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Chasing UFOs: You Know You Want To

Chasing UFOs: You Know You Want To

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

Who hasn't thought about Chasing UFOs?  

When I saw "Independence Day" in 1996 I first thought, "A Mac can bring down an entire alien civilization? Their users really are creative!" but then I wondered if some day, someone might actually get paid to find aliens.

Well, that day is here.  But I have to warn you, the language is bad in this UFO stuff.
Genetic Discovery Could Make More Tomatoes Taste Like Heirlooms

Genetic Discovery Could Make More Tomatoes Taste Like Heirlooms

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

Genetic modification of food has happened for thousands of year.  Tomatoes would still be the size of your thumb without genetic modification.

A 2012 study may mean tomatoes of the future could get that much better. They're big business, on the order of 15 million tons of the fruit for processing and fresh-market sales annually, so for decades food scientists in the tomato industry have selected varieties that are uniformly light green before they ripen, in order to produce tomatoes that can be harvested at the same time.  But this characteristic is accompanied by an unintended reduction in sugars that compromises the flavor of the fresh fruit and its desirability for processing.
Ideas On Higgs Couplings

Ideas On Higgs Couplings

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

A very interesting paper appeared one week ago in the Arxiv. It is titled "Higgs Self-Coupling Measurements at the LHC", and it is authored by M.Dolan, C.Englert, and M.Spannovsky. The idea is that once and if a Higgs boson is found at the LHC, the next natural step of the research would be its characterization as a pure standard model object or a more complex, or just different, beast.

Of course, once a signal were established, the LHC experiments would certainly want to measure all its properties as precisely as possible: mass, angular distributions, cross section in all the production mechanisms, and decay modes.
HD 189733b: Dramatic Change Spotted On A Faraway Exoplanet

HD 189733b: Dramatic Change Spotted On A Faraway Exoplanet

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

The atmosphere of exoplanet HD 189733b, about 60 light-years from Earth, changed dramtically after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation. Result: A powerful burst of evaporation. 
Self-Plagiariasm Is The New Prius

Self-Plagiariasm Is The New Prius

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

Self-plagiariasm is big news these days.  A short while ago, former ACS president Ron Breslow had an article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society pulled - not because he claimed dinosaurs might be ruling other planets, but because he re-used work from other articles he wrote without crediting himself.
Giant Pythons Take Over The World

Giant Pythons Take Over The World

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

Many people have an uncomfortable feeling about snakes and the bigger they are the more uncomfortable the people become. So when people are watching a TV show, on a channel that is supposedly a nature/fact channel, and they begin to describe the take over of North America by giant pythons loosed in Florida, and headed for all states north, many people become upset.Newspapers print articles about giant snakes eating babies and attacking people as they walk in the fields.
The Frankenfood Paradox

The Frankenfood Paradox

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

On Sunday there was considerable confusion about the alleged "GMO" grass that killed cattle.  Turns out it was not GMO grass at all, but a hybrid.  I received many inquiries about the difference between a GMO and a hybrid, as the latter sounded truly freaky and much more invasive than any frankenfood.
5 Arguments For Citizen Science

5 Arguments For Citizen Science

Jun 28 2012 | comment(s)

Almost all scientists claim citizen science is a good thing.  Hey, doctors all claim that patients who can Google and ask a lot of questions about diseases and treatements are a good thing also.  But not all really feel that way.

Climate scientists certainly wish there was less citizen science. If they wanted to shut up climate deniers (and skeptics) about data, they would do what physicists do - send all 10 billion pieces of raw data. Good luck making sense of that, citizen scientists.  Biologists could also likely do with fewer people who know just enough science to be wrong.
Trees? Australopithecus Sediba Had A Caveman Diet You Want No Part Of

Trees? Australopithecus Sediba Had A Caveman Diet You Want No Part Of

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

 Australopithecus sediba, a short, gangly hominid that lived in South Africa 2 million years ago, had a diet unlike virtually all other known human ancestors - trees and bushes.

A new study indicates that A. sediba ate harder foods than other early hominids like  Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man" because of its massive jaws and teeth, which  focused more on grasses and sedges.
Conservatives Have Greater Morals Than Liberals, Says Liberal Atheist Psychologist

Conservatives Have Greater Morals Than Liberals, Says Liberal Atheist Psychologist

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

Progressives and liberals delight in any sort of pseudoscience that implicates the right wing, especially if it can claim their political opposition has a brain defect or some sort of 'control' fetish.

They don't like it at all when anything psychological makes them look less moral.  And they really don't like Jonathan Haidt - because he is a liberal, atheist social psychologist and therefore should only go after conservatives.  He confesses he once thought of conservatism as a “Frankenstein monster,”, an ugly mishmash of Christian fundamentalism, racism and authoritarianism.
Janken Robot Wins At Rock, Paper, Scissors Every Single Time

Janken Robot Wins At Rock, Paper, Scissors Every Single Time

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

Is it possible to lose at Rochambeau, the millenia-old game of Rock, Paper, Sissors, every single time?

