Catnmus: Catnmus Contemplates Science

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 03:47:35 GMT

Marriage of ideas - nuclear waste and space elevators

New Scientist, March 4. An article about nuclear waste disposal. It gives a pretty detailed description of the new site being developed in Sweden. Still under construction, it has become one of the town's top tourist attractions. School kids take field trips there. It sounds pretty cool. And people in Sweden are not saying, "Not In My BackYard." Which is nice. Owning up to their disposal responsibilities, unlike some other countries that just keep procrastinating.

A sidebar to this article starts with, "Gone are the days when people entertained the idea of blasting nuclear waste into space. The consequences of a launch failure don't even bear thinking about." Which does make a lot of sense. Still, "space" does seem to me like it might be a much safer place for the stuff. And I'm wondering, has anyone considered using a space elevator for this? This is essentially a REEEAAAALLLYYY long structure of some sort that is traversed by a vehicle of some sort, like an elevator car on its cable. One of these structures, originally portrayed in science fiction, is already being developed in Arizona, due to the wondrous discovery and development of carbon nanotubes.

Assuming there's some sort of safety parachute concept, using a space elevator should be no less safe than trucking these fuel rods across the country to Yucca Mountain. Once in space, a very low-energy, low speed thruster-type system can drive these fuel rods off somewhere, where they are safely away from us. Maybe even the moon. In any case, it'd probably be pretty safe there from terrorists, and unable to enter the water supply or get ruptured during an earthquake.

Anyone that knows someone in NASA or the US (or any other country's) Department of Energy, feel free to pass this idea along. Or maybe that private company in Arizona would like to get some government funds for further research and development.

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 04:20:34 GMT

Women that are smarter than Lawrence Summers

(Second in a new, occasional series.)

I decided to start this new feature where I will be highlighting stories from my science magazines where the women achieved successes that the men had not, or where the addition of a woman to a team helped the team achieve success where previous, all-male teams had not. This is not in any way meant to imply that men are stupid or that they aren't as smart as women. However, the best way to show that something is at least equal to X is to show that it can be more than X. People that want to yell and scream at me for this... that's what that little comment link down there is for. Go for it. Meanwhile, on with the show.

Various researchers have been trying to prove - via experimentation - that E really does equal mc². They were having problems at Cornell with "magnetic noise" problems in the Penning trap they were using to measure the mass of an ion. They worked for at least 3 years on this problem without success. But then in 1999, when Debbie Fygenson joined them, the team finally solved the problem by trapping two different ions at the same time, which proceeded to move in a syncopated fashion. Researchers were then able to weigh the two ions against each other in order to cancel out the effect of the noise.

Alas, the researchers did not move to this "revolutionary" discovery immediately. They wasted four more years using the old one-ion method, before giving up in 2003. Using the new method they were finally able to measure the mass of an ion to within 5 parts in a trillion.

Thanks, Debbie Fygenson, for your contributions to the team, to the research, and to advancing the exposure of women in science!

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 23:26:05 GMT

Here are some women that are smarter than Lawrence Summers

I hope someone alerts Lawrence Summers to this achievement. Recently a female Chinese mathematician, Xiaoyun Wang, along with two others (one female, one unspecified) broke a very strong hash algorithm used in cryptography (SHA-1). "Breaking" one of these algorithms means finding a way to produce a collision in hash value in less time than it would take with a brute force method. In this case, she reduced the number of tries from the order of 2 to the 80th power, to 2 to the 69th.

But that's not all. After that, she worked with another pair of researchers, again one female, one of unspecified gender, and reduced it further, to 2 to the 63rd. Take that, Mr. Summers!

The condescension of religion

So, that was the good news. Here's the bad news. A very interesting article in Science News about the Piraha Indians of the Amazon. They have no words for numbers or colors, no compound sentences, rarely use pronouns, etc. They don't do math at all. They tell no creation myths and don't make up stories or draw pictures. All of this is very interesting. But then the researchers throw in this tidbit of information. These people believe in spirits, "but there's no great god who created all the spirits." Um, since when is this a requirement of an "advanced" civilization? Seriously, what the hell does that mean? Is that some sort of "great truth" that they just haven't discovered yet?

