Special days – Page 35

Page 35 of 38

June 22, 2012August 17, 2012

Take Your Dog To Work Day – what’s your pooch thinking?

Today, believe it or not, is Take Your Dog To Work Day. This day was initiated by Pet Sitters International, and has been celebrated since 1999.

The rationale behind the day is the celebration of the human-canine bond, and the promotion of pet adoption by making life – including the workplace – more accepting to pets, in particular dogs. Employers are encouraged to open their workplace to employees’ pets on this special day.

Bulldog — The lovable bulldog – breed of choice for Adam Sandler and Winston Churchill, among others.
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Seems a good enough idea, doesn’t it? I think the following bit of research has the potential to further promote and enhance the human-canine bond:

According to a recent article in Scientific American, scientists have (pun alert!) embarked on a study of dogs’ thoughts, by means of fMRI brain scans of unsedated dogs. The research team says this provides a first peak into the thought processes of dogs.

Of course the key problem in scanning the brain of an fully awake, unrestrained dog, is that the animal is unlikely to remain still for the duration of the scan. However, after seeing the level of training achieved with dogs in the US Navy, lead researcher Gregory Berns from the Emory University Center for Neuropolicy, felt they should be able to train a dog to behave inside the fMRI.

Two dogs – a 2-year old feist and a 3-year old border collie – were trained to walk into the scanner and remain still while being scanned. In addition, they were trained to respond to certain hand signals – one indicating the dog was about to receive a treat, and the other that it wasn’t.

Recognition of the “treat” signal caused activity in the caudate region of the dogs’ brains – a region also associated with reward in the human brain.

While this can perhaps be viewed as a rather simplistic result, it is early-stage canine neuro-research, and it does open the door for further studies into canine cognition, for example how they respond to human facial expressions, and how they process human speech.

Such research could definitely shed new light on the 15 000 year old human-canine bond – perhaps it can even help explain why certain people prefer certain breeds.

June 21, 2012August 17, 2012

World Music Day with a jolt of Maths

World Music Day is the brainchild of American musician Joel Cohen, who first proposed the idea in France in 1976, while working at a French radio station. His idea – an all night festival of free music on summer solstice – won favour with the French Minister of Culture, and the first Fête de la Musique took place in 1982.

Now in its 30th year, the celebration has grown into a huge international celebration of free music. On 21 June, musicians the world over take to the streets and share their art in public spaces, shop-fronts and side-streets to create a beautiful global noise – the only ‘rule’ being that the performances should be free of charge.

rockabilly — Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
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If you’re scientifically inclined, of course, a global celebration of music also happens to be a celebration of mathematics. Yes indeed, when you celebrate the beauty and emotion inherent in music, you are also acknowledging the beauty of mathematical theory and logic.

Simply speaking, rhythm, musical notes and chords can all be explained mathematically, defined in terms of numerical patterns, scales and equations. At a deeper level, composers are often drawn (consciously or not) to mathematical structures – Bach made use of mathematical symmetry, Debussy employed fibonacci number sequences, Erik Satie used the golden ratio in several of his compositions, and many more. Complex, atypical rhythmic structures, as employed in the work of modern minimalist composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, has found favour in a modern rock music sub-genre known as math-rock, where musicians employ complex rhythms, odd, asymmetrical time signatures, angular melodies and dissonant chords.

Where there is music, mathematics is never far away. In the words of Igor Stravinsky, “Mathematics swims seductively just below the surface.”

So when you’re out enjoying your free musical fix on World Music Day, you may just get a little jolt of maths in the process – enjoy it!

Accordion — Music = Mathematics + Magic
(© All Rights Reserved)

June 20, 2012August 17, 2012

World Refugee Day

Today is World Refugee day. The aim of this day is to create awareness of the plight of forcibly displaced people throughout the world. It is also an opportunity to honor the courage, strength and determination of people forced to flee their homes under threat of persecution, conflict and violence, and to recognize the contribution these refugees are making in their adopted environments.

In 2011, a record 800 000 people were forced to flee their homes and cross borders for survival. Worldwide, almost 44 million people are currently classed as refugees. It does not take a degree in mathematics to recognise that this is a shockingly high number – more than 0.5% of the world population. Of these, almost 80% are women and children.

People who become refugees are often forced to remain in refugee status for many years, often living in refugee camps or other temporary environments. The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, provides tents, shelter, supplies and life-saving services to refugees.

