Here are the current standings in the 2008 Beijing Olympics doping league.
Before the Games, Russia withdrew two walkers and a cyclist over positive test or suspicion of doping. Bulgaria withdrew its entire weightlifting team due to positive tests for steroids. The Greek weightlifting team also had numerous steroid positives.
As a postdoc, I worked for several years on the cell cycle in Drosophila. At that time, the field was just beginning to take off, not least because of the efforts of my then group leader. Nowadays, I study the ageing process, still using Drosophila, and including modelling the function of WRN, the gene responsible for the progeroid condition Werner's syndrome (WS). WRN encodes a RecQ DNA helicase (unwinds the DNA double helix), but unusually has a second activity, a DNA exonuclease (removes nucleotide bases from the end of a DNA strand). We are currently studing the Drosophila homologue of the WRN exonuclease (which we have named DmWRNexo, and which is encoded by the CG7670 locus).
When trying to demonstrate that a mutant of CG76700 indeed displayed characteristic comparable with defects seen in cell lines derived from WS patients, I recalled reading this paper at the beginning of my postdoc position.
The Quackometer and Holfordwatch blogs report that the British Chiropractic Association, presumably fired by their New Zealand colleagues' attempts to silence scientific opinion, have filed a suit against Simon Singh following an article originally published in the Guardian (but now unavailable). Hopefully this will engender a major Streisand effect, and I fully expect the case to fail.
See also the news report in the Telegraph (I notice the Telegraph journalists refer to the chiropractors as "Doctors" and doubt this is justified).
This year's Duo Normand time trial will be held on 21st September, and after a year's absence, Team Grumpy (a.k.a. Gerry Oram and me) will be competing again. For a change, we are entered in the Corporate category instead of the Veteran category (we may revert to veteran if we continue to be the sole team in our category!).
The 20 riders who turned out for this event were fortunate that we managed to avoid the heavy showers (some extremely heavy) that plagued us during the day. We did however suffer strong winds that made the opening leg to Chicheley something of a trial, and aero wheel handling quite twitchy at times.
I didn't hang around after the event, as it was getting darker and windy. I also didn't see most of the guys for the pre-race banter as I was quite late getting up to Astwood - I assume Gilbert ("Hard man of the North") Wheelwright is still using the tribars and pointy hat! Stuart Tarry's winning time of 22:55 was pretty quick for an evening like this (even if he claimed he only showed up because I was going to give him an entry for his '10' on 30th August- which I forgot anyway).
The Daily Telegraph reports an interview with Prince Charles, that famous organic farmer, where he continues to lambast genetically modified crops.
His criticisms seem to principally concern the mass commercialisation of farming - I guess his interests in organic community farming in Caithness and the Duchy estate prompt this. However the interview seems to me to be interpreted by the media as a criticism of the GM industry, despite his comments being vague and really quite ill-informed scientifically. To say GM crops are a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong" is really unhelpful, with no evidence presented to support his stance.
These photographs were taken during the 2005 trip to Normandy for the Duo Normand. They were taken before and after the race while tandem cycling in the Norman countryside, and during the race as we started in and passing through Marigny (notice the picture where we were going so fast only the edge of my disc wheel is in the photo!). We also visited Mont St Michel.
{gallery}2005-normandy:::{/gallery}
Einsturzende Neubauten have released a significant catalogue of music, which has metamorphosed from loud metal bashing to more sophisticated sounds such as Silence is Sexy, from the album of the same title. I found this video at YouTube.
This was a particularly tough morning on the F1/25 - perhaps the hardest I can recall, though at least the heavy rain we saw on Saturday did not make a reappearance.
