young cellist’s got talent

I managed to catch the final of the BBC competition Young Musician of the Year on Sunday and was completely blown away by cellist Laura van der Heijden’s rendition of the cello concerto by William Walton. OK, I’ll admit my ignorance and confess that I hadn’t known this concerto before. I realised very quickly that I had missed out on something rather spectacular. Laura duly won the competition – I have no idea how they make comparisons between musicians from completely different instrument groups, but I reckon her choice of an underappreciated but utterly wonderful concerto may have helped, as the other two finalists had chosen more middle of the road composers.

Anyhow, come Monday morning I fired up the computer and internet hoping to find a few more knowledgeable people spreading some insight and enthusiasm about this event and found … nothing. On the BBC website, a search for the name of the young cellist yielded some links to a footballer with a similar name. Searching for the name of the competition yielded the page where you can watch it on the i-player, but not even a statement of the result of the final. At least the Wikipedia page of the cellist had been updated but that may have been done by a family member.

One blogger discussed the event and also bemoaned the lack of impact. Apparently, not a single newspaper in the UK covered the final. Never mind the fact that she won a competition which only happens every other year and may well set her on a course as a successful recording and performing soloist, of which there aren’t all that many (it certainly didn’t harm fellow cellist Natalie Clein to win the competition in 1994), I would have thought that the way that Laura played that concerto at age 15 and a few weeks should have been worth reporting.

At 12:28 the BBC website got out of bed and bothered reporting the event that the corporation itself had broadcast from 6 to 8pm the day before. It was duly tweeted as “breaking news” on the BBC’s breaking news twitter feed. Only 16 hours late.

I hear that on the same weekend, a somebody with their dancing dog won Britain’s Got Talent. I reckon that the result of this competition was reported in every single newspaper, and many of them will have put it on the front page. Not to mention that the prize money at BGT is several orders of magnitude higher than at young musician of the year. And where is the recording contract for Laura (in analogy to the usual arrangements on X factor and similar competitions)? I would buy the CD of the Walton concerto immediately.

I am sure that Britain has got a lot of talent, but right now I am getting very depressed about the way in which Britain does or doesn’t recognise its talent, and about the message that this is sending out to young musicians.

still life with giant lemon

For some reason which I never quite understood, TV chef Jamie Oliver owns (runs? inspires?) an Italian restaurant in George St, Oxford. As far as I know he's neither Italian nor Oxonian, but at least his name is above the door. The restaurant is easy to spot, as there is usually a queue outside. I've tried to ignore this, but today Jamie very kindly arranged this still life in the window, and it would have been rude not to take a picture:

murder at Burton college

Crime scene -- do not enter, says the ribbon. While it's true we're not allowed to enter, it's not really a crime scene, only a fictional one on a film set. The college isn't called Burton College in real life either, it's Mansfield College on Mansfield road.

What's happening here, I guess, must be some new instalment of the TV series "Lewis" a spin-off from the very popular Inspector Morse series based on Colin Dexter's books. As both series are set in Oxford, one does occasionally bump into a film crew in town. In this case it was very convenient, as the "crime scene" was close to the college entrance, so lots of people could watch the filming from the road. Always fun to watch people work, especially if it's something vaguely creative.

Jim's genome

catching up with two week's worth of Nature, I spotted James Watson's genome in the current (April 17) issue. No genes for scientific brilliance or misogyny spotted yet, though. I guess the important bit of progress here is that the genome was sequenced in 2 months at a cost of 1 million dollars, two orders of magnitude faster and cheaper than previous efforts, including Craig Venter's genome. However, the assembly of Watson's genome did depend on the human genome sequence being known already, so comparisons with the first sequencing efforts are slightly unfair.

Plus, in the April 10 issue, the important piece of news that Richard Dawkins is going to follow in the footsteps of his wife, Lalla Ward, and appear in Dr Who. Imagine the dialogue: "I'm the doctor." "Delighted to meet you. I'm the Charles Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science."

sesame street on the brain

Rule no. one of science: if you give boring names to the things that you discover, nobody will pay any attention. So researchers studying the development of the brain have named two key proteins ERNI and BERT (obviously, as Sesame Street was also supposed to serve the development of the brain, and as these proteins tend to fight each other), and bingo, they got my attention. I have to say in my defence, though, that it was a very slow news week for science last week, so there wasn't much else really.

Anyhow, here's their story:

BERT and ERNI proteins control brain development

Scientists at University College London have discovered how two proteins ¬called BERT and ERNI interact in embryos to control when different organ systems in the body start to form, deepening our understanding of the development of the brain and nervous system and expanding our knowledge of stem cell behavior.
The new research published this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology solves the puzzle of how vertebrates prioritize the order in which they begin to develop different sets of structures. During development, only a few signals instruct cells to form thousands of cell types, so the timing of how cells interpret these signals is critical. An international research team led by Professor Claudio Stern of the UCL Department of Anatomy & Developmental Biology has shown that the first stage of development of the brain and nervous system is, paradoxically, a block on its progression.
The scientists describe a sequence of reactions that take place when vertebrate embryos are only a few hours old that together act as a timing mechanism, temporarily preventing the development of neural cells (cells that go on to form the brain and nervous system). This gives a head start to other cells in the embryo that will go on to create the body’s internal organs and skin, and prevents the nervous system from developing prematurely.
Dr. Costis Papanayotou of the Stern laboratory discovered a new protein, BERT, which then binds with the protein ERNI (also discovered by Professor Stern’s team) and other proteins to unblock a gene called Sox2, which gives the green light to cells to start forming the brain and nervous system.
Professor Stern said, “Scientists have been looking for a long time for the switches that determine when cells in the embryo take on specific roles. Our work shows that the proteins BERT and ERNI have an antagonistic relationship: BERT is stronger and overrides ERNI’s suppression of the Sox2 gene, which has a crucial function in setting up the nervous system. As the Sox2 gene is also needed for stem cells to retain their ability to take on a variety of roles in the body and to renew themselves, this research also advances our knowledge of stem cell behavior in adults, which could have implications for this growing area of medical research.”


Citation: Papanayotou C, Mey A, Birot AM, Saka Y, Boast S, et al. (2008) A mechanism regulating the onset of Sox2 expression in the embryonic neural plate. PLoS Biol 6(1): e2.doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060002

lucky escape

some time in spring 2006 I was approached by a TV production company looking for a boffin to take part in a new "science" show, largely modelled on MTV's Jackass. (no, really!) I did a few trial recordings, and then the TV people just stopped calling, so I just assumed the project had died a natural death.

Now I've found out, though, that they actually managed to make the program and sell it, and the second of 8 episodes was broadcast on Five yesterday. It really is at least as stupid as Jackass, and there is a boffin (they found someone looking more boffinesque than me, so that must be why they stopped calling!) mentioning some science in between the stunts, but on the whole I don't think they are making a worthwhile contribution to the public understanding of science.

Having said that, I admit that my ten-year-old enjoyed the show.

Anyhow, I figure I had a lucky escape ...

mmmmm ... pi !!!!

Al Jean, executive producer of The Simpsons and Harvard graduate in maths is interviewed in today's issue of Nature
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7152/full/448404a.html
(appears to be open access)
Complete with a list of the top 10 science moments in the series (overlapping with those chosen in Paul Halpern's new book (What's Science ever done for us?), and in my Guardian piece:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,,1073542,00.html )
Interesting explanation of some maths jokes, too. The Simpsons also feature in the Nature podcast, if you can handle this kind of technology ...