There are many things each of us can do to assist these humanitarian efforts. The most obvious and direct contribution is donating money or volunteering services via the UNHCR website. Alternatively, helping to organise local fund raising events in your community, or even just raising awareness either through physical events or online initiatives and social networking activities.

Refugees have no choice. You do.

June 19, 2012August 17, 2012

World Sauntering Day

sauntering
blindly, aiming only where I’m not
full heart, empty mind
thinking freely
associating

ambling
guided by footprints in the sand
sandy path, path of light
light diffracted, fractured, structured
structure birthed in chaos
infinite possibilities
synapses firing infinitely
saturating

meandering
connecting with strangers, friends forgotten
fragments of conversations
focused, defocused, defined
concepts conjured
assimilating

running
eagerly, aiming whence I came
animated by sparkling prospects
calculating courageously
percolating

June 18, 2012

International Sushi Day – time for some Sushi Science

It’s International Sushi Day – ready for a bit of sushi science?

Here’s an interesting story…

A research group from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, did a study on bacteria, and specifically their ability to produce enzymes to break down carbohydrates in their food. One of these enzymes, called porphyranase, specifically breaks down polysaccharide, a carbohydrate in the cell walls of Porphyra, an algae present in nori sheets, used to wrap sushi. Polysaccharide occurs very rarely in other marine plants.

By chance, they discovered that the enzyme porphyranase also occurs in the gut of a Japanese person. This was so unexpected that they pursued the discovery, by testing a group of Japanese people against a control group of Americans. It turned out that none of the Americans tested positive for the specific enzyme, while it occured in almost half of the Japanese test subjects.

Given that porphyranase is normally produced by the bacteria feeding on nori sheets, which is a main ingredient in the sushi-rich diet of the Japanese, they made the deduction that this “porphyranase producing ability” was genetically passed on from the bacteria in the food, to the bacteria in the intestines of the people.

The bacteria present in the intestines of the Japanese thus seem to have developed the ability to produce an enzyme that can digest seaweed, while the seaweed passes straight through the intestines of their American counterparts.

Source: Nature, April 8, 2010

While this study is not conclusive, it is an interesting example of how the food we eat may affect us in very complex ways. Guess there’s truth in the saying “We are what we eat”!

June 17, 2012

World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought

It is one of those almost-impossible-to-believe facts, but it is claimed that each year, an area of land three times the size of Switzerland is lost to desertification. That is almost 12 million ha or land turning into desert annually! (UNCCD, 2012)

To raise awareness about this shocking fact, and to promote ways of reversing the global growth in non-productive dryland, a World Day to Combat Desertification was introduced in 1995, to be celebrated annually on 17 June.

This year, the Day’s slogan is “Healthy soil sustains your life: Let’s go land-degradation neutral”. Not only is this a call to stress the severity of the situation, but also to reinforce the message that desertification needn’t be fatal, that solutions exist, and that it can be effectively tackled through strengthened community participation and cooperation at all levels.

Fertile soil is a critical non-renewable resource. Zero-net land degradation can be achieved when non-degraded soil is kept healthy and fertile, and degraded land is restored through reforestation, programmes to improve soil health etc. This is critical to help ensure international food security and alleviate rural poverty.

Drought and global desertification – it’s not someone else’s problem.
(© All Rights Reserved)

No matter where you are in the world, you can contribute to the fight against desertification. Planting trees or building terraces to combat soil erosion, contributing to soil enrichment programmes, even just doing your bit to combat climate change by practicing healthy green practices like recycling and reuse. It’s not someone else’s problem – your actions can make a real difference.

June 16, 2012

Stretch your brain on World Juggling Day!

Its World Juggling Day! A day to marvel at the skill of all the jugglers out there, be it the ones who can magically keep multiple balls in the air, or those who are able to maintain a balance between different tasks and responsibilities – the master-multitaskers among us.

Juggling, at least in the traditional sense of the word, is all about objects in motion – as such, they are an intricate, entertaining demonstration of the laws of physics in action. Because of this fact, a number of jugglers have developed scientific juggling routines, where they teach and demonstrate fundamental laws of physics and mathematics through the art of juggling. I can’t help wishing I had a juggling maths teacher at school!

