Klaatu or the hopeful fable

by Martín Bonfil Olivera

Published on Milenio Diario, December 17, 2008

Science fiction, besides being a form of entertainment, usually communicates certain kinds of messages about science, technology and their effect in human society.

That's what the movie The day the earth stood still, a 1951 classic directed by Robert Wise and based on a Harry Bates, did. The story —an extraterrestrial being, together with a super-powerful robot, come to warn humankind of what can happen if they don't choose peace over war — was a typical cold war-era message .

The movie did not end the cold war, but left a mark on the people who watched it.

The new version that is currently being shown in theatres, starring Keanu Reeves (for once, his stiff acting suits the role) as Klaatu the extraterrestrial being, keeps, an updates, the earth-salvation moral of the story. And, apart from the weak ending —I understand that Klaatu's speech at the end of the movie could not be kept, but something should've been done to substitute it —, is a good (not great), exciting and interesting action movie.

Is it worth it to continue making science fiction movie fables? I don’t know, but they don't hurt either. The impact of movies as means to modify attitudes is well portrayed by movies like Philadelphia or An inconvenient truth, films that, using fiction or documentary, sparked a change in the public opinion about such important issues as AIDS-related discrimination or global warming. The day the earth stood still will not be that influential, surely, but at least it helps people who watch it, to remember that we have a pending issue: to stop hurting our planet.

Although it lacks strict science fiction —it's more a fantasy movie —, the 2008 version includes very welcomed updates to the original version's naïveté: the complex sphere instead of the flying saucer; the destructive nanomachines, the biotechnological placenta-space suit from which Klaatu is "born" in its human form… and it keeps the character of the sensible scientist that chats with the extraterrestrial and starts to convince him that humankind still has a salvation.

In summary, an enjoyable movie, that transmits a very valuable message and gives a positive image about science. Something to be thankful for.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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The secret of the nucleolus

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, December 10, 2008

The news that appeared in several media two weeks ago does not grab the reader's attention at first glance: it's been discovered that parasite Giardia duodenalis does in fact have nucleoli.

It was, however, the subject of several scientific front pages. Why? Let me explain the importance of the discovery and why it is good news.

The amazing image of the cell that molecular biology has revealed to us in the last few decades shows that it is a much more complex and dynamic system than the gelatin with inserted fruits that high school students usually study. For example, the nucleolus appeared inside the nucleus as a little sphere with no well-defined function.

Today we know that it is a complex sub-cellular factory where, with great precision and speed, ribosomes are assembled, whose function is to make proteins. Since proteins are the molecules responsible of performing basically all of a cell's functions, it's clear that ribosomes, and thus nucleoli, are vital to the cell's economy. However, only cells with nucleus — called eukaryotes — have a nucleolus. Bacteria and their cousins archaea — prokaryotes — do not have nucleus nor nucleolus. In the border between the two reigns, it was thought that some "primitive" eukaryotes, like the protozoa Giardia duodenalis (also known as Giardia lamblia), a common cause of gastroenteritis in humans and other mammals, had a nucleus, but not a nucleolus.

This being said, the importance of the discovery is that it "breaks the paradigm" that there were exceptions to the rule that prokaryotes, besides a nucleus, also had nucleolus.

Furthermore, the news deserves our attention because it was a discovery done by Mexican researchers, leaded by Luis Felipe Jiménez, from the Science School at UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico), together with scientists from IPN (National Polytechnical Institute) and from the Cancer and Pediatrics National Institutes (and from Zurich University). The discovery was achieved using diverse techniques of light and electronic microscopy, in which Jimenez is one of the main national experts.

As the note stated, "it was a triumph of Mexican microscopy" and another demonstration that our universities and public health institutes can do first world-quality science, that may have health applications. Good job!

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Ten years of ¿Cómo ves?

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, December 3, 2008

Evaluating the quality of cultural projects is complex. Even more when we deal with the promotion, popularization, democratization of scientific culture. Two possible criteria are the acceptance of the public to which they are targeted, and their permanence.

With the above basis, I dare to declare that magazine ¿Cómo ves?, published by the Dirección General de Divulgación de la Ciencia (General Direction for Science Popularization) of UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), which yesterday celebrated its first ten years with an event in Universum museum, is an example of top quality science promotion.

