Category Archives: YouTube
The 11th Hour – Leo Dicaprio gets his Gore on…
Following on from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, Leonardo DiCaprio last year released his environmental call-to-arms, The 11h Hour. And it’s very good. It really knocks home the old proverb that we are not inheriting the Earth from our ancestors, but borrowing it from our children.
Here’s the trailer:
The movie contains contributions from the likes of Stephen Hawking, Nobel-winner Wangari Maathai and David Suzuki. Particularly useful is Gloria Flora‘s sentiment that we all vote, every day – even those who are too young to cast a ballott – by making informed choices about what we consume, spend our money on and throw away.
The first half of the movie is a talking-heads and imagery look at our impacts on the Earth, with plenty of soundbites and starting-points for further discussion. There’s a poitical section in the middle that’s probably worth skipping, but the last section outlining some of the achievable solutions to our problems is excellent.
Now here’s Leo’s video message (including the ‘vote’ quote from Gloria Flora):
For some further reading, go to the 11th hour Action website, or check out An Inconvenient Blog.
For good measure, here’s Linkin Park’s accompanying music video, What I’ve Done (which was also used for Transformers):
Total Eclipse of the Sun – 1st August 2008
Viewers in Chine were treated to a cracking eclipse of the Sun last Friday and NewScientist were on hand to film it:
There is a great explanation and animation of how solar eclipses happen on the BBC website.
Exploratorium have a full-length clip on their webcast page, as well as a nice animation of how eclipses occur. (I’ll give Exploratorium its own post very soon).
“Girl, It’s Time to Automate” & “The PCR Song”
This was first posted by TheIntersection over at ScienceBlogs.
It seems the latest way to market expensive Science lab toys (by which I mean equipment beyond the reach of your average school), is to produce a cheesy pop video.
Our first example is clearly aimed at the ladies in the lab and has been produced by Eppendorf to sell their automated pipetting system:
The next makes a mockery of cheesy ensemble charity singles and has been made by BioRad to market their PCR equipment:
“I’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating can do-oooo!”
More choice lyrics after the jump.
Shark vs Octopus – National Geographic Videos
1. Place bets.
2. Play video.
3. Oh yeah.
National Geographic have been playing the YouTube game for two years now and have posted over 600 videos on their channel. Just put ‘science’ into the search box to filter the videos.
TED – 50 million views young (and the best graphs EVER)
TED (Technology, Education, Design) has racked up 50 million views since 2006 and is proof that people can use the internet for more than just celebrity gossip and the dodgy sites. They now have a highlight reel of their top ten talks, including the $40 SMART Board, some oceany greatness and lessons learned while having a stroke. Ken Robinson’s talk is up there (are schools killing creativity?), and one of the coolest bits of statistics you’ll ever see from Hans Rosling:
After watching that, you should absolutely must head straight on over to gapminder.org and be dazzled.
You can even access the gapminder graph and manipulate both axes. Awesome.
Synthetic Biology – the man-made future?
Where’s the money in Biology? Probably where the future lies – genetics and synthetic biology.
As we learn more about genomes and the way different organisms (including pathogens) work, we can move towards creating targeted responses and DNA-level manipulation. Synthetic biologists take DNA and try to re-work it into a solution to a problem – by creating synthetic DNA, they hope to achieve control over the functions of the organism. They hope to generate alternative sources of fuel, targeted treatments and vaccines and many more applications.
Click on the image to the right to download a useful poster from SEED magazine.
BioBricks (company link) are a leading example of synthetic biology in action. Think of them like lego bricks or parts of standard computer code – you can take them and (theoretically) fit them into any genome. This is one of the wonders of DNA – base-pairings and the universality of the genetic code allow these researchers endless opportunities for tinkering and advancing science. Some BioBricks are ‘parts’, some are ‘devices’ and others are ‘systems’ – sections of code that increase in complexity and functionality.
There is an exciting world of information out there about this topic, and it’s well worth looking at if you think your future lies in biotechnology. It’s a discipline that pulls together Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Engineering and Programming, and the ways in are various. If you want to find out more about a career in synthetic biology, MIT are world-leaders in the field.
For a quick explanation of how synthetic biology works (and an interesting hardware/software analogy) watch the video from ScientificAmerican below:
You might also want to read ‘Prey’ by Michael Crichton for a bit of light holiday scare-mongering. Imagine ‘The Andromeda Strain‘ with nanoparticles.
And while we’re on the subject of Scientific American, you may as well check out their video channel on YouTube. It’s much like the NewScientist one.
i-Biology 