.S.I. needs Star Trek

I was catching up on my podcasts yesterday and came across an interview with wealthy bazillionaire, Elon Musk, who used some of the money he made from PayPal to create space exploration technologies company, SpaceX. When explaining his reasons for investing in (and encouraging governments to invest in) space exploration, he said that “life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems”.

It got me thinking about curiosity-led science and the strange divide that exists between it and problem-solving science. It also, somehow, got me thinking about late-night television.

I’ve always enjoyed a late-night C.S.I. marathon on Living. There’s a sense of closure and satisfaction with each episode as they use DNA, molecules of paint, and impossibly fast lab equipment to convict a lonely Las Vegas card-dealer of putting a 3 year old tabby in a wheelie bin. It also represents a particular strand of science that is driven directly by the need to solve problems using information we have on how the world works; the kind of science motivated by the need to cure diseases, improve technologies, and combat climate-change.

In the 90s, my late-night televisionary marathon of choice was the back-to-back episodes of Star Trek TNG shown on Sky 1 of a weeknight – all wormholes, time-travel, and inertial dampeners. Star Trek camply captured the essence of curiosity-led science; the kind driven by the need to explore and understand the Universe; Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Apollo missions, and the Large Hadron Collider are all products of this curiosity.

Curiosity-led scientific research and problem-led scientific research are not mutually exclusive – to combat viruses, we need to know how they evolve; to make computers, we need to understand the subatomic particles in their silicon chips; and to get a decent 3G signal, we need to understand magic and witchcraft – they are part of the same overall process. In other words, we wouldn’t have Grissom without Picard.

Problem-solving research is undoubtedly essential, but it relies on a solid foundation of curiosity-led research. When the Governmental departments were renamed and reshuffled earlier this year, science was essentially remarketed as commercially driven ‘innovation’. My worry now is that only research with a direct commercial return will get supported. Maybe this will satisfy an understandable new culture that wants a C.S.I.-like return on their investment, but I think that now, more than ever, is the time to encourage the Trekkies.

Plus, Deanna Troi is awesome!

Cherita and the rest of us

[DISCLAIMER: This post is more sentimental than usual, but I had a little gin with breakfast*]

I started drawing Cherita Chen last year…

“Chut up!”

“No, it’s true.”

Cherita is a character from the film Donnie Darko who, for me, is one of the heroes of the piece – and not just for demonstrating that earmuffs can be a valid lifestyle choice.

Throughout the film [particularly in the Director's Cut], Cherita experiences such heart-breaking abuse that it almost felt wrong to include it as text in this image.

Cherita is the film’s innocent. She is abused not because she is mean or invented pop-up advertising, but because she looks and sounds different from the majority. Cherita is bullied. Each time it happens, Cherita becomes more and more distant from the group – she stands away from them at the bus stop, she wears earmuffs to block out their voices, and she eats her lunch alone. She represents real life for too many people.

I think Cherita is a hero for just leaving the house, but what really makes her special [and my favourite character in the piece] is her ability to get on stage and dance in front of those same people. I would have completely understood were Cherita unable to do either of these things but, as a character who represents the bullied, I think she deserves hero status.

And so, to my point: I had this idea to create a series of short comic strips inspired by Cherita [but only inspired by, you understand? - I'm not a fanfiction fan, nor am I a "getting sued by Richard Kelly" fan]. She might have superpowers, she might not. She might have a costume, she might not. Her arch-nemesis might be Oprah, she might not. Ultimately, the plan is to create a character, inspired by Cherita and informed by people I know… so… if anyone, like me, was bullied for preferring astronomy to AstroTurf or Kylie to killing small animals, and would like to contribute their experience of same to a story, please get in touch.

One more thing: Jolene Purdy is the very talented actress who played Cherita. She’s very sweet and is well worth a follow on Twitter – link

*I didn’t really have gin with breakfast.

