Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Apparently, there's a new Trojan virus that infects users when they use the Help feature of Internet Explorer! Matthew 7:9-11 says:

9“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

So there you have it, if there was any doubt in your mind, now you have proof. Microsoft is not God.

(Okay, that was the long way around just to spread the news about a new virus... hmm, maybe I can redeem the post by offering another link.)
Just in case you thought that you had no alternative to Microsoft, I'm here to tell you that you are absolutely correct. But if you want to pretend for a short time that you are resisting, you can download Mozilla's browser. Pros: More secure, blocks pop-ups, nice interface, allows you to make a purely symbolic show of defiance. Cons: Bill Gates may break your kneecaps... Or at least your Caps Lock.

Check this out, apparently "something" has been cleaning the Mars Rover, removing layers of dust and boosting the signal strength far higher than scientists had anticipated.

Rover team leader Jim Erickson at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told New Scientist that a process still not understood has repeatedly removed dust from the solar panels. "These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really great shape," he says.

Anyone else get an image of Martians holding a spray bottle and a rag?

I'll bet you thought that our calendar, (you know, January, February, etc.), was just fine, but apparently you're wrong, because this guy thinks we need to change it.

Wouldn't it be convenient if your birthday, Christmas and the Fourth of July — not to mention most other major holidays — all fell on the same day of the week, year after year? Wouldn't it make life — or at least planning — easier, for instance, to know that Dec. 17 would always fall on a Saturday or that January 1 — New Year's Day — would always be celebrated on a Sunday?

Richard Conn Henry, professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, thinks it would. He has designed — using computer programs and complex mathematical formulas — a new calendar that would make it happen.

Under Henry's plan, each new 12-month period is identical to the one that came before. Each month has either 30 or 31 days. January, for instance, would have 30 days, as would February, April, May, July, August, October and November. March, June, September and December would all have 31 days.

His plan would also get rid of leap years in favor of a week-long 'mini-month' that would occur every five or six years. On top of all that, he also wants to have everybody change to one universal timezone.

Henry also urges everyone to simultaneously switch to what is called "Universal Time" (formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time). Doing so would synchronize the date and time the same worldwide, streamlining such things as international business and exchange.

"We would quickly get used to the fact that sunrise and sunset henceforth occur at what seem to us unusual hours by the clock,"

Do I think this guy has some interesting points? Yes. Do I think he has the slightest chance of getting his plan implemented? Not so much. Besides, I don't think he has considered all the implications... Like what about that whole "Thirty days hath September" poem? Or the Pirate Song in Pirates of Penzance? Without the leap year, the 'most ingenious paradox' is ruined! The week-long mini-month, which he proposes naming after Isaac Newton is hardly an acceptable substitute.

Over at Nature.com, they have this story about a new technique that allows researchers to, in effect, take a picture of an electron orbital. This may not seem so spectacular unless you know a bit about electrons. The old picture of a little spark running circles around the nucleus like the moon orbits the earth is incredibly oversimplified. True electron orbitals are more like a cloud of probability, where the electron's position cannot be precisely determined.

They have come up with a technique however that can sort of make the electron send out a one-time signal beacon.

Measuring this interference for thousands of ionizations allowed the scientists to reconstruct the shape of the outermost electron orbital in nitrogen. It produces a blurred image, says Villeneuve, like a swarm of flies snapped in a long-exposure picture.

Electron orbitals and their various interactions are the basis for all chemistry, and a better understanding of them could lead to untold advances. Now I'd better leave this topic alone before I accidentally induce an O-Chem flashback coma. (Chemistry majors will know what I'm talking about.)

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that there is a lot of bogus science out there when it comes to health, and I had always placed magnetic bracelets in that category.

Then I saw this article. Apparently they did an actual study on the effect of magnetic bracelets on arthritis pain.

They found a significant reduction in pain scores between the standard and dummy magnet groups. The results for the weak magnet group were similar to those of the dummy magnets, and this suggests that the magnetic strength of the bracelet is important.

Of course, we'll have to see if these results are repeatable, but frankly, I wouldn't have expected even this level of results. Weird, eh?

Okay, that title is not really fair. Some people are really coming up with interesting points on both sides, but in the recent controversy about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution in the classroom, there are a whole lot of people going completely nuts.

*sigh*

I've been participating in a conversation on the subject here, and there are some good opinions and some bad ones on each side.

UPDATE!! The debate at the abeve link is really heating up. Lots of good stuff there. Check it out!

Some other articles of interest:
--My post about a famous atheist changing his mind because of Intelligent Design
--A defense of Intelligent Design
--Exploring the Evolution / Creation debate
--An article claming to collapse the concept of "Irreducible Complexity"

In this post, I discussed the heroic efforts of the Coast Guard to rescue the crew of a crashed freighter and to begin cleaning the oil spill.

Well, in the small blessings department, it looks as though the oil spill isn't as bad as it could have been.

The federal government's incident commander, Capt. Ron Morris, said just 41,138 gallons of bunker fuel were inside the tank directly breached when the Malaysian soybean freighter Selendang Ayu split in two Wednesday on an Unalaska Island shoal.

