Monthly Archives: December 2012

Art and Science

I found a thought-provoking article on the Science Careers magazine the other day.

Adding an Artistic Dimension to Science

The article profiles several practicing scientists who are also simultaneously pursuing a career in the arts. These two ways of looking at the world, art and science, may seem disparate, but they can exist in the same human mind. I am one of those human minds, or at least I hope to be.

By day, I’m a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. I’m about halfway through a program to earn a Ph.D. in plant biology. I spend the days in a laboratory studying how rice plants transport nutrients over long distances – from the roots and the leaves to wherever they are needed. By night, I’m an aspiring spec fic and science writer. I have a short story and a couple of nonfiction pieces out in magazines, a couple of Smashwords novels, and even a few fans.

How long can one keep up doing both? The prospects of ever earning enough to survive from writing are dismal. Pursuing a career in research science requires ultimate commitment, one that might not leave much room for an artistic pursuit on the side. And yet art and science careers do positively reinforce each other. Writing helps me be more creative in the lab, and I might sneak a few references to antimatter into my writing. The Science Careers article describes people who have made it work, so I should feel hopeful.

Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett

618150Happy Boxing Day, everyone! Hope you had a great holiday.

If you pick up a Terry Pratchett book, there are certain things you can expect from it. First of all, you can expect it to be a good read. You can also expect multiple interweaving storylines without any real chapter breaks, very human characters with lovable foibles (even though many of the characters aren’t technically human), and satire. Pratchett’s Feet of Clay delivers on all these expectations.

As the third of Pratchett’s Night Watch books, ostensibly the plot of the book revolves a mystery: who is poisoning Lord Vetinari? But really, the mystery is just an excuse for all the cool Discworld stuff that Pratchett puts into his novels.

First of these is Cheery “Cheri” Littlebottom, the Watch’s first openly female dwarf. As Angua, another female cop, takes Cheery under her wing, expect lots of interesting reading about gender expression. And explosions. Cheery is the Watch’s new forensics guy and her tests tend to explode.

We also get to learn a lot more about Dorfl and Ankh-Morpork’s golem population. I love a good robot story, so I’m picky about how they’re portrayed, but Pratchett does not disappoint. Expect a lot of deep examination of the nature of freedom and slavery.

One of the storylines made me feel like an American in a strange land, though. The characters of Ankh-Morpork are obsessed with finding themselves a new king, but why? What is it with Discworld (and by extension, Great Britain) and hereditary nobility? Where I come from I guess we have movie stars and business tycoons, but it’s just not the same.

Pratchett draws all the plotlines to a satisfying conclusion, as usual, but you should check out this book for the wild ride.

The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge

Happy No Apocalypse Day, everybody!

Secondly, I’m signing up to participate in the Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge. You may have heard of The Mad Reviewer, as she’s guest-posted on STandG a couple of times in the past. She’s a crazy-fast book reviewer who’s challenging other book reviewers to do the same thing.

You can read more of the details of the challenge at her site. You choose a challenge level, pledge to read and review that many books in a year, and put a little progress meter on your blog site. Anybody who meets their goal is entered into a prize drawing. I’m going for the Sane Reviewer level, but who knows? I might make it to Slightly Sane.

If you’re a blogger and you’re interested in book reviewing, I encourage you to check it out as well.

This is neat: microbial fuel cells

Hello and welcome to the second installment of the cool stuff I saw at the National Association of Science Writers conference.

Dr. Bruce Logan of Penn State University is seeking to address two global problems at once.  One of these problems should be pretty familiar: we need new and better sources of energy.  The other problem is one that you probably don’t think about much.  The treatment of wastewater has a high energy cost.  In the United States, 1.5% of all our energy consumption goes to wastewater treatment alone.

Dr. Logan hopes to turn wastewater around into a potential energy source.  Wastewater is literally full of crap, but the cellulose and other organic molecules in it contain energy in their chemical bonds that bacteria can digest.  If we can get bacteria to digest organic matter in the right environment, we can harvest electricity from the chemical bonds at the same time that the water is being purified.

The self-contained units that Dr. Logan and his team build to house the bacteria are microbial fuel cells.

The basics of the microbial fuel cell

The microbial fuel cell contains two chambers that are each filled with water.  The membrane that separates the two chambers only allows ions to pass through.  This prevents charge from building up when electrical current is passing through the system.  A metal wire runs from one chamber into the other.

Step one:  Collect a sample of bacteria from a wastewater treatment plant.  Put the bacteria, along with some “fuel,” into one chamber.

Step two:  Seal the chamber with the bacteria off from the air.  When bacteria digest organic molecules, they strip electrons off of them.  Eventually, these electrons have to go somewhere.  Oxygen will take the electrons if oxygen is around, but if there is no oxygen in the chamber, the bacteria are forced to dump the electrons into the wire.

Step three:  At the other end of the wire, the electrons combine with oxygen and protons to form water.  Now electrons are continuously passing through the wire.  Current!  You can hook an electric-powered device up to the wire and it will run.

Benchtop versions of these microbial fuel cells already work.  Click here to watch a video of a microbial fuel cell running a fan.  And here, you can learn more about the Logan lab’s work.