I’m off to three conferences over the next two weeks, presenting something at all of them. I’m sure they will have their highs and lows, but to try to maximize return on my time, I’ve decided to set myself some targets for each one:

#solo10 – Grok Mendeley (I have a feeling this is being too optimistic, but we’ll see).

#altc2010 – Business models: I’ve got the brains, You’ve got the looks, Let’s make lots of money…

#reps10 – Herding cats? Where’s the can opener? Suggestions via the comments please.

Science fiction author Hal Clement (1922-2003) was known for creating aliens that are well-adapted to the often extreme physical conditions on their home planets. Clement is probably best known for his 1954 novel Mission of Gravity, which takes place on a planet with a surface gravity hundreds of times greater that of Earth. But that’s not the only unique world he imagined.

Clement’s novel Cycle of Fire is set on the planet Abyormen, which orbits a dwarf star, which in turn circles a blue giant. The planet’s usual orbit creates two sixty-five-year-long seasons; the “hot season” and the “cold season”. Each season is dominated by a different intelligent species. 

Abyormen’s life forms have evolved a unique form of reproduction to account for the widely varying in environmental conditions. All its creatures – including the intelligent ones – lay spores in their alternate season counterparts. Those spores lie dormant until the seasons begin to change.

When the cold season on Abyormen draws to a close, the “cold” Abyormenites die and the “hot” Abyormenites emerge from the spores left in their bodies decades before. Those newly hatched “hot” Abyormenites carry spores for the next generation of “cold” Abyormenites, which in turn lie dormant until the next change of the seasons. Thus each sapient species on the planet absolutely depends on the life and ultimate death of the other for their own survival.
  As Donald Hassler writes in his Clement reader’s guide, the inspiration for the Abyormenites came from an article about the viruses that infect bacteria:

Clement has said that Andre Lwoff’s article entitled “The Life Cycle of a Virus,” which appeared in the March 1954 Scientific American, gave him the idea for Cycle of Fire. Not only is the content of Lwoff’s piece referred to in chapter fourteen of the novel but also the poetic tone of this scientific article underlies the novel. Lwoff describes the way certain viruses are capable of remaining dormant inside the totally alien life form of certain bacteria for several generations before they reappear as distinct virus life, and he emphasizes the cycles of life and death coupled here with reproduction and the protection of generation. Although much of Clement’s fiction avoids such sublime and poetic images, Cycle of Fire is meant to demonstrate, on this most elemental level of life and death (not microscopic in the novel, of course), the symbiotic inter-dependence of what seem to be very alien life forms.

André Lwoff received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for his research on viruses  – called “bacteriophages” – that infect bacteria.  Bacteriophages have two different modes of reproduction. In some cases the bacterial cells are broken open (“lysed”) after the viruses reproduce, in what is known as the lytic cycle.

But not all bacteriophages destroy their hosts. As Lwoff explained in his Nobel Prize lecture:

As far as we know, the bacteriophage itself controls its own regulation. The bacterium infected by a virulent bacteriophage has become a virus factory which cannot be stopped except by its own disintegration. A bacterium has no control over the development of a virulent bacteriophage. But this is an extreme case. The relations between virus and bacterium do not always have this dramatic character.

As a matter of fact bacteriophages exist which do not kill all the bacteria which they infect. Some infected bacteria survive and perpetuate the ability to produce bacteriophages. These are lysogenic bacteria. Their investigation has profoundly modified our ideas on the relations between cell and virus.

The DNA of the so-called “temperate” bacterophages that follow the lysogenic life cycle  is integrated into the bacterial genome. The viruses remain dormant until the environment in the bacterial cell is favors lytic reproduction. It’s easy to see how Clement drew on the life cycle of these microbes in imagining the life cycle of the Abyormenites.

While this story might just be considered merely an interesting writing anecdote, I think it illustrates an important element of science fiction. Clement read an article about cutting edge science, but didn’t just incorporate the scientific observations directly into his story. Instead he built on the science to create something very different from the original inspiration. I think that’s one of the factors that distinguishes science fiction from fiction with science. And that’s one of the reasons why I enjoy reading SF.

References:

Lwoff, Andre. “The Life Cycle of a Virus” Scientific American 190, 34-37 (1954) doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0354-34 [requires a site license to access)]

Lwoff, Andre. “Lysogeny” Bacteriol Rev. 17(4): 269-337 (1953) [free access]

Hal Clement (Starmont Reader’s Guide) by Donald M. Hassler @ Amazon.com

Cycle of Fire by Hal Clement @ Amazon.com (you can get a “new” copy for only $102!)

