Why is Science Vital (by sarah)

Science is threaded through out the modern world, everything is affected by or initiated by science. Shouldn't the money be spent on health care? I hear you cry - what do you think is at the bases of the treatments? What allows the equipment to function and be used? SCIENCE!

What about the environment? Surely that was caused by science? No it was caused by ignorance and mis-management and what do you think allowed us to see what was happening? SCIENCE - what do you think will allow us to drag ourselves and our planet out of it? SCIENCE.

Then there is our transport systems, heating for our homes, clean water, foods and hygien. The cloths we are wearing - all those nice washable colours and enduring fabrics? SCIENCE was at the root of all of these.

The artists pigments and the fact they don't die as much from accidental substance abuse - SCIENCE.

Even trying to sort out the mess of the financial crises comes from SCIENCE. Because you know what Maths is SCIENCE. And on that subject we plunge straight into the humanities from war anylises to domestic abuse statistics.

What about business? I hear you cry - shouldn't we be concentrating on strengthening the private sector and let nessecity drive invention?

Ok but you see modern business is reliant on computers - weather it is running their e-bay shop or because they use a bank and where do software engineers get the tools to be able to make these boxes of lights do such amazing things? SCIENCE. Yep sorry guys but even if you only take the logic part of programming into account here - computing is a SCIENCE.

(For the purpose of Research and Development - Science, Engineering and technology in general are all far too interlocked to be seperated out - though I do have views on this aswell but that is beyond the point being made here.)

And to those who say - ok but get rid of all non-vital research - I say that without blue sky research you hamstring the entire scientific entity. Things crop up in unexpected places leading to major breakthroughs - just look at some medical history 😉

I was horrified over the proposed funding cuts in science - how to spiral a country into a social war of attrition as all our initiative and endevours - business start ups etc.... disappear - in other words - all the sorts of things you need to bump a country out of recession.

Looking at other countries it appears that those who invested in science regardless clawed their way up whilst those who didn't dwindled and became weaker.

All of our global equivalents are currently increasing science funding so this is pure madness which is why I have chosen to write yet another blog post about it. Please please check out ScinceIsVital and sign their petition at the very least.

National Poetry Day Uk 2010 (by sarah)

Today is National Poetry Day UK and the them is Home. Like last year Jeany has composed a poem - this time it's a bit longer and she wanted to do loads more poems too :/

I like my home
It is great
But my window
Should be a different colour
It should be rainbow

I told the painter
And he didn't paint it
The colours I wanted
It should be
Blue, green, red, purple, yellow, black

I Jean love my home
I love my drinks bottle
And my slinky
It is rainbow coloured
Purple, orange, pink, blue, green, yellow
And it's boingy

I love my dinosaurs
My plastic ones
I'm covered in rainbows

I love my cats
I love Tom he's white and ginger
I love Helium she's white and black
I love Hydrogen she's white and black and pink

I love my toy baby
I love my rabbit
He's the same as Helium
The guinea pigs are daft

My slinky goes round my head a bit

I love my home
I love my computer
Oh no there's cornflakes
All over the floor

The tea cup and everything are good
Except the windows

Science is Vital Poem Rap – The Video! (by sarah)

What We Don’t Yet Know (by sarah)

As many of you now I want to be an Astrobiologist when I grow up - something I am resigned to not doing for the next few years as health and family have to come first.

But when I was working on it I saw so much still to find out it was almost mind blowing. Astrobiology as a formal subject is very young still as in - I bet few of you had heard of it before I started talking about it and I used to call it exo-palaeontology anyway 😉 .

Looking at the concept of life beyond our planet brings you straight to the question of life on Earth. Life's origin, evolution and colonisation of the harshest climes. In recent years life has startled us by turning up in the most unexpected places - entire eco-systems have been found is isolated pockets of water in the ice caps. The study of these creatures and how they interact is only just beginning but what use is knowing about them I hear you ask?

Well as everyone knows there is a thorny issue in science that affects everyone globally and that is Climate Change. Well our climate is a large complex fed back system with interactions that stretch from rock erosion to cows munching grass. One of the things that makes it so very complex is the biosphere - Life is both a driver and a quencher of climatic cycles. It is also a record of it.

Any information or new angles that can be explored with this topic will be immensely useful to mankind. Who knows it may even save us from ourselves but if there is no funding the research can not be done and those pools of ice will melt and be lost forever.

Another aspect is that micro-organisms can live inside rocks - in fact they can even eat the rocks to get what they need. This has reprocusions over say where you can store Nuclear Waste and the like. On top of that one of these little critters happens to etch glass for it's meal times! Photographers may have come across this as a frosting of their lenses - something they curse highly!

The hospitals we go to, especially the older ones often have porous brick work which would appear to now perhaps not be such a good idea! All those nice little nooks and crannies for organisms to live in. But just how much that matters will not be found out with out scientific research continuing.

Another aspect that always captured me was the evolution of the cell and organisms in general. And this where everything we thought we knew about genetics comes a little bit undone. Everything bar those annoying Macro-organisms (and maybe some of them!) appear to be be able to swap DNA. Little circular pieces of DNA called plasmids can be transfered not just between same species but across Kingdoms! (It used to be thought there where 3 Kingdoms in biology but there are at least five and the majority of it is dominated by mirco-organisms not the original Plant, Animal, Fungi!). This is what makes antibiotic resistances in a disease so bad - it can transfer the resistance to other diseases 🙁 But the mechanics and origin of this along with say a solution - lay in exploring how life arose, how the cells evolved. This again needs more work done.

I could keep going, talk about the elemental distributions on the Earth and in the Solar System - how this effects everything from mining for metals to make our computers run to how likely space colinization is but I feel I have made my point!

What we don't know? Just about everything - there is so much - we have just scratched the surface, just set down the tools we need and now the workshop is about to be destroyed before we can even start on the masterpieces.

Science is Vital Poem/Rap (by sarah)

Science is vital the scientist said
The politicians just shook their heads
And smiled oh so very primly
they knew what's best they said rather grimly

Science is vital the teacher cried!
The politicians shrugged and simply lied
The way they had done before
Is telling the truth such a chore?

Science is vital the nurse intoned
The politicians thought it just - another funding moan
Even with their private health care plans
They failed to see what drove - those cancer scans

Science is vital the cleaner shouted
The politicians just looked at money and counted
Forgetting to take in the longer view
Thus knotting the financials into a thorny stew

Science is vital the artist sang
The politicians ignored them till the world went bang
Or did at least for an island at the edge of the world
Crushed and broken is societal whorls

Slowly it crumbled to the sea
A brain drain leaving it's people be
Without the intellectual resources to save themselves
This is what historians will see once they delve

A people derelict and poverty stricken
Science is vital

Why
did
they
not
listen?