Bullshit.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 20:26:40 GMT

Science Sunday

Episode 1: Junk DNA

You all know that I have a bug up my butt about "junk DNA". There was an interesting article in New Scientist with an interesting observation about so-called junk DNA. It states that "the biggest differences between species lie not in the number of active genes, but in the amount of junk DNA". Humans have the largest proportion of junk DNA of any species yet tested. Scientists don't yet know why this is, but it sure is interesting. I might have to change my opinion in that previous article linked above. Maybe, instead of the junk DNA being the "basic programming" and the genes being the "data", it's the other way around. Maybe the genes are your basic arithmetic operations that all "computers" know how to process, and the junk DNA is the "data" that it operates on. Humans, with more DNA, have more data to operate on, and therefore more complex results are produced when the program is finished.

Episode 2: Manipulation of Science

The Bush administration is still muzzling the scientists they don't want you to hear from. Any remarks that NASA scientist James Hansen wants to make have to be reviewed by the public affairs staff. These directives come through informal channels such as phone conversations, which leave no paper trail. The government position is that scientists can present results but should not be speaking about policy. Colleagues have stated that he always makes clear that he is speaking for himself and not for the agency. But he's still not allowed to speak unfettered. Contrast this with the restriction on an anti-climate-control scientist during the Clinton administration, Indur Goklany. He was taken off climate-related works, but he was still allowed to speak or publish whatever he wanted, as long as he made it clear that he was only speaking of his own opinion.

Among the restrictions, according to Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to the Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, McCarthy said Deutsch called NPR "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee, that might be Deutsch's priority.

Episode 3: Undisputed fact

I was listening to NPR last week, and they had a woman on there that was some sort of head honcho at the Right To Life foundation. While I respect her right to have her own opinion about things, I have to call her on something she said, since the host of the show did not. She repeated several times that "it's an undisputed fact that life begins at conception". I wholeheartedly agree that if you believe that life begins at conception, that you may then conclude that "abortion is murder". However, it is not an "undisputed fact" that life begins at conception. In fact, I'd say that it is completely disputed, and that's the main direction from which the debate about abortion comes. And until such groups as yours start pushing hard for contraception in addition to against abortion, and against the death penalty, you will never convince anyone that you are not just an organization with a religious agenda.

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:54:18 GMT

You know you need a laugh after all that

So here it is - your laugh of the day. Remember that wacky cult that claimed in 2004 that they had successfully impregnated six women with cloned babies? And remember the recently-disgraced South Korean that claimed to have created multiple embryonic stem cell lines through cloning? Well, guess what cult company just offered what so-called researcher a job. Three guesses and the first two don't count.

Sounds like a match made in heaven to me!

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 01:20:35 GMT

Speaking of reproductive rights...

There was this article in the paper today, about the FDA supporting the sale of a diet pill over the counter. The AP article says this: "Alli would have half the dosage of Xenical but would be freely available for purchase by adults."

Read those last three words again. "Purchase by adults." The Bush administration should definitely not take the FDA's recommendation and should instead ban this drug from over-the-counter sales, don't you think? After all, remember Plan B? Drug store clerks are apparently completely incapable of checking IDs to ensure that this drug is not purchaseable by those under 18. So therefore, this drug should not be approved for OTC sales, either.

Of course you know it will be. After all, this pill has nothing to do with allowing women to protect themselves from getting pregnant, and plus, it's something that men can use as well. Therefore, this drug will get approved for OTC sales. Plan B, alas, won't get approved until we get this dick (actually, both of them) out of the White House.

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 03:57:57 GMT

Random is as random does

This is a bunch of random musings I've been thinking over the past couple of weeks. This oughta mostly catch me up and I can start having all new thoughts after this. Whee!

