Sing About Science & Math

Goodbye, Blogspot; hello, WordPress!

2011-02-21T12:22:00.000-08:00

When we started this blog in April 2010, we weren't quite sure what we would do with it or how it would relate to the rest of the Sing About Science project. Ten months later, it's clear that the blog is integral to the project and something that we should keep writing. To give it an appearance that is more professional and more consistent with the rest of SingAboutScience.org, we've moved it to a new WordPress-based directory: http://www.singaboutscience.org/blog/.

If you've enjoyed reading the posts here at singaboutscience.blogspot.com, please update your feed readers, bookmarks, etc. Virtually all of the content posted here is now available at the new address, and future entries will be posted only to the new address.

Grammies for science songs, part 2

2011-02-18T01:00:00.000-08:00

Well, They Might Be Giants' stellar Here Comes Science did not win the Grammy Award for Best Children's Album last weekend, and a bunch of scientists are pretty upset. In fact, the journal BioTechniques went so far as to create its own Best Lab Song of the Year category, select nominees, and appoint itself the judge of the nominees. I'm not sure this represents the peer review process at its best, but you are welcome to view the BioTechniques article ("And the Grammy for best lab song goes to...") and decide whether you agree with the selections.

Science song of the week: "Coral Reef" by Billy B

2011-02-17T01:00:00.000-08:00

From Geophysical Research Letters via Science News comes the word that corals off the coast of Japan are moving northward, perhaps in response to the warming of the ocean.

The team, led by geographer Hiroya Yamano of the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan, analyzed maps of corals from four time periods starting in the 1930s. They found that of nine common coral species, four had expanded northward, and two went as far as temperate waters. The study confirms what marine biologists and fishermen have speculated for years.

For some background information on choral reefs, we go to a live performance in which Billy B is supported by a coral group, er, choral group, of schoolchildren. If this song doesn't teach you the word "zooxanthellae," I don't know what will!

New additions to the database: Jonny Berliner and Doug Edmonds

2011-02-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

Sing About Science's searchable database now includes over 3700 math and science songs, which seems like a lot. But does it include virtually all of the relevant songs out there? I doubt it. Just yesterday I discovered a couple of artists of whom I was not previously aware: Jonny Berliner and Doug Edmonds. Berliner is a musician with a knack for lines like, "With Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle you can be uncertain for sure." Edmonds is a junior high school teacher who has been written up in the TribLocal branch of the Chicago Tribune ("Singing science teacher attracts YouTube following").

I look forward to discovering even more singing scientists and adding them to the database. Suggestions are always welcome!

Scientists are like punk rockers (?)

2011-02-11T12:49:00.000-08:00

Alison McCook notes certain parallels between the guitar-smashers and the gene-cloners.

"Punk ethos is typified by a passionate adherence to individualism, creativity and freedom of expression with no regard to established opinions," Bill Cuevas, biochemist at the biotech company Genencor and music director at the Stanford University radio station KZSU, tells The Scientist. "Good scientific discipline is also typified by such qualities, including inquisitiveness and curiosity, with no entrenchment to established beliefs."

...Importantly, punk is "about the freedom to express what you want to express," says Milo Aukerman, a plant researcher at DuPont and lead singer of legendary punk band The Descendents. In many ways, research is the same -- more so than in other professions, scientists can set their own schedules and decide what they want to study. "There is a certain freedom implied there," Aukerman adds.

Unfortunately, the article backs away from the possible conclusion that more punk rock music should be about science.

Of course, even if punk music and science share many elements, the comparison can be taken too far, says Aukerman. For instance, you don't see many punk musicians singing about science. "I will probably never ever write a song about DNA," he says.

Thanks to Joel Tetreault for pointing us toward this article.

One man's trash is another man's science song

2011-02-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

Our featured science story of the week is Turning garbage into gas (from The Economist).

Appropriately tweaked, the destruction of organic materials (including paper and plastics) by plasma torches produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas. That, in turn, can be burned to generate electricity. Add in the value of the tipping fees that do not have to be paid if rubbish is simply vaporised, plus the fact that energy prices in general are rising, and plasma torches start to look like a plausible alternative to burial.

A science song that aligns fairly well with this story is "Making biogas is a gas, gas, gas" by T. H. Culhane. Note, however, the difference between syngas, discussed in the article, and biogas, discussed in the song. The gases produced are different -- syngas is carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H₂), while biogas usually consists mostly of methane (CH₄) -- and they are produced by different processes, with biogas arising from the metabolism of living organisms such as bacteria.

Hey, I was on TV again!

2011-02-09T23:38:00.000-08:00

Sorry for yet another bit of self-promotion, but here I am in "UW professor a mad scientist behind songs about science," a KING 5 TV piece that aired earlier tonight.

Another personal anecdote

2011-02-07T15:33:00.000-08:00

On January 6th I gave a brief presentation -- "Global health, neglected diseases, and drug development" -- to students in Glacier Peak High School's biotechnology program. At the end of it I tacked on an a cappella rendition of a song about malaria written by my boss. A couple of weeks later I received a very nice thank-you card signed by 21 of the students. Although they only had space to write a sentence or two apiece, 14 of them mentioned the song!

Although we cannot conclude anything about my singing ability or the students' comprehension of the song lyrics, the song was obviously memorable. And if any of the students turn their attention to malaria again in the future, they may well recall the existence of this song, search for it on YouTube or my database, and perhaps digest the words and ponder their meaning. That's exactly the sort of informal learning that we want to encourage.

Antimatter hey, antimatter ho...

2011-02-03T01:00:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Coulton, who we've mentioned before, is somewhat famous for his "Thing a Week" project, in which he recorded a new song every week for a year. A pretty strict schedule ... and yet downright lax compared to that of Jonathan Mann, who has been posting a new song to YouTube every single day for over two years running! His Song A Day #686 ("CERN Created and Held Anti-Matter") is our selection as this week's Science Song of the Week. Feel free to sing along with the chorus: "Antimatter hey, antimatter ho -- our model of the universe needs you, bro...."

Mann's song was chosen because it may serve as a fun entry point into a recent Science News article, "Sizing up the electron," which explains the connection between electrons and antimatter as follows.

[The electron] inspired the mathematical equation that first hinted at the existence of antimatter, the exotic, oppositely charged counterpart to ordinary matter.

Now the electron is poised to go one step further, by helping scientists understand why matter triumphed over antimatter in the early universe. In theory, the Big Bang should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts, but if so they would have annihilated each other and left nothing behind.

Though the standard model of particle physics, the mathematical framework for explaining how stuff is held together, can't quite account for how matter beat out antimatter, some theories that go beyond the standard model do. By carefully measuring the shape of the electron, through a particular property known as the electric dipole moment, scientists think they can narrow those theories down to get at the one that best reflects reality.

"The electron EDM is one of the places where there should be a good chance of seeing some new phenomena that can't be explained in the standard model, and could in turn help to explain this matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe," says physicist David DeMille of Yale University.

I'm glad I have a boss who sings too

2011-02-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

I got a rare call on my office phone this past Friday at about 4:30 PM. It was my boss, calling in from California. We chatted for a couple of minutes and then I said, "Look, I'm sorry but I have to go. We're, ah, making a music video about the lab's research."

I would have preferred not to cut off my boss with such a frivolous-sounding excuse, but felt safe in doing so. He himself has been known to sing about medicine in public. Besides, the video was sort of meant to celebrate the work being done by his group. In general terms, this entails the very early stages of drug development for infectious diseases. Like most biomedical research, it requires a constant influx of grant money ... which is why I called the song "Money 4 Drugz."

Many thanks to Ryan Choi, who directed the video, and everyone else who helped!

Zheng Lab enters the YouTube Top 10

2011-01-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

Last June we made a list of the YouTube science/math song videos that had been seen by the most viewers. That list has been rendered obsolete by the release of Bad Project, the grad student nightmare set to music by Hui Zheng's lab at the Baylor College of Medicine. New rankings are below; let us know if we're missing any "platinum" songs. Note that #3, #5, #8, and #9 on the current list all belong to John Boswell's Symphony of Science.