Did you know that juggling can actually stretch your brain? Neuroscientists from the University of Oxford did an experiment to study the effect of juggling on the brain. They took a group of non-juggler adults and measured a cross section of their brains with an fMRI scanner. Half of the group was then enrolled in a juggling course where they had to practice juggling for at least 30 minutes a day, and at the end of a six week training period the brains of the juggling group and the non-juggling control group were again scanned.

The results showed noticeable changes in the white matter of the brains of the juggling group, that is, the fibres that connect the different areas of the brain and that carry messages (electrical signals) between nerve cells.

What is important about this research is not so much that juggling is good for you, but that the adult brain still remains mobile and adaptable beyond childhood. The study shows that, instead of starting to degenerate in adulthood, its possible for the brain to continue to adapt and condition itself to operate more efficiently when faced with a new challenge. Juggling was chosen for the experiment because it’s a particularly difficult motor skill to master – precise body movements, tracking of fast-moving objects and peripheral vision – as such requiring extra effort from the brain.

Study leader, Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg, noted: “Knowing that pathways in the brain can be enhanced may be significant in the long run in coming up with new treatments for neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, where these pathways become degraded.”

(Source: ABC Science)

I wonder if the juggling required to balance work, family, friends and other responsibilities has the same mental benefits?

June 15, 2012

Blown away on Global Wind Day

From light breezes to destructive gales, today is the day to celebrate wind in all its guises. Global Wind Day is all about discovering the possibilities wind holds for changing our world for the better.

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing forms of renewable, clean energy sources on the planet, with wind farms already operating in 75 countries, and exponential growth in technology to effectively harness the power of the wind.

With New Zealand being one of the most consistently windy countries in the world, it makes sense that it is very active in wind farming research and development. Having recently covered the New Zealand Wind Energy Conference, I was blown away by the level of wind energy related activity in the country. Wind currently provides about 5% of the country’s electricity, and at its current growth rate it is expected that this figure will rise to 20% by 2030. Considering the upward trend in energy consumption, this implies a massive increase in wind energy output over the next 20 years. Interestingly, given the consistency and reliability of New Zealand’s wind resource, NZ wind farms significantly outperform the international average.

While detractors complain about the visual and noise impacts of wind farms, research results have largely refuted these arguments. (Living in the middle of New Zealand’s most active wind farming area, I find a hill covered in wind turbines aesthetically quite pleasing, to the extent that I can spend days looking for interesting new angles to photograph them!)

Wind energy has a number of very appealing features making it an environmentally sound choice for clean economic growth:

Wind never runs out, making it one of the most secure sources of electricity for future generations.
Since wind cannot be “owned”, investing in wind energy helps provide protection against the volatility of fossil fuel markets, where price and supply is dictated by political regimes.
Thanks to their small footprint, wind farms have minimal impact on land use. Land owners hosting wind farms can continue their normal farm activities with little need to adapt to the presence of wind farm infrastructure.
Wind farming has minimal environmental impact – it does not consume water, and produces no carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, mercury, radioactive waste, particulates, or any other type of air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources.

Given that the global need for electricity is real and is not going to go away any time soon, the rather serene sight of a set of wind turbines on a hill sure is a heck of a lot more appealing than a destructive, polluting fossil fuel plant on the horizon!

June 14, 2012

World Blood Donor Day

With today being World Blood Donor Day, I thought what better way to gather info for my blog than to immerse myself in the experience, and register to donate on the day. So I duly pre-registered, filled in some forms, and my booking for this morning was made.

Arriving at the blood bank, more forms had to be filled in, and having never donated blood in New Zealand before, I was quite surprised at some of the rules for eligibility to become a blood donor.

Most of the limitations (never give blood if you or your sexual partner(s) are HIV+, if you carry the Hepatitis B or C virus, if you’re on drugs, etc) seemed pretty sensible, as were the limitations placed on sexually promiscuous individuals. The geographic limitations, however, were more of an eye-opener, and this is where my good intentions sadly got derailed. It turns out that anyone who had previously lived in a region considered to be high-risk for HIV infection, were excluded from donating for 5 years. Excluded regions include the entire sub-Saharan Africa, large parts of Asia, as well as specific South American regions.