The initial section, roughly southbound to the Sandy RAB, gave me a little taster for what was to come later on: after descending the sliproad to the A1, it was most definitely going to be tough on both southbound legs. Unfortunately the reverse didn't seem to the true, while it's true I was whizzing along with a tailwind after the Sandy RAB (I topped 34mph at times), the benefits of the wind seemed to be absent some of the time. Presumably this was due to the slightly serpentine nature of the course. Despite most peoples' opinion, I'm a bit of an optimist, and usually on days like this I reach the turn think that maybe, just maybe, the return leg won't be as hard as I expect. For today's event, I can safely say the return leg exceeded my direst prognostications. On some of the more exposed sections, I was battered down below 20mph, and I'm sure I saw 17mph at one point. (Jason Gurney claimed afterwards to have had to drop to the small ring at one point!). I was caught by #90 for 3 minutes shortly after the turn, and even he seemed to be struggling into the wind after that.
These photos were taken during our 2005 cycle tour of Uist, Harris and Skye. Visit the tour description to see the context of these images.
Well, I have finally plucked up the courage to present a link to the video press release that the BBSRC issued on youtube:
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQwz2Wv9FU 425x344]
Not, I think, peer-reviewed science this time, but two articles from Nature and Science respectively, both on the subject of sports doping, a subjetc which is of course very topical given the Beijing Olympics, due to start tomorrow, 8th August. The first is a Commentary article from Donald Barry on the statistical significance of doping tests, focussing on the case of Floy Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France victory following a positive test for testosterone. The second article is one of a series of News articles in Science related to the upcoming Olympics, and questions whether performance enhancing drugs really do benefit performance.
The figure on the left is included in the article - it shows delta notation of isotope ratios of 167 samples tested at the LNDD (who tested the 2006 TdF samples, including Landis'), those considered positive are in red, those negative are in green. I don't think these samples are necessarily derived from the Tour, if any, since a good number are considered positive.
A warm, sticky evening brought out some great times from the riders who turned out for this visit to the Stoke Hammond bypass course. Personally speaking, this was yet another occasion when I actually thought I'd go sub 22:30 on this course, but was thwarted by the false flat on the run up to the finish. Still, I seem to be edging closer to Tony. Having tried out a pointy aero hat last week, Gilbert paired that move to the modern world with a set of aero bars this week!
Tim Carter's fine ride of 20:39 was particularly notable, beaten only by the tandem.
Here are some photographs taken during our 2008 cycling holiday in the Outer Hebrides, Skye, and the west coast. To view these images in the context of the narrative, click here.
{gallery}tour2008{/gallery}
New Web Pages
My website is now pretty much reconstructed (though with a paucity of comments on the stories I've restored from the old database!). Let me know of any broken web links.
Cyclingnew.com reports that Emanuele Sella (Team CSF Group Navigare), who won three stages and the King of the Moutains in the 2008 Giro d'Italia, has tested positive for the latest formulation of EPO, CERA. CERA is the same stuff that Ricco (second placed in the 2008 Giro overall) tested positive for in the Tour de France.
CERA seems to be the endurance athlete's dope of choice at the moment, presumably due to rumours that it was less easily detected. The Olympics start in two days - I wonder how many athletes, of all disciplines, will be collared.
Am I correct to assume that you've not punctured since May? In which case, is this some sort of record?
The morning was pretty vile - alternating light and heavy rain - it was with something of a heavy heart that I set off in a downpour to the Hemel 10, over by Leighton Buzzard. I took a somewhat circuitous route (somewhat concerned about picking up a flint in the smaller lanes), and by the time I reached the race HQ it was sunny and warm, albeit with a rising breeze.
Despite the squelching shoes, I felt pretty optimistic. The outward leg had something of a tailwind and is the longer leg of the event. Overall though there were some slightyl tough sections, it was quick to the turn, and a bit harder back. I reached a max HR of 197bpm during the return leg! I finished in 22:37, which I think is my fastest on this course for a few years.
What has happened to my web pages?
Basically, a botched upgrade from a Joomla! release candidate to the latest version! However, I plan a better website than before! Hopefully reasonably normal service will be resumed over the coming weeks.