1. Waking Up Is Hard To Do. 8,186,590 views as of 1-31-11. (4,566,200 views as of 6-16-10.)
2. Large Hadron Rap. 6,347,199 views as of 1-31-11. (5,888,305 views as of 6-16-10.)
3. A Glorious Dawn. 5,165,197 views as of 1-31-11. (3,824,241 views as of 6-16-11.)
4. The Elements. 1,992,228 views as of 1-31-11. (1,329,187 views as of 6-16-10.)
5. We Are All Connected. 2,927,577 views as of 1-31-11. (1,967,245 views as of 6-16-10.)
6. Chemical Love. 1,595,210 views as of 1-31-11. (961,327 views as of 6-16-10.)
7. Bad Project. 1,506,819 views as of 1-31-11. (Didn't exist as of 6-16-10.)
8. The Poetry Of Reality. 1,311,977 views as of 1-31-11.
9. Our Place In The Cosmos. 1,112,445 views as of 1-31-11.
10. Diagnosis Wenckebach. 1,134,013 views as of 1-31-11. (1,012,912 views as of 6-16-10.)
11. I Will Derive. 1,096,814 views as of 1-31-11. (883,882 views as of 6-16-10.)

Another variation on the art/science fusion theme

2011-01-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

Most examples of science-inspired art that we've highlighted on this blog consist of individual scientists doing something artistic or individual artists making art about science. A neat article from the University of Washington highlights something a bit different: an exhibit of 36 artists, ALL of whom worked with scientists to create weather-related pieces.

Seattle artist Scott Schuldt worked with [UW atmospheric scientist Celia] Bitz, whose climate research focuses on the Arctic. Schuldt, who quit an engineering career in 2005 to concentrate on art, and Bitz created "The Melt," beadwork on a canvas anorak modeled after those worn by early Arctic explorers and based on Inuit designs. The anorak was sized to fit Bitz and the beadwork represents various aspects of her work in the Arctic.

"For me, the inspiration comes in seeing the focused and very important work that Cecilia is engaged in. It's just fascinating stuff," Schuldt said. "Scientists wear their work on their sleeves, so to speak, so it wasn't that big of an artistic jump to clothe a scientist in her own work."

...Such collaborations between artists and scientists can be beneficial to both, Bitz believes, but it also gives the viewer a different way of perceiving science.

"Visualizing science through art offers a way to communicate science on a different level than most of us experience from lectures or textbooks," she said. "Through art, scientists can share the beauty that inspires us along our journey to understand the natural world."

Science song of the week: arsenic-using bacteria revisited

2011-01-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

Back on December 9th, we mentioned the controversial Science paper on a bacterium that can supposedly substitute arsenic for phosphorus in the structure of its DNA. The most relevant freely available song that I could find at the time was a DNA Replication Song that reviewed the structure of DNA.... But now there is at least one song that directly addresses the Wolfe-Simon paper: "GFAJ-1 Arsenic Blues" by Adrian Ebsary.

We at Sing About Science and Math have no official position on the correctness of the original research or this particular response to it (which seems mostly critical of the publicity blitz rather than the research itself). However, we do think that singing about the primary literature has great potential for increasing the public's awareness of this literature.

More interesting stuff from Adrian is coming soon at ScienceSounds.com (currently under construction).

Science + Art: more than the sum of the parts?

2011-01-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

From physicist Chad Orzel's links dump comes a New York Times article of interest to fans of art/science fusion: "An infusion of science where the arts reign." The "Citizen Science" program basically immerses non-science majors in hands-on science work, but with some room for creative expression at the end....

While there is no final grade, there is a final project, and Ms. Batkin and six classmates came up with an idea that is pure Bard: a dance performance that illustrates how an influenza vaccine works. Students assumed the roles of the antigen, B cell, T cell and antibodies.

"We’re using rubber bands and bubbles to show the B cell alerting the T cell that there’s a foreign invader," Ms. Batkin said. "I’m narrating the process, but I am also the antibody at the end."

This sort of reminds me of a course at my alma mater, Williams College, taught by Professor of Mathematics Edward Burger. In "Exploring Creativity," students are challenged to convey core concepts of one discipline using the tools of another discipline. For example, as discussed in this Alumni Review article, students might be asked, "What is the fourth dimension? Write a two-sentence definition and then create an artistic representation of a four-dimensional object or of four-dimensional space."

What these courses and Wendy Silk's "Earth, Water, Science and Song" seem to have in common is a sense that there is meaning and value in the challenge of creatively expressing scientific and mathematical concepts. Arts-related assignments are given not because the students can't handle more traditional "hard-core" assignments, but because science and math can and should inspire singing and dancing and drawing.

You'll love this week's featured science song, thanks to dopamine

2011-01-20T01:00:00.000-08:00

"Whether it's the Beatles or Beethoven, people like music for the same reason they like eating or having sex: It makes the brain release a chemical that gives pleasure, a new study says."

Thus begins Malcom Ritter's article (Study: Love music? Thank a substance in your brain) summarizing a study just published in Nature Neuroscience (Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music by Valorie Salimpoor et al.).

To complete the dopamine/music pleasure circuit, how about listening to a song about this particular neurotransmitter (as well as its cousin norepinephrine)? "Chemical Love" by Charlie McDonnell is sure to fire up those striatal neurons!

Billy Joel, Adjunct Professor of Fishery Sciences

2011-01-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Prof. Kira Wennstrom of Shoreline Community College for pointing us to this super-cool activity: Downeaster Alexa: A Fishery Story (PDF file).

It was created in 1991 through a National Science Foundation grant to an Ohio State University team led by Victor J. Mayer and Rosanne W. Fortner. Its in-depth consideration of the lyrics of the Billy Joel song "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" (embedded below), and its connection of those lyrics to relevant data, offer a strong rebuke to anyone tempted to dismiss educational uses of science songs as superficial or frivolous.

Science song of the week: Tevatron requiem

2011-01-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

Tuesday's Nature News announced, "Tevatron faces final curtain."

After much debate, officials at the US Department of Energy's Office of Science revealed this week that they have decided not to extend funding for the Tevatron, the proton–antiproton collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, by an additional three years. The decision means that the first glimpse of the long-predicted Higgs particle, thought to endow other particles with mass, will probably be achieved by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland.

Below is the YouTube video for "Particle Business" by rapper funky49 (a.k.a. Steven Rush). It does a nice job conveying that CERN's LHC and Fermilab's Tevatron have been in a high-stakes race to find evidence of the Higgs particle:

Tevatron, OG atom smasher
say hello to CERN’s party crasher, the
new "Lord of the Rings" LHC, hear me, this
be competitive collaboration baby...
rock stars of physics, particle business
smash matter, antimatter and witness
quarks, bottom to top they don’t stop
"where the Higgs at?" yo that’s their mark
where the Higgs at? where the Higgs at?
where the Higgs at?

One more "year-in-review" song, and then on to 2011 in earnest!

2011-01-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

The Scientist has published several compilations of the year's top biology papers, including a top 7 in biochemistry and a top 5 for all of biology, both ranked by the Faculty of 1000. The key advances included two prized crystal structures: complex I of the bacterial electron transport chain, and the two subunits of the yeast ribosome. The most pertinent song I found was "The Structural Biology Rap" by Zach Powers (a.k.a. The Science Rapper), which gives an overview of pertinent techniques including protein expression and crystallography.

Sonification: transforming data into sounds

2011-01-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

NPR reports on Lily Asquith's attempts to analyze LHC data by converting them into sounds in "Particle Pings: Sounds of the Large Hadron Collider."

[Asquith] thought about a heart monitor in a hospital; it turns the electrical data from your heart into sound.

"You don't have to watch the monitor because you can hear it without making any effort," she says. "Just a steady beep — you can quite easily detect if it starts going quicker or if it stops even for a second."

She wondered what would happen if she used music composition software to turn data from the collider into sound....

What she got isn't quite music, but sounds that are more out of this world — bells, beeps and clangs.

Right now, Asquith says, the sounds don't tell scientists very much. But she hopes that in the future, it could help them understand the data in new ways.

She says that in certain situations, it's much easier to use your ears than your eyes, particularly with something that's changing over time. Collider data do that.

Science song of the week, or the year, or whatever

2010-12-30T01:00:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season for end-of-year summaries. PhysicsWorld.com has a ranked list of the top ten physics breakthroughs of 2010, including this entry:

3rd place: Quantum effects seen in a visible object

In what is an important step towards testing Schrodinger's cat paradox, physicists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have bagged third place in our top 10 by observing true quantum behaviour in a macroscopic object big enough to be seen with the naked eye. Andrew Cleland and crew reduced the amplitude of the vibrations in a resonator by cooling it down to below 0.1 K. They were then able to create a superposition state of the resonator where they simultaneously had an excitation in the resonator and no excitation in the resonator. "This is analogous to Schrödinger's cat being dead and alive at the same time," says Cleland. This is the first time this feat has been achieved and it could shed light on the mysterious boundaries between the classical and quantum worlds.