The SF police video scandal. Overblown. Two cases in point: the black officer eating out of a dog bowl, and the Asian officer riding a bike (badly). The black officer's nickname is "Dog". The Asian officer failed a police-biking course. That's really all I need to know. This is just good-humored fun, with the people being made fun of, portraying themselves in the videos. Get over it.
Soy, green tea and cancer. A lot of people have been recommending soy as an estrogen replacement (to treat hot flashes) for women with breast cancer that is hormone-sensitive. But there have not been any studies (as far as I know) showing that soy is safe where estrogen isn't. If the body treats it just as it treats estrogen, why would that be any better for women with breast cancer than estrogen itself? So I looked up online about incidence of breast cancer in Asia, where they have been eating soy (tofu) for ages. And the incidence is "traditionally very low". Okay, so maybe soy is safe. But then I read about how green tea has been shown to "cure" chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a blood cancer. As you may know, green tea is also an Asian staple. So maybe soy does raise the risk but the green tea reduces it, and that's why it's so low. So maybe NOT eating soy, but ADDING green tea, could eliminate cancer risk completely. Of course that doesn't get rid of the menopausal hot flashes that soy is meant to counteract...
I just saw the movie Brokeback Mountain. Twice. In less than a week, in the theater. This is not like me. But it was so good, I had to go back again. Star-crossed lovers, man. The age-old story. The kissing outside the laundry has got to win some "most passionate screen kiss" awards at some point. An excellent film. Go see it.
I also just read My Sister's Keeper, but Jodi Picoult. An awesome book that really highlights the moral issues in specifically conceiving (or even just otherwise having) a child to be a medical donor for another child. I couldn't put it down. It seemed kind of all over the place at the beginning, but after one short, key chapter, all the confusion about is-she or isn't-she suddenly makes sense.
Nothing is free, invention edition: There's this invention that is a ramp that generates 10-50kW of electricity as each car drives over it. But no one is asking where this power comes from. It's got to come from somewhere, right? Answer: it probably causes reduced fuel efficiency in the cars that drive over it. And that means fossil fuels. Each pass over one of these ramps probably minutely slows the car down, just a tiny fraction, but that means more power required by the car to drive the same distance over time, which means more fossil fuels and paid for by the car's driver. I would really like to see the flaw in my argument, because like I said, this energy has got to come from somewhere. It's not coming from waste heat or other by-products.
Technology to mimic nature. This is a very cool idea to keep the internet virtually virus-free. It works like an immune system for the internet. First, we need software that can automatically detect and disable new viruses, worms, etc. that it has not encountered before. Then, this software can be deployed on special "honeypot" computers on the internet, looking for all the world like a naive, unprotected computer that's ripe for infecting. Instead, when the virus invades, the software analyses it, builds "antibodies" to combat it, and then distributes this "immunity" via all the honeypots to all the computers on the internet. Simulations show that this kind of system could result in only .001% of computers actually getting infected (this estimate is based on the size of the network). Now that's cool!
Dear Aaron MacGruder. Does Eddie Murphy know you're using his stuff in your TV show? Namely, in the Gangstalicious episode, Riley throwing himself down the steps, and thump-thump-thump, "my shoe!". Also in that same episode, annoying black eyewitness. "I seent it! I seen the whole thing!". I mean, it's cool if he knows about it. But if not, then beware that some of us watching are old enough to remember the early stuff!

Wow, I can't believe I got all that off my chest. It's great to unload, isn't it?

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 19:12:10 GMT

Why women always have to watch out

We recently moved, and waiting for us at the new house was a magazine delivery for one of the previous occupants - Teen Vogue. On the cover is that Harry Potter actress, the one that plays Hermione. So far so good. The cover also says that there is a spread on "styles for every body shape - tall&thin, petite, curvy and athletic". I'm interested, so I flip to the spread.

They've got seven different outfits for tall, thin girls. Six for petite ones. Curvy? There's a mere three outfits - half of what the other two categories got. And all athletic girls get is the quarter-page on the wrap-up that shows famous people in each category - no outfits at all. None. I flipped the pages several times, looking for "continued on page X", or maybe two pages stuck together. Nope, nothing of the sort. There's nothing there for athletic shapes.

Teen Vogue is obviously preparing young girls for adult Vogue, where you only deserve attention if you're tall&thin or if you're petite.

On the science side, there's this article: Young women have flawed eggs too. It's about IVF pre-implantation testing of embryos for genetic defects. This is a way to test for genetic defects in an embryo before implanting it to achieve a pregnancy. Researchers found that 40-50% of embryos from the eggs of younger women (under the age of 30) had genetic flaws. They concluded that the women's eggs were at fault, and that even young women's eggs have a significant number of flaws.

It's not until the last paragraph that they state that "the flawed embryos might have nothing to do with the donor eggs, and could be a result of problem sperm". Yes, you read that right. Remember that this testing is all on the embryos, not on the eggs themselves. The researchers apparently did not control for problem sperm, age of the sperm donor, or anything like that. Nope, they came to the conclusion that it was the eggs that were at fault.

Now you could say that I should have known this from the start of the article. They were after all talking about IVF and about pre-implantation testing of embryos. But the title of the article (see link above), and all the text in the article up to the last sentence lulled me into a false sense of trusting that they knew what they were talking about. For example, this sentence: "Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) – a technique in which a cell from an early-stage embryo is examined for such abnormalities before being used for IVF treatment – has confirmed that older women’s eggs are riddled with abnormalities." It sounds to me like that testing is flawed as well!

