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The SM Rules: Four Bets Won, $1200 Claimed

The SM Rules: Four Bets Won, $1200 Claimed

Jul 11 2012 | comment(s)

The path of the LHC experiments to the successful observation of a Higgs boson has not been the smoothest I could think of, with delays in construction, incidents, and the like; but we are finally there. And now, with over 10/fb of data fully analyzed and presented at ICHEP, we can take stock and draw the "summer 2012" picture on existing and non-existing subnuclear entities, the non-existing ones notably including SUSY particles and other new physics candidates which are periodically evoked by theorists to mend the shortcomings of the standard model.
Dengue Fever And The Next Phase Of Transgenic Mosquitoes To Fight It

Dengue Fever And The Next Phase Of Transgenic Mosquitoes To Fight It

Jul 11 2012 | comment(s)

Telstar, Tornados, And Telecasters

Telstar, Tornados, And Telecasters

Jul 11 2012 | comment(s)

Telstar 1 enabled the first transatlantic TV broadcasts, was the proof that communications satellites were viable, and began start of an industry.  It also provided the first US #1 Billboard song hit, from a song about Telstar 1 by a group called the Tornados.  The song was simply called 'Telstar' and is also notable as an early piece of electronica.
Phase II Collaborative Study For TroVax In Colorectal Cancer

Phase II Collaborative Study For TroVax In Colorectal Cancer

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

Oxford BioMedica plc, a gene-based biopharmaceutical company, and Cardiff University announced a Phase II trial to assess the safety and immunological activity of TroVax(R), a therapeutic vaccine for patients with inoperable metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). The study will be funded by Cardiff University, with some funding awarded by Cancer Research Wales, and Oxford BioMedica will provide TroVax(R). The trial is supported by the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC), Cardiff.  

Frankenstein Meets The Mummy In Scotland Of 1,000 B.C.

Frankenstein Meets The Mummy In Scotland Of 1,000 B.C.

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

The best stuff is found in Scotland.

And by 'best' I mean weirdest, like haggis, caber-tossing and 3,000-year-old mummies that turn out to be Frankenstein monsters.

Well, at least we know the ancient Celts weren't anti-science.  I mean, they created a Frankenstein monster and they figured out that high-acid, low-oxygen peat bogs are the perfect way to insure that future generations could enjoy their abominations of nature. That's pro-science.
13 Billion Year Old Ghost Galaxies Are Fossils Of The Early Universe

13 Billion Year Old Ghost Galaxies Are Fossils Of The Early Universe

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

Why do some extremely faint galaxies in our backyard contain so few stars? An international team of astronomers has helped solve the mystery of why these galaxies are starved of stars - and why so few of them have been found.

Hercules, Leo IV and Ursa Major dwarf galaxies all started forming stars more than 13 billion years ago - and then abruptly stopped shortly after the Big Bang.The extreme age of their stars is similar to Messier 92, the oldest known globular cluster in the Milky Way.
Singularity Update: 16,000 Processors To Identify A Cat

Singularity Update: 16,000 Processors To Identify A Cat

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

Are we on the road to uploading our brains to computers and living forever? 

Singularity proponents require a two-pronged approach to believing so; wildly overstating the technology curve of what future computers and programmers will accomplish and wildly understating the complexity of the human brain.  If you believe strongly enough, the future looks bright for an eternal...future.
Magnetosensory Perception? Why Powerlines Confuse Animal Migration

Magnetosensory Perception? Why Powerlines Confuse Animal Migration

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

Over the last half century, it has been established that fish and migratory birds use the planet's magnetic field to help find their way, an interesting zoological mystery. Researchers have now identified cells with internal compass needles for the perception of the field, and that can explain why high-tension cables perturb their magnetic orientation. 

Although many animal species can sense the geomagnetic field and exploit it for spatial orientation, efforts to pinpoint the cells that detect the field and convert the information into nerve impulses had not been successful.
Apology to my ATLAS Colleagues

Apology to my ATLAS Colleagues

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

I realize I owe an apology to my ATLAS colleagues.

In a post-Higgs-announcement article where I was listing some random "post-mortem" considerations, I wrote a paragraph which could be read as an accusation of malpractice in one of the recent ATLAS analyses. I was misled by the fact that I had no access to the details of the
actual results being shown at ICHEP on the matter -my information was partial and I was not sure whether it was public or not; it was second-hand and I had no way to check its real source.
Ayurvedic Remedy Gets Studied: Frankincense For Asthma?

Ayurvedic Remedy Gets Studied: Frankincense For Asthma?

