Chapter 2: Femur Bones
Thursday Afternoon, 12:35 pm; October 29th, 2015.
Tokyo University of Frontier Sciences: Department of Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences. It is considered to be one of the most demanding Bioscience programs in the world, requiring a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum, synthesizing many scientific and technical fields and applying them to biological research. The university stresses a focus on creative, pioneering research techniques and instilling in its students the ability to cross-communicate ideas effectively over discourse boundaries to solve complex, multifaceted problems head-on.
Two professors power-walked down the endless hallway, their footsteps vibrating off the cold tiled floor. One of them was Professor Shinzo Mafune, a Marine Biologist specializing in Deep Sea Ecology, and Professor Erika Shiragami, a Botanist who specialized in genetic sequencing and effects of radiative particles on plant structures. Professor Mafune was a man in his mid- fifties, slivers of grey hair but mostly black. Professor Shiragami was in her early thirties, and was one of the youngest Professors in the department. Both organized a seminar lecture series in advanced and conceptual Integrated Biosciences. This was the last of the lecture series scheduled.
"Late for the last seminar, and of all of them this semester, it had to be his."
"Don't worry Shinzo. He's one of the most forgiving faculty members around here. I just had to get these for him."
"Didn't he want to go to the store himself Erika? He can be very picky you know."
"Usually, but I saw him drink this kind of tea in his office...once. It's a variety pack. He should like at least two of them. Think of it as a thanks to our once-advisor."
"Once? Twenty years after my PhD and I still ask him to assist in my menial research. Very few think the way he does. It's a wonder how many of my hypotheses are substantiated by his early conceptual models of underwater biomechanics. Wait...Erika, are those the books he's been looking for?"
"It is. He's going to love them!"
Both turned the corner. The classroom was still far away down the building. Their footsteps continuing to echo loudly off the tile floor, reverberating through the hall.
"His personal library is bigger than both of ours combined. I wonder if he still takes his research home?"
"His wife said he had a personal study dedicated to his own research."
Both professors stopped at the door of a massive lecture hall, capable of housing over four hundred students, room 3-3. They peered through the small glass opening. The whole room was dark, save for a faint area of light coming from the front area where about fifteen students were crowded around. The podium was abandoned. The guest speaker was nowhere to be found, yet the students were looking up towards the ceiling, as if waiting for something to descend down.
"You had to schedule his seminar lecture on a Saturday, didn't you Erika. This room is usually stuffed to the brim on regular days; now its barely -."
"Please Shinzo, let's enjoy this time...where...where is he?"
Both quietly tip-toed in down the side of the steps. They looked around, but it was still very dark. The only light was a faint blue-amber glow from several optical lights running along the front stage. The lights glimmered off the PowerPoint title, Biophysics and Biomechanics; Can Life Break the Rules or Are the Rules Unbreakable?
They finally made it to the group of students, their heads now turned around towards the left corner of the lecture hall. Prof. Shinzo whispered to them "Pardon me students. What is going on exactly? We were a little delayed," Shinzo said, cocking an exacerbated expression towards Erika.
One student closest to them, a young undergraduate woman in the program named Akane Yashiro, turned around and pointed towards the ceiling of the lecture hall.
"The Professor is wrapping up what he called his "theory and concept" part of the lecture. He wants us to make predictions based on the allometric scaling relationships of femur bones he brought in-."
Prof. Mafune interrupted her for a moment.
"Did you hear that Erika? We missed the whole lecture. I'm sure he's going to be thrilled to find out where we've been." Mafune said with dry sarcasm.
"Actually," Akane interjected, "The Professor said he had something planned for you two just in case you were delayed. In a second he's going to drop a mouse, horse and elephant femur bone, then he's going to show us something el-"
Before she could finish, three bones from the ceiling, lit up in the dark with bright green luminescent paint, dropped from the ceiling. The tiny mouse femur was barely visible, the horse a bit more, and the elephant looked like a huge hot-lava lamp. As the bones went down, an old man's voice boomed out from the corner.
"OBSERVE PLEASE!"
All the students, Erika and Shinzo saw the mouse femur hit the flat table in the very back left corner of the lecture hall. Just a slight noise from the impact, but the little luminescent object looked intact. The horse femur came down. It hit the top and it cracked a little bit. Then the elephant femur hit and broke into several large pieces. A voice then echoed from the back of the lecture hall, the voice of an old man.
"Recall the quote I stated earlier by Bio-polymath J.B.S. Haldane? If we put the actual tissues on these organisms and dropped them from these particular heights, the mouse would get a shock but walk away, the horse would splash, and the elephant? I threw that one in, but goodness, I don't even want to think about that. So, in this small-scale experiment, we generally understand the durability of larger organisms versus smaller organisms under the action of gravitational fall, including the forces that affect organisms of differing scale. I demonstrated a rather crude way of why large organisms don't tend to do well when they fall from equal heights smaller organisms fall from. It turns out it is just fine if you're a mouse or smaller. The biomechanical machinery of life has certain proportional limits to how big, and especially how durable it can get."
An old man started walking briskly back up to the podium. Seventy years of age but looking more in his late fifties, he was a lively and healthy man with nothing but black circular reading eyeglasses on. He wore a black dress shirt with cream-colored khaki pants and black leather shoes. Compared to Professor's Mafune and Shiragami who were still in their laboratory coats and the students attending, the old professor was the most dressed up, and quite possibly, the most relaxed. His laboratory coat was hanging up in the corner, a tan-cream color.