It shouldn't be but a new Janken robot (Janken is the Japanese name for Rock, Paper, Scissors - why is the West stuck with a French name for an ancient Egyptian game?  It's a mystery of linguistics) can win against humans without fail.  

Is it psychic?  Are humans that predictable?  No, it basically cheats - if by cheating I mean being much faster than I can ever be.
Turing Test 2012: A Bot With Personality Comes Really Close

Turing Test 2012: A Bot With Personality Comes Really Close

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

On June 23rd, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, a contest at Bletchley Park, where Turing was key in cracking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II, saw Eugene Goostman win the biggest Turing test ever staged.

Except Eugene is not a person, it is a chatbot with the 'personality' of a 13-year-old boy in the Ukraine.

The Turing test is what Turing considered a threshold for believability, an evaluation of machine intelligence; a machine that fooled humans into thinking it was human 30 per cent of the time will have beaten the test. 

Basic Education For Particle Hunters: Significance And Rate Error

Basic Education For Particle Hunters: Significance And Rate Error

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

I am endlessly amazed by observing, time and again, that even experienced colleagues fall in the simplest statistical traps. Mind you, I do not claim to be any better - sorry, let me rephrase: to have been any better in the early days of my career as an experimentalist. But then, I started to appreciate that to really understand physics results I needed to at least get familiar with a small set of notions in basic Statistics.
Seeing Is Believing? You Still Won't Believe This Gravitational Arc

Seeing Is Believing? You Still Won't Believe This Gravitational Arc

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

Astronomers have found a puzzling arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies residing 10 billion light-years away. The galactic grouping was observed when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age of 13.7 billion years and the giant arc is the stretched shape of a more distant galaxy whose light is distorted by the monster cluster's powerful gravity, the effect called gravitational lensing.

The puzzle is, the arc shouldn't exist.
GMOs May Save Us From Climate Change

GMOs May Save Us From Climate Change

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

While the world actually grows enough food to feed all its inhabitants, it isn't equally distributed. Nearly 500 million people in the developing world remain undernourished and, if projections hold true, that number could to 20% within a decade due to the impacts of climate change on global food production, according to a detailed analysis by The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn&Child Health (PMNCH), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), 1,000 Days, World Vision International and partners.
Shimi: Like Microsoft Bob, Except For Music

Shimi: Like Microsoft Bob, Except For Music

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

Is the world ready for a robot DJ?

Sometimes you have to be bold.  People laughed at Microsoft when they introduced Microsoft Bob too; people didn't know they needed a graphical image of their office showing a fax machine to send a fax - until it was available.  
Gauge Theory, Maxwell's equations, and the Maxwellian

Gauge Theory, Maxwell's equations, and the Maxwellian

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

There is an important difference related to the mathematical formulation of Self-Field Theory (SFT) and that is the complete absence of gauge. We know from the various quantum theories that gauge plays a crucial role. To understand this difference we must first look at the basics of gauge theory. And to look at the basics of gauge theory we must first define some terms we have already used in discussing SFT. First let’s define Maxwell’s equations.

VELCADE Receives Positive EU Regulatory Recommendation For Subcutaneous Administration

VELCADE Receives Positive EU Regulatory Recommendation For Subcutaneous Administration

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

Janssen-Cilag International NV (Janssen) announced today that the Committee for Medical Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has granted a positive opinion recommending approval of subcutaneous (under the skin) administration of VELCADE(R) (bortezomib). VELCADE(R) is indicated for the treatment of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. Subcutaneous bortezomib has fewer side effects and offers greater convenience for patients, with similar efficacy compared to intravenous bortezomib. VELCADE(R) plays a central role in effectively managing multiple myeloma across different patient types and lines of therapy.[1,2] 

Does NASA Have A Sinister Plan For Thailand?

Does NASA Have A Sinister Plan For Thailand?

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

Poor NASA. Even since a Democrat took over as president the world is convinced Americans are imperialists bent on flexing their muscles in areas like...disaster relief.

Disaster relief and humanitarian assistance are just two of the 'sinister' things critics in Thailand contend NASA may secretly be involved in under the guise of monitoring the atmosphere as part of the "Southeast Asia Composition, Cloud, Climate Coupling Regional Study". The project will use satellites, aircraft and ground missions to study how air circulation during the monsoon affected the climate and air quality in South and Southeast Asia.
All Calories Are Not Equal - Proteins Are Better For Keeping Weight Off

All Calories Are Not Equal - Proteins Are Better For Keeping Weight Off

Jun 27 2012 | comment(s)

A small-scale study found diets that reduce the surge in blood sugar after a meal - low-glycemic index or very-low carbohydrate - are better than a low-fat diet for those trying to achieve lasting weight loss. The study also found that the low-glycemic index diet had similar metabolic benefits to the very low-carb diet without negative effects of stress and inflammation as seen by participants consuming the very low-carb diet.