To remind us non-physicists of the basics of Schrodinger's cat, we turn once again to Mark Rosengarten. His song "Schodinger's Cat Strikes Back" explains the paradox:
http://www.youtube.com/MarkRosengarten#p/c/65159266CFC74682/10/5SvtsKsh9Fo

Of course, if you only play the song a single time without doing any additional reading, you might feel that the concept has been simultaneously explained and not explained. Quantum physics can be like that....

Science Song of the Week: "Silent Night (for the cosmically inclined)"

2010-12-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

This week we take a break from the news-of-the-week format to celebrate the holidays ... in a scientifically correct manner, of course! The song below is described by its writer, Connie Barlow, as a "traditional Christmas song rewritten to celebrate the scientific fact that we are made of stardust."

Science song of the week and "teaching the controversy"

2010-12-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

The past week's science-related news stories included much coverage of the Cancun Climate Summit convened by the United Nations. The tone of this coverage varied widely, with many liberal sources stressing the urgency of the global warming problem and some conservative ones questioning whether there is a problem at all.

If you look for songs about global warming, you'll find a similar range of views. One that is highly critical of the scientific support for global warming is "Hide the Decline," by a group called Minnesotans For Global Warming.

If I were teaching a class about climate change, I might show a video like this one and then ask students to do some further reading at websites such as SkepticalScience.com. Remember that, in an educational context, songs do not have to be used simply for ramming textbook facts down people's throats; they can serve as jumping-off points for discussion. A good discussion starter does not have to represent a scientific consensus; why not start with the "controversy" and then examine the evidence in more detail?

MASSIVE's long and winding road

2010-12-12T16:44:00.000-08:00

Back in August, I wrote of my intent to get my MASSIVE (Math And Science Song Information, Viewable Everywhere) database up to date after three years of inactivity. I'm pleased to report that MASSIVE now includes many additional songs, pushing the total above 3500, as well as some new search options. For example, it should now be easier to find songs that are parodies of popular hits. To find scientific parodies of "YMCA," you could enter "YMCA" in the "Song Template" box of the Find Songs page, or you could enter a writer of the original song (Henri Belolo, Jacques Morali, or Victor Willis) in the "Writer" box. These searches aren't perfect -- not all song parodies have been labeled as such -- but they turn up some interesting results. While nobody thinks of John Lennon or Paul McCartney as science enthusiasts, if you do a search for songs co-written by Lennon or McCartney you'll find a host of science songs (15, at present) based on Beatles tunes.

Science song of the week: the structure of DNA

2010-12-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

Continuing with the new, newsier format introduced last week, we note the considerable media buzz concerning the NASA research by Felisa Wolfe-Simon et al. that was just published (online) by Science: A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus. The central claim of this paper is that, when growing in a high-arsenic, phosphate-free environment, a bacterial strain known as GFAJ-1 can substitute arsenate (AsO₄^3-) for phosphate (PO₄^3-). This claim has been hotly disputed by prominent scientists, but if it were true, the standard textbook explanations and diagrams of nucleic acids having a "sugar-phosphate backbone" would not necessarily apply to all life.

At this point, casual biology students and scientifically curious adults may be thinking, "Right.... Now what does that sugar-phosphate backbone look like, again?" Most DNA songs focus on the hydrogen bonding between complementary bases, but here's one (performed by two high school teachers) that shows you the backbone as well. Bonus points for using the word "phosphodiester"!

A Grammy for science songs?!

2010-12-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to They Might Be Giants, whose album Here Comes Science has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Musical Album for Children." (Other nominees include Jungle Gym by Justin Roberts, Sunny Days by Battersby Duo, Tomorrow's Children by Pete Seeger With The Rivertown Kids And Friends, and Weird Things Are Everywhere! by Judy Pancoast.) Could this be the first time an album devoted entirely to science has been nominated? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised....

Science Song of the Week -- new, newsier format!

2010-12-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

Up to now, this Science Song of the Week series has lacked any real cohesion. That isn't necessarily a problem, but a conversation with Kate and Wendy about the future of the Sing About Science project led to the idea that we could work harder to connect songs to current science news stories for which the songs may provide context and background. Starting this week, my SSotW plan is to pair a news story with a song that is at least loosely related to it.

Our topic for this week? Stem cells!

Laura Ungar of the Washington Post reports that Stem cells in fat may help repair damaged hearts. And why do so many people study stem cells, again? Tufts University professor Jonathan Garlick "breaks it down" for us.....

Science Song of the Week #27: "A Wave of Reason"

2010-11-25T01:00:00.000-08:00

John Boswell has taken a highly innovative approach to creating music out of science: he uses Auto-Tune software to create vocal tracks of Carl Sagan and others "singing" and creates instrumental accompaniment for their "melodies." He describes his latest piece, just released this week, as follows:

"A Wave of Reason" is the seventh installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It is intended to promote scientific reasoning and skepticism in the face of growing amounts of pseudoscientific pursuits, such as Astrology and Homeopathy, and also to promote the scientific worldview as equally enlightening as religion. It features Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Phil Plait, and James Randi.

Harry Potter and the Prince of Science Songs

2010-11-21T14:30:00.001-08:00

"Tom Lehrer, in my opinion, is the cleverest and funniest man of the 20th century." So said Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in the movies based on the J.K. Rowling novels, in a recent BBC telecast. Then, as if to prove his devotion to Lehrer, he performs a rushed but recognizable version of one of Lehrer's most famous songs, "The Elements."

Thanks to my friend Jeremy for sharing this.

Science Song of the Week #26: "Fossil Man"

2010-11-18T01:00:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are already -- halfway through a year of Science Songs of the Week!

The SECOND-biggest YouTube collection of science songs of which I'm aware is that of Mark Rosengarten, who was featured in week 14. The biggest YouTube collection of all, I think, has been posted by a Bill Nye fan who has uploaded music videos from nearly every episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Below is one of my favorites, a parody of the Elton John song we were just discussing.

Rocket science

2010-11-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

I just discovered one of those Internet archives that other people have been enjoying for years: the McSweeney's collection of Pop-Song Correspondences by John Moe. These are letters imagined to have been written to, from, or about the performers of various pop hits. The titles remind me of headlines from the Onion. For example:
* James Taylor Issues an Update on "The Friendship Promise"
* Attention, Mr. Axl Rose: We Did Not Feel Welcome in the Jungle
* A Letter to Prince Regarding the Crying of Doves and the Fiasco That Resulted From the Presentation of a Speech on That Topic

Since this is a blog about science songs, I'd like to direct your attention to A Letter to Elton John From the Office of the NASA Administrator. This is based on John's 1972 hit Rocket Man, of course. I love that song, yet I've always been bothered by the lines, "And all this science I don't understand/ It's just my job, five days a week." I've seen enough NASA propaganda to know that its astronauts are highly trained in science, and so has Moe. Writing as "James C. Fletcher, NASA Administrator," he provides this hilarious rebuke:

We expect a great deal from our astronauts, but perhaps the most important part of the job is an understanding of science. For our top men -- Armstrong, Aldrin, and the like -- understanding the science is more than a 9-to-5 job; they work at it seven days a week. Frankly, sir, I doubt your scientific acumen. After demanding data from you for days, you were only able to offer this insight: "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did." First off, if you did what? That doesn't even make sense. Secondly, we did not send you up there to evaluate whether Mars is fit for human habitation or child rearing. Thirdly, your mission was not even going to Mars.

I'm glad somebody took John to task for his portrayal of astronauts -- even if the true fault lies with his lyricist, Bernie Taupin.

A trio of new science song CDs

2010-11-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the year-end holidays come new CDs from veteran science singer/songwriters Dr. Chordate, Professor Boggs, and Monty Harper. The respective titles are The View from the Pond: More Songs of Science; Round the World with Science; and Songs From the Science Frontier. Orders for each may be placed on the musicians' websites (see links above), which also contain some song excerpts and lyrics.

Below are videos for "Ain't It Beautiful" and "Eat a Toad," two of the songs included in these new albums.