Three students raised their hand; one was Akane, the others named Hideo Ogata and Emiko Yamane. Both were also in the Bioscience undergraduate program.
"The one with the Chihiro Ogino and Haku-Dragon emblem," the old lecturer said, smiling at Emiko, now sheepishly quiet and getting red in the face. "Yes Miss Yamane, I recognize you. You had Spirited Away playing every time I visited your father when you were a little girl. Good times...OH, back to the questions, yes?"
"Um, all things considered Professor, how is it that certain sauropod dinosaurs could be many times the size of elephants? Wouldn't they fall apart and collapse under their own weight?"
"Very good question. In essence, large terrestrial sauropod dinosaurs followed the same general rules that all large megafauna living today follow; increased body size requires increased skeletal-bone mass, or stouter and thicker bones to support the greater weights. That's the trend anyways. This is why there's a cap on some of these giant organisms being under certain weight and size limits, especially when it comes to trying to actually estimate their sizes with little fossil fragmentation to go off of. I recommend your consult your grandfather. He's made some astounding findings that have modified many of my own hypotheses. Ask if there's new findings on that controversial find of his."
"Which one Professor?"
"Ha! Yes, which one indeed. Your grandfather has made some very famous academic enemies for his conjecture, some of them mine. Um, the ones in Southern Africa in the Permian-Early Jurassic formations frame...oh. Please excuse me students, my age is showing yet again."
He turned the PowerPoint on, this slide showing a diagram of the largest terrestrial creatures ever to walk the Earth, pictured with the shadow of a blue whale. Akane and Hideo had their hands up still. The old man looked at his watch.
"Now, are there anymore questi...GOODNESS! We've spent this long on lecture and demonstration? Alright, sorry you two. Please get back to me after this final demonstration. Let's see now, are they here yet?"
The old professor looked into the dark room, squinting at the gaggle of few students. Closest to the aisle were Shinzo and Erika.
"I wondered were you had gotten to. At least you saw the femurs drop. Did you see that part?"
"Yes we did." Erika said. Both rose up and bowed. Mafune then spoke up, "I apologize for our tactless tardiness Professor. My colleague," Shinzo looked over a Erika with a stink-eye, "... had insisted upon acquiring certain items that took up our time-."
The old Professor interrupted.
"I sure hope it's more tea. I can never have enough tea. Well, you two know the content anyhow. So long as you saw the femurs I won't dock down points," he said with a slight smirk.
"Alright students, I don't I have enough time to finish the last demonstration. I needed Professors Mafune and Shiragami," the old Professor announced.
"I do have one more thing I wish to bring up to you; well, several actually. These are my concluding remarks. The first is that Biophysics and Biomechanics fundamentally want to use the methods of the physical sciences and apply them to biological systems of whatever scale. I touched on one of my favorite topics, Allometry of large vs small vertebrates. The current properties and laws of physics do not permit animals larger than the largest known extinct species of dinosaur and currently living Blue Whale from greatly exceeding these limits. I recommend you pay closer attention to my handout on the importance of the "Square-Cube Law," and really understand its major implications for organisms, like a shrew versus an elephant."
The old professor popped on another screen showing these creatures in their scale and the respective facts about the, area, volume, mass, forces and metabolism acting on them.
"This is small-fry compared to what currently exists in the grand field of Biophysics. If you love understanding the how and why of life, you're in the perfect program. You can all excel in any area or areas you wish. It could be Bioengineering, Biochemistry, Evolutionary Analysis, and our new program, Computational and Systems Biology. How I wish these disciplines were more developed here in the 70's. My second and final point is more about the philosophy of education I hope to instill in you, if the program curriculum hasn't instilled it into you yet."
He put on another slide with the picture of a kid with his head smashed into his desk, words under the picture saying "STUDYING. Notice how they conveniently put "dying" at the end of this word." All the students quietly chuckled.
"Your studies, although intense and rigorous, will pay off. I assure you the curriculum isn't designed to make you memorize volumes of information, but to be able to acquire, grasp and share that information, to follow the scientific method and confidently discuss topics that may not be within your domain of study or interest. Make sure you study hard, are always honest with what you know and don't know, your research and findings, cross check your procedures and methods with others in your field, and above all..."
The old Professor popped up one last slide in his PowerPoint. It was a photoshoped anime version of himself with wax wings dangling at the top of the new Skytree skyscraper in Tokyo, the sun bright in the sky; his expression blown up in detail saying, "I can make it!"
"...have fun with science. I hope you enjoyed this final seminar lecture, and best wishes to all your studies. Live long and prosper ladies and gentlemen," the old Professor said, raising his hand in the Star-Trek fashion.
The students clapped rigorously, along with Erika. Shinzo gave a modest few claps. He didn't want to make it seem like he enjoyed what little of the seminar he attended, although Erika new Shinzo internally geeked out at the Vulcan Salute.
One of the undergraduates leaned over to Emiko and Hideo and whispered, "The last nine seminars weren't even half as good. This guy is actually fun about it."
"I know right?" Akane chimed in. "I watched a news story that described him as the Michio Kaku of Japan."
"Ironic that Kaku is Japanese descended," Hideo said, agreeing with the group.
Suddenly Erika rose up from her seat.
"Students, please thank our guest lecturer for taking time out of his schedule and presenting a wonderful seminar series conclusion."
They all stood up.
"Thank you very much Professor Sato."
