Where are Kirk and Spock (not to mention Dr Mulhall, Lt Troi, Maj Kira, and all the other space babes) when you really need them?

This was inspired by Sixty's post and link to a piece in the Gray Lady about hidden galaxies. If I read the thing another 50 times, I may actually understand it.

I heard once in my undergrad days about how the universe was expanding and I wondered into what (one of my buds admired my "deep thoughts").

This is one of those intellectual toys where you just fool around with an idea to see where it goes.

I mean is there a void beyond the universe? Is that where Heaven is?

Stuff like that.

And where's Kelowitz? Or Riley?

Finding The Good Eggs

Human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg, scientists have shown for the first time, after capturing the astonishing ‘fireworks’ on film.

I had to read through the whole linked article to confirm conform what I suspected expected: this is just another example of fluorescence spectroscopy.  This means that the phenomenon is more akin to putting tiny mirrors in place on the egg which reflect shined light when zinc impinges them.  The lights and mirrors are introduced artificially. The technique is yet another example of work pioneered by Roger Tsien.

"Intelligence genes discovered by scientists"

The Telegraph: They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.

However when the genes are mutated or in the wrong order, it can lead to dullness of thinking, or even serious cognitive impairments.

Scientists believe that there must be a ‘master switch’ regulating the networks and if they could find it, they could ‘switch on’ intelligence for everyone.

“We know that genetics plays a major role in intelligence but until now haven’t known which genes are relevant,” said Dr Michael Johnson, lead author of the study from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College.

“This research highlights some of genes involved in human intelligence, and how they interact with each other.

“What’s exciting about this is that the genes we have found are likely to share a common regulation, which means that potentially we can manipulate a whole set of genes whose activity is linked to human intelligence.

“Our research suggests that it might be possible to work with these genes to modify intelligence, but that is only a theoretical possibility at the moment – we have just taken a first step along that road.”

Bacon is now cancer causing?

"Halloween week kicked off with big scary news from the World Health Organization: Processed meat is now in the same category of carcinogens as cigarettes . . .
. . . and sunshine."

The IARC says it is now classifying processed meat as a Class One carcinogen (known to cause cancer) and all red meat as Class Two carcinogens (likely to cause cancer). Wait, don’t place that bulk order of lentils just yet. “Causes cancer” is not the same as “will give you cancer.”

But don't worry, it's now safe to eat bread. "Scientists who found gluten sensitivity evidence have now shown it doesn't exist."

In one of the best examples of science working, a researcher who provided key evidence of (non-celiac disease) gluten sensitivity recently published follow-up papers that show the opposite...

For a follow-up paper, 37 self-identified gluten-sensitive patients were tested. According to Real Clear Science’s Newton Blog, here’s how the experiment went:

Subjects would be provided with every single meal for the duration of the trial. Any and all potential dietary triggers for gastrointestinal symptoms would be removed, including lactose (from milk products), certain preservatives like benzoates, propionate, sulfites, and nitrites, and fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates, also known as FODMAPs. And last, but not least, nine days worth of urine and faecal matter would be collected. With this new study, Gibson wasn’t messing around.

The subjects cycled through high-gluten, low-gluten, and no-gluten (placebo) diets, without knowing which diet plan they were on at any given time. In the end, all of the treatment diets - even the placebo diet - caused pain, bloating, nausea, and gas to a similar degree. It didn’t matter if the diet contained gluten. (Read more about the study.)

"In contrast to our first study… we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten," Gibson wrote in the paper. A third, larger study published this monthhas confirmed the findings.

James Watson auctions his Nobel prize.

Because, "Nobody wants to admit I exist." 

Watson, shared his Nobel Prize in 1962 with Francis Crick for their discovery of the nature of the DNA spiral helix molecule in 1953.  Crick died in 2004.

A mind-blowing discovery. You must admit. I learned we owe much that we know of genetics to these two men. We all sat there in the science amphitheater stunned they could figure its shape. It is a difficult to conceptualize structure. 

