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What Do You Prefer To Call Squid?

What Do You Prefer To Call Squid?

Oct 31 2011 | comment(s)

Okay, this is just bizarre. There's this "anti-aging consumer website," right? And they've just instituted an annual supplement award, called the "You Can't Be Serious" Award. 
The award, presented by antiagingsupplementnews.org, goes to the natural health supplement that combines the most improbable or intriguing ingredients in a product with a promising future.
The first award went to this supplement called Marine D3, which contains extracts of brown seaweed and squid. Yep!
Homo Stupidus

Homo Stupidus

Oct 31 2011 | comment(s)

You are in a game with one hundred other players. They don't know you, you don't know them, and you can not communicate with any of them. The game is called 'even/odd(s)' and is explained to you as follows:

"You have the choice between two selections: 'even' or 'odd'. The hundred other contestants face the same choice. You all make your choice simultaneously. If the total group of players select an even number of 'evens' and an odd number of 'odds', those who selected 'odd' will receive $3, and those who selected 'even' will receive $4. However, if the result amounts to an odd number of 'evens' and an even number of 'odds', no-one will receive a penny. Now go ahead and make a choice!"

What is your choice?
Thanks, Congress - We Need To Make Fake Maple Syrup A Felony

Thanks, Congress - We Need To Make Fake Maple Syrup A Felony

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

Vermont Democrats want their constituents to know they are getting something done to protect Vernont jobs - they want to make it a felony to sell Maple syrup that is not authentic.

If you have lived in a place with Maple trees, you know the process; you stick a spigot in a tree when the winter thaw arrives and hang a bucket on it and delicious sugar water arrives.  Then you empty the bucket into a vat and create a ridiculous amount of carbon emissions boiling it down to a thick syrup.
The 1% Love Solar Subsidies Paid By The Other 99%

The 1% Love Solar Subsidies Paid By The Other 99%

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

The 99%, those people protesting current government and corporate greed, think banks are the problem, yet they don't seem to realize banks aren't the biggest problem - the government that enables them and other kooky schemes is.  Likewise, Hollywood capitalists are having a field day joining in on calls to make changes - unless it is to their incomes.

While Kanye West, one of those rich people (worth $400 million), showing up at Occupy Wall Street wearing a $350 shirt and gold chains to show support might seem stupid or even ironic, in reality he has a lot to thank poor people for, as do a lot of other millionaires in California.
Quantum Vacuum: How To Balance Nothingness

Quantum Vacuum: How To Balance Nothingness

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

What is nothingness? It's a philosophical question, to be sure, but in physics the ground state of the universe can't be described by the absence of all matter, contend some theoretical physicists. There must be a 'quantum vacuum'.

The first theoretical consideration of the spontaneous decay of the quantum vacuum, believed to be a complex state of constantly fluctuating quantum fields with physical properties, dates back to the year 1931, but understanding is still in its infancy.

But it could soon happen that experimentalists are able to witness the spontaneous decay of the vacuum into pairs of particles of matter and antimatter in super strong electric fields. 

Stochastics: Spectral Analysis And A New Distance Dimension

Stochastics: Spectral Analysis And A New Distance Dimension

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

Statistical tests and economic forecasting are something of a joke; Paul Krugman is fun because he rants about Republicans in the New York Times but no one would ever actually let him manage money. 

Sixty Nanoseconds

Sixty Nanoseconds

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

In the OPERA experiment, the distance between CERN and Gran Sasso was approximately 450 miles. The difference between the neutrino arrival and the calculated speed of light was approximately 60 nanoseconds.

If the results are confirmed by FERMI, it would mean the following: 

From a satellite orbiting Earth at approximately 450 miles altitude, if you were able to fire both a neutrino and a photon at EXACTLY the same time, when the photon reached the ocean surface, the neutrino would be approximately 60 feet deep.  

That would be a cool experiment. Even better, if the film '60 Nanoseconds' were broadcast on '60 Minutes', think of all the available commercial time.
Addiction's Brain Abnormalities Can Be Reversed

Addiction's Brain Abnormalities Can Be Reversed

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

Researchers from the University of Minho in Portugal have discovered that rats exposed before birth to glucocorticoids (GC) not only show several brain abnormalities similar to those found in addicts, but become themselves susceptible to addiction (the glucorticoids, which are stress hormones, were used to mimic pre-natal stress).  But even more remarkable, Ana João Rodrigues, Nuno Sousa and colleagues were able to reverse all the abnormalities  (including the addictive behavior) by giving the animals dopamine (a neurotransmitter/ brain chemical). 
Stress Kills

Stress Kills

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

We all know chronic stress isn’t good for you. This seems to be true in all organisms. But can stress kill you? A new study says yes, if you’re a dragonfly larva at least.

Researchers from the University of Toronto investigated the effects of stress on the development and survival of dragonfly larvae, reared in the presence of a predator. These juvenile dragonflies were raised in aquaria that also contained a predator. Important is that this predator had no way to actually attack the larvae.

As Is Well Known About Elliptic Orbits

As Is Well Known About Elliptic Orbits

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

When we teach, and even communicate with people whom we assume to belong to some sort of common circle with ourselves, we simply assume that our audience knows or at least have heard about certain things.