Apart from being the largest university publication in the Country (20 thousand copies monthly), ¿Cómo ves? has become one of our most successful popular science magazines. Not only because of its acceptance and permanence, but also because of the intrinsic quality of its contents , elaborated by a small but efficient multidisciplinary team that sums the knowledge of its collaborators — some experts in science; others, in science communication — with the rigorous work of correctors and editors, and the creativity of designers, illustrators and photographers, and an enthusiastic support group.

¿Cómo ves? not only divulges data: it offers scientific culture. Its first number stated that "our ambition is that you get to know where scientific knowledge comes from and how it is related with you and the society you live in". It has achieved its goal. More than scientific curiosity or isolated data, the magazine offers accessible and timely knowledge in context. Science, of course, but also its history, its conflicts and debates; its advances and retreats. It shows us science as a human activity that cannot be isolated from the rest of culture and society.

However, if the goal is to encourage science appreciation by the common citizen, the development in scientific and technical investigation, its vinculation with industry and productive sectors and finally, an improvement of the conditions of a society that, as ours, aspires to get out of the third world and become a first world country, the road is still long. Projects like ¿Cómo ves? are a very good start, but they are not enough. I hope these first ten years are useful as a stimulus for new scientific culture projects. We definitely need them.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Trip to Oaxaca

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, November 26, 2008

Its true: trips make you wiser . Last week I had the opportunity of going to Oaxaca. I found a very prosperous and modern city, with better urban and touristic infrastructure than before, and that nevertheless has not lost its traditional flavor. Luckily, it's still humane, livable city. Also, a city that has not managed to overcome the great problems that affect one of our country's poorest states, where there's a lot of inequality.

It was also a trip to my roots, because I was invited to give a science talk in the Colegio de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos (College of Scientific and Technological Studies) in Etla valley, where my great-great-grandfather, doctor Mariano Olivera, was born in 1824.

The pleasure of the visit increased because on a Oaxaca bookstore I was lucky to find a book that I had been looking for for some time ago: Oaxaca Journal (National Geographic, 2000) by Oliver Sacks, the famous writer and neurologist, author of the master piece The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other books such as Awakenings (which in 1990 was turned into a movie starring Robert de Niro and Robin Williams), An anthropologist on Mars or Uncle Tungsten: memories of a chemical boyhood. All of them highly recommended.

It turns out that Sacks visited Oaxaca in 2000 as part of a trip organized by the American Fern Society, a group of enthusiasts for this plants (technically known as pteridophytes) of which he is a member.

Sacks dedicates his book to the enthusiasts —of the rocks, birds, astronomy— and his reading confirms why these groups of lovers —amateurs— are still important, not only because of the scientific contributions that they constantly make, but also because they preserve and transmit the joy of directly observing nature. Apart from his delicious prose, Sacks book offers the view of a foreign person in a culture he did not know and that he feels very different from his ("a new world", he writes).

He finds meals with grasshoppers and worms, markets, traditions, poverty and diseases, ancient civilization ruins and colonial convents, the ancient árbol del Tule (Tule tree), the old method for obtaining colorant from the cochineal insect… and of course, a lot of ferns.

A neurologist and writer, and fern enthusiast, describes the culture of Oaxaca. Science and culture. What a pleasure.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Science and marketing

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, November 19, 2008

Science is not only made in the lab: it is a human and social activity, therefore, it has ideological, political, ethical, cultural and commercial components… the list could go on.

To survive and fluorish, the scientific-technical research system has to generate a good public image: with politicians and decision makers, with investors and business men, and with the common citizen.

A good way of doing this is through the media. The objective is to gain "customers" for science: people that get interested, understand it, support it and even make a career on it. Its propaganda and marketing; in this case, for a socially useful end.

Like all things, in science there are good and bad publicists. Two good examples on hand are astronomers and biologists. Probably you already know that 2009 has been declared as the "International year of astronomy", since it will be 400 years ago since Galileo Galilei used a telescope to observe the sky.

He discovered amazing things: that Jupiter has satellites and that the surface of the moon, very far from being perfect as Aristotle used to teach, is filled with craters. He inaugurated a new stage in astronomic studies, and in science in general.

