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It's the pain, stupid

It's the pain, stupid

Feb 18 2011 | comment(s)

Being human sucks.

I mean, being a kid is quite alright. You play, you eat, your mama tucks you in at night. That is, unless you're unlucky enough to have abusive parents. Or a serious illness. Or you live in some country were you're likely to starve or die in some other gruesome way.

After -and during- childhood, there are many ways in which your life can get completely screwed, and most of the times our beloved Mother Nature doesn't even give a warning. Out of the blue, you're left with nothing. All you need is a car accident. I'm sure you can think of other examples.
Jericho - The World's First Skyscraper

Jericho - The World's First Skyscraper

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

If you've been to Bible study classes, you know the story of Jericho.   Actually, if you're an atheist you may know it even better, since on quizzes atheists seem to know The Bible better than many religious people.  In the story, Joshua, successor to Moses, led the Jews across the Jordan to what would be their land.   Jericho was clearly sitting on it so using trumpets for seven days and finally their voices they were able to take out the walls of the city and kill most everyone inside.

Wait until the Mythbusters try and tackle that one.
  
Testing QCD With Heavy Flavour - Part 1

Testing QCD With Heavy Flavour - Part 1

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Today I spoke at a conference on "QCD advances" which is being held in Les Houches, an amiable small town near Chamonix, on the french slopes of Mont Blanc. The content of my talk is accessible from the conference web site, but I guess that I should provide here a summary of what I discussed.
Evolution In Action: Hudson River Fish Mutate To Adapt To PCBs

Evolution In Action: Hudson River Fish Mutate To Adapt To PCBs

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that allows a fish in the Hudson River to live in waters heavily polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls - PCBs. In their report,  they show that a population of Hudson River fish apparently evolved rapidly in response to the toxic chemicals, which were first introduced in 1929, and were banned fifty years later. PCBs were once used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications, especially as electrical insulators. 
Built: The World's First Anti-Laser

Built: The World's First Anti-Laser

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

After 50 years, laser technology is still advancing.  Scientists at Yale University have announced  the world's first anti-laser, in which incoming beams of light interfere with one another in such a way as to perfectly cancel each other out, a breakthrough that sounds academic but could pave the way for new applications in optical computing and radiology.

Conventional lasers, which were first invented in 1960, use a so-called "gain medium," usually a semiconductor like gallium arsenide, to produce a focused beam of coherent light—light waves with the same frequency and amplitude that are in step with one another.
Liquid Hot Magma - A Beneficial Geothermal Accident

Liquid Hot Magma - A Beneficial Geothermal Accident

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Sometimes good things result from bad things.  When scientists drilling near an Icelandic volcano hit magma, they had to abandon their experiments on geothermal energy but it turns out they may have discovered an alternative source of geothermal power.

When tested, the magma well produced dry steam at 750 degrees Fahrenheit , enough to generate up to 25 megawatts of electricity, which could power 25,000 to 30,000 homes.  Fine, fine, but what does that mean?  Only 5 to 8 megawatts are produced by a typical geothermal well, and Iceland already gets about one-third of its electricity and almost all of its home heating from geothermal sources, but this is a terrific new source.
Osteocalcin - Hormone In Male Bones And Fertility Linked

Osteocalcin - Hormone In Male Bones And Fertility Linked

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

The skeletal hormone osteocalcin also, boosts testosterone production to support the survival of the germ cells that go on to become mature sperm, say researchers writing in Cell.

Bone was once thought of as a "mere assembly of inert calcified tubes" but in the last ten years, scientists have gained a much more dynamic picture of bone as a bona fide endocrine organ with links to energy metabolism and reproduction. 
Genome Uncertainy Principle? Biologists May Contaminate DNA

Genome Uncertainy Principle? Biologists May Contaminate DNA

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

In physics, it is sometimes the case that the act of observation changes the thing being observed.  While it isn't that extreme in biology, a study in PLoS One may mean a genome biologists think is accurate may not be so.

Up to 20 percent of the nonhuman genomes they examined were contaminated with human DNA, they say, a discovery they made while looking for a human virus.   They found so much human-looking DNA in nonhuman genomes that they did a specific search for the common human sequence AluY, which occurs one million times in the human genome.   It could be skin.
Scientists May Have Accidentally Found Baldness Cure

Scientists May Have Accidentally Found Baldness Cure

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

They were researching stress, but we might be able to add 'cured baldness' to the list of unexpected discoveries found using basic research.

As they wrote in PLoS One, a team led by researchers from UCLA and the Veterans Administration was investigating how stress affects gastrointestinal function but may have found a chemical compound that induces hair growth by blocking a stress-related hormone associated with hair loss — entirely by accident.