Science Song of the Week #25: "Natural Selection"

2010-11-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

The topic of this week's song is a bit redundant with SSotW #4, but the songs themselves could hardly be more different. "Natural Selection" comes from a unique album called The Origin of Species in Dub, a reggae representation of Darwin's famous book. The video is embedded below, but I recommend going to the Genomic Dub Collective's web page on this video for complete lyrics and other relevant information.

Grants for singing scientists

2010-11-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Last month's posts on science song trivia were pulled from the archives of a monthly newsletter that I used to write. Some other good tidbits are buried in those archives as well, and I may recycle them from time to time -- like right now, for example.

The May 2004 newsletter included a summary of all of the science song-related grants I was aware of at the time, as follows:

* The Chromatics, an a cappella group from Maryland, were awarded a NASA IDEAS (Initiative to Develop Education through Astronomy and Space Science) grant in 1997, which they used to develop a CD of 6 astronomy songs. After the grant money ran out, they continued to write and record additional songs, the end result being a revised-and-expanded CD called AstroCappella 2.0.

* Priscilla Laws, a physics professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, received a small grant from the National Science Foundation in the mid-'90s that she used to finance an album of Physics Pholk Songs compiled and recorded by David and Ginger Hildebrand.

* In 2002, Carl Winter, director of the UC-Davis FoodSafe program, was awarded a 3-year, $418,391 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve food safety education through the use of music-based curricula. This one even spawned a couple of publications in peer-reviewed journals: "Incorporation of music in a food service food safety curriculum for high school students" (S.M. McCurdy et al., Food Protection Trends 28: 107-114, 2008) and "Food Safety Education Using Music Parodies" (C.K. Winter et al., Journal of Food Science Education 8: 62-67, 2009).

Much more recently -- earlier this year, in fact -- Wendy Silk of UC-Davis was given an "incubator" grant from NSF to develop a network of folks interested in science songs. Her proposal was "Undergraduate Biology Education - Songs for Teaching (UBEST)," and this blog is one networking/outreach activity resulting from it.

Perhaps others out there have also secured bits of funding for activities related to science songs. If you know of any, please leave a comment!

Science Song of the Week #24: "A Song About An Anglerfish" by Hank Green

2010-11-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of grant-writing lately and haven't been outside for two days. But things could be worse -- I could be an anglerfish.

On second thought, maybe it would be better to be an anglerfish right now. In the words of the song, "You can't hate the night if you live your whole life without light."

(Thanks to London Parker for emailing me this link!)

Science Song of the Week #23: "Stanley the Skeleton"

2010-10-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

Here's an anatomy song sung by a skeleton -- perfect for Halloween!

What's a festival without music?

2010-10-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Kudos to the organizers of the 2010 USA Science & Engineering Festival for making music such a central part of the festivities. Back in May, we mentioned that the lead-up to the festival included a jingle contest. The festival itself included a science-themed oratorio featuring local K-12 students as well as performances by science songsters Monty Harper, Jeff Moran ("Dr. Chordate"), Larry Morris ("Prof. Boggs"), and Francis Collins. I'd love to hear more from anyone who was there.

Science Song of the Week #22: "El Corazon"

2010-10-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure what to make of Chris Hardwick and Mike Phirman, known together as Hard 'N Phirm. Their songs and videos include several with science/math themes, yet they don't seem to have an educational agenda per se. I guess maybe they see the communication of science simply as an area ripe with humorous satirical possibilities.

The song illustrated below, "El Corazón" (The Heart), seems sort of representative of their work. A passionate recitation of facts about the cardiovascular system, in Spanish, gives way to a quick tribute to the rock band Heart and then a depressing ending. You may want to watch it twice.

Benoit Mandelbrot: a song to remember him by

2010-10-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Curtis Silver of Technorati for writing this up before I had the chance:
In Memory: "The Mandelbrot Set" by Jonathan Coulton

Those with highly sensitive ears should be warned that the song contains the phrase "bad-ass f***ing fractal." Is it vulgar, or is it math?

Doctoral dance update

2010-10-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

We previously mentioned the "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, the first round of which has since concluded. Suzanne Winter of BioTechniques.com gives us an update in her article "Shake your groove thing," which focuses on the winner in the chemistry category, Maureen McKeague of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Since this is above all a science music blog, we should note the central role of music in the winning dance:

McKeague's thesis dance begins with a lonely homocystine target, dancing by herself to Celine Dion's "Alone" before being incubated with DNA strands that are possible aptamers. The dancers demonstrate binding affinity by keeping apace of the aerobic homocystine as she dances to Vanilla Fudge's "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and surviving a urea wash as "Night on Bald Mountain" plays menacingly in the background. In the true gem of the video, the strands then undergo PCR, led by a jiving Taq DNA polymerase molecule to the tune of Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance." Finally, natural selection takes its toll as mismatched aptamers peel off the dance group to Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and the remaining aptamers celebrate their binding affinity with Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance."

The charming article is marred by a number of factual errors. McKeague's small-molecule target is homocysteine, not homocystine. In addition, most of the songs mentioned above appear to be attributed to the wrong artists. The version of "Alone" used in the dance sounds to my ears like the original one recorded by Heart, not Celine Dion's cover. Conversely, "The Safety Dance" was originally recorded by Men Without Hats, but the dance includes a different version. And the "You Keep Me Hangin' On" heard here is not from Vanilla Fudge -- maybe Kim Wilde?

Science Song of the Week #21: "Graphene"

2010-10-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Over at PhysicsSongs.org, Haverford professor Walter Smith posted the video below in honor of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. The press release reads, in part:

A thin flake of ordinary carbon, just one atom thick, lies behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have shown that carbon in such a flat form has exceptional properties that originate from the remarkable world of quantum physics.

Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.

Geim and Novoselov extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils. Using regular adhesive tape they managed to obtain a flake of carbon with a thickness of just one atom. This at a time when many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable.

However, with graphene, physicists can now study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties. Graphene makes experiments possible that give new twists to the phenomena in quantum physics. Also a vast variety of practical applications now appear possible including the creation of new materials and the manufacture of innovative electronics. Graphene transistors are predicted to be substantially faster than today’s silicon transistors and result in more efficient computers.

Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene is suitable for producing transparent touch screens, light panels, and maybe even solar cells.

When mixed into plastics, graphene can turn them into conductors of electricity while making them more heat resistant and mechanically robust. This resilience can be utilised in new super strong materials, which are also thin, elastic and lightweight. In the future, satellites, airplanes, and cars could be manufactured out of the new composite materials.

And now a celebratory song based upon J.J. Cale's "Cocaine," courtesy of Georgia Tech....

Blog? Facebook? Listserv? Message board? (All of the above?!)

2010-10-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Sing About Science approach to social networking might seem a bit scattered at this point. In addition to this blog, we have a Facebook page and a just-created forum (electronic message board), plus some of us use a Yahoo groups email listserv. There is some method to this madness, though. We figure that, as we grow our network of people interested in science songs, we should try all of these approaches and see which one(s) people like best. So, any thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment here, or respond to the corresponding message board thread (after creating a user login).

Answers to the trivia questions!

2010-10-09T01:00:00.000-07:00

And now, as promised, the answers to yesterday's science song trivia questions....

1. The song "Drops of Jupiter" by the group Train was a #1 hit in 2001. Which of the following incorrect "facts" is implied by the lyrics of the song?
A. Earth is not part of the Milky Way.
B. We now have proof that life once existed on Mars.
C. Jupiter was named for the Greek god of metallurgy.
D. Saturn is the only planet with rings.
E. Pluto was discovered by Galileo.

The answer is (A). In the song, the vocalist asks his galaxy-hopping girlfriend, "Did you make it to the Milky Way?" -- implying that the Milky Way is some distant astronomical entity, when in fact we are already in it.

2. Though most SSA members toil in anonymity, every so often a science song makes it into the repertoire of a famous person or group. Which of the following recording artists has NOT recorded a science song?
A. Biz Markie ("Energy blues")
B. Flanders and Swann ("First and second law")
C. Kate and Anna McGarrigle ("NaCl")
D. Sam Hinton ("It's a long way from Amphioxus")
E. Sheryl Crow ("Fathom the atom")
F. They Might Be Giants ("Mammal")
G. Tom Lehrer ("The Elements")

The correct answer is (E), Sheryl Crow. (How about covering me on your next album, Sheryl?)