Coast Guard officials last week said they thought the 140,000-gallon tank had been full.

Of course, any oil spill is still awful, and is proving difficult to clean up, but at least it isn't as bad as it might have been.

The NYTimes has an interesting article today on new tests for early detection of autism.

For years, autism was rarely noticed before the age of 2, its symptoms overlooked by busy parents or so subtle that pediatricians missed them. According to federal figures, only a third of the 6-year-olds who were receiving treatment for autism in 2002 had been identified by age 4.

But in the last two years much has changed. Propelled by an explosion of public awareness and growing evidence that early treatment with behavioral therapy can improve a child's chances, scientists have set out to diagnose the disorder as early as possible, and slowly, more children with autism are being identified before they turn 2.

It's a very interesting article. In my experiences as a day-care / Sunday School teacher, I've met two autistic children. They can be wonderful at times, but they are definitely more work. The reason early detection is so important is that there are many behavioral therapies that can help autistic children achieve a higher level of functionality than they would have without them, but these therapies are most effective when started as soon as possible.

If you are the parent of an infant or toddler, or know people who are, you should definitely make yourself aware of the early warning signs. Some children may demonstrate some signs without being autistic, and some autistic children won't display all the signs, but regardless, it's best to be informed. Check out FirstSigns.org, an excellent sight devoted to the early identification of children with develomental delays or disorders.

Some French scientists have calculated the perfect throwing angle for skipping stones.



I always enjoy learning about the science behind fun everyday things like this. Of course, 'knowing' the perfect angle isn't necessarily going to help me actually skip the little stones. That would require coordination and skill.

Scientists have had some recent luck in the field of synthetic cells. Though their creations are not technically alive, they can produce proteins in large quantities when supplied with the necessary amino acids as raw materials.

Ready-made mixtures of all the biomolecules that a cell needs for protein production are commercially available, extracted from bacteria such as Escherichia coli. These mixtures can make specific proteins, but they stop working within about two hours unless they are continually fed with raw materials and cleaned of waste products.

To enclose this biomolecule mixture inside membranes like those of natural cell walls, Noireaux and Libchaber made microscopic droplets of the cell extract suspended in oil. Soap-like molecules called phospholipids then coated the surface of these droplets in the same way that emulsifying agents surround the droplets in a salad dressing, stopping them from coalescing.

The researchers then coated the droplets with a second layer of phospholipids, to form a double layer that looks just like the membrane of a real cell. They publish their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pretty neat stuff, if you ask me. No need to really get into any philosophical debates here, I don't think. This is really just bio-chemical manufacturing on the cellular scale. These things really aren't alive in any real sense. So no need to dig that old Voight-Kampf test kit out of the attic any time soon. (20 points to anyone who gets that reference. 20 more for people who get the one in the title!)

Religious bliss, that feeling of being watched, feeling a supernatural 'presence' in the room... What causes these feelings? Or alternatively, what is happening in the brain when we have these feelings?

For a long time, studies had seemed to suggest that feelings of this kind could be stimulated in research subjects by targeting the temporal lobe of the brain with electromagnetic fields, but Nature.com has an article discussing new experiments that cast doubt on those original conclusions.

A group of Swedish researchers has now repeated the work, but they say their study involves one crucial difference. They ensured that neither the participants nor the experimenters interacting with them had any idea who was being exposed to the magnetic fields, a 'double-blind' protocol.

...SNIP...

In contrast to the results from Persinger and others, the team found that the magnetism had no discernible effects. Two out of the three participants in the Swedish study that reported strong spiritual experiences during the study belonged to the control group, as did 11 out of the 22 who reported subtle experiences.

What does all this mean? Well, it just goes to show you that even some things that we think of as "proven" scientifically may not, in fact, be true. Now, I have a great respect for the scientific method and science in general. I think that they are tremendously useful for increasing our understanding of the world around us. I just think that there is a tendency among some to think that they can explain everything unequivocally, and that's where I disagree. To quote the Bard: "There are more things in heaven and earth...Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Over at Boston.com, (linked there from Google News,) they've got an article originally from the LA Times about the 10th Annual Convention on Climate Change going on this week in Buenos Aires. It was an incredibly well-done article, I thought. Very balanced. Some selections...

Observers here say the United States is increasingly being shut out as the rest of the world adopts the global mechanisms by which each country will meet its targeted reductions, including a potentially lucrative trading mechanism by which companies can trade reductions in carbon emissions in a kind of global pollution market.

The United States produces 30 percent of the world's emissions of greenhouse gases. Washington pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.

And this...

"The Kyoto Protocol was a political agreement," said Harlan L. Watson, President Bush's senior climate negotiator and the head of the US delegation to the conference. "It was not based on science."

...SNIP...

Watson and other US officials here point out that the Bush administration has set aside billions to fund climate research and weather monitoring programs around the world.

In 2002, Bush committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by the year 2012 but linked the reductions to growth in gross domestic product. However, US officials at the conference said emissions were likely to be 15 percent above 1990 levels, far higher than mandated in the Kyoto pact. The US plan is based chiefly on voluntary measures, because Bush administration officials believe mandatory limits would hinder economic growth.