The international year will be, according to the International Astronomical Union, "a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and the culture that will stimulate the interest not only in astronomy, but in science in general, specially in young people". There will be a lot of conferences, fairs, publications, public observation events all over the world… a full strategy to bring the public closer to astronomy.

However, 2009 also could have been declared as "the year of evolution", because in February 12, 200 years of the birth of Charles Darwin is commemorated, and also, 150 years of the publication of the book presenting his theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. But, have you heard of an event to this respect? True: there are some, but they are few and isolated. Biology has not made a lot of noise.

Compared with the creativity and enthusiasm of astronomers to promote their science, biologists have been left behind. As mentioned: not all of us are good publicists.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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The mercaptan of terror

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, November 12, 2008

Just what we habitants of Mexico City needed. Only two days after a plane crashed right in the middle of Mexico city's Polanco zone (an important suburb in México city), killing its crew and 40 other people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time, a new incident occurs in the same zone, causing alarm: a leak of ethylmercaptane that forced the evacuation of at least two thousand people. The fear was understandable, because although ethylmercaptane is harmless in low concentrations, is has a strong "gas" odor.

In reality, gas does not smell: the smell in gas is due precisely to ethylmercaptane. The reason why we associate mercaptane smell to gas leaks goes back to a tragedy that happened in 1937 in New London, Texas.

In march of that year the New London School, a rich school in an oil-producing region, suffered a leak of the gas that was used for heating. A spark lighted the mixture of gas and air, and the explosion caused, according to witnesses, the walls to bulge and the roof to jump momentarily in the air before falling again, destroying the main wing of the building. Around 300 kids died.

Texas government decided to look for a solution to the gas leak risks, and ordered that from that moment on, mercaptane was to be added to gas. This way, any leak would be detected easier. The idea expanded quickly around the world, and that's why the smell that propagated around Polanco last Thursday caused panic.

Mercaptanes or thiols are chemical compounds very similar to alcohols, but instead of oxygen, they have sulfur. The name comes from the Latin term mercurium captans, "that captures mercury", because such metal combines very easily with these molecules. Ethylmercaptane or ethanethiol, which is the one normally used make gas smelly, is relatively inoffensive in low concentrations, although in high doses it can be toxic. The smell in Polanco was due to a tank filled with the substance that someone left opened and abandoned in a terrain owned by a glass factory.

There was no risk involved, but there was fear. The doubt remains whether this was, as is heavily insisted with respect to the death of mexican state minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and ex-antidrug zar José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, just another "accident."

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Expense or investment?

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on the Mexican newspaper Milenio Diario, November 5, 2008

"México requires creators, not only servants", the ex-principal of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), José Sarukhán said in Xalapa (La Jornada, October 30).

He was not referring to artistic creators, but scientific researchers, engineers and experts in the humanities. University people formed in the discipline of academia and research.

Scientists are professionals that, apart from their high degree of specialization, require a great deal of creativity to be efficient. Ruy Pérez Tamayo, the famous Mexican pathologist, defines science as "a creative human activity whose objective is the comprehension of nature and whose product is knowledge."

That's why good scientists cannot be formed - and neither can engineers or humanists - in schools that do not perform research. Education seen as simple instruction is not enough.

The global economical crisis threatens to cut the budget for science and technology in our Country. Especially, as usual, the budget for academia and research (and even more in the case of the so called "basic" research).

The absurd, denounced by Marcelino Cereijido, the well known Mexican-Argentinean researcher, of considering the budget for science and technology as a superfluous expense, instead of a strategic investment, is still current. "We will invest in science when we have solved our current problems", we think, ignoring that scientific research is precisely the first step in solving those problems.

The chain that goes from the production of scientific knowledge - academic work - trhough technological applications, to a more solid industry, and finally a more vigorous economy, with its consequent social goods, is still ignored by government politics.

Fortunately, some voices are rising to try and change things. Institutions like UNAM, the Scientific and Technological Consulting Forum, the Mexican Academy of Sciences and others have asked to stop the cuts and for an increase in the investment in these areas. A budget increase for Conacyt has been requested for 2009, to reinforce the technical-scientific community of our Country. Let's see if the people who decide how public money is spent have their priorities right.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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