The travelling salesman problem and bacterial computers

This post was generated by the marvellous webcomic, below, from David Malki's Wondermark (a fascinating project in and of itself).

As usual, click on the image to make it legible. Weblink here.

Witticisms aside, the first thing that came to mind was the travelling salesman problem, a lovely little piece of computational maths. To give you the gist: it's all about a travelling salesman, who has to figure out how to optimise his sales route so that he only visits each place once, and completes the route in the shortest possible distance. It's been the focus (well, sort of) of such things as genetic algorithms (which can be used for all sorts of fascinating things, and I'd strongly advise that you explore the area further), and now a new field called bacterial computing.

Bacterial computing fuses mathematics and biology to compute problems - sort of like genetic algorithms on 'roids. And recently, it was used to solve something called the Hamiltonian Path Problem, which is similar to that issue faced by our anonymous, but hopefully ubiquitous, salesman. The Burnt Pancake problem also features, which name I am endlessly amused by. Also, there's an unrelated, but darkly amusing, xkcd strip about pancakes.

The whole field is called, enticingly, 'synthetic biology', and the brains behind it reckon that it has uses not only for solving fun maths puzzles, but also for more concrete uses such as medicine, energy and even the environment.

Anyway, the paper can be found here (it was published in the Journal of Biological Engineering, which, given its name, I expect to be presenting me with a means of having gills as well as lungs sometime very soon).

Magnetic monopoles?

Oh, this is too, too good.

Only 2 days after a New Scientist article discussing some 13 phenomena that science is still unable to understand - including the fact that magnets don't seem to come in a fashionable, slinkier 'monopole' - it's been announced that, in fact, they do.

A magnetic dipole (yes, you can see it with iron filings, but I thought this was prettier)

Haha.

To paraphrase, for those too busy (or uninterested, in which case stop reading), I shall make the attempt:

Magnetism and electricity are very strongly interwoven, as everyone who's done highschool physics knows. However, while we are able to see component parts of electricity - electric charges themselves, such as electrons - the same doesn't hold for magentism. Magnets always come in 'North and South' flavour.

Now, clever people who theorise about these things are sure they must exist, but we just hadn't seen any of them yet. And we can't make (apparently) them either. But we had hope.

And now, vindication! Wahay! Well, sort of. We have, in fact, observed the next best thing to them, says a paper to be published in Science (which means it's probably not a hoax). In essence, two different groups of researchers have dug up differing evidence of these analogues.

Also, the scientists got excited about things like fractioning in 3D and so forth, but this went somewhat over my head...Actually, most of it did, but nonetheless, still very cool.

Cows and...seaweed?

The discussion of how to deal with ruminant emissions is now as pervasive as the emissions themselves, it seems.

Here in NZ, we have the PGgRC, which has been set up to deal specifically with the issue. After all, something like a half of NZ's emissions are due to these gases! Gosh! And stories dealing with how to offset the emissions are all over the place.

In no particular order, some of the more recent ones:
The NZ Herald: Hungry bugs could slash animal-gas danger
The register: Bubbly-belly-bugging boffins battle bovine belch peril (possibly the best headline I've yet seen, and it sort of fits with the country responsible for more video tracking of its citizens than any other)
Sciencealert: Diet may cut cow fart emissions (perhaps the most direct headline)

The interesting thing is that this last strategy, if it works, could be perfect for New Zealand. We have access to lots and lots of seaweed, and lots and lots of cows. And while I'm fine with GM, I think Occam's Razor is a great guideline, and something like this is less likely to come with the usual hysterical press-release battles, and potentially unseen side-effects, possible with messing the bugs themselves (for example).

If anyone's really interested in the issue, I can happily supply more resources (and even a podcast)...

The geoengineering debate

Geoengineering. Yes. Likely to spark heated (haha) debate, because if people are uncomfortable with the idea of tweaking living organisms (GM), then people are definitely going to be uncomfortable with slinging giant mirrors into space, and injecting dust into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight (which reminds me a little bit of the 'we burned the sky' line in The Matrix).

