In 2001, on the eve of the US-led invasion into Afghanistan, soldiers are fortified with more than just guns and bullets. Many, especially the pilots, were on Provigil produced by Cephalon in the US. The drug is designed to treat narcolepsy but allows pilots to stay awake, and operational, for up to 85 hours at a time.

What works for the military soon becomes popular elsewhere. Scientists and stressed executives were soon pushing cognitive enhancers into off-label areas of use. Provigil is popular, but so too is Ritalin (usually prescribed for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder), Aricept (used to treat Alzheimer's disease), and Adderall (used for both narcolepsy and ADHD).

In the seminal short story, Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon documents his experiences following surgery designed to enhance his intelligence. Charlie gradually becomes one of the most intelligent people on earth before tragically suffering a reversion and dying. Keyes, however, had tapped into the curious pursuit of cognitive enhancement that has driven scientists to take unusual risks with their own lives.

On 19 April 1943, Swiss chemist, Dr Albert Hofmann of the Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, intentionally ingested 250ug of Lysergic acid diethylamide; LSD. Its hope as a mind-enhancing steroid has proven a disappointment, despite energetic disciples such as Timothy Leary.

However, the pursuit of synthesized drugs that would provide cognitive enhancement is still an area of tremendous activity.

"I am frustrated... that we are preventing the advancement of important science that could potentially impact millions of suffering Americans... My hope, and the hope of so many in this country, is to provide our researchers with the means to explore the uses of embryonic stem cells so that we can begin to turn the tide on the devastating diseases affecting our nation and our world." The speaker echoes the feelings of many researchers who would like to follow their investigations to their logical conclusions but are prevented from doing so by the vagaries of politics.

But this was no idle comment, for the words are those of Barack Obama, president-elect of the US.

The proposed change would lift federal funding restrictions on research that uses embryonic stem cells. These are harvested from human embryos which are specifically donated for this purpose.

The change in policy coincides with success in adult stem cell therapy, as well as tremendous growth in genetic lifestyle products entering the market.

Stop, you're embarrassing me

The Oxford English Dictionary defines embarrass as an act or emotion that causes a person ‘to feel awkward or self-conscious or ashamed’. It can be personal, as when attention is drawn to something private or to one’s personal flaws. It can be professional, as when evidence is disregarded or when an official course of action is abandoned.

Embarrassment is usually accompanied by some physiologically-expressed features such as blushing, sweating, nervousness, fidgeting, even stammering. In circumstances where social etiquette is breached, nervous laughter is often a response, which can easily be misunderstood or misinterpreted.

The physiological repertoire that accompanies the emotion of embarrassment is strings of biochemistries the pathways for which are reasonably well understood. The biology of blushing, for example, is known to involve particular chemicals flowing towards particular destinations. We also know which biochemical producing cells are involved.

Sweating is well understood too. Nervousness is less well understood. Stammering and fidgeting are behavioural sequences linked in part to the nervous system and brain. How the whole system coordinates to produce the emotion of embarrassment in response to particular cues has not yet been fully documented.

Influenza invading the lung

Dear Minister Hogan: You would know that, unlike bacteria, viruses are not free-living organisms. They need the cells of other organisms like ours to reproduce. 'They are actually lifeless, inert chemical particles' John Farndon wrote in Bird Flu, but 'once they get inside a living cell, however, they change completely, taking it over like some demented house guest.'

There are no other forms of life like a virus. They have no cell. They do not have the cell structures for eating and the making of energy. All they can do is copy themselves and even that they cannot do on their own. Viruses are very bad news wrapped in a protein.

David Baltimore gives the following description: 'A virus is really nothing more than an alternative set of instructions that can take over the cell and make the cell into a virus-producing factory. As in our own DNA, the instructions are broken up into genes. Because viruses put such a premium on being small, the virus's genes are notably compact but also notably changeable. The rapid change means that a virus can readily adapt itself to new circumstances.'

Darwin 200

Events

All seminars mentioned below are FREE unless otherwise stated. For further information on the following items please call: AGEI: 021 683 5814 or HIPPO Communications: 021 557 0246

12 February - The Bicentenary of Darwin’s birth

Charles Darwin: Fact & Fiction, Realities & Myths

Venue: Menzies 9, Menzies Building, Engineering Mall, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.