3. The overall winner in the 2001 SSA Student Science Songwriting Contest was a song that included these lyrics:
I got isotopes
Of an element.
They have different masses --
It just don't make sense.
I'll guess you'll say,
"How come they don't weigh the same?"
Neutrons, neutrons, neutrons
Talkin' 'bout neutrons, neutrons.
To which oldie hit are these words meant to be sung?
A. "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf
B. "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" by The Shirelles
C. "I Want You Back" by The Jackson 5
D. "Your Song" by Elton John
E. "My Girl" by The Temptations

The answer is (E), "My Girl," as originally performed by The Tempations (and later covered by Hall & Oates and many others).

4. Only one of the following purveyors of science songs is/was based in the United States. Which one is it?
A. Les Horribles Cernettes
B. The Metabolites
C. Chris Rawlings
D. Billy B. Brennen
E. Flanders & Swann

The answer is (D). Billy B. Brennen, a children's biology/environmental singer/songwriter, currently resides in New York. Les Horribles Cernettes include
members from various European countries and are based in Switzerland; The Metabolites (the children of songwriters Harold Baum and Peter Shade) and Flanders & Swann are British; and Chris Rawlings is Canadian.

5. A brilliant and famous 19th-century physicist wrote many poems, including the following lines, which he may have sung while accompanying himself on guitar:
If a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air.
If a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?
Every impact has its measure,
Ne'er a one have I,
Yet all the lads they measure me,
Or, at least, they try.
Who is the author?
A. Henri Becquerel
B. Ludwig Boltzmann
C. Carl F. Gauss
D. Jean Foucault
E. James Clerk Maxwell

The answer is (E), James Clerk Maxwell. Walter Smith of Haverford College and PhysicsSongs.org offers additional info at: http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/rigid.htm

6. In 2000, the York Theatre Company premiered a musical play titled "Fermat's Last Tango." In a nutshell, what is the plot of this play?
A. A Princeton professor struggles to prove a 350-year-old theorem.
B. A dance instructor derives equations that explain the aesthetic beauty of his discipline.
C. An elderly Pierre de Fermat reflects upon a life in mathematics.
D. Parisian disco revelers welcome the arrival of the 1980s at a New Year's Eve party.
E. A famed French composer's most celebrated works are secretly ghostwritten by a mathematician.

The answer is (A). This play is based on the real-life toils of Princeton math professor Andrew Wiles, who did in fact prove Fermat's Last Theorem after many years of work. Professor Wiles was not himself involved in the making of the play, but after seeing it, he remarked, "I think that it did especially capture the feeling that one sometimes has when doing mathematics that obstacles have been put there deliberately to taunt you, but also the feeling of wonder at the beauty and simplicity of it all when one finally sees the light."

7. Of the following, which is the longest science/math song that is currently available in its entirety on the web?
A. "The Krebs Cycle" by Science Groove
B. "Digital Love" by Eric Siegel
C. "Stairway to Kelvin" by the Incubators
D. "Furrier Than Thou" by Dr. Chordate
E. "The First 1000 Digits of Pi" by Math MC

The answer is (B). You can listen to this song -- all 12 minutes and 51 seconds of it -- and find its lyrics at: www1.cs.columbia.edu/~evs/songs/.

8. Which of the following is a real science song (for which a recording exists)?
A. "Albert Einstein's Comb" by Mister Mark
B. "Barbara McClintock's Lipstick" by Jamminella
C. "Archimedes' Socks" by They Might Be Science
D. "Heisenberg's Wallet" by Fun Factory
E. "Newton's Wig" by Terminal Velocity

The answer is (A). "Mister Mark" is the stage name of Mark Burrows, a musician in Fort Worth, Texas.

9. Match the songs (1-5) to the recording artists who've performed them (A-E).
1) "Big Science"
2) "Disco Science"
3) "Mad Science"
4) "Pure Science"
5) "Weird Science"
A) B. Hill-Smith
B) Hustlers of Culture
C) Laurie Anderson
D) Mirwais
E) Oingo Boingo

The answers: 1-C, 2-D, 3-B, 4-A, 5-E. To be honest, even I haven't heard of all these recording artists, but I still thought it was interesting how many songs with "science" in the title are out there.

10. Moving away from the usual multiple-choice format, this question is an essay question. Assignment: assess the chemistry content of the song "Chemical Calisthenics" by Blackalicious. Song lyrics can be found at
www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Blackalicious/Chemical-Calisthentics.html.

Answer: Although the song is a long stream of words, at least some of them appear scientifically suspect. For example, calcium hydroxide and laughing gas are identified as "C-O-H-O-2" and "N-O-2" rather than the more commonly accepted formulas of Ca(OH)2 and N2O. Pretty funny, eh? There is also a reference to "boraxic acid," which I'm not sure is a real acid. Boric acid, maybe?

Test your knowledge of the science songs universe!

2010-10-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

From 2004 to 2006, I sent out a monthly science songs newsletter ("MUSE: Music for Use in Science Education") to members and friends of the Science Songwriters' Association via our Yahoo groups email list. Many newsletters included a science songs trivia question whose answer was revealed in the following month's newsletter. I thought it would be fun to revisit those trivia questions now, so let's take a look! Answers will be (re-)revealed tomorrow!

1. The song "Drops of Jupiter" by the group Train was a #1 hit in 2001. Which of the following incorrect "facts" is implied by the lyrics of the song?
A. Earth is not part of the Milky Way.
B. We now have proof that life once existed on Mars.
C. Jupiter was named for the Greek god of metallurgy.
D. Saturn is the only planet with rings.
E. Pluto was discovered by Galileo.

2. Though most SSA members toil in anonymity, every so often a science song makes it into the repertoire of a famous person or group. Which of the following recording artists has NOT recorded a science song?
A. Biz Markie ("Energy blues")
B. Flanders and Swann ("First and second law")
C. Kate and Anna McGarrigle ("NaCl")
D. Sam Hinton ("It's a long way from Amphioxus")
E. Sheryl Crow ("Fathom the atom")
F. They Might Be Giants ("Mammal")
G. Tom Lehrer ("The Elements")

3. The overall winner in the 2001 SSA Student Science Songwriting Contest was a song that included these lyrics:
I got isotopes
Of an element.
They have different masses --
It just don't make sense.
I'll guess you'll say,
"How come they don't weigh the same?"
Neutrons, neutrons, neutrons
Talkin' 'bout neutrons, neutrons.
To which oldie hit are these words meant to be sung?
A. "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf
B. "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" by The Shirelles
C. "I Want You Back" by The Jackson 5
D. "Your Song" by Elton John
E. "My Girl" by The Temptations

4. Only one of the following purveyors of science songs is/was based in the United States. Which one is it?
A. Les Horribles Cernettes
B. The Metabolites
C. Chris Rawlings
D. Billy B. Brennen
E. Flanders & Swann

5. A brilliant and famous 19th-century physicist wrote many poems, including the following lines, which he may have sung while accompanying himself on guitar:
If a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air.
If a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?
Every impact has its measure,
Ne'er a one have I,
Yet all the lads they measure me,
Or, at least, they try.
Who is the author?
A. Henri Becquerel
B. Ludwig Boltzmann
C. Carl F. Gauss
D. Jean Foucault
E. James Clerk Maxwell

6. In 2000, the York Theatre Company premiered a musical play titled "Fermat's Last Tango." In a nutshell, what is the plot of this play?
A. A Princeton professor struggles to prove a 350-year-old theorem.
B. A dance instructor derives equations that explain the aesthetic beauty of his discipline.
C. An elderly Pierre de Fermat reflects upon a life in mathematics.
D. Parisian disco revelers welcome the arrival of the 1980s at a New Year's Eve party.
E. A famed French composer's most celebrated works are secretly ghostwritten by a mathematician.