Imagine a very long rope made as a very tight ladder that by chemical signal twists until it cannot twist any further. 

Pressure builds as twisting continues and the length of ladder rope responds by twisting the twists forming a coil maintained by the pressure of continuous twisting. Coil upon coil until the length is fully coiled and there is no room left for any more coiling. The length is now much shorter and wider. 

The tightening continues as pressure builds by twisting until the coil loops up on itself as if a thousand Slinkies™ connected together are twisted until they they loop in a length of loops that is shorter and wider. Loop upon loop until there is no room for more loops and the length is shorter and wider. 

Twisting continues until the loops wrap around themselves along the fat shortened length, wrap upon wrap  until  there is no more room for any more wraps along the length that has become even shorter and wider. 

Twisting continues until the length of wrapped looped coiled twists writhe into a tight bundle awaiting a chemical signal to unwrap and another chemical signals to rip another copy of the stretched out ladder. 

No, the world does not want your opinions on genetics. It has deeper concerns. You must go away now so the politicized social world can continue its trajectory. There is balance all around to consider you know. It's all fun and genetics until somebody puts an eye out.  And that goes for your friends studying climate. We have no need for your conjectures stated forthrightly and honestly. Goodness, how you have failed to evolve! 

Smart as you are, you're just crap at political science and sociology, and the art of playing along. Now you pay.

"The Human Genome Is In Stalemate in the War Against Itself"

"There’s a sense of futility about this. Much of our genome seems to be engaged in an ultimately pointless duel whether neither side can give or gain any ground. But these battles aren’t quite as fruitless as they might seem."

"The team found that KZNFs partly suppress the genes around a retrotransposon too. When the cops finds their target, they tell all the bystanders to the lie on the ground too. This is important because it seriously affects the activity of many human genes, beyond retrotransposons. It means that KZNFs can eventually be used to control the activity of genes that jumping genes land next to. (“Excuse me, officer, but while you’re manhandling your suspect, would you mind also rescuing my cat?”) This arms race could have given rise to more complicated networks of genes, and perhaps more complicated bodies or behaviours." (read the whole thing)

Planting by the moon

The Old World Kitchen, Elisabeth Luard 1987

There are plenty of crops you can't plant when the moon is waning. The May moon is bad, for example; if you plant beans then, they make a mass of stalks and no fruit. You have to plant seedbeds of onions, lettuce, melon and pumpkins with the waning moon as you do vetch and alfalfa. If the later is planted at any other time, the livestock swell up and die when they eat it. That's the truth. I don't know why it is, but everyone here knows it. [The Pueblo, Ronald Fraser, 1973]

Why?

The simplest most intuitive explanations includes the word "tides." The moon's affect on large bodies of water you see for yourself. The moon's gravity tugs at the bodies of water covering the earth. There is no dispute about that. Ideas about planting by the moon consider the moon tugging at all bodies of water, tugging the water table underneath the soil, tugging the water moisture within the soil. Seeds planted at the time of high tides have more water available to them in the soil. So plant during periods of waxing moon.

Waxing / waning moon also affects weather by affecting moisture in the atmosphere as well.

Conversely, plowing the ground is easier when there is less water in the soil. So plow during periods of waning moon. (This contradicts what my farmer friend just told me, his field was easier to plow under and deeper because it had more water in it. Incidentally, his fields are like powder, soft fragrant powder)

The effect of the phases of the moon on seed germination and growth was first studied by L. Kolisko in 1930. Using wheat, Kolisko found that seeds germinated faster and more prolifically when sown at the full moon. The new moon gave him the most unsuccessful results. Later experiments on cress confirmed Kolisko's findings. Recent studies at Northwestern University, conducted by Professor F. Brown, have shown that, even under equal temperatures, seedlings absorb more water at the full moon than at the new moon. The findings lend credibility to adages that recommend harvesting at full moon. It seems plants have less water content at the new moon phase. Professor Brown went so far as to test plants in a darkened laboratory where they would have no direct access to effects of sun or moon. The plants still responded to the moon phases.