The Royal Society of London has released the results of a year-long study into various geoengineering options, and have looked at them in terms of cost, risk, and so forth. More on the report can be found here (also, the 2020Science blog has some good posts on it as well).

Click on image to enlarge. Preliminary overall evaluation of geoengineering techniques (Royal Society of London, Geoengineering the Climate, Sept 1 2009)

The reason it's sparked comment is that people are concerned that the techniques, even the safest of them, might cause downstream problems we can't predict. The report was, however, pretty clear on the fact that emissions reduction should absolutely be seen as the primary goal, and that geoengineering efforts should be a 'last ditch' strategy.

Some comment on the matter can be found here and here.

I must say, I agree with the need to further consider these options. Yes, we need to look at mitigating emissions, of course, but if Kyoto is any indication, we stand the real possibility of failing to reach the various global and country-specific targets to be set in the upcoming year or so. And it is highly likely that new technologies are yet to be invented which will help in these efforts. But a plan B is generally a good idea - even if we never implement such measures, better to plan for them now than, in 10+ years' time, to realise that such measures are necessary, but cannot be implemented in a timely fashion.

Also, there's the pure geek joy of simply contemplating huge mirrors on the sky (having said that, Futurama has already warned us of the potential pitfalls of such a technology).

Jellyfish, continued

The BBC's posted this beautiful set of photographs of deep-sea jellyfish (honestly, I'm beginning to think I have a thing about these creatures).

(I couldn't use one of the beeb's pictures, so have put in another cool jellyfish photo.)

I think I like the small blue jelly best, just because it really does look like a graphic generated for a show such as Fringe (yes, this last link really does point to Fringepedia's page on the graphics used in the show). Of course, the rest of them look like something cooked up in the fevered imagination of a sci-fi/fantasy artist at the point just before the absinthe abuse of the night causes them to pass out...

Pretty produce

So, our urge to mess with our food continues unabated, it seems, and as usual, aesthetics are a fundamental part of this (as with many of our endeavours, I think).

So yes, a few new instances of pleasantly pretty produce. In first place (because I live in NZ, if nothing else), are some very special red apples.


A local scientist, Dr Richard Espley, has been working on understanding the genetic mechanisms behind the red colour in apples, with the idea being that apples can be grown which have novel colour characteristics, as well as oodles of anti-oxidants. And when I say red apples and novel colour characteristics, I mean it: not only will the skins be red, but the flesh of the apples as well. Apparently, apples with red flesh do exist, but while they have ligher levels of good things (liek antioxidants), they don't taste nearly as good as their white-fleshed counterparts.

Richard won awards at the recent MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year awards, and works at Plant and Food, one of New Zealand's Crown Research Institutes.

Next on the list, and perhaps slightly more flippantly, are heart-shaped cucumbers.


Yes, you heard me correctly: from the people invented bento box art (links abound), comes the next element in making the everyday necessity of nutrient ingestion a more pleasant affair. Other shapes include stars, and who-knows-what next.

And, hilariously, baby-shaped pears.


The Chinese farmer involved has been perfecting his technique for some 6 years by now (well, that's what I read), and they're selling for £5 a pop. I think they're very reminiscent of the Buddha, don't you?

Of course, if these had been made in the shape of other deities, I can imagine there may have been more of a fuss (although, if you've ever thought of making truly iconic toast, have a look here, and I've also seen various kits and DIY vids on google as well).

But yes - hooray for those tirelessly endeavouring to beautify our meals.

PhD Comics gets it right, again

Couldn't resist. PhD comics have been around for quite some time (and I would encourage you to read them whenever you get a chance), but this one (also shown below) was just far too perfect to pass up.

Clicking thereon will show it in a slightly more readable form, for those of you not blessed with supervision.


And, of course, this one as well.