7. Of the following, which is the longest science/math song that is currently available in its entirety on the web?
A. "The Krebs Cycle" by Science Groove
B. "Digital Love" by Eric Siegel
C. "Stairway to Kelvin" by the Incubators
D. "Furrier Than Thou" by Dr. Chordate
E. "The First 1000 Digits of Pi" by Math MC

8. Which of the following is a real science song (for which a recording exists)?
A. "Albert Einstein's Comb" by Mister Mark
B. "Barbara McClintock's Lipstick" by Jamminella
C. "Archimedes' Socks" by They Might Be Science
D. "Heisenberg's Wallet" by Fun Factory
E. "Newton's Wig" by Terminal Velocity

9. Match the songs (1-5) to the recording artists who've performed them (A-E).
1) "Big Science"
2) "Disco Science"
3) "Mad Science"
4) "Pure Science"
5) "Weird Science"
A) B. Hill-Smith
B) Hustlers of Culture
C) Laurie Anderson
D) Mirwais
E) Oingo Boingo

10. Moving away from the usual multiple-choice format, this question is an essay question. Assignment: assess the chemistry content of the song "Chemical Calisthenics" by Blackalicious. Song lyrics can be found at
www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Blackalicious/Chemical-Calisthentics.html.

Science Song of the Week #20: "Living with a Hernia"

2010-10-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

Another not-totally-infused-with-science selection this week ... but aside from Weird Al's excellent James Brown impersonation, I love the fact that he breaks out a list of the different types of hernias during the bridge of this song: "There's Incomplete! Epigastric! Bladder! Strangulated! Lumbar Hernia! Richter's Hernia! Obstructed! Inguinal, and Direct!"

Science Song of the Week #19: "Collider" by Les Horribles Cernettes

2010-09-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

This week's featured song is more in the "just for fun" category than the "learn a whole lot of science in four short minutes" category. But there are some good reasons to give this one a turn in the spotlight. First, the video appears to have been filmed on location at CERN, the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (European Council for Nuclear Research). Second, the group has an awesome name, Les Horribles Cernettes, which shares its acronym of LHC with another CERN-based entity of some renown. Third, LHC can legitimately claim to be the "first band on the web" -- not just the first science-song band, but the first band, period!

Below is a video of their signature hit, "Collider" (lyrics here), about a woman who is lonely because her physicist boyfriend spends all of his waking hours at the lab, smashing atoms.

Science Song of the Week #18: "The Double Life of Amphibians" by Two of a Kind

2010-09-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

David and Jenny Heitler-Klevans are a husband-and-wife musical duo known as Two of a Kind. They met at Oberlin College in 1986 -- not long before Do Peterson, Kirk Van Scoyoc, and Gretchen Ludwig of Science Groove would get to know each other at the same school. What is it about Oberlin and science songs? Anyway, Two of a Kind has written several kid-oriented science songs, including the one shown below. (Notice the musician playing the frog at the start!) Their YouTube channel has additional videos of science-themed performances at school assemblies and the Philadelphia Zoo.

Saving Kids With Science

2010-09-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

My boss and I were shown singing science songs -- and talking about their impact on students and society -- in a KOMO-4 TV special that aired last Friday! Below is Part 1 of "Saving Kids With Science"; our segment starts at about 11:55. Also, my song The Waltz of the Ribosomes is played during the closing credits at the end of Part 3. If you aren't sure whether to commit to watching the whole show, you can view the 30-second trailer.

Science Song of the Week #17: "Outbreak of Superbugs"

2010-09-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

The song below is from Damaged Care, "the musical comedy about health care in America." It was written by physicians Greg LaGana and Barry Levy and has been performed by them in 27 states over 15 years! Thanks to Maryn McKenna's blog Superbug for drawing our attention to this.

Rock stars of science

2010-09-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a site that I was surprised to discover. There aren't a whole lot of places on the web where you can find biographies of Harold Varmus and Anthony Fauci alongside those of Sheryl Crow and Seal.

So what's the goal of "Rock Stars of Science"? The mission, as stated on the site, has four parts.

• Make investment in medical research a national priority
• Accelerate therapies across diseases: cancer, Alzheimer's, heart and HIV/AIDS
• Inspire the next generation to careers in science
• Stand together and refuse to accept "no cure" as an answer

The featured scientists are mostly rock stars in the metaphorical sense. However, Francis Collins (of Human Genome Project fame) can be seen and heard playing songs such as The Times They Are A-Changin' with Joe Perry of Aerosmith.

Given the many scientific fields not represented in this group, a more accurate name for the initiative might be "Rock Stars of Biomedical Research on Diseases Prominent in the Developed World." In any case, we here at Sing About Science certainly agree that researchers should be recognized for their achievements and that young people should be encouraged to consider careers in science. Rock on, guys!

Science Song of the Week #16: "The Light Wave Equation"

2010-09-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

I'm short on time this week, so I'm grabbing the SSotW from the archives of a veteran science songster, Lynda Williams, also known as the Physics Chanteuse. This one is called "The Light Wave Equation." It's completely baffling to me, but Williams has taught physics at the college level and presumably knows her stuff.

Science music minus the music

2010-09-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

I've written a series of posts on my favorite enzymes at my other blog. They have nothing to do with music, but feel free to read them anyway! Here are the links:
* My favorite enzymes, part 1: S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase from Trypanosoma brucei
* My favorite enzymes, parts 2 and 3
* My favorite enzymes, part 4: RuBisCO

A rant about media coverage of genome sequencing

2010-09-05T00:14:00.001-07:00

"Apple genome is cracked by geneticists," BBC News declared on August 30th. The article states, "Scientists from 20 institutions took two years to unravel the apple's code."

While I applaud achievements such as this one, I wish news organizations would stop portraying the latest sequencing of a genome as the cracking of a code. (So do T. Ryan Gregory and Larry Moran.)

Genomes do indeed use a code to specify how proteins should be made. But that code, in which each group of three nucleotides (such as ATG or CCA) corresponds to a single amino acid, was deciphered decades ago. The people who determined how this works -- Robert Holley, H. Gobind Khorana, and Marshall Nirenberg -- were awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Each organism's genome can also be considered a code in the more trivial sense of "something that represents or symbolizes something else." An apple's genome is a genetic representation of an apple, so you can call it the "code" for an apple if you really want to. But I submit that sequencing a genome is not much like cracking a code. As Katrin Weigmann says in a 2004 essay for EMBO Reports, "It is not genes but intricate protein networks that constantly survey the environment outside the cell, monitor metabolic processes and integrate this information into physical function. Simply deciphering the text as laid down in the genome therefore does not necessarily predict how life works at the cellular, let alone at the organismal, level."

Or, as I once wrote in a parody of the song "I Don't Know How to Love Him":

Yes, now we have their genome,
But I don’t see what it tells us.
It’s the genes; it’s just the genes.
And the genes don’t change
When the fuels do,
So how do the cells respond?
We need more clues!

Science Song of the Week #15: "Biochemistry Operetta" by Dr. Chordate

2010-09-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

If last week's featured song was reminiscent of Timbuk3 and The Cars, this week's offering reminds me of Don McLean's "American Pie" or Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" trilogy. That's right -- it's a ballad, and it's long! It's by Dr. Chordate, a.k.a. Jeff Moran, who really is a doctor (of the Ph.D. variety).

To hear this newly recorded song -- all 8 minutes and 58 seconds of it -- go to www.myspace.com/drchordate and click on "Biochemistry Operetta."

Noteflight: online software for composing and sharing musical scores

2010-08-31T01:00:00.000-07:00

Here at UBEST headquarters, we have experimented with a vidiscript-based Virtual Studio for enabling online musical collaborations. This setup should allow users to share and comment upon audio or video files, perhaps representing works in progress, while giving them the option of blocking access by random members of the general public.

But what if you just want to draft some sheet music without making a recording? Then Noteflight may meet your needs quite well. I tried it yesterday and was impressed by its ease of use ... and by the fact that it's free! (There's also a "premium" version available for $49.)

Among other attractive features, registered users can easily share their scores with unregistered people; each score has a unique URL. Also even though preparation of the scores is web-based, and printing web pages can often be a challenge, my sample score snippet looked fine when I printed it out.

SingAboutScience.org is safe again

2010-08-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

We've cleaned the site and re-uploaded all of the needed files, and Google confirms that the suspected malware is gone. Let us know if you have any problems accessing the site.