The light reflected by the moon also affects plants.

The lunar month is divided into two basic moon activities: waxing and waning. The beginning of each process is designated by the new and full moon. A full moon occurs when the moon is 180 degrees opposite the sun, in position to receive sunlight over the maximum volume of its surface. A new moon occurs when the sun and moon are so closely aligned that it is impossible for the moon to give off any reflected sunlight. Waxing occurs in the period between the new and the full moon. Waning describes lunar activity between the full and the new moon. When the moon is waxing, it is said to be in its first and second quarters. The waning of the moon brings the phases through the third and fourth quarters of the cycle.

The waxing moon phase is a good time to encourage plant growth and proliferation. The waning moon phase is a useful time to control plant growth and keep down garden pests....

We have already seen evidence asserting growth and liquid absorption peaks at the full moon, and drastically declines during the new moon....

We know from fluctuations in the electrical field of plants, made visible through Kirlian photography, as well as through experience, that plants grow and absorb water at an irregular rate. Rapid growth rate is often followed by a period of rest. Fruit bearing is followed by a period of dormancy. Although we do not know the full effects of the waxing and waning moon on plant growth, we do know that synchronizing phases of plant growth with the phases of the moon produces healthier plants and more abundant yield.

Lunar winds on Earth surface. 

What?

Lunar winds on the earth's surface, moving at l/20 of a mile per hour, are too minute to be felt on the human skin, but they come, as do tides, twice daily. In the morning they flow east, in the evening to the west, influencing the growth of plants as surely as sunshine and rainfall.

KayKeys.net   
http://kaykeys.net/spirit/earthspirituality/moon/moonseed.html

Most other explanations are less useful than this. They rely on ancient knowledge acquired by observations of accumulated result and  passing down the connections they made between moon and the moon passing through Zodiac star constellations, and and planets and all that involving superstition and a good deal of anthropomorphizing plants. Differing methods were developed over time, Synodic, Sidereal and Biodynamic cycles.

the Gardeners Calendar.co.uk  
http://www.the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk/moon_planting.asp

Almanac. com
http://www.almanac.com/content/planting-moons-phase-gardening-calendar

My To Do List For Later...

EBL posted a link to the new energy from seawater process. link

I've already made a few comments over there noting (a) The process is energy intensive; and (b) it's interesting in that onboard an aircraft carrier with limitless (nuclear) energy, it could be useful for generating fuels which would have to otherwise be delivered. This is a logistical advantage.

I have to dash off for several hours (and had to post date this by two hours), but if I had time, I would do the following:

Write out the chemical steps for the entire process, and construct a Born-Haber cycle for the whole thing to pinpoint the uphill thermodynamics -- I suspect it's the 2H⁺ + 2e^- --> H₂(g) reduction.

Show how they use the H₂ in the water-gas-shift reaction (WGSR) but don't mention the CO involved. This is really old school WW II German technology. On the other hand, perhaps they've invented a new way to reduce CO₂ to hydrocarbons more directly than the WGS reaction followed by Fischer-Tropsch.

Third, I'd go to the US Patent & Trademark website and look for disclosure using keywords and also the NRL as the assignee. The Navy can and has withheld patent disclosure for national security reasons.

Density Matters

Great Lakes flooding hazard because of excess ice and snow

original

This is related to why frozen soda cans expand and sometimes burst and also why ice floats.

Latent Heat Of Fusion

I opened my latest copy of Chemical & Engineering News and saw an intriguing "letter to the editor." [The letter is behind a pay wall].

The writer offered a simple reason why the oceans and ambient seas have failed to warm during the past dozen years: the latent heat of fusion of water.

