Better Drinking through Science

Now this is the kind of science we should be supporting more of! According to Seed Magazine, Robert MacPherson, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and David Srolovitz, a physicist at Yeshiva University, New York have discovered why some beers holds their head and others do not.

Surprisingly, the degree to which a beer holds its head is not directly correlated to the blood alcohol content of the beer's dispenser, as I had always suspected. But, according to Seed Magazine:

"Beer foam is a microstructure with complex interfaces. In other words: a cellular structure comprising networks of gas-filled bubbles separated by liquid.

The walls of these bubbles move as a result of surface tension—and the speed at which they move is related to the curvature of the bubbles. As a result of this movement, the bubbles merge and the structure coarsens,” meaning that the foam settles and eventually disappears."

Ostensibly, the difference in Lager and Stout, aside from the obvious differences in taste, lies in variations created either by the liquid surrounding the bubbles or by the gas filling the bubbles. My money's on the gas since I know (from meticulous pub-based research) that Guinness taps require a nitrogen source and other beer taps just require regular carbon dioxide.

On a related note, just to show you the difference between Nature, where MacPherson and Srolovitz's work was published yesterday and Seed Magazine where I just read about their paper, I saw the citation below on my weekly email table of contents from Nature and thought, "Yawn, who cares about von Neuman relations and microstructures." Of course I failed to read the last line in the summary. Contrast that with Seed's catchy headline, "Head Start: Scientists Crack Beer-Froth Enigma," all I can say is "thank God for science writers, Nature should consider hiring some!"

To recap:

Guiness and Budweiser are inherently different

Boring:

"The von Neumann relation generalized to coarsening of three-dimensional microstructures"
(Nature Volume 446 Number 7139 p1053)

Over 50 years ago, von Neumann derived an exact formula for the growth rate of a cell in a two-dimensional cellular structure. Now the extension of this result into three (and higher) dimensions has been found. The formula could lead to predictive models for various industrial and commercial processing scenarios, such as controlling the head on a pint of beer.
Robert D. MacPherson and David J. Srolovitz

Cool:

Permanent rest stop for Drive

I knew it was too good to be true. The creative genius behind Angel, Firefly (no not Joss) and the little-known Wonderfalls, Tim Minear, has once again been left high and dry by Fox.

I anticipated Drive's premiere for months before it finally aired in a two-part season premiere on April 15th. It's ratings were not great but I held out hope that once it settled into its usual Monday night at 8 PM slot that things would improve.

Disappointingly, however, the ratings did not improve and after just 4 episodes, Fox cancelled the series. I enjoyed the four episodes and was hooked by the high speed chases in the mysterious, secret, illegal, cross country road race. And Nathan Fillion is hot.

The curious thing about Drive is not that it was cancelled, good well-written television is almost always replaced by inane reality TV these days, but that fans seemed to know from the beginning that it would be cancelled.

Reading postings at Whedonesque and TV Squad on April 16th revealed that fans were cautious about becoming too attached to the show. After Minear's experiences with Firefly and Wonderfalls InterplanetSarah even likened Tim and Fox's relationship to Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. Like Lucy, Fox keeps pulling Tim's shows away at the last minute. To give Fox credit, though, they did a good job advertising Drive and, unlile Firefly, didn't premiere it on Friday night.

Much as I lament the loss of a show that I enjoyed (albeit briefly) I do wonder whether the networks made the only rational decision by cancelling a show with low ratings to avoid losing advertisers' dollars.

While I don't pretend to know how accurate Nielsen ratings are at predicting the actual viewership of a show, they do appear to be the only game in town. If the network execs are beholden to these ratings to determine which programs are revenue generating, then we shouldn't blame the network execs, but instead the Nielsen rating system for the loss of favorite shows.

Perhaps in addition to recruiting creative talent to write, direct and act in TV shows, we should also find additional ways to measure the viewership of these shows. We've seen that if Nielsen is to be believed, then the U.S. wants to watch trashy reality TV shows with no redeeming social value. This American TV consumer, at least, would rather turn the television off than watch the search for the next Pussy Cat Doll.

Cybertwin

So if you've scrolled down to the bottom of my blog lately you've probably noticed all the crap I have pasted down there.