Net net, trust no one, and we women have to watch out for subtle discrimination not only for beauty purveyors, but also from science researchers.

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 03:37:09 GMT

The tiger, or the other tiger?

Imagine the "lady or the tiger" story, where there are two doors and behind one door is a lady and behind the other is a tiger, and you get to pick one. Now, imagine that each door has a window in it, and you can see that behind each one of them is a tiger.

This is the question I'm faced with when I try to balance global warming against the global economy. For example, coffee (for the sake of argument, let's say it's fair trade coffee). Buying coffee pumps money into the economy of the countries where it is grown, such as Colombia, Kenya and Vietnam. Countries where farming coffee beans to support the caffeine addiction of the world makes one a nice living. And yet, global warming experts say that buying local is better because you avoid the pollution that comes from burning the fossil fuels to transport your product to you.

So, what should I do? Buy local, which means American, to save the planet while letting some farm family in Mexico or Costa Rica starve? Or support the global economy by spending my dollars in foreign countries, and to hell with the ozone layer?

What to do....

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:59:08 GMT

Speaking of autism

This article at the BBC site discusses how autism is primarily known to have a higher incidence in boys, but it may just present differently in girls. For example, boys may collect "things" whereas girls may collect "information". Girls, generally seen as more passive than boys in the first place, may simply be seen as shy. And, girls' autism may manifest as anorexia - obsessive calorie-counting, anyone?

I'm not sure I agree with it, but it's an interesting theory, nonetheless.

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:45:25 GMT

I stand corrected... Maybe...

Two recent articles in New Scientist and in Science News, raise possible mea culpas in my mind.

First, the subject of dark matter. Under the auspices of Occam's razor, dark matter has just seemed too complicated and to require too many additional assumptions to be the Right Answer to explain the distribution of galaxies in the universe. But an 8/13 issue of Science News has an article titled Cosmic Computing, where a model of the early universe including clumps of dark matter placed according to the "reverberations of subatomic ripples in the density of an otherwise uniform soup of material and radiation" (which is what our universe looked like 400,000 years ago) evolves into a "cosmic web of filaments", where rich clusters of galaxies could form with vast voids between them. Just like what we have in real life.

Of course it doesn't explain how the ripples got there, does it?

The second subject that I have learned new, interesting facts about is autism. There's a nice long article in the 8/13 issue of New Scientist that analyzes whether we are really in an autism epidemic or not. And the most telling statistic to me is, 75% of all autism diagnoses today are either Asperger's Syndrome or PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified), both of which are sometimes called "high-functioning autism". In fact, the article has a graph showing autism rates since 1970, and it looks like the largest growth occurred after PDD-NOS was added to the diagnostic manual.

There is still a doubling in the numbers from 1977 to 1987, though. The article also mentions that up to one third of the autism diagnoses are "regressive", where the child seems to develop normally until about age 2, and then loses language and social skills that they had previously mastered. This is what I thought researchers were investigating all along - not cases where the children fail to develop normally from the start.

So I do still wonder if perhaps mercury exposure in childhood vaccines might explain the regressive form of autism even if it doesn't explain all cases or any of the Asperger's cases or whatever. If there are enough data out there to analyze (one study of 13,135 children found 56 cases, and that includes Asperger's and PDD-NOS cases as well - probably not enough for a correlation study). It seems like a nice study for a graduate student in ... psychology? psychiatry? pediatrics? Something like that.

So, I admit I may be wrong about these things. Though I still hedge my bets!

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 18:38:08 GMT

A call to action

This is meant as a non-partisan call to action to do something about global warming. I’m not pointing the finger at anyone – country, industry or individual – for causing it. Some have finally admitted – after many years of pooh-poohing the possibility – that global warming is happening, but they don’t seem to think that the cause is manmade. And that is fair to say. The fact that global temperatures and warm-weather effects have increased along with the rise in industrialization is, after all, only a correlation at this point. Nothing has been proven as far as cause and effect. Proponents of a “global cyclical warming trend” contend that this warmer period that we’re in is part of a X-thousand-year cycle of warming and cooling. That’s also “just a correlation”, right? Who’s to say which is right?

So, let’s do some science to try to settle the question. We have two options. We can continue as we’re doing, changing nothing, and then check back in a thousand years or so and see if the warming trend has stopped and now a cooling trend is upon us. Or we can assume that we are the cause of this trend, and that we thus have the power to reverse it. We can immediately start doing the things that science says will reverse this trend, and check back in 10 years or so to see if anything has changed. If it has, great – we can stop when we’ve achieved the desired effect, and everybody’s happy. If it hasn't, then we know that pollution was not the cause.

