Interesting PhD?

[Tracy Sherwood-Farnfield]

Whilst conducting my usual browse of 'find a PhD.com' I stumbled on this new title being offered by the University of Exeter

Food, Sex and Death; costs of reproduction and the mechanistic basis of ageing in crickets

It apparently includes 'in lab feeding experiments' perhaps we could contribute .

In the past I have also come across other 'interesting' PhDs including one on;
Conflict and Sexual Trauma in Bed Bugs
and another titled;
The Genetic basis of Methane production in Bovine Diary Populations (so that's a study on cows F**ting then !)

the world of academia never ceases to amaze!

[Nicola Dolby]

Hi Tracy,
Do you think they'll ever invent one on nosepicking in felines????

[James Box]

LOL that's pretty amazing...good old academia...and i bet they don't even see the humourous side!

[Tracy Sherwood-Farnfield]

LOL that's pretty amazing...good old academia...and i bet they don't even see the humourous side!

They take themselves far too seriously for that!!

Anyone actually got a Doctorate in anything unusual?

[Tracy Sherwood-Farnfield]

Hi Tracy,
Do you think they'll ever invent one on nosepicking in felines????

More than likely if you suggest it you'll get funded - unlike me who is only looking for funding to study the immunology of Multiple Sclerosis with a view to improving treatment - oh no - no funding for me!

[James Box]

More than likely if you suggest it you'll get funded - unlike me who is only looking for funding to study the immunology of Multiple Sclerosis with a view to improving treatment - oh no - no funding for me!

i think the problem there is that you're trying to do good in the world, not pander to the sensationalist kind of "science" we see on telly alot lately.
don't get me wrong, i like seeing caravans explode, but it's not exactly helping people, is it?

[Tracy Sherwood-Farnfield]

i think the problem there is that you're trying to do good in the world, not pander to the sensationalist kind of "science" we see on telly alot lately.
don't get me wrong, i like seeing caravans explode, but it's not exactly helping people, is it?

LOL I think a certain Mr Clarkson with his honourary Doctorate in Engineering would disagree.....

Perhaps I should try and discover a drug which is of value to 99.9% of the world and affordable to 0.01% instead - ah cynics of the world unite!

[James Box]

haha! i fully agree.

[Tom Forman]

Not only cars and factories are to blame for global warming.
As far as I can remember cows contribute to about 10% of emmissions causing the greenhouse effect (yes in form of their farts) because they are so vastly overproduced.

If you could change the genetics of the cow so it did not produce as much methane, that problem would be solved.

[James Box]

thanks Tom, i did know about that, but sexual trauma of bed bugs...hmmm lol
it just made me think about all the "let's blow stuff up!" kinda science shows and the general approach to it these days. seems like it's going for entertainment value rather than real value...but i could say that about just about everything these days.

[matthew spooner]

ha ha, here's one for ya, for all those metal heads out there

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/02/nguitar02.xml

[James Box]

lol! that is of huge benefit to mankind, surely!

[Tracy Sherwood-Farnfield]

Not only cars and factories are to blame for global warming.
As far as I can remember cows contribute to about 10% of emmissions causing the greenhouse effect (yes in form of their farts) because they are so vastly overproduced.

If you could change the genetics of the cow so it did not produce as much methane, that problem would be solved.

Of course, you are right Tom and I was perhaps being overly flippant! I just loved the 'highly convoluted' title, it made me chuckle. I believe there is also an oceanic micro-organism which also contributes greatly to the methane in the atmosphere when it has a 'bloom' but I can not recall the details.....

I mentioned the bed bugs one to my work colleagues and they could not decide if the sexual trauma was between bed bugs or a result of being BED bugs (I wonder if that means that some bed bugs are subject to greater trauma than others....and in what environments....oh no it has sucked my in ....I....I....feel a hypothesis forming...) ah the plight of an unemployed research scientist....

the cow thing is serious though, I have heard (although maybe erroniously) that we would be suffering from global warming with the cow's contributions alone, without our own distructive involvement. I bet somewhere, once, even if only for a fleeting moment of insanity someone considered an emissions tax for cattle.....