The calorie is historically defined as the energy required to raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1 degree C. The energy required to convert 1g of ice to water is about 80 calories.

No one can argue with the fact that glaciers and polar ice masses are shrinking dramatically. That consumes a staggering quantity of energy and could well explain the recent flat change in surface temperature. 

He could have added that the energy added to melt ice does not raise the temperature of the water -- it all goes into tearing down the rigid structure of ice -- but his audience already knew that. Did you?

Here's a visual that every chemistry student is exposed to:

original

The author is drawing attention to the first flat red line labeled "latent heat of fusion."  Melting the polar ice caps will not raise the temperature of the seas until the last ice is melted. We know that the arctic ice cap is melting rapidly, but what about the antarctic ice mass?  What is the overall balance?

[added]:

The difference between melting and freezing is infinitely small in degrees Fahrenheit and is measured instead in degrees of freedom.  link

NYT Science: "Stupider With Monogamy"

"Forcing male flies into monogamy has a startling effect: After a few dozen generations, the flies become worse at learning."

This discovery, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, isn’t a biological excuse for men who have strayed from their significant other. Instead, it’s a tantalizing clue about why intelligence evolved. 

Concluding paragraphs...

The evolution of learning remains a puzzle for scientists. A smart animal can learn how to find more food or how to avoid predators. But if learning were such an unalloyed good, then one might expect all animals to be as smart as we are.

They are not because there is a cost to learning. Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues have found that flies that have been bred to be good learners are more likely to die when competing for scarce food with regular flies. Even when they’re not threatened with starvation, their life span is 15 percent shorter than average.

It’s still not clear why that is so. Changes to the nervous system that come with learning may cause long-term damage of some sort, or learning may simply use up energy that could be directed to other uses.

Because of the cost, evolution may increase learning only when its benefits outweigh its drawbacks — such as when it affects mating. Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki suspect that fast-learning males may be able to swiftly recognize receptive females, and thus mate with more of them before they die. Forcing the flies into monogamy, on the other hand, gets rid of learning’s benefits, leaving only the cost behind.

To test this idea, Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki compared the mating prowess of the evolved flies. They put a group of male flies in a vial with one receptive female and five unreceptive ones and tallied how many mated in an hour. The scientists found that the polygamous males quickly zeroed in on the receptive female. The monogamous males, on the other hand, wasted time courting unreceptive females and being rejected.

“They’re just not figuring it out,” said Dr. Hollis.

While no one has yet carried out an experiment like this on other species, Dr. Hollis suspects that the relationship between sex and the evolution of learning might apply beyond flies — perhaps even to our own species.

“I think it really can inform us quite a lot about what’s going on in nature, and why we have the brains we have,” said Dr. Hollis.

NY Times 

It's The Microbes That Are Making You Fat

People living in cold, northern latitudes have bacteria in their guts that may predispose them to obesity, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Arizona, Tucson.

According to researchers, at least. 

Put down the bowl of Haagen-Dazs and re-read that.  Maybe you just have too many Firmicutes and not enough Bacteroidetes in your gut.

It's science.  And I, for one, am feeling better about myself after having read the article.  It isn't my fault.  I'm a victim of Firmicutes.

And so are you.  Maybe.

Regelation Is A Revelation For Me

Michael Faraday discovered this phenomenon, like so many others.

"Brightest Explosion In the Universe Ever Seen Defies Astronomy Theories"

"The really cool thing about this GRB (gamma-ray burst) is that because the exploding matter was traveling at [nearly] the speed of light, we were able to observe relativistic shocks," study co-author Giacomo Vianello, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University in California, said in a statement. "We cannot make a relativistic shock in the lab, so we really don't know what happens in it, and this is one of the main unknown assumptions in the model. These observations challenge the models and can lead us to a better understanding of physics."