If big business and wasteful consumers really believe that pollution is not the cause of global warming, just think – put invest a mere 10 years into this experiment, and if you were right, you’ll be able to run roughshod over the planet until the end of time.

Of course this experiment only includes two different possibilities – either natural global permutations or pollution-caused. There might be other possibilities as well. For example, maybe over-fishing in the North Sea has changed the ocean ecosystem enough to affect organic chemical emanations from the ocean surface, changing the atmosphere. Still a manmade cause, but a different set of actions and expected responses would be called for in the experiment. A global experiment should first consider other causes so that the study can account for these effects as well. If after 10 years we’ve seen no effect from reducing pollution, then maybe we look at one of the other theories, like over-fishing and other ecosystem effects.

Maybe if we frame this issue not as blame but rather as a reasonable global science experiment, business and governments will sign on in order to prove once and for all whether the actions of one puny species has the ability to impact the climate of an entire planet. This experiment can’t fail to give us some answers, as long as the time period of 10 years (or whatever) is sufficient for cause-and-effect to take place. After all, it’s a big planet, and our current warming period did not take place overnight. But even if there is no effect after 10 or so years and we find out that the answer is that the entire cause of global warming is this cyclical warming trend, we have still learned something. And that is priceless.

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 03:59:25 GMT

The following post is bunk.

Before you get all invested in it, I just want to say up front that the idea presented here is total hoo-hah and should not be implemented. I'll explain why, later. But first the rant aka the challenge for scientists.

Why is it that no one has come up with other ways to produce the petroleum products that are currently based on our fossil fuels? I mean, come on! They're just hydrocarbons, right? Hydrocarbons that were once organic matter such as plants and animals. How difficult can it be to come up with an efficient, cost-effective process to create oil, gasoline, kerosene, petroleum jelly, whatever we want from the materials that are currently available to us, for example in landfills? This would lessen our (American) dependence on foreign oil and avoid having to desecrate the pristine wildernesses in Alaska, in the Gulf of Mexico, and other places. And much of the current oil and gas distribution network would be unaffected.

So okay, the reason this is a bad idea is that it only addresses the supply issue of the fossil fuel equation. Even if this challenge could be solved and seemingly unlimited oil could be produced as needed, it still ignores the issues of pollution and probable environmental degradation. If this energy could be produced purely through landfill contents, the environment might be preserved. But I'm guessing the chances of that are pretty slim. And if the resulting product was molecularly the same as what currently gets pumped up out of the oil fields, the pollution problem would remain as it is - or possibly get worse, if as a result gas prices plummet. So add those things to the description of the challenge as well If only new oil could be manufactured in such a way that it produces less pollution and does not wreck the environment, we'd be in business.

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 03:34:58 GMT

Sliding down the slippery slope?

There is a heartbreaking case of a 22-month-old baby with severe lung, brain and kidney damage. The parents took the doctors to court because the doctors indicated that, in spite of some progress she had made with her breathing, they would not be resuscitating the baby if her heart should fail. The judge ruled in favor of the doctors, that resuscitating her would not be in her best interest.

This is the the same situation as pharmacists who are no longer obligated to fill prescriptions that are morally objectionable to them. For example, they could refuse to dispense birth control to women, or AIDS drugs to gay men. Maybe these doctors find it morally objectionable to resuscitate someone with so very, very little (if any) quality of life. Sure, doctors are so far not allowed to assist suicide or actively terminate a life (except for state-sponsored executions) in most locales. But they can refuse to continue to employ their skills in certain ways, such as not to resuscitate someone with such severe, untreatable medical conditions.

Nothing was said in the article about whether the parents would be free to find other doctors that might be willing to provide this care. This is what the conservative, religious pharmacists have said about their refusal to dispense birth control - that women are free to find another pharmacist to fill their prescription. But this case is also different from the Terri Schiavo case, because here, the parents are the ones that are responsible for making healthcare decisions.

If I remember correctly, the latest legislation in the works regarding contraception proposes that an individual pharmacist may choose not to dispense the prescription but the pharmacy itself must then have someone else on staff that will. Who would this baby's parents appeal to - the hospital? What if all of the doctors on the hospital staff refuse to agree to resuscitate the baby?

It's a difficult subject, no matter how you look at it.

