David Bradley

Retronyms

Blair Bolles discussed the Sunday Times Acrostic puzzle recently on one of the NASW discussion groups. Apparently, he was rather intrigued by a “new” word – retronym. As examples, he cites “silent movies” and “acoustic guitar” all retronymic phrases – i.e. the qualifier was added after the original word lost its original meaning.

Another example he gives is “special relativity”. Einstein talked of his “theory of relativity” but then he came up with another “theory of relativity” so the first one was retronymically referred to as “special”.

Puzzlingly, Blair says Google only lists one page carrying the word retronym – a google whack blatt, in other words. But, I see more than 20,000 hits when I search…

This article ties in quite neatly with a more recent item I wrote on redundancy in phrases such as male semen, as if there could be any other kind.

Leukencephalopathy

An unusual keyword to say the least, but someone surfing the net found sciencebase with it. So, here’s a quick definition:

Progressive multifocal leukencephalopathy (PML) is rare but debilitating. It is an inflammatory response to viral infection observed in immunocompromised patients, such as AIDS sufferers. The inflammation leads to loss of the myelin that insulates nerves within the white matter of the brain. Visual defects, headaches, and speech/language problems result.

There is no dedicated treatment but AIDS patients undergoing therapy with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) often improve significantly.

Science Fair Project Ideas

My science fair project ideas page, featuring inexpensive, downloadable 24h science projecs started getting more traffic than usual recently. It was only when I spotted a typo – sceince, instead of science in the title that I realised why. Lots of students searching MSN.com with the “word” sceince, were finding this page on the first of that particular search engine’s results pages! Wouldn’t make sense to fix it would it? But, apologies to my regular readers who can spell.

Squirt George Bank Nuisance

Researchers have completed a survey of the invasive sea squirt colony on the Georges Bank. A wider area was searched for the sea squirt in 2005, and it was mapped over about twice the area observed in 2004. Results show that the species is present in two adjacent areas totaling 88 square miles in US waters near the US-Canada boundary. The very large mat-like colonies observed in 2004 have been replaced by fewer smaller ones. The Georges Bank occurrence is the largest known infestation of colonial sea squirts in a major offshore fishing ground.

And, doesn’t it lend itself to an oddly apt sounding GWB headline?

Three-parent embryo

Is it squeamishness or superstition that makes the announcement from Newcastle University of plans to create a “three-parent” embryo controversial? I cannot see a profound difference between this kind of “non-natural” method of conception and any of the plethora of IVF and related treatments. They’re all non-natural when compared to the conventional approach to conception, after all.

However, the potential benefits of this new approach could be immense, when considered from the perspective of mitochondrial disease, which it seeks to prevent. So, what’s it to be non-natural and healthy or natural and not?

Ferrets

A neighbour approached a stranger who knocked on our front door three days in a row while we were on vacation. Apparently, my ferret had been sighted in the grounds of the local school! I was so relieved…except that I don’t own a ferret. I can only asusme that there was some transient overlap with the parallel universe in which I do own a ferret…either that or the world’s gone mad (more likely).

Nonoxynol Molecular Structure

Nonoxynol features in my list of unusual and unsavoury wedding anniversary gifts on sciencebase, and as such generates a fair few hits from visitors looking for its molecular structure. So, here it is. Unusual looking beast with that large protruding group at the front there!

Visit the main site for more information on the sciencebase molecular modeling service

It’s not something I can claim as my own really, but my name was an answer on the US TV show Final Jeopardy some time ago. Apparently, the associated question was “Who invented the computer reset ‘Control-Alt-Delete’?” Well, it wasn’t me, but it was my namesake at IBM during the early 1980s. And, where would we all be without him? Stuck in an endless blue screen of death state I reckon.

24 Hour Science Projects

Check out 24 Hour Science Projects – it’s an online package of five complete science project guides. The projects can be completed in one day, and come with step by step instructions. Students can easily find science project success with 24 Hour Science Projects! By the way if you spelled science projects, as sience prodgects you spelled it incorrectly. It would be a good idea not to do that when you’re completing your project write-up and remember even a professional with a spellchecker can be a dangerous thing.

Comments

UPDATE: 2011-11-30 It’s the last day of Movember, and I see from our laser display board that Sciencebase has passed the 2000 blog posts mark by a long margin. Apologies if you were expecting a fanfare that never came.

UPDATE: 2011-09-04 Fast approaching 2000 posts on Sciencebase since switching to WordPress. Now locked down comments to three-day open, but you should be able to add comments to all posts via Facebook.

UPDATE: 2011-05-17 We’re still here, still blogging, about 1900 posts at the time of writing and thousands of comments. Once we switched to WordPress, which is years ago now we needed to be even more vigilant with spam comments. As of this year, comments are enabled on new posts and you can offer your thoughts for a week before the articles are essentially archived and comments disabled.

I’ve enabled comments for the ~~SciObs~~ Sciencebase science blog, please feel free to tell me what you think…comment spam will be ruthlessly hacked to pieces and the perpetrators hounded down and spiked.