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Subsidized Solar Energy - Let's Not Buy Any More Magic Rocks

Subsidized Solar Energy - Let's Not Buy Any More Magic Rocks

Sep 20 2011 | comment(s)

People may complain about tax breaks for successful energy companies but the one thing worse is spending real money on lousy ones.   Yet it has happened because advocacy is taking precedence over science.

The recent Solyndra LLC collapse is not the first time this has happened, nor can it be blamed solely on the Obama administration simply due to his zeal for alternative energy - the Department of Energy began the loan guarantee program in 2006 when there was a Republican Congress and a Republican senate and in 2005 the wasteful ethanol subsidies and mandates were put into law.
Gamers Help Scientists Solve Enzyme Structure

Gamers Help Scientists Solve Enzyme Structure

Sep 20 2011 | comment(s)

Retroviral proteases are a class of enzymes that play an important role in the maturation and proliferation of the AIDS virus. As such, this class of enzymes is a subject of intense research. The efforts, however, were hindered by a fundamental problem: nobody knew exactly what these enzymes looked like.

The Plot Of The Week - Single Top Loud And Clear

The Plot Of The Week - Single Top Loud And Clear

Sep 20 2011 | comment(s)

A well-known HEP rule says that yesterday's searched new processes will be tomorrow's annoying irreducible backgrounds; but since I am an optimist, I always see the glass half-full and feel compelled to add that today they are pleasing high-statistics signals. Take single top quark production: the Tevatron experimentalists (you can include me in the lot) banged their head for a decade trying to measure it; they finally succeeded, but the signal always remained a small excess of events in the tail of a highly-refined multi-variable discriminator.
The Rumsfeld Principle, Mikado Sticks, And How Not To Get The Girl

The Rumsfeld Principle, Mikado Sticks, And How Not To Get The Girl

Sep 20 2011 | comment(s)

Last time I blogged, I discussed entropic gravity and ended with the prediction that we will witness some more opposing and supportive views on entropic gravity before the dust will settle on the subject. The moment I wrote these words, a critical article on Verlinde's entropic gravity idea appeared, soon followed by a an article that brushes aside all earlier entropic gravity criticism based on neutron experiments. 
Deriving the Maxwell Source Equations Using Quaternions (2/5)

Deriving the Maxwell Source Equations Using Quaternions (2/5)

Sep 20 2011 | comment(s)

The Maxwell source equations will be derived using quaternions - an approach James Clerk Maxwell himself tried and yet failed to do. As far as I am aware, this technique is not in the literature, up to an isomorphism (meaning actually it is there but under a different name, math in disguise). By using quaternions, the approach can be extended to generate field equations for particles with the weak and strong force symmetries, SU(2) and SU(3). The extension is a technical speculation, which I define as precise math whose applicability to Nature I have not a clue :-)

Warning: doing a classic field theory calculation in detail requires far more math than is customary on this site. The blog is my longest so far...
Yawning Cools The Brain? The Thermoregulatory Hypothesis

Yawning Cools The Brain? The Thermoregulatory Hypothesis

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Think someone is bored if they yawn? Perhaps their brain is just overheating.

A study led by Andrew Gallup, a postdoc in Princeton University's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, says yawning frequency varies with the seasons and that people are less likely to yawn when the heat outdoors exceeds body temperature.  Conclusion: yawning could serve as a method for regulating brain temperature.

$65 Billion Net To Farmers: Thanks, Biotech

$65 Billion Net To Farmers: Thanks, Biotech

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

$65 billion is is the increase in net farm income, the farm level benefit after paying for the seed and its biotech traits, that the biotech industry has provided across the globe during the period 1996 to 2009, according to an analysis published in the International Journal of Biotechnology.

The study's authors estimate that almost half of that money was derived by farmers in the developing world.

Science 2.0: Kids Crowdsource The Search For Apollo 10's Lost Lunar Module

Science 2.0: Kids Crowdsource The Search For Apollo 10's Lost Lunar Module

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Apollo 11 and giant leaps for mankind get all the love now but the missions leading up to it brought their own excitement - and a mystery.  

In May 1969, two months before man walked on the Moon, Commander Thomas Stafford, Command Module Pilot John Young and Lunar Module Pilot Eugene Cernan made a 'dummy' run and successfully returned from the Moon and landed their Apollo 10 command module, dubbed 'Charlie Brown', in the ocean, after setting a still-existing human speed record of 25,000 MPH. They basically did everything except land on the Moon.
French Champagne Makers Are Loving Climate Change

French Champagne Makers Are Loving Climate Change

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Living in northern California, I have enjoyed one of the nicest summers I have ever had anywhere.  It's been spectacular.  Of course, climate instability can be a very bad thing - next year it could be heat winds like vorpal blades, dogs and cats living together...real mass hysteria.  But this year was pretty good, since I did not live in the southern or eastern US.

The Champagne region of France is also loving life.  They say climatic shift has made their lives easier and their Champagne better. Recently, the Champagne harvest ran from mid-September to early October, but it has progressively crept earlier, late August through mid-September.
Experts Discuss Al Gore's Climate Reality Project

Experts Discuss Al Gore's Climate Reality Project

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Nature invited some prominent names to comment on Al Gore's recently concluded Climate Reality Project.