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 04:40:51 GMT

Proposal: An eye for an eye, or, you show me yours and I'll show you mine

No doubt you've heard the latest flap about Bush pushing for the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" in schools. He feels that "both sides ought to be properly taught". Hey, I'm all for that. In fact, let's teach it the way that Bush expects sex education to be "properly taught". Let's let teachers teach "intelligent design" - hell, let's even call it what it is: creationism. But they should only be allowed to describe its failure to explain or predict our world - the job of every scientific theory everywhere.

Alternatively, let's play the trade-off game. Let teachers discuss the full spectrum of both intelligent design and sex education. I'd rather have a bunch of people that believe in the claptrap of creationism and intelligent design not breed, thank you very much.

Maybe we can even get Kathleen Parker, the conservative columnist, to back this plan. After all, in her latest column, she says that if adults find the debate between creationism and evolution fascinating, maybe high school students would as well. She states that "alert, stimulated children incited to prove or disprove intelligent design would hardly suggest a failure of public education." Think how much more interested students would be in proper sex education than in explanations of human origins. Not to mention its more direct impact on their everyday lives.

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 04:38:24 GMT

Closing in on autism?
Buried in the middle of a brief article on screening of embryos for in-vitro fertilization for genetic defects is a revelation about a possible genetic component of autism. It mentions one type of genetic abnormality that we may soon be able to screen for, called "copy number polymorphisms" (CNPs), where small sections of DNA are duplicated too many - or not enough - times. The article states that a team that developed a chip to detect various abnormalities including these CNPs also "identified numerous CNPs found only in people with autism." That could be big news in either trying to prevent autism during IVF procedures or detecting the possibility of future autism at birth. It could also provide a new line of research into the mercury-thimerosal-vaccine-autism connection.
Closing in on the dark matter, too? Or, are the stars really where you think they are?
In the same issue of New Scientist as the article quoted above, is a feature story about the perceived locations of stars in the heavens. Scientists may have been incorrectly interpreting the effect of black holes on the light rays that reach us from distant stars. As a result, stars may not be physically located at the absolute universal positions that have been calculated. And as a result of that, it may not be necessary to conjure up such esoteric things as dark matter and dark energy to explain the physical makeup of our universe. Now that's something I approve of! The whole necessity of dark matter has always seemed hinky to me. This new line of research fell out of something called negative refraction, which is something that, though unknown until 1967 and never seen until 2000, actually exists.
Technology to watch
I was a bit taken aback recently when I started talking about something being built with carbon nanotubes, and the person I was speaking to had no idea what I was talking about. This technology is everywhere in the science publications these days, so I just assumed that everyone knew what they were. For the uninformed, I offer you this description.
Imagine a sheet of carbon, only one atom thick. Raw carbon can form up to four bonds, and that's perfect for building this sheet of paper - one bond up, one down, one left, one right. To make a nanotube, roll the sheet up like a piece of paper, forming a tube, with the atoms on the left bonding with the atoms on the right. Obviously the tube really could be any diameter, but the current focus is on the teeny tiny size.
Materials made out of nanotubes would be very strong but very light. They could be used for building materials, or airplanes, or bulletproof vests, etc. Tubes could also be used to make nanomachines, for example to repair our bodies from the inside out.
I'm afraid of blowing your mind, but what the hell. If you're still here, you can take it. There's another similar technology, where these carbon atoms are built into a soccer-ball shape. It's called a buckyball, after the guy that popularized the geodesic dome.
You can read more at wikipedia.
Here endeth the lesson.

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 04:36:47 GMT

For those of us keeping score: BSE: now 2?
So, brain samples from a cow declared mad-cow-free last November are now being re-tested by the USDA and by the BSE reference lab in the UK. Now, if you remember correctly, last March I reported (from this same magazine, New Scientist) that experts claim that the US has deliberately chosen tests for BSE that are known to be poor. One causes false positives (ELISA, which is one of the reasons this particular cow in November got all the press); and the other is not even approved for use in Europe because of its unreliability (IHC, which requires there to be significant amounts of prions in the brain tissue). The "western blot" test is considered the definitive diagnostic test, but this was not performed in November when the IHC test came back negative.
I'm not sure when the testing occurred, but the USDA inspector general ordered western blot testing of the three "false positive" samples from November, and one came back positive. Now they're doing these two more independent testing to "confirm" the positive result.
By the way, so far there is "no evidence" that this cow was imported from Canada, as the first confirmed mad cow case was. So far it appears to be completely domestic. That's been the defense of this administration all along, as the reason we don't need to do very much testing of our cattle - we don't have the infectious BSE in our herds, Bush contends. That's why Creekstone Farms is not even permitted to test every one of their cows, the way they'd like to. Because that would imply that all these other cows are not safe.
Mind you, we could have been using the western blot test all along. And, we could be testing all cows instead of just downers. But whatever. Bush has got your back, right? So have another burger. Bush is sure it's perfectly safe. Eat up!