10:00 Darwin’s Marginalia – Visiting the Mind of the Great English Naturalist by Mario di Gregorio, University of L'Aquila

11:30 Darwin and Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope by Brian Warner, Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town

14:00 Charles Darwin: The Man & the Myths by Peter Bowler Queen’s University of Belfast

Co chaired by Wilmot James & Raj Ramesar

18:00 The City of Cape Town will install a new plaque marking the Sea Point contact.

23-25 March - Humanising Darwin: Scientist, Father and Family man

Venue: The Whale Well, Iziko South African Museum, Queen Victoria Street; Cape Town

Time: 17.30 for 18.00 daily

March 23: Darwin in Cape Town: the Beagle voyage and beyond by Dr Janet Browne, Aramont Professor in the History of Science, Harvard University

March 24: Darwin at Downe - Science at Home by Dr Randal Keynes, Down House

March 25: Conversations with Darwin: Janet Browne & Randal Keynes converse with John Parkington, University of Cape Town, Francis Thackeray Institute for Human Evolution WITS & Raj Ramesar, University of Cape Town, about what would surprise and what not surprise Darwin about modern biology today.

Chaired by Michael Cherry, University of Stellenbosch.

3 June: Darwin’s Contribution to Geology’ by John Rogers, University of CapeTown.

17:30 for 18:00 at New Learning Centre, Anatomy Building, University of Cape Town, Anzio Road, Observatory, Cape Town

July 23: Swine flu - the 2009 pandemic: a paradigm of biological evolution in action by Barry Schoub

17.30 for 18.00: New Learning Centre, Anatomy Building, Health Sciences Campus, University of Cape Town, Anzio Road, Observatory

2 September: Charles Darwin, Human Difference & the Story of Caster Semenya by Wilmot James

17.30 for 18.00: New Learning Centre, Anatomy Building, University of Cape Town, Anzio Road, Observatory, Cape Town

23 November:   Launch of Darwin Exhibition at Iziko South African Museum

17h30 for 18h00: Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town; Prof Chris Stringer will give the opening address.

24 November: Nelson Mandela Science Lecture sanctioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation

Debating with Darwin: Africa & Human Origins by Professor Chris Stringer FRS, Research Leader in Human Origins and Director of AHOB, Dept of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, London.

12:30 for 13:00 at the GH1 Hall, University of the Western Cape

Additional events:

July: The Darwin Trail Map will be published tracing the places in Cape Town and surrounds that were visited by Charles Darwin when he visited in 1836. Installation of plaques in Simons Town, Paarl, Franschoek, Houw Hoek and Sir Lowry’s Pass.The plaques will form the basis of the Darwin Trail.

November: Darwin and the Origin of Species - A Cape Perspective Exhibition

22 November 2009 to April 2010

Venue: Iziko South African Museum

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book “The Origin of Species”and to reclaim Charles Darwin as part of the Cape’s Heritage

Current Partners

• City of Cape Town
• Cape Nature Department of Education
• Learning Cape
• Iziko Museums
• MTN Science Centre
• Sci Fest
• British Council
• Royal Netherlands Embassy
• Down House, Kent
• Division of Human Genetics, University of Cape Town
• Africa Genome Education Institute

Darwin aboard HMS Beagle

In his Beagle field notebook (1.6, EH 8820236) Charles Darwin observed that he ‘saw the east and west ranges south of Caledon’ travelling along ‘the mountains in the curved road’. He mentions as geographic markers the Palmiet River and the Zonderend that, presumably, is today’s Riviersonderend.

Darwin did a quick tour of the Cape over four days during June 1836 taking him to Paarl, Franschoek, Houw Hoek and back to Cape Town over what was then called the Sir Lowry Cole’s pass. He wanted ‘glimpses of African landscape, or rather should I say, African deserts.’

Darwin had written to his sister Catherine in a letter from the ‘Cape of Good Hope’ dated 3 June 1836 that ‘Having seen so much of that sort of country in Patagonia Chile and Peru I feel myself to a certain degree a connoisseur in a desert and am anxious to see these.’