Barry W. Brook, director of climate science, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Australia, said, "Overall, I don't think this initiative will do much good. For one thing, Al Gore is now as much a hindrance as a help on climate change advocacy, as he's been characterized (probably unfairly) as a highly partisan figure, and so immediately gets about half of all folks offside..."
Skepticism Banned? Backlash Against Lower Evidence Standards For Alternative Medicine In Canada

Skepticism Banned? Backlash Against Lower Evidence Standards For Alternative Medicine In Canada

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Should the least-proven medical treatments have fewer guidelines than evidence-based medicine?
The Rise Of Mutant Gonorrhea

The Rise Of Mutant Gonorrhea

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that causes urethritis and pelvic inflammatory disease.  Before AIDS, this was what you got for having promiscuous, unprotected sex with many anonymous partners in a consequence-free environment (a period known as "The 1970s" yet often assumed to be the '60s) and when you contracted it you took some antibiotics and then it was back to Studio 54.

Do High-Calories Foods Actually Look Different To Obese People?

Do High-Calories Foods Actually Look Different To Obese People?

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

The number of individuals who are obese and suffer with its associated health problems has continued to rise, even being called an epidemic.

Is it genetics?  The dream of cheap food finally being realized? Or are we slaves to marketing?

Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine and the University of Southern California say they have visualized differences in the way that the brains of obese and non-obese individuals respond to visual cues of high-calorie foods.  They see those foods differently.

Health Care Reform: In Massachusetts, The Working Poor Still Are Not Covered

Health Care Reform: In Massachusetts, The Working Poor Still Are Not Covered

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Massachusetts implemented health care reform to increase employer-based insurance and to provide no-cost or low-cost insurance to those unable to afford it but it hasn't worked - the uninsured in Massachusetts remain predominantly the working poor, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School.

Adermatoglyphia - No Fingerprints 'Disease' Linked To SMARCAD1 Gene

Adermatoglyphia - No Fingerprints 'Disease' Linked To SMARCAD1 Gene

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Some people have no fingerprints.  That might be handy in a burglary but it can be an issue when passing through immigration or in security situations where a fingerprint is required, like getting a notary public to take your five bucks for some benign document.

Like DNA, fingerprints are unique to each person or set of identical twins. That makes them a valuable identification tool for everything from crime detection to international travel. But what happens when the tips of our fingers are missing those distinctive patterns of ridges?

On 'Self'-ish genes

On 'Self'-ish genes

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

In her 1979 article Gene-Juggling, Mary Midgley criticises Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene with the words:
'Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.'
This seeming failure to understand what a metaphor is brings to mind the complaint by the robot from Frederik Pohl's 'Midas World':
'Ralph made that faint beeping sound that was the robot equivalent of a sigh: Human(ist*)s were so literal minded!'
*I mean those who study the humanities here, rather than anything to do with religion
An Interview With Kerry Cohen, Author Of Seeing Ezra

An Interview With Kerry Cohen, Author Of Seeing Ezra

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Kerry Cohen, author of Seeing Ezra, agreed to an interview with Kathleen Leopold and me. Kathleen's questions appear first. (This post appears at the Autism Blogs Directory)


The name "Ezra" means aid or help. Is the title of your memoir a reflection of the idea that in seeing your son for who he is-helped you to see life how it really is. In other words, happiness and happy endings aren't guaranteed-one has to make them happen.
A Six-Sigma Signal Of Superluminal Neutrinos From Opera!

A Six-Sigma Signal Of Superluminal Neutrinos From Opera!

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

[Introduction: I published the text below last Monday, when the news of this controversial new measurement had spread in the corridors of physics departments, as well as in the threads of popular HEP blogs. I felt I was not doing anything wrong, since all I was reporting were facts, with a cautious opinion on my part. I was however forced to take it down only a few hours afterwards, due to a kind of pressure I could not ignore, my own job being at stake. I understand that the experiment who did this measurement was not too happy to see the news in print before they wanted to, but then again the fault is theirs. And in retrospect, what damage did I cause with the post below ?
CDF: Four Decades Of Stretching The SM

CDF: Four Decades Of Stretching The SM

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

The Collider Detector at Fermilab, CDF for insiders, is the longest lasting physics experiment ever (yes, I know about the pitch drop and no, I do not consider that a physics experiment). Designed in 1979, it was assembled in the early eighties, and operated since 1985 to 2011. Now, in two weeks it will stop data taking, and soon will be decommissioned.
A Joint Review Of Kerry Cohen's Seeing Ezra

A Joint Review Of Kerry Cohen's Seeing Ezra

Sep 19 2011 | comment(s)

Cowritten by Kim Wombles and Kathleen Leopold

Kathleen Leopold and I have been blogging buddies for over two years now, working on various projects together, struggling to figure out our places in the online autism community as we work in the real world to find our place there, as well, to find the best ways to help both our own children, and other children like ours.