In the run up to the general election, I considered setting up a “noisy” Twitter account where I could post high volumes of tweets around a particular event without annoying my regular Twitter followers. After useful discussions, I decided to mothball this account (and a few others) and to use my regular Twitter account for conferences.

With the conference season coming up over the next few weeks, that means there’s going to be some noise on this account, from #solo10, #altc2010 and maybe even from #reps10. If it bothers you, I apologise in advance. If you want to unfollow me, go ahead. Selective filtering is one of the things Twitter lacks (can you say “freemium”?). But if you can stand the noise, I’d welcome your input at these events.

Update: Some Twitter clients (such as Tweetdeck) have filtering options built in. I have to say I find the Tweetdeck filters tricky to use, but I need to practice more. The first time I tried, I broke JamesClay.

Recently Twitter risked a rent in the timespace continuum by suggesting I follow myself. Well that’s how it looked, but the truth is a bit more complicated. Twitter picked up on one of my other identities and suggested it back to me.

I’ve regularly made attempts to filter various social networks by setting up alternative identities, all clearly labeled as different varieties of me. For the most part, this has been for teaching purposes, where I felt students would be put off by the volume coming from my regular account. However, in spite of tools such as Hootsuite, and Tweetdeck (currently my preferred Twitter/Facebook client) experience across many networks has taught me that the maximum number of identities I can effectively maintain on a single service is: two.

Of course, YMMV, and I don’t know how personal this limit is, but I’d be interested to hear your experiences of managing multiple online identities.

Related:

• My Twitter Strategy

Not bad, but not as good as chocolate beetroot cake:

Ingredients:

250g/10oz good, dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into pieces.
250g/10oz unsalted butter, cut into cubes, plus more for greasing.
250g/10oz caster sugar.
3 free-range eggs.
150g self-raising flour
250g beetroot, boiled until tender, peeled and grated.

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Grease a baking tin of approximately 20 x 30 x 3cm and line the bottom with baking parchment.
2. Break up the chocolate into pieces, cut the butter into cubes then mix them up a bit in a heatproof bowl. As the oven begins to warm up, put the bowl onto one of the shelves for a few minutes until the chocolate and butter starts to melt. Stir, and put back into the oven for a few more minutes to melt completely.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar together in a bowl until combined, then beat in the melted chocolate and butter until smooth. Gently fold in the flour then the beetroot – be careful not to overmix or it will make the brownies tough.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth over the top with a spatula. Bake for about 20 minutes. A knife or skewer pushed into the middle should come out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Don’t be tempted to overcook them! Remove the tin from the oven and leave on wire rack to cool before cutting into squares.

I put this question up as a Question on Medpedia but would like to also present it to my visitors here. You might go to Medpedia and look at any responses but also access the link below and then return and write your comments here.

I just came across another interesting blog: How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends.

It’s author, Dr. Grasshopper, graduated from medical school in May and just started their residency.

Most of the posts aren’t specifically about science fiction – although Joss Whedon, I’m Calling You Out discusses the incorrect portrayal of spinal tap in an episode of Dollhouse. 

I especially enjoyed the posts on how someone could really die of a broken heart and Tools for the Toolbox: Pellet with the Poison (who doesn’t like a good fictional poisoning?).

Check it out!

Ever since I first saw If in the 1960’s I’ve been on the side of the machine gun toting rebels. I’m a comprehensive lad and I’m proud of it.

Which is only part of the reason I found Gary Lineker’s bonehead rant about Charterhouse so amusing.

What’s wrong with it? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it my lad. It’s dead.

Dear Steve,

In September 2009 my Macbook (serial number W87491WMZ64), purchased in June 2008, stopped working one month out of guarantee. The Apple Highcross Leicester store determined the cause to be a faulty logic board, making the cost of repair uneconomic. I was forced to abandon a 13 month old laptop and purchase a Samsung N120 running Windows as a replacement. This has worked flawlessly for the last year.

This month, my iMac (serial number CK714019VUY), purchased in 2007, developed display problems making it unusable. The Apple Highcross Leicester store has said the machine needs a new display (cost approximately £500) and/or a new logic board (cost approximately £500), again making repair uneconomic.

I cannot afford to keep abandoning expensive machines after a short time and am being forced to consider running Windows or Linux on much cheaper hardware which might be considered to be disposable. As a Macintosh user for the last 15 years, I am very disappointed at the reliability of recent hardware and would like to know what you have to say about this which might retain me as a future customer.

I’d like a replacement please.

Sorry, we don’t have any more iMacs.

Oh, I see.

We’ve got this slug.

Does it talk?

It runs Windows…