Except it's only in mice.  So we will have fewer bald mice, at least.
Less Consumption Is Better - If It's For Someone Else

Less Consumption Is Better - If It's For Someone Else

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Results of a survey in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy titled "How Much Is Enough? Examining the Public’s Beliefs About Consumption" showed no huge surprise, people think we should consume less, but how the authors interpret the results is.
I'll take

I'll take "Intelligent Machines" for 800, Alex

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

The following segments were written one per day, as I watched the three days of IBM’s Watson computer play Jeopardy!. I’ll post my notes here now, for the three or four people who haven’t already seen more analyses than they care to think about.

The first day

Interesting.

Watson did very well on its first day. In order to have time to explain things and introduce the concept of Watson, they set it up so that only two games are played over the three days. The first day was for the first round, and the second day (this evening) will have the Double Jeopardy! and Final Jeopardy! rounds.

Time flows

Time flows

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Time flows.

Newton seemed to think so. So did Aristotle and countless others before. Even the Buddhists, with their cyclic time, kept believing that time was something which went from one instant to the other, moving forward though in circles.

That, of course, changed after Einstein. However, I think a vast number of people still have problems coming to grips with the nature of time and how they fit in it. Which is no wonder: humans evolved to live within time, trapped in their 3D slice of reality, ripe with memories and longings. This paragraph hasn't been here forever. I just wrote it. Or did I?

In Defense Of Blogging

In Defense Of Blogging

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

Yesterday I wrote about journalist and science blogger Ed Yong's unfortunate run-in with the kind of anachronistic journalism dinosaur that will be extinct one day soon - a PIO who resents blogging.
Simulation Hypothesis And Other Silly Religious Stuff

Simulation Hypothesis And Other Silly Religious Stuff

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

After arguing against ‘higher consciousness’ or freedom evolving, let us go on to discuss consciousness inside computers. This is, maybe surprisingly so for some readers, closely connected with the non-existence of gods and in fact quantum theory.


Ironically (given what I wrote the last time), cyberspace and its breakneck speed evolution is still the big hope for some ill-defined freedom. Since cyberspace is all about information technology, should there not be higher consciousness after all? Maybe a ‘god2.0’ develops and grants us salvation in virtual reality, in a simulated matrix?


What is this massive, hidden object in space?

What is this massive, hidden object in space?

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space.   
Kraken: Fact Or Fiction? Take Your Pick!

Kraken: Fact Or Fiction? Take Your Pick!

Feb 17 2011 | comment(s)

This a double whammy, a two-for-the-price-of-one, a joint review (for some value of the word review) of two books with the same title: Kraken.



China Miéville's Kraken is a New Weird novel that tracks the adventures of London Natural History Museum curator Billy Harrow. The inexplicable theft of his prize Architeuthis specimen forces him into an other-London of magical knacks, squid cultists, gangsters, and impending Armageddon.


The Neuroscience Of Creativity And Insight—The Good, The Bad, & The Absolutely Ridiculous

The Neuroscience Of Creativity And Insight—The Good, The Bad, & The Absolutely Ridiculous

Feb 16 2011 | comment(s)

—A Critical Look at Recent Studies of Creativity and Insight—
"All this fires in my soul, and—provided I am not disturbed—my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and in the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance..." —Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Understanding Of Science Nearly Triple Since 1988

Understanding Of Science Nearly Triple Since 1988

Feb 16 2011 | comment(s)

In the somewhat chronic angst over science understanding (more funding, more funding) one thing that gets lost is that it's really only 'fact-based' science, memorization, where American kids are behind those in Asia.  That changes over time and, among adults, new results show science understanding has improved dramatically.

"Elementary, My Dear Watson"

Feb 16 2011 | comment(s)

OK, by now everyone's familiar with "Watson", the IBM Jeopardy machine with all the hype and drama associated with Artificial Intelligence and what it means for the future of humanity.  Is it HAL or Skynet?  Not by any definition.

So what's the point?  At present, as a proof of concept, "Watson" has demonstrated that it is possible to use algorithms to produce some understanding of natural human speech.  I don't place much stock in "Watson" winning at Jeopardy since that seems as much a function of how quickly the buzzer can be pushed as it is in having an answer.
Fontenelle’s Conversations (1686): Popular Science Writing At Its Very Best

Fontenelle’s Conversations (1686): Popular Science Writing At Its Very Best

Feb 16 2011 | comment(s)

Popular science writing today can be hit and miss. It can be truly awful; such as Brian Greene’s immensely dull Elegant Universe, Stephen Jay Gould’s idiosyncratically waffley Rocks of Ages, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's misguided and rushed Black Swan (in my humble opinion). But it can be utterly sublime, such as Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestors Tale (his magum opus, in my opinion), Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of time, and Carl Sagan’s The Cosmic Connection.

Good popular science books like these are engaging, unpretentious, and inspirational, but most  of all, clever, witty, and humorous. You could argue with me on this one, but simply saying that the science will speak for itself is not good enough. I could just as well go read a nice thick textbook.