This exclusion is irrespective of sexual history, previous HIV test results, or any other ‘proof’ of not being HIV+. So, given my South African heritage I was greeted with a friendly but firm “No thank you”, putting a premature end to my intentions of becoming a blood donor in my adopted country. I can appreciate the logic of geographic exclusion, but cannot help finding it sad that, despite being married and faithful to my wife for many years, and having ‘passed’ a number of insurance and emigration-related HIV tests in the past, I am still considered to be a higher risk than someone earning a living as a prostitute in New Zealand (who only has to wait 1 year before being accepted as a donor).

What makes this experience more ironic, is that the international launch of World Blood Donor Day took place on 14 June 2004 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Oh well… So unfortunately I cannot yet share with you any first hand donor experiences. What I can do, however, is to share some interesting facts and figures about blood and blood donation:

When “donating blood”, you can actually donate a number of different transfusable blood products – red blood cells, platelets, or plasma.
When donating a pint of “whole blood”, two to three of the above products can be produced from the donation, hence a single whole blood donation can save the lives of up to three people.
If you donate only specific blood components – red cells, plasma or platelets – the process is called apheresis. A single apheresis donation can produce one transfusable dose of platelets.
Of the blood products that can be donated, only plasma has a reasonably long shelf life – it can be frozen for up to two years and blood products made from plasma (e.g. cryoprecipitate) can be stored for up to two years.
Red blood cells must be transfused within 35 days from collection, while platelets have an even shorter shelf life – it has to be transfused within 5 days. As a result of this, there is a continuous need for fresh blood.
Healthy bone marrow is continuously working to produce new red blood cells, platelets and plasma in the body. Blood lost during a donation is replenished by the body over time – the fluids of the donated blood is replaced in just 24 hours. The red blood cells take a bit longer, and will be replaced within about 8 weeks. Typically a healthy donor can donate every three months.
In New Zealand, the treatment of cancer requires the biggest percentage of all donated blood products (22%), while blood needed to treat accident victims make up 18%. Mothers and babies receive about 7% of the blood supply.

The bottom line is that blood is always desperately needed, and it really is one of the easier ways of doing something truly amazing for your fellow man.

June 13, 2012June 13, 2012

Going Green on Sewing Machine Day

It’s Sewing Machine Day, the day to dust off and celebrate the trusty sewing machine, unsung hero of the industrial revolution.

Tracking the invention of the sewing machine is like reading the script of a sensational TV drama – a juicy tale of betrayal and deceit, industrial sabotage, stolen ideas and legal battles. The first patented design dates back to Thomas Saint in 1790, followed by various iterative improvements, but the first commercially viable design came some 60 years later, courtesy of Isaac Merritt Singer who combined ideas from various previous designs. Unfortunately he borrowed a bit too heavily from a patent by Elias Howe, who promptly took him to court for patent infringement, winning the case and forcing Singer to pay him a fee for every sewing machine sold.

Despite its checkered past, the sewing machine quickly gained popularity, vastly improving efficiency in the clothing and fabric industries. As such it played a key role in the industrialisation of the manufacturing sector.

By the early 20th century, the household sewing machine was a common appliance in almost every home. Most families had one in the house – used to sew new clothes, do alterations, or to mend worn or damaged clothes. This golden era of home sewing lasted almost a century, but with the proliferation of mass produced, super cheap clothes from giant producers like China, the trusty home sewing machine seems to be facing extinction.

Sewing Einstein — Scientific sewing? Even a basic sewing machine offers many more creative opportunities than just shortening a pair of pants.
(© All Rights Reserved)

So, with today being Sewing Machine Day, perhaps it is high time to dig out the old sewing machine, give it a good dusting and reacquaint yourself with the possibilities it offers. Or if you don’t have one, check out the secondhand stores or online auction sites – perfectly functional machines are going for a song.

Not only is home-sewing an excellent outlet for your inner Chanel or Versace – it is also a positive step towards green living. Sure, it may be quicker and easier to go out an buy a new $5 t-shirt, $30 jacket or a pair of $20 jeans, but Mother Nature will be so much better off if you rather patch up the elbows and cuffs on your old jacket, mend those torn jeans, and wear them for a while longer. The environmental impact of a few minutes of home sewing is negligible compared to the impact of creating a new garment in some industrial sweat-shop.

Like 150 years ago, when the sewing machine became a key player in the industrial revolution, it now has the potential to become a surprise hit in the green revolution.

Category: Special days

A scientific look at days with special importance.