Dead Reckoning

Janeane Garofalo, I salute you – primarily for playing Heather Mooney in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion ["This dress exacerbates the genetic betrayal that is my legacy"], but I salute you nonetheless. As well as reminding me of Lisa Loeb, appearing in this and being generally awesome, you have now given me an analogy that I will steal and use forever. While describing Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the Rosie O’Donnell radio show [add one more awesome point], Garofalo used the term, “dead reckoning”, to describe Hasselbeck’s politics… I shall now shamelessly steal this analogy and apply it to science.

Dead reckoning is a navigational term, and a way to estimate your position when you don’t have access to navigational tools – you take a previously determined position, guesstimate the direction and distance you’ve travelled, and use that information to determine your current location. The problem is that, because you use this estimation to plot your course, any errors are cumulative. It’s like surfing YouTube clips using only the suggestions panel to choose your next clip [and if you accidentally click "Twilight Fan Video" along the way].

As societies and cultures, many of our ideas and opinions have survived by dead reckoning – generations of people doing things a certain way because that’s how it’s always been – and I think that process has facilitated things like sexism, racism, and homophobia. One of the best navigational tools available to us is science. I don’t just mean the Petri dishes, boffins, and iPhone 4s; but the idea that we can understand the world on its own terms. Science connects us to reality in a unique way that allows us to determine our position based on fact [science is the YouTube search bar that saves you from the next Bella and Edward montage video set to an album track from Katie Melua]. I’ve decided that my next post will be about the ways that science can filter through popular culture and get us out of that feedback loop… mostly because I have an incredible shoulder pad-era picture of Dana Scully that I really want to use.

DNArt

I ran one last DNA gel before I finished up in the lab this week.

 

DNArt – Shaun O’Boyle

 

I had some PCR samples (left over from my research) that I’d been keeping in the fridge. I keep a PCR sample in the same way that I keep the Guardian entertainment supplement if it has a thought-provoking deconstruction of the Miley Cyrus / Hannah Montana dichotomy (they’re not the same girl!) – I’m convinced that I’ll need it someday, whereas in reality I really really won’t.

I loaded the leftover samples as the gel ran, so that the final image would represent a question mark (with some Photoshop intervention and a 1kb DNA ladder on the left). The question mark, while echoing the mystery of where Hannah ends and Miley begins, is intended to represent two things: One was the specific question I was asking in my own work (why do two copies of the same gene behave differently depending on which parent they were inherited from?); The other was the open-mindedness central to science – to ask questions independent of dogma, and to listen to the answers you get.

My inspiration, and the first electrophoresis art I saw was this excellent piece by Paul Vanouse. He used restriction enzymes to digest DNA and create different “portraits” that explore the genetic identities of Cyrus and Montana (not really the last part).

Shaun.

Perspective is important

I was so happy, this month, to see my first non-academic article position itself across two pages of THE (proud to be gay) Magazine, kept company by a halftone same-sex penguin couple and an advertisement for a fetish store (as a scientist, you rarely get such great placement). Link to the article.

THE took a ridiculously long draft (with more pop culture references than the casual reader could have handled) and created an edit that maintained every single point I wanted to make (albeit with less allusion to Jennifer Aniston) – so I’m very grateful for that.

I wrote this article because I think it’s important to understand the world on its own terms, to take ourselves out of our self-centred perspectives, and to see reality for what it is and not for what years of social constructs have told us it is. Plus, I had a really great joke about Sandra Bullock, but then she won an Oscar and it wasn’t funny anymore. The overall point I wanted to make was that to consider only the majority as “normal” is bollocks, and that it is every bit as “normal” to be attracted to the same sex as it is to the opposite sex. My hope is that a more objective view will encourage those of us in minorities to demand the equality we are entitled to.

For anyone who would like to read the unedited version of my article, here’s a link to the pdf: Perspective (Long Version)

Shaun.

First posts are so intimidating…

I suddenly feel like my vintage 13 inch iBook is looming above me, arms folded, waiting expectantly for me to write something funny, intelligent and/or relevant for my first blog post.

Well iBook, there’s absolutely no fun in that for me so, instead, I’m going to post a link to a video that beautifully captures what it’s like to be oppressed by office life and also by stockings… I understand neither and both.

*sidesteps awkwardly*

Shaun