In particular you may be wondering what the Cybertwin is all about. Well, try talking to it and find out! I'm kind of curious too. I spent about 45 minutes answering random questions in the hopes that when you talk to it it'll be entertaining and not very much like talking to me.

Here's an example of a recent conversation I had with my cyber twin (my input is listed as "you" the cybertwin is labeled "Flygal"):

You: Hello
Flygal: Hi there!
You: You're hot
Flygal: Hmm, time to get that perscription checked.
You: What's your name?
Flygal: Flygal76
You: What's your real name?
Flygal: Flygalerina
You: What do you enjoy doing?
Flygal: play with my cat
You: What kind of cat do you have?
Flygal: Any that my owner Flygal teaches me to.
You: That's nice
Flygal: Are you being sarcastic?
You: No, I'm being kind. I really like you.
Flygal: do you really vtc128?
You: yes, i want to call you later
Flygal: The reason why people are always wishing for what they
don't have, is that there is nothing else to wish for - Houghton Line
You: That's really deep.
Flygal: Thanks for the explanation.

I found it hilarious... I think I could entertain myself all day! Let me know if you have a Cybertwin and I'll go chat with it!

Stanford, Schmanford!

Who needs to move their lab to California now that New York's approved stem cell funding? As reported yesterday in ScienceNOW (the petulant child of science journalism most recently overheard tantruming, "I want my science and I want it NOW!") on Friday March 31st, with moments to spare before FY08 began, NY state legislators passed the state's budget including 100 million dollars for stem cell research in New York state.

Why New York state begins its fiscal year in April, I don't understand, probably along the same lines as why commuters must listen to their iPods at levels audible to passengers around them. Annoying, but in the end only hurting themselves.

So what does the 100 million dollars mean for New York researchers? Mainly, it means that because of lack of federal funding, the U.S. will continue to develop patchwork funding and therefore uneven regulatory policy for stem cell research. This is concerning because although funding stem cell research on a state-by-state basis may alleviate the short-term problem of low public funding for this research, it ignores the long-term problem that the U.S., as a nation, is rendering itself uncompetitive with other countries who have approved government funds for stem cell research country-wide.

If all researchers who wanted to conduct research on human embryonic stem (ES) cells resided in California, New Jersey, New York and a few others who are considering allocating state funds to supporting this research, there would be no problem. However, since biomedical research takes place in virtually every state in the nation and stem cell researchers are the new "It Scientists" this research should be happening everywhere. Though due to the lack of federal funding, it can only happen where state or private monies are available. This gives certain states a competitive advantage, but may hinders research cooperation overall.

To take a step back, the national policy on stem cell research was set by President Bush by Executive Order (EO) in August 2001 when he said that existing human ES cell lines could be used for government funded research but that no newly created stem cell lines could be used for federally funded research.

There were two main problems with this approach. The first was that most biomedical research is federally funded. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) boasts a 28 billion dollar a year budget including 15 million to support biomedical research at extramural (outside of the NIH campus). Additionally most academic researchers at top-tier research institutions receive most of their funding from the NIH. So by disallowing research using federal funds on newly created stem cell lines, the president was essentially putting a stop to research on new stem cell lines. Since then, new mechanisms of private funding for stem cell research have emerged, but no where near the scale of NIH funding.

The second problem with Bush's 2001 EO approach was that the existing human embryonic stem cell lines were no great shakes. Before researchers purified human ES cells, they started with a more laboratory friendly mammalian system, and purified Murine (mouse) ES cells. ES cells can't survive on their own, however, and must be grown on a so-called "feeder layer" of cells that provide nutrients and support to the ES cells. Since Murine ES cells were first purified, Murine feeder layers were readily available to provide support to the first human ES cells purified. At the time that Bush announced his 2001 EO, the only human ES cells available were grown on Murine feeder cells and thus not a therapeutically useful human ES source. (Why? because mice aren't people... nuff said)

So to bring the discussion back around to New York State's well-intentioned 100 million Empire State Stem Cell Fund, I say kudos to New York State, your stem cell researchers won't defect across the Hudson to New Jersey or across the country to California.

But the overarching problem hasn't been solved. In the absence of a permissive federal policy on funding human ES cell research, the patchwork state-by-state regulation discourages collaboration and may end up hampering research.