Science Song of the Week #14: "Natural Decay" by Mark Rosengarten

2010-08-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder what might have emerged if Timbuk3 and The Cars had teamed up to record a science song?
http://www.youtube.com/user/MarkRosengarten#p/c/65159266CFC74682/7/J8p7OIdyt54

Please don't visit SingAboutScience.org

2010-08-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

We have set about SingAboutScience.org as a central hub with links to our various sub-projects, including this blog. SingAboutScience.org seems to have been hacked or corrupted in some way such that visiting it may lead to the inadvertant downloading of malicious software. We are investigating this issue; in the meantime, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Science Song of the Week #13: "CSIRO"

2010-08-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

I'm in Melbourne, Australia for the 12th International Congress of Parasitology (ICOPA XII), so ... how about an Australian science song this week? The Backstreet Boys parody shown below was pointed out to me by Janet Newman, a scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). It is a sort of CSIRO theme song, highlighting its many specialties (climatology, oceanography, immunology, crystallography...). Most boy bands have some degree of carefully engineered diversity -- the cute one, the shy one, the great dancer, etc. -- but this group is a truly interdisciplinary one featuring a biologist, a chemist, a physicist, a math(s) guy, etc.

MASSIVE rebuilding project

2010-08-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time -- OK, it was in 2004 -- I created a free online database of math and science songs, which I called MASSIVE: Math And Science Song Information, Viewable Everywhere. Its visual appeal was limited and so were its search options (e.g., you couldn't do compound searches such as "songs by artist X including term Y in the title"). Nevertheless, I was quite proud of my creation and rejoiced when it was featured in the NetWatch section of Science magazine.

And then life got really busy -- fatherhood, new job, etc. -- and I stopped updating the website. That was three years ago. Now I'm trying to move the project forward again.

There are many aspects of the website that could be improved from the user-interface side, and yet the question I find myself returning to again and again is, "How can I make this as easy as possible to update?" My experiences as a contributor to TDRtargets.org, a website devoted to target-based drug development for "neglected" diseases such as malaria, have reminded me over and over that regular updates of curated information are both (A) extremely important and (B) extremely hard to achieve.

So you'll have to pardon me if in the coming months the MASSIVE website continues to look as though it were designed by a middle-school student. I've got three years of curation catch-up to do.

Science Song of the Week #12: "Regulatin' Genes" by Tom McFadden

2010-08-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

In my early days of exploring the world of science songs, most of the songs I encountered seemed to be by middle-aged guitar-playing white guys who had rewritten the lyrics to songs that they had learned when they were younger.

This is not meant in any way as a criticism of middle-aged guitar-playing white guys, some of whom are quite talented! (And, for the record, I myself am a 37-year-old white guy, though not one who plays guitar.) But it does raise an important educational issue, namely, is the music of older generations the best "hook" for teaching the younger ones?

I think the answer is "it depends." There's a lot to be said for quality, and if what you do well is folk songs or Beatles parodies, then students may indeed appreciate those. However, I'm always intrigued when someone presents scientific content in a more contemporary musical format, and this week's featured song is an example of that. It is by Tom McFadden, an instructor of human biology at Stanford, and his colleague Derrick Davis. The song has been posted on YouTube for about a year and a half and has racked up 130,000 views as well as an endorsement by the TierneyLab blog.

A "step" beyond science songs

2010-08-06T01:00:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite science blogs is The World's Fair. As its name implies, it covers a diverse range of topics, but one recent post of possible interest to our readers was Dance Your Ph.D.: One Month till the Duedate! This post is but one of many in the blog's category of The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building.

To me, conveying scientific content through song seems challenging; doing so through dance seems really challenging. I applaud those who are willing to give it a shot, though, and I imagine that the effect can be almost magical under the right circumstances. My Ph.D. adviser, for instance, met the woman who would later become his wife at a dance performance designed to illustrate how a nuclear reactor worked, or something like that. He impressed her by explaining the scientific basis of the various dance moves, and a chain reaction ensued....

Science song of the week #11: "I Feel Fantastic" by Jonathan Coulton

2010-08-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

The video below, like the one we showed you last week, was produced for an online contest. In this case, Popular Science commissioned singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton to record a soundtrack for its "Future of the Body" issue (August 2005), then invited readers to create videos for the song "I Feel Fantastic." The winning entry, by Andrea Crain, is shown here.

Though this song does not delve too deeply into the science of pharmacology, Coulton clearly has more than a passing interest in science and math. Among the free songs available from his website are Bacteria (based on a Kentucky Fried Chicken training video) and Mandelbrot Set (inspired, I believe, by a course he took from Benoit Mandelbrot at Yale).

Science Song of the Week #10: The Nano Song

2010-07-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

This week's featured song is a gem recently brought to our attention by Felix, one of UBEST's wonderful student assistants. Wendy and I were unaware of the American Chemical Society's "What is Nano?" video contest when it was held last year, but the entry shown below -- made by a UC-Berkeley team led by director Patrick Bennett and vocalist Glory Liu -- won both the Critics' Choice and People's Choice awards.

I'm always impressed when the musical accompaniment and arrangement of a song reinforce the meaning of the lyrics, but this production takes the opposite approach. A very modern and cutting-edge topic, nanotechnology, is presented in a very old-fashioned way, featuring puppetry and Mary Poppins-ish music. The contrast makes the video more striking and humorous, at least for me. While a "techno" flavor might have been a more obvious stylistic choice, I'm not sure that it would have had the same impact.

Songs from the Science Frontier

2010-07-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

...And speaking of frontiers, Oklahoma singer/singwriter Monty Harper is working on a recording project that he calls Songs From the Science Frontier. For the past couple of years, Monty has been hosting Born to do Science meetings at which professional scientists speak to children about their research. These talks are somewhat unusual in that the scientists tell the kids what they do in the lab from day to day rather than simply reciting a bunch of general facts on their research topic. Monty has written a set of songs based largely upon the talks and now hopes to get them recorded with the help of a first-class producer and band.

In general, I want to avoid turning this blog into a series of ads for new products. However, based the novelty of Monty's program and the extensive unpaid work he has already put into science outreach, I think that Songs From the Science Frontier is worth mentioning here.

Science Song of the Week #9: Journey to the sun ... without accompaniment!

2010-07-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

Recent SSotW posts have had a general theme of "pushing the limits," including featured songs about medicine (a profession based on science but encompassing much more than that) and in Spanish. This week's featured song explores a different sort of science/music frontier, i.e., the minimalist approach to instrumentation. To my knowledge, only one full-length CD of a cappella science music has ever been made: AstroCappella by The Chromatics. The Chromatics' recording of "The Sun Song" has been paired with some striking footage from orbiting space observatories in the video below.

Science Song of the Week #8 ... en Espanol!

2010-07-15T01:00:00.000-07:00

This week, your faithful correspondent happens to be in Tres Cantos (literally, "Three Songs"), making him wonder about the existence and prevalence of science songs in Spanish. Not being the most worldly sort, he is currently aware of only a handful: a few tracks from La Tierra y el Mar by the Banana Slug String Band, and the following piece from Carl Winter:
Mantenga Bien La Comida

I once saw Carl perform this live, and he sort of apologized for the fact that, unlike most of his other songs, it isn't particularly humorous. "I don't know how to be funny in Spanish," he explained. Personally, though, I crack up at the lines "Yo no soy descuidado, yo no soy descuidado, soy profesor." I'm not careless, no sir -- I'm a PROFESSOR!

Science Song of the Week #7 ... and what exactly is a "science song," anyway?

2010-07-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

Is this a science song?

Your answer may depend on whether you think of medicine as a science, or whether science songs should by definition include scientific content (as opposed to commentary on the lives of scientists and so forth). I really like the "Anaesthetists' Hymn," but have yet to include it in our list of YouTube's greatest science song hits. What do you think? Does this song inspire curiosity about the science of anaesthesia, or is it simply a funny monologue set to music?

Science Song of the Week #6

2010-07-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

Well, let's get right to it. This week's song comes to us from medical students at the University of Alberta in Canada. It's a parody of Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback." The new version is called "Diagnosis Wenckebach," Wenckebach being a type of cardiac arrhythmia.

Thanks to Twitter user @WesleyWilson for alerting me to the existence of this song, which now joins our list of YouTube's most popular science songs.

Introducing the "Virtual Studio"

2010-06-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

For the past three years, Wendy has taught a class at UC-Davis that combines science with music-making. In its current incarnation, the class is known as SAS 42: Earth Water Science Song. Its unique format consists of two one-hour lectures per week along with a two-hour "studio" session, in which students learn various aspects of songwriting and performance and apply those to the scientific material they're learning. One example of the students' output, a song about plant transpiration called "Breathe," has been uploaded to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IsMMmqbR28

While this class is undeniably innovative and well-liked by students, its execution requires personnel with dual expertise in science and music, as well as institutional support that may that be available elsewhere. To facilitate scientific songwriting in situations where participants aren't able to meet regularly in person, we have created a site that we call Virtual Studio. In brief, it allows collaborators to post and critique musical works in progress. For more information, please visit SingAboutScience.org and follow the links under the Virtual Studio heading. This project is still in its infancy, and feedback would be very helpful!

