In a column posted a few days ago (November 1) I mentioned that my friend John Evans, a Cambridge (England) mathematician, has developed a general formula for estimating biocomplexity. It is quite simple, using only two variables: the number of units in a system, and the number of connections (interactions) each unit has with other units in the system. Today, in fact, biologists publish ‘interactomes” with furry ball figures that illustrate the number of proteins in a given cell and the number of interactions each protein has with other proteins.

John Evans, a mathematician friend of mine in Cambridge England, came up with a formula that specifically allows one to estimate the relative complexity of nervous systems in the animal kingdom, from C. elegans to the human brain. It takes into account not just the number of neurons in the brain, but also the number of synaptic connections that link neurons to one another, and in a second version, the encephalization quotient.

A few days ago, I was working at home when the phone rang. I answered, and was surprised to hear a soft, accented voice asking for me. It was Lada Tsokolova, calling from Germany, with the sad news that her husband Sergey had just died of cancer.  I was stunned. Sergey was young! He had spent nearly a year in my lab in 2005-06, on a Fulbright Fellowship, and I had seen him recently at scientific meetings in Kyoto and Heidelberg, but he never mentioned that he was ill.

In his July 23 column, Gary Herstein presented a thoughtful discussion and analysis of scientific controversies (What Does A Real Scientific Controversy Look Like?), with an example from physics. Perhaps readers of Scientific Blogging will be interested in another scientific controversy that emerged in biophysics over a 20 year period. 

Michael White recently blogged about Rock Stars of Science (July 8), which is an educational effort to attract kids to careers in science.  (Michael characterized this as “another hopeless attempt to make nerds look cool.”) 

    Part of the enjoyment of doing research is that ideas pop into your head all the time. Everyone has ideas, but the hard part is to choose which should be subjected to critical tests that have the primary aim of proving them wrong. That’s the most efficient way to discard bad ideas, because most of them in fact don’t work. Only after an idea survives the crucible of initial testing can it be taken more seriously and tested further. Then, if it still survives, you can publish.

There must have been an abundant source of free energy on the early Earth that could produce the polymers required for natural experiments leading to the origin of life.

What was it?

 “May you live in interesting times!” So goes the ancient Chinese curse, and times certainly must have been interesting for Alexander Ivanovich Oparin, who was 23 years old when he graduated from Moscow State University in 1917. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had just seized power, the Czar and his family were imprisoned, then assassinated a year later, and the war between Red and White Russia began.

In the last few columns, I described how laboratory simulations of a volcanic prebiotic environment showed that interesting organic reactions can be driven by the heat and pressure associated with vulcanism. I also described my own studies of volcanic sites on the present Earth, which we call prebiotic analogue environments, and pointed out some of the problems that arise when we try to duplicate laboratory experiments in the real world geothermal conditions. 

In the comments following the column, Gerhard Adam suggested that ice might be a plausible alternative to a hot site for the origin of life.

When we think of volcanic conditions, our minds leap to images of vast eruptions like Mount St. Helens in Washington State, or lava oozing down the slopes of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. With my family, I once visited that lava flow.

We are used to stones being “rock solid” but here molten orange-hot rock oozes across a two-lane road and pours over a cliff, causing clouds of steam to erupt from the Pacific Ocean.

My daughter Ásta, five years old at the time, was understandably very suspicious of the stuff and would not go near the lava flow. It radiated an oven-like heat, even from fifty feet away.