Live Science beta

Primordial Soup

Our always-brilliant friend El Pollo Raylan wrote in his most recent post:

Lastly, Lem posted an intriguing story about life on other planets. I think the unspoken question is, "but did they have the spark of life?"  I'm not being creationist here. The famous Miller-Urey Experiment was anything but that.

This reminded me of one of my most favorite little digressions from one of my favorite people, the great writer, cook and personality Julia Child. This video, produced for a 1970's exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum called "Life in the Universe", features Child cooking up Miller & Urey's (and Cyril Ponnamperuma's) recipe for Primordial Soup.

The difficulty of finding out what we don't know

A snippet of a long Wired article "Scientific Data Has Become So Complex, We Have to Invent New Math to Deal With It"

Topological methods are a lot like casting a two-dimensional shadow of a three-dimensional object on the wall: they enable us to visualize a large, high-dimensional data set by projecting it down into a lower dimension. The danger is that, as with the illusions created by shadow puppets, one might be seeing patterns and images that aren’t really there. (italics mine)

“There’s a terrible math joke that topologists can’t tell the difference between their rear end and a coffee cup because the two are topologically equivalent,” said Benjamin Recht, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who says it is so far unclear when TDA works and when it might not. The technique rests on the assumption that a high-dimensional big data set has an intrinsic low-dimensional structure, and that it is possible to discover that structure mathematically. Recht believes that some data sets are intrinsically high in dimension and cannot be reduced by topological analysis. “If it turns out there is a spherical cow lurking underneath all your data, then TDA would be the way to go,” he said. “But if it’s not there, what can you do?” And if your dataset is corrupted or incomplete, topological methods will yield similarly flawed results. 

Got Wood?

Trees use a rigid natural polymer called lignin* to stand upright against gravity. It's the arboreal analog of cellulose in plants -- the very molecular scaffold on which a plant hangs its inner workings. But lignin interferes with the extraction of sugars from trees for biofuels. A work around solution is to genetically modify certain trees to have less lignin and thus to be less rigid, according to a recent article in Science.

Hey, Who Wants to Work for Free?

A guest post by bagho20.

We have a simple, real-world million-dollar problem, and maybe the power of the CH brain can solve it.

The problem: We manufacture a product. Let’s call it a robotic snow shovel. The shovel is pushed by two DC powered electromechanical linear actuators. The problem is that we are forced to use actuators that are not manufactured with sufficient consistency to all push at the same speed. Some are slightly slower. In the product, they are side by side about 6 inches apart pushing on the blade of the shovel. Since they often don’t push exactly the same speed, one actuator does all the work, draws too much current, binds the shovel, and wears out too soon. How do we fix it?

This is a real problem that I must and will solve, but I was wondering what others might come up with. There are better and worse solutions due to costs, reliability, etc, and the best solution is the simplest and cheapest, but we’re just brainstorming at this point. Think outside the box, find a new paradigm, you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else, be the change, give it 110%, It’s a no-brainer, everything happens for a reason, there are no dumb questions, etc. Now take it and run with it….. right up the flagpole.

I’ll let you know what solution we eventually prototype and use. Maybe it will be what you come up with.

Ever Wonder Why?

A guest post by Dante.

Wonderful Freeman invited me to write up a math/computer science post, and so here it is. Math seems like common sense, and if you only think of it you can understand it. So here is a little puzzle you can think about to explain a common phenomenon: why is it that if you are in a shower, or on a treadmill, it's really hard to hear someone call out to you, even though they can hear you.

I have three (impulsive) boys, and as such I encountered this often. The answer is pretty simple, and with a couple of concepts, you can puzzle it out for yourself.

The first concept is Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Here, voice is the signal, and noise is anything generating sound that isn't part of the signal (like the shower or treadmill). In general, to decipher a signal, it has to be stronger than the noise. How much stronger isn't too important for the concept part of it.

The next concept is that over distance, sound (noise or signal) decreases in strength.

With these two concepts, you can use common sense to figure out what is going on.