(Untitled)

[madrigalis]

I'm listening to a fascinating interview on ABCClassic fm - Margaret Throsby interviewing Professor John Crawford from the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, University of Sydney. He started his career as an astrophysicist and then moved into theoretical biology (which he says isn't that great a leap, which I found a startling statement, but he

Comments

[ti_met]

If you are interested, towards the end of last year I read the book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations which I found fascinating.

It is a book of many things. An introduction to geology, a history of soil science and an analysis of soil husbandry through the ages. I borrowed it from the Monash library and enjoyed it so much that ended up buying a copy for myself.

I seem to be a sucker for wonderfully informative books that both turn me into a raving leftie and want to slit my wrists with despair :(

[madrigalis]

I don't mind reading "raving leftie" stuff, but I'm trying to steer clear of things that cause me to despair just at the moment, so I think that's a book for another time. But it certainly looks interesting.

[nessbrain]

We've tried to do some work on soil micro-organisms and failed dismally as it's just too complex. What we normally do is isolate the DNA from the thing we're working with (usually a plant species) and then reduce the complexity with multiple restriction enzymes, but we just couldn't reduce the complexity enough with soil, we're just getting garbage data as it's all random chance if anything matches up... very frustrating but also very fascinating :-)

[madrigalis]

It always seemed to me that one of the major drawbacks to a career in biological research is that there are just too many damn interactions, most of which can't be directly controlled (or even measured in many cases). It's a point that was actually made during the interview - astrophysics problems are generally solved for one or at most two bodies; introduce a third and the equations break down. But biological systems can have hundreds of thousands of proteins/cells/organisms, which necessitates a completely different approach. I am therefore completely in awe of the people who nevertheless manage to prove things about living systems.

[dzurlady]

Did it discuss how to work out what soil your food is grown in?

[madrigalis]

I'm afraid not. But it would require laboratory testing for most things, I suspect: very few plants display visible indications of soil composition, hydrangea blooms being the obvious exception.

[dzurlady]

I suspected as much, but it makes it difficult as a consumer to select food grown in nutritious soil.