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

Science 2.0 fave Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson recently sent a funny thing across his Twitter feed:
Q: What do you call Alternative Medicine that survives double-blind laboratory tests?
A: Regular Medicine.
And that's the crux of the issue, isn't it?  There's no Big Pharm conspiracy against homeopathy, for example. What multi-national conglomerate wouldn't love to slosh some magic water in a bottle and sell it for 10 bucks or more?  It just doesn't work.
Last Weekly Blog

Last Weekly Blog

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

The Higgs has been discovered, so this is the last of my Monday/Tuesday weekly blogs.  Blogging at Science 2.0 achieved my primary goal: debunking my GEM unified field proposal.  Part of that work suggested there was "no stinkin' Higgs".  The announcement from the LHC on July 4 of the Higgs discovery showed that technical speculation was in error. Don't believe the 1 in a million of being wrong PR however.  The spin of the particle detected remains to be shown in the data.
Looking at the Real Numbers the Z2 Way

Looking at the Real Numbers the Z2 Way

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

What I enjoy most is upsetting my own apple cart, presumptions about how things are as provided by my earliest teachers.  The image I learned about real numbers has negative numbers on the left, positive numbers on the right, and a zero sitting in the middle, with the integers marked out as even as can be:
Thapsia Garganica: Mediterranean Weed Compound Kills Tumors

Thapsia Garganica: Mediterranean Weed Compound Kills Tumors

Jul 09 2012 | comment(s)

A novel anticancer drug is designed to travel, undetected by normal cells, through the bloodstream until it becomes activated by specific cancer proteins.  It's basically a sleeper cell for tumors.

The drug, called G202, is chemically derived from a common Mediterranean weed called Thapsia garganica, and has been shown to destroy cancers and their direct blood supplies, acting like a 'molecular grenade' but sparing healthy blood vessels and tissues.
Dragonflies: Giants of the Past

Dragonflies: Giants of the Past

Jul 09 2012 | comment(s)

Dragonflies, from the order Odonata, have been around for over 250 million years. The most conspicuous difference in their evolution over time is the steady shrinking of their wingspan from well over two and a half feet down to a few inches. Voracious predators, today they dine on bees, wasps, butterflies and avoid the attentions of birds and wee lizards --  but back in the day, they had a much larger selection of meals within their grasp. Small lizards and birds who today choose dragonflies as a tasty snack used to be their preferred prey.
What are nutrients to a plant ? What is the role of organic manure?

What are nutrients to a plant ? What is the role of organic manure?

Jul 09 2012 | comment(s)

Plants have a capacity to uptake minerals from the soil and use them for synthesis of their own cellular components. Plants are autotrophs and they can make their own food and human beings are heterotrophs; we have to get food from plants.

All life on earth depends on the energy captured by plants. How do plants discriminate among ions to be taken up by them? How do they "exclude ions" (or in simple terms if you allow me to put a corollary) "vomit out" , i.e., sodium exclusion from membrane? 
Physics Students Take Time To Debunk New Batman Movie Science

Physics Students Take Time To Debunk New Batman Movie Science

Jul 09 2012 | comment(s)

If you watched the new "Star Trek" reboot, you had to chuckle when two heroes were plummeting toward terra firma at terminal velocity and were beamed aboard the Enterprise in the nick of time, suffering barely a bump.  And that business about hiding behind Titan...okay, maybe that could work.

But that was science fiction, it gets a free pass.  Superhero movies, though, had better get it right.

In "Batman Begins", Batman's cape solidifies when a current is passed through it, and it enables him to glide from tall buildings, but that would simply make a big splat, say physicists from the University of Leicester whose paper's press release made it to my inbox just in the nick of time.(1)
The Sounds Of The Northern Lights - Pinpointed

The Sounds Of The Northern Lights - Pinpointed

Jul 09 2012 | comment(s)

When you think of the northern lights (aurora borealis) you don't think of sounds. The famous blues, greens and reds rippling in the sky have been described by visitors and also handed down in stories as long as people have been visiting. Astronomers of King Nebuchadnezzar II  documented it in 568 B.C.

But later travelers described sounds to go with the light show. 

The lights happen when gas from the sun reaches earth's magnetic field; the charged particles flow along the planet's magnetic lines, but that is too far away for people to hear anything.
Is The Higgs A European Particle?

Is The Higgs A European Particle?

Jul 09 2012 | comment(s)

How soon after the claim that the Higgs discovery is 'international' did self-loathing Americans and Europeans ridicule the American institutions that issued press releases noting their part in the work?

About a day.  The smug intimation was because America did not want to fund the whole LHC completely - understandable given the fiasco of the Superconducting Supercollider - that we somehow 'lost out' on the discovery and made no contributions worth mentioning.
Want To Stay Thin? There's A Vaccine For That

Want To Stay Thin? There's A Vaccine For That

Jul 08 2012 | comment(s)

A new study has assessed the effectiveness of two somatostatin vaccinations, JH17 and JH18, in reducing weight gain and increasing weight loss in mice.

Somatostatin is a peptide hormone which inhibits the action of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), both of which increase metabolism and result in weight loss. Vaccination with modified somatostatin caused the body to generate antibodies to somatostatin, effectively removing this inhibition without directly interfering with the growth hormones and subsequently increasing energy expenditure and weight loss.
The Gender Issue: Girls Do As Well In Math But Suffer More Anxiety

The Gender Issue: Girls Do As Well In Math But Suffer More Anxiety

Jul 08 2012 | comment(s)

In America, the last few years saw young females and males achieve math parity for the first time ever.  But girls are still anxious about math, and that has nothing to do with teachers or outreach or the oppression of a liberal democracy.

Mathematics anxiety is a state of discomfort associated with performing mathematics tasks and is believed to affect both children and adults, having a negative impact on their mathematics performance.   That makes sense.  Math is difficult and difficult subjects make people nervous.