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 03:47:11 GMT

Autism and Schiavo and Pit Bulls, oh my
In spite of how you might feel about my writings here, I'm really not much of a conspiracy theorist. I have a hard time believing in deliberate lying and misrepresentation by people and organizations in positions of power. Stupidity, trying to cover up after doing something boneheaded, or just saying "hey Joe Bob, watch me invade Iraq" - that kind of stuff, while it pisses me off, doesn't necessarily seem malevolent. And I certainly have (had) a lot of respect for the CDC. But this article in Salon, on a deliberate cover-up about the effects of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal used in childhood vaccines and the possibility of it causing autism practically blew my doors off. Last year this month, I blogged about a study that showed, in mice, a correlation between thimerosal exposure and autism-like symptoms in mice with a "genetic family history" of autoimmune disorders. Allow me to quote myself:

It baffles me that scientists do not seem more excited about this finding. They seem just as intent as ever to ignore or discount the possibility, even with such a study being done at prestigious Columbia University and printed in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. It seems to me that this should be a little more of an a-ha moment, cause for optimism, and a satisfied “NOW we’re getting somewhere!” Instead they continue to discount the story as if it were all still anecdotal evidence.

Boy, don't I sound naive?

Dear CDC,
Please claim that you never saw this study at Columbia, and that you are shocked, shocked to find out that autism is going on in here. And then clean up the mess that you made for yourself.
Love,
Catnmus

In other news, Terri Schiavo's autopsy report has been released, and it pretty much supports the husband's contention and not her parents' beliefs. Her brain was half the volume of a normal brain, and would not have been able to re-grow. She was blind, so she would not have been able to track the balloon floating past her face as in one video. And she would not have been able to "eat" or "drink" as her parents claim she could - she would not have been able to get enough sustenance from that to live. "In fact, she might easily have choked to death if such feedings had been tried."
Why do I think the parents still are not going to give this up?

Meanwhile, a 66-year-old woman was mauled by her pit bull when she tried to get it to stop attacking her 36-year-old son after she fought with him (her son). She had extensive injuries, and some "chunks" taken out of her leg that could not be repaired. The dog had to be restrained using a Taser. It had a history of aggression - neighbors knew to stay inside if it got loose.
Nice doggie.

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 05:47:34 GMT

Atheism to agnosticism?
In spite of the promise of the Life of Pi, and its overall wonderfulness, I regret to inform Christian conservatives that it did not make me believe in God. However, even given the likely theories put forth by scientists, this picture of Saturn's moon, Iapetus, freaks me out a bit. It looks a lot like one of those cheap foil-covered chocolate balls that you find in your Christmas stocking or Easter basket. Is it possible that this universe is not only made by a creator, but also mass produced? Or from a kit? Geez, that gives me the creeps. Imagine a lot of little gods, sitting in class, and designing and building their own universe. Getting graded on it. I wonder what grade we would get? I suppose it would depend on what level of class it is. Is it a graduate level course? or a gifted high-school course? Or maybe just remedial 3rd grade astrophysics or something.

Speaking of which, here's proof that scientists can also be idiots. In the same issue of New Scientist (but not online) is a spread about the Milky Way. In it is an article about extra-solar systems. Here's a quote:

"the search has turned up surprise after surprise. It had been expected that most planetary systems in our galaxy would look like the solar system: small rocky planets like Earth closest to the star, gas giants like Jupiter further out, and all following fairly circular orbits."

So, based on the overwhelming evidence of a single planetary system, they assumed that all systems would look like this, and are surprised - SURPRISED! - when so far, no other solar system seems to be architected this way. I'm sorry. If you see two systems and they both like this, you can start to maybe expect it. Three out of three, you can start to assume it. But on a single example, you got nothing. So you shouldn't be so freakin' surprised. It makes you look stupid.

