Nerd of this parish.
Oct 09
![Wason cards [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/wason_cards-300x118.png)
The Wason card problem is a well-known psychological test that probes how people think about hypothesis testing. The version I use in one of my first-year lectures is shown below. I think the original version used letters and numbers, but I’m a biologist, so obviously I use pictures of dead pets instead of numbers. We …
Sep 22
![Araneus diadematus in web [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Araneus_diadematus_web-198x300.jpg)
I’d never noticed that a garden spider’s third pair of legs is much shorter than the others before.
Sep 02
![Earth [public domain, NASA]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/earth-300x300.jpg)
One consequence of being an evolutionary dead-end is that I do not get exposed to new cultural touchstones through watching crap children’s telly with offspring I haven’t produced. As an alternative, monitoring the dwindling intersection of history I share with my incoming undergraduates serves the same salutary purpose of reminding me how out-of-touch I am. The …
Aug 09
![Sequoia sempervirens strobili and seeds [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Sequoia_sempervirens_strobili_and_seeds-269x300.jpg)
There’s something very satisfying about growing plants from seed, and none more so than growing a monster from next-to-nothing: At the moment, this little redwood seedling is just 18 months old. Given 500 years or so, it’s going to get a wee bit bigger: The seeds of redwoods are absolutely titchy, as you can’t see in …
Aug 09
![Maxwell Boltzmann distribution [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/maxwell_boltzmann_distribution-300x285.png)
An enzyme lowers the activation energy for a reaction Like a previous post, the problem here is not so much that this idea is flat-out wrong, but that it’s very prone to misinterpretation. Text-books often state that an enzyme, or any other catalyst, lowers the activation energy of a reaction. The activation energy for a reaction (written …
Aug 09
I tried this about five years ago, with more or less the inverse of these results. The nerdy grammar fascist bit of me is pleasantly surprised by the improvement, but poor Karl Albert still has some way to go… Fischer projection: About 38,800 results Fisher projection: [sic] About 8,090 results Lineweaver Burk: About 234,000 results Lineweaver …
Jul 28
![Lucilia sericata face on [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Lucilia_sericata_face_on-281x300.jpg)
Apologies for the long gap between postings; it’s been exam season at work, and I’ve not had much time to blog. The garden was buzzing with green-bottles yesterday, thanks to a combination of warm weather and overflowing brown bins. These flies tend to get a bit of a bad wrap, what with the spitting onto …
May 26
![Kryptoperidinium [CC-By-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/kryptoperidinium-273x300.png)
Cassiopea, which looks rather like a spelling mistake (but isn’t), also looks a bit like an anemone (but isn’t): It’s actually a jellyfish, but one that spends most of its time living upside-down (relative to its relatives). Unlike its close relatives, it gets much of its energy from sunbathing rather than from fishing. Inside the cells …
May 03
![Datura metel (flower) [CC-BY Alex Lomas]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Datura_metel_flower-225x300.jpg)
I’m a sucker for things that are both poisonous and pretty. Datura metel definitely meets both criteria. These photos were taken in southern Spain, where this purple variety of the plant seemed to have naturalised itself out from someone’s garden . Datura metel is closely related to Atropa belladonna, the deadly nightshade, and – like it …
May 01
![Sigmoidal kinetics [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sigmoidal_kinetics-300x272.png)
Enzymes in cells can be modelled using the Michaelis-Menten model Enzymes can be, and often are, modelled by the Michaelis-Menten (well, Briggs-Haldane) model: v = vmax · [S] / (KM + [S]) Where: v is the velocity of the enzyme, which is the rate at which product accumulates vmax is the maximum velocity of the enzyme (i.e. …