Science Sunday - The Week As I See It

Clearly I am new to this blogging malarkey. And also clearly, not being the world's most avid exercise enthusiast, some weeks I am going to struggle to provide relevant anecdotes on the ongoing Tough Mudder training struggle. Not unless you want more posts like:

"Did some skipping. Knackered now. Ate cake.

-Note: for 'some' read 'a very little' and insert 'quite a lot' between 'ate' and 'cake'."

Fancy that? Thought not. So today, having had a terrible weekend exercise-wise - my father's birthday (lots of lovely food, wine and a massive restaurant bill) coincided with an unfortunate time of the month (lying on the sofa groaning and generally being a mardy cow) to produce what is possibly an all-time low in movement let alone actual exercise - I decided to write about a few things that have interested me, science-wise, this week.  

                                               

 Autism Spectrum Disorders and Music

Last year I worked with a primarily autistic class of 11 year olds and, in the summer terms we took most of the year group on residential holiday. Whilst there we discovered that one of our students who had never to our knowledge played with an iPad before, or showed much musical ability either, could, using the piano app, work out how to play simple tunes such as Happy Birthday or the Balamory theme tune. Now maybe he spends his free time playing the piano with his mum or maybe he is a musical genius. But recent research supports the hypothesis that individuals with autism have a greater ability to discriminate pitch and remember melodies (Stanutz S, Wapnick J, Burack J. 2012 Pitch discrimination and melodic memory in children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism)

Hannu Rajaniemi

Hannu Rajaniemi - what can I say? I would like to spend a day inside his mind, that's for sure! He wrote the mind-blowing SF book The Quantum Thief which mixes tech that is advanced to the edge between our understanding and Rajaniemi's ability to describe it but also clearly comes out of the tools we currently use to communicate. Imagine an inbuilt Google/Facebook/Wikipedia that gives you as much information as you want on anything or anyone that you interact with, using multiple levels of functionality and accessing public and private profiles dependant on societal status... well you're nearly at the limit of my descriptive powers. Luckily Rajaniemi is a much better storyteller than me. His sequel The Fractal Prince continues this flight through space just past the fingertips of the law and will open your imagination. I won't promise it will be an easy read but it will certainly be a fun one. 

And Finally

Isn't this amazing? A very clever chap named Russell Gawthorpe created these science action figures. Sad as I am that Gregor Mendel (father of genetics, pea enthusiast and all-round clever clogs) didn't  make the cut at least science superstar Nikola Tesla is in there! 

See the original link at DeviantART. 

Have a lovely week yourself and I will try and organise myself (and the lazy team!) to upload some more Tough Mudder content. Only 203 days to go!