For example, with people belonging in some sense to physics I would expect that my physics students would at least know about Bessel functions. I was wrong. One has heard the name, the others had not any idea. And they did not know practically how to plot functions on a computer. Two did know sort of, but only using "Origin". And so on. I do not want to complain. They are bright young people and they know lots of things, but not all what I - and most of my colleagues - would expect the students to know. 
Superluminal Tachyons - Post Archive

Superluminal Tachyons - Post Archive

Oct 30 2011 | comment(s)

The following entries are an exchange between myself and Helen Barratt regarding superluminal neutrinos and related topics.  I have removed them to this archive for anyone that wants to peruse the posts, and to eliminate the distraction from the original article.  They have not been modified in any way, beyond the artifacts of copying them.

=======================================================================
Pluto Takes Back 9th Biggest Solar Object Title

Pluto Takes Back 9th Biggest Solar Object Title

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

In a Nature paper published Oct. 26 by Sicardy et al from the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, Pluto was promoted to the ninth largest body orbiting the Sun. Its evil dwarf doppelganger Eris, though very similar in size, was found to be slightly smaller and was therefore relegated back to the Kuiper Belt league.

In a press conference, Pluto was accompanied by Uranus and Neptune. "I am glad the controversy has been put to rest", he noted. "But I still would like to be classified as a planet. We want to take on the mighty triumverate of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn."
Getting Our Mad On: Saturday Morning Trolling; Feeling Community

Getting Our Mad On: Saturday Morning Trolling; Feeling Community

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

It's always a little surreal to see a new comment in the email on an old article. The older the article is, the stranger it is, especially when the comment itself is bizarre.
Once in 737,000

Once in 737,000

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

Once in 737,000 times. That's how frequently happens what I saw yesterday evening, playing poker with my kids. 

We were playing with eights and up since we were three, so 28 cards. And Filippo got served off the deck a straight flush. Even waiving the fact that it was a maximum flush (10-J-Q-K-A), there are only 16 such combinations in a 28-card deck, out of 12-some million possible hands.

Small-probability events do happen from time to time, and we usually give too much importance to them. I will most probably never see another straight flush at my table in my life, but maybe one day I'll die in a plane crash (an event which has similar odds).
Permian Extinction: Repopulation Was Diversification, Not Climate

Permian Extinction: Repopulation Was Diversification, Not Climate

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

252 million years ago there was a watershed moment in the history of life on Earth - namely that there was almost no life left on Earth. As much as 90 percent of ocean organisms were extinguished, ushering in a new order of marine species, some of which we still see today and land dwellers also sustained major losses.

A new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B undertook an exhaustive specimen-by-specimen analysis  of surviving land-based vertebrates. The survivors, a handful of genera labeled "disaster taxa," were free to roam more or less unimpeded, with few competitors in their respective ecological niches.
Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier Loss May Speed Up

Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier Loss May Speed Up

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

An underwater ridge may be the only thing holding back the retreat of Antarctica's fast-flowing Thwaites Glacier, which drains into west Antarctica's Amundsen Sea, and it could speed up within 20 years, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters.

Thwaites Glacier is being closely watched for its potential to raise global sea levels as the planet warms but neighboring glaciers in the Amundsen region are also thinning rapidly, including Pine Island Glacier and the much larger Getz Ice Shelf. The study highlights the importance of seafloor topography in predicting how these glaciers will behave in the near future.

The Prefrontal Cortex Evolution and the Educational Process In Human Childhood

The Prefrontal Cortex Evolution and the Educational Process In Human Childhood

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

The phylogeny of the nervous system has been very well understood by evolutionary neuroscience. Since the first self-defense reactions (irritability) of the unicelular organisms, going through the procceses of centralization, cephalization, and tele-encephalization, the goal of the system is to survive by catching the changes of energy of the enviroment (stimulus) and give and adequate suvirval response to it.

The evolutive instruction of the nervous system is to survive and the diversity of responses increases with the incorporation of new structures.
Career Paths as Wacky Loops

Career Paths as Wacky Loops

Oct 29 2011 | comment(s)

Here's a little history, since some of my students are starting to look me up on the web.  It's also a story about how life is so weird that, if you wrote about it in a movie, the audience would say 'no way'.  Ready for some acronym soup?

After getting a degree in the US, I was hired to work on a joint US/NASA mission (called ASCA or Asuka, depending on which language you use).  I got to work in Japan at their space agency, called ISAS, for that and, yes, it was as awesome as you might imagine.  Later I returned to the US to work on other missions, then got my PhD, then went freelance, and now I'm a professor at Capitol College.
Republicans Really Are Crazy When It Comes to Science.

Republicans Really Are Crazy When It Comes to Science.

Oct 28 2011 | comment(s)

I know that there are plenty of liberals and progressives that are scientific whacko's and embrace many anti-scientific sentiments.  I'm certainly not about to defend them, but ....

Something this stupid simply can't be ignored.  Enjoy.
Really, Don't Trust Seafood Labels

Really, Don't Trust Seafood Labels

Oct 28 2011 | comment(s)

I've been hearing about issues with seafood labeling (and mislabeling) for years. As it turns out, if you don't have a PCR machine in your kitchen, there's no way to know if the red snapper you picked up at the store is actually tilapia. It's disheartening--but very important--to learn that the issue isn't going away.