Over at the NY Times, there's an editorial (free registration required for link) advocating a manned repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. Essentially, in the next couple of years, the existing batteries will start to fail, and they need to be replaced. They are considering a robotic mission, but that is risky, because it might not work, and might even damage the telescope. A manned voyage would have a much higher likelihood of success, but of course, the cost is much higher as well, not to mention using NASA resources that would otherwise be available for other missions.

As of now NASA is pursuing a robotics program that it still deems highly promising and doing nothing to pursue an astronaut mission. The real reason the agency prefers robotics is that the same technologies might prove useful in the president's long-range plan to explore the Moon and Mars, whereas diverting a shuttle to the Hubble would disrupt NASA's planned high-speed dash to complete the station and retire the costly shuttles to free up money for the president's exploration program.

The agency faces two important design reviews for its robotics program next year. Unless those show astonishing progress, NASA should get cracking on an astronaut flight to the Hubble. The great danger is that NASA will convince itself and Congress that robotics will work, and then down the line confess failure and let a spectacularly successful telescope die from neglect.

Over at the Science Blog, they've got a story about some new deep tremors they've detected under the San Andreas fault. These aren't new so much as newly discovered. Scientists are hoping that they could be used to make better models for predicting earthquakes.

Frankly I don't see what the big deal is. If the big one comes, all we have to do is get Superman to fly backwards around the planet a few times.

Over at MSNBC.com, they've got this story about some of the recent scientific experiments involving the blending of human cells and animal cells.

I don't have too much to say on this one just yet. I'm still thinking about it. On the one hand, the science-fiction geek in me thinks it's all pretty damn cool. On the other, you don't have to look too far down this road to see some seriously gray ethical situations. For example, using human stem cells to produce mice with human-like immune systems, blood proteins, etc. But in theory, such an experiment could accidentally produce a human embryo being fertilized in a mouse. Or what about producing a chimpanzee with a substantially improved capacity for speech and reason? At what point does it become deserving of all the same rights as a human being has now? Tough questions, but questions that we may actually have to find answers for, and soon.

Over at Alice and Bill, they've got a post about a new camera called the R-1. Think you have a fancy digital camera? Got those megapixels? Well this thing operates on the level of gigapixels!! It can take a picture of a mountain seven miles away, and the photo contains so much information that it can be blown up to clearly see a single footpath! Pretty impressive, says I.

Over at The Science Blog, I found this story. It talks about how new techniques have allowed better energy efficiency in Hydrogen Gas generation by raising the temperature of the electrolysis reaction. This may not sound like a big deal until you consider that increased efficiency of hydrogen generation brings the practicality of Hydrogen fuel cells that much closer. It sounds like a good thing in my book. They say that they are getting energy efficiencies of up to 50%, compared to 30% with previous techniques. (Note to self: look up what kind of efficiency other technologies use.)

It's important to remember though that Fuel Cells are not an energy source. It takes energy to make them, so they are more like batteries than oil. But if the efficiency can start to approach the energy efficiency of making gasoline from oil, then that could be a huge breakthrough in reducing car exhaust and greenhouse gas emissions.

Boy, I tell 'ya, this brain thing we all got is pretty darn cool. Now, of course I've been interested in the brain for quite some time, but occasionally, I still come across something that just makes me sit up a little straighter in my chair and say "Cool!"

In this story, they are talking about the brain's apparent ability to substitute one sense for another. Basically, contrary to what would seem like common sense, we don't see with our eyes, we see with our brains. The eye is of course a critical part of that process, but all it does is convert the visible light image it receives into a series of nerve impulses. Those impulses are sent to the brain, and the brain interprets the impulses as visual data. The same is true for all our other senses too. Hearing, taste / smell, touch, everything. What scientists have discovered is that the brain is capable of crossing its own wires, and can occasionally re-route those nerve impulses to different parts of the brain.

Of course, when this happens by accident, it produces a condition known as synesthesia, where people find that they "hear" colors, or "see" tastes. But apparrently, the brain can actually be trained to do this same rerouting in useful ways.

For example in the article I mentioned above, scientists have created a device that allows blind (from birth!) people limited sight through a device that stimulates their tongue with tiny electrical impulses. A video camera records a live picture and translates it to specific patterns on the tiny electrodes. Supposedly, it feels like a buzzing or bubbling on the tongue, but with practice, people can train their brains to interpret these buzz patterns as visual information, and people are literally seeing with their tongues! Another device has allowed someone with inner ear damage to regain her sense of balance using a similar device equipped with an electronic leveling device, with effects that last even after she takes off the device!

I don't know about you, but I think that's amazing! Not only could these devices be used to really help people with disabilities, but there could be thousands of applications even for people with normal senses. For example, the Navy Seals are testing sonar-like devices to allow their divers to "see" even in total darkness.

Anyway, I find it incredibly interesting, and the sci-fi technology geek part of my brain is just spinning. Hey, do you suppose I could temporarily reroute that enthusiasm towards balancing my checkbook?