Science Song of the Week #5

2010-06-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

This week's featured song is actually a pair of songs.

Though we tend to think of science songs as a new, experimental frontier in education, they have been around for many decades. The true aficionados out there are familiar with such classics as "First and Second Law" by Flanders and Swann and "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer. Even more remarkable than these one-off pieces was the production of a SIX-ALBUM set of Ballads For The Age Of Science in the late '50s and early '60s, with lyrics by Hy Zaret and music by Lou Singer. Of the Zaret/Singer songs, "Why Does The Sun Shine?" (orginally performed by Tom Glazer on the album Space Songs) remains well-known thanks to various cover versions recorded by They Might Be Giants.

Despite the authentic-sounding content of "Why Does The Sun Shine?" -- also known by its first line, "The sun is a mass of incandescent gas" -- They Might Be Giants decided that it needed to be updated. Their new song "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" begins, "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma." As they explain, "Plasma: electrons are free. Plasma: a fourth state of matter. Not gas, liquid, or solid. Plasma -- forget that song. Plasma -- they got it wrong. That thesis has been rendered invalid."

Kudos to They Might Be Giants for keeping up with the latest research!

Science Song of the Week #4

2010-06-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

My old friend Jeremy Fox, an ecology professor at the University of Calgary, alerted me to the video below, a live performance of Performance, Feedback, Revision taken from the album The Rap Guide to Evolution by Baba Brinkman. The song is interesting for at least a couple of reasons. First, it (and the rest of the album) grew out of a dialog between Brinkman, a professional "rap troubadour," and Mark Pallen, an evolutionary biologist. Second, it uses the analogy of making music to explain how evolution works, and does so in a reasonably accurate and compelling way. Watch for the freestyle section where Brinkman introduces some new "mutations" into his song!

Most popular science songs of all time?

2010-06-16T20:51:00.001-07:00

We've made a preliminary list of the most popular science songs to be found on YouTube. There are at least eight with over 850,000 views! Check out our "Chart Recorder" page...
http://www.singaboutscience.org/youtube.html
...and let us know if we've missed any!

I'll Take Care of You...

2010-06-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

In earlier posts (e.g., What rhymes with "RuBisCO"?) we mentioned a song created by Dave Nachmanoff and participants in the UC-Davis "Oak Discovery Day." That song is now available on Dave's website. It is called I'll Take Care of You (If You'll Take Care of Me).

While some of the lyrics are almost comically specific ("Thank you . . . for visiting the UC-Davis arboretum oaks"), it's a nice example of what can happen when musicians, scientists, and others come together in a collaborative music-making project.

Science Song of the Week #3

2010-06-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

One reason to use science songs as educational tools is that they are a form of advertising, with "hooks" to grab people's attention.

Much to my delight, two biotech companies have taken this idea and run with it, creating very catchy science songs that showcase their expertise and products. First, in January 2008, Bio-Rad released Scientists for Better PCR.

As if in response to this bit of Bio-Rad brilliance, Eppendorf put forth its own ad-in-a-song a few months later: It's Called epMotion.

In case it isn't obvious how much effort went into producing these pieces, the following featurettes dutifully chronicle the application of makeup, positioning of cameras, and so forth.
• Behind the Scenes: "Scientists for Better PCR"
• The making of "It's Called epMotion"

Science Song of the Week #2

2010-06-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

This week's Science Song of the Week is "Glucose, Glucose" as performed by Science Groove. It's a parody of "Sugar, Sugar" the 1969 bubble-gum hit by The Archies, with new lyrics about glucose metabolism.

Since "Glucose, Glucose" was recorded in 2004, the advent of YouTube and similar websites has made it almost shockingly easy to combine sounds and images and to share these mashups online. As a result, "Glucose, Glucose" has taken on a new life as the soundtrack of a couple of YouTube videos:
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C78BMJ7D68I
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJvAL-iiLnQ

I prefer the graphics of the first one, but the latter has over 100,000 hits! Just think about that for a moment. A catchy science song was released "into the wild"; others enjoyed it, added pictures, and shared it with friends; and now 100,000 people have heard the song. Can there be any doubt that this is a good way to reach large audiences with scientific content?

Science Song of the Week #1

2010-05-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

With this post, we introduce what we hope will be a regular feature of this blog, namely, the Science Song of the Week (SSotW). The song below was written and performed by Adam Cole (stage name Cadamole). It is called "A Biologist's Mother's Day Song." Thanks to my friends Andreas and Tonya for independently pointing this song out to me! Nominations for future SSW's are welcome and may be sent to crowther@u.washington.edu.

Up with ODD!

2010-05-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

As a belated follow-up to my previous post about Oak Discovery Day at the UC-Davis arboretum, here is some photographic evidence that I (left), Wendy (right), Wendy's husband Ron (second from right), and math teacher/musician Norm Milstein were present at and enjoyed Dave Nachmanoff's songwriting workshop. (Thanks to Elaine Fingerett for the photo.)

Norm is an interesting guy who writes math songs to engage and educate his students. An example taken from YouTube -- "Invasion of the Prime Numbers" -- is below.

Jingle all the way

2010-05-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

The USA Science & Engineering Festival, to be held in Washington DC in October, is in the final stage of its contest to select an official jingle. Which jingle will go all the way? Vote for your favorites at:
http://www.usasciencefestival.org/2010festival/contests/jinglecontest

Good luck to Monty Harper and Professor Boggs, whom I know (virtually) through the Science Songwriters' Association.

What rhymes with "RuBisCO"?

2010-05-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

I'm back in Seattle after a great visit to UC-Davis to meet Wendy and other participants in the UBEST project. UBEST, by the way, is an acronym coined by Wendy. The general area of her NSF grant is Undergraduate Biology Education (UBE), and our particular project is Songs for Teaching, so if you put the whole thing together you get UBEST.

There were many interesting and fun aspects of the trip, but Oak Discovery Day at the UC-Davis arboretum was especially special. Dave Nachmanoff was charged with the task of writing a song about the oak grove ... while incorporating input from myself and 30 other attendees ... in less than 90 minutes. This song will eventually be accessible from people's iPhones so that they can listen to it as they walk among the oaks!

Dave did a masterful job of harnessing people's energy and synthesizing their ideas into a coherent and pleasing ditty. Along the way, some excellent discussions were had about what was unique about the UC-Davis oaks and what was worth mentioning in the lyrics. Even though my own contributions were minimal, I remember a lot from the discussions, such as how the oaks were planted by a Dr. Tucker about 50 years ago, how there are over 80 species of oaks in the arboretum, and how the Patwin Indians native to this area used to grind the acorns into flour (which they then used to make bread and other foods). I think the take-home message here is that science songwriting is not just fun and games; in making judgments about the importance, correctness, and clarity of the concepts being expressed, you learn a LOT!

With so many people offering their input, it was inevitable that some ideas would not make it into the finished song. Personally, I was disappointed that the suggestion to highlight RuBisCO was ultimately ignored, though I can see how a decision to feature that enzyme might have offended aficionados of PEP carboxylase. Anyway, RuBisCO fans, that means there's still an unfilled song niche for us to fill. I'll even get us started: Somewhat east of San Francisco/ Mighty oaks employ RuBisCO,/ Slowly using CO2 so/ Others will not have to do so.

Well, I suppose that could still use some work, just like this project as a whole. But we're off to a good start!

UBEST networking at Davis, CA

2010-04-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

Excited to be having our first UBEST meeting with Greg Crowther on the Davis campus. We will be consulting with Carl Winter, Dave Nachmanoff, Arnold Bloom, Petr Janata, Elaine Fingerett, Laura Sandage, Katie Henry, Norm Milstein and other local scientists and songwriters.

Note Elaine Fingerett has organized a songwriting workshop as part of Oak Discovery Day at the UCD arboretum this Sunday:
http://internationaloaksociety.org/ios-events/oak-discovery-day-shields-oak-grove-uc-davis-arboretum-2-may-2010-2187