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:47:10 GMT

Fascinating Science Facts of the Day
It's Saturday Science time, so here are a couple of fun facts for your enjoyment.
Scientists had been under the impression that when a fertilized egg starts splitting, the two-, four- and eight-cell stages was really too early for the cells to start differentiating. But that turns out not to be the case. Given a two-cell blastocyst, one cell usually splits from top to bottom while the other splits across the middle. Using dyes, researchers determined that the one that splits top to bottom usually becomes the embryo and the one that splits through the middle usually becomes the placenta. So then they split the blastocyst and implanted each half. The result: the top-to-bottom half survives to term 85% of the time, while the side-to-side half survives to term only 30% of the time. Don't be surprised if this ends up adjusting our notions of the flexibility of stem cells.
On a completely different topic. Did you know that the areas of the brain that are associated with processing "reward" is also the same area that is stimulated when you punish cheaters, even when this comes at a cost to you? That explains a lot, from whistleblowers to vigilantes to people that sue their dry cleaners for $20 for a cheap shirt that the cleaners ruined. It's all about the reward.

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 04:34:36 GMT

Why it just doesn't matter (or does it?)
A couple of weeks ago, a judge in Georgia ordered the removal of the "evolution is a theory, not a fact" sticker from science books. The stickers were added in 2002 to appease religious parents that believe in creationism. The school board immediately voted 5-2 to appeal the decision. of course. But that's not why it doesn't matter.
The reason it doesn't matter is because many teachers just sidestep the whole issue, either from their own personal convictions or due to pressure by the school administrators. They may assign the chapter on "evolution" as a reading assignment and then not quiz students on it, or sprinkle the concepts of evolution throughout the entire curriculum without actually using the "e-word". Or they may say that it's controversial and that many people don't accept it, without stating that for the most part scientists accept it and don't find it controversial.
So, let's hear it for home tutoring, where you'll now have to teach not only sex ed but also evolution.
But the good news is, for the first time, more than half (53%) of Americans now believe in evolution of human beings from earlier life forms. This is an improvement to the 45% figure that we stood at for decades. Just another 27% and we can approach the wisdom of other industrial nations.

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 04:34:05 GMT

What's the answer to the ultimate question? Apparently MSNBC.COM knows.

Normally I would never be promoting something that is so blatantly self-congratulatory, but most of the articles I found on Google link back to this main article.
Asteroid Douglasadams, brought to you by MSNBC.COM.

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 04:31:12 GMT

Nutritional news I heard this week
Organic milk is higher in vitamins, and
Organic ketchup has more lycopene (a cancer-fighter) than non-organic.
I'm beginning to be a believer in organics.

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 02:21:50 GMT

Teaching critical thinking
In the New Scientist, Dec 4th issue is an article talking about how a "next great theory" slowly - so slowly - becomes a scientific certainty. Scientists in general are pretty conservative. Once they settle on a theory, it will take either completely irrefutable evidence, or death of the old guard, before a new theory will unseat it. And usually both. And if scientists are so conservative about this kind of stuff, you can imagine how conservative the general public is!
The article proposes, as a way of getting people (over time) at least on the same page as scientists, that we teach critical thinking throughout children's education. "At age 11, they might learn about the Copernican revolution; at 12, the story of Charles Darwin; at 13, they might study how geologists proposed the theory of tectonic plates; at 14 the rise of the big bang model." You can see how incorporating all this into the curriculum every year would give kids the basis for critical thinking of anything they're being told by either side. It would give religious parents what they want - the teaching of alternative theories - while still giving kids the means to truly evaluate for themselves the "evolution is just a theory" sticker on the outside of their books.

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 23:58:27 GMT

What if what you knew about gravity was only almost - but not quite - correct?

The November 27th New Scientist has an article about some pendulums going a little wacky during a solar eclipse. Which was interesting, but not as interesting as a small sidebar to the article. It talks about a new theory of gravity that could stand relativity on its head. The theory is called Modified Newtonian Dynamics, and it is described with equations and such here. It proposes that the standard F = ma equation is only true at "higher" accelerations (higher values for a), and that at smaller values, it could be much smaller. The intriguing part of this theory is that it may eliminate the theory of dark matter. According to the current theories in favor, scientists claim that the universe contains as much as 90% of its matter as "dark matter". They conjure this up to explain the observed motions of stars and galaxies using only the current theory of gravity (the inverse square law). As far as I know, no scientists have ever yet found any dark matter. This new theory, if accepted, could not only resolve the galaxy motion question much simpler, but could also help provide a merger of general relativity with quantum mechanics. Plus, it may also help to explain why the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts are veering ever so slightly off their expected courses. There might be a lot less gravity around pretty soon!