Major article in The Guardian 1999

Lucy Ellmann curls up with the latest tome

Turns out it’s not enough to have invented the car, the bomb, fluorescent lighting, aluminium, and BSE

Not enough to have convinced us all for years that animals have no emotions

Not enough that having identified genes, they now get to patent them

Not enough that they’ve paved the way for total annihilation of the planet!

No; Scientists want something more out of us: they want us to buy their silly popular science books and spend our last precious moments of earthly existence reading them

International PerspectiveScience is a truly international culture -

arguably the only one

UKUKUSAUSA

EUEU

MexicoMexico

JapanJapan

CanadaCanada

IndiaIndia

IsraelIsraelKoreaKorea

Science as a Cultural ActivityThree Components:

1. Discovery2. Knowledge

3. Applications

2 and 3 are useful to create interest

but 1 is needed for understanding

Life on other worlds?

subunit

  subunit of hemoglobin, showing the oxy-to-deoxy transition with the heme held stationary. The protein backbone is shown as a cylindrical coil; helices A-H are colored from blue at the N-terminus to magenta at the C-terminus. The heme,

shown schematically as a set of flat plates, is viewed edge-on. The polypeptide backbone is linked to the heme by the proximal histidine within the F helix (orange). This helix moves laterally by about 1 Å relative to the heme.

Relative motion of dimers in HaemoglobinThis animated figure illustrates the motion of the            dimer (thick coils towards front) relative to the            dimer (thin coils towards rear) in the oxy-to-deoxy transition. Here, the coordinates of oxy- and deoxy-Hb have been superimposed at the           interface so

that the            dimer remains stationary. The            dimer rotates by 15 degrees about

an axis passing through the     subunits.

Pictures courtesy of J Lukin, Colorado

During the oxy- to deoxy- transition, several hydrogen bonds and salt bridges are formed, as significant conformational

changes occur in the            (and identical           ) interface. Selected residues which are in contact in either the oxy or deoxy conformation of Hb are illustrated in the following animation. Here the structures have been superimposed at the "flexible

joint" region, where the FG segment and G helix of the     chain contact the C helix of the     chain. Inter-subunit contacts in this region (     91-95 and     36-40) remain relatively unchanged during the change in ligation state

      interface

The Public is oblivious to the debt it owes to Science and Engineering

The public is ill served by TV which is driven entirely by advertising and as a result we are fed a complete diet of progammes chosen entirely for their entertainment value and for their zero educational content. TV programmes are the equivalent of Hello and OK magazines.

This is unsatisfactory and perhaps also very dangerous in a world dominated by society’s blindly voracious appetite for the benefits of Science and Engineering

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