Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Radio Waves

There's a sign in Epcot's Mission Space that talks about how the lunar rover could only go a few miles an hour but the radio waves sent from it could go all the way back to Earth.

Between this and the NPR story about the WIFI waves being able to keep up with the car no matter how fast it went, I'm beginning to see why high school seniors aren't doing as well as could be hoped with their test scores.

My Children Should Thank Me

House Dust May Protect Against Allergic Disease Early In Life

None of my children have ever been bothered by allergies other than the seasonal "Kentucky Crud" that's just a part of living in the Ohio Valley. I don't know whether house dust gets credit for this but I'm more than willing to believe!

Save the Honeybee, Save the World!

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

I'm almost beginning to find this amusing. It's not that I don't like honeybees, I do. It's that most of the time when people are talking about non-native species they are discussing how to get rid of them.

The honeybee was imported from Europe. It is a useful pollinator because it will visit a wide variety of plants and, since it is a social insect, can be more easily managed than most other types of bees. It also works well with the large number of non-native crops that we're growing here.

But...

There were food crops in the Americas long before the Europeans came and those plants were pollinated by native bees that had evolved along with those plants.

One problem these native bees have is that they need areas of natural growth near the farmed crop areas. (It provides them with a nesting area and a food source when the crops aren't in bloom.) This means they can work well on farms with hedgerows, small woods, or areas of natural growth along streams but can't handle the huge megafarms. Devoting small areas of wild growth for native bees to use as nesting areas may not be a solution but it would be a reasonable step to take while scientists are trying to find out what's wrong with the honeybees.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.

Except that we have another imported bee - the alfalfa leafcutter bee - that is better at pollinating these plants than the honeybee. Another import, the Japanese Hornfaced bee is better at pollinating orchards and has been used to pollinate apples in Japan for decades.

If you're interested in encouraging native bee species, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service has information about how to provide nesting areas and suggests types of plants for them.

Life's Real Mysteries

New Scientist has a list of 13 Things That Don't Make Sense. My personal list of things that don't make sense is much longer but it's not limited to things that lack a scientific explanation. Who has time to ponder dark matter when you're busy trying to figure out how people who can make complex creations out of Legos or K'nex can't manage the mechanics of changing the toilet paper roll? Why does one out of every pair of socks go missing? And how did footprints get on the ceiling?

I Don't See It on the NYT's Bestseller List

A letter to the editors of American Scientist regarding a recent column had this sentence:

Gödel's undecidability theorem isn't a bunker-buster as so much popular literature claims.

I understand what the letter writer meant but when I first read it the combination of "popular literature" and a mathematical theorem made me laugh.

If My Only Choices Are Panic of Inaction...

Global Warming Man-Made, Will Continue - "The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do'," Steiner said. "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible."

I hope they spell my name right.

Fools Rush In

Or to put it more politely, let's say it's an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences - Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare

Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electrical plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia.

Spurred by government subsidies, energy companies became so enthusiastic that they designed generators that ran exclusively on the oil, which in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants.

But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare.

Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Hot or Not?

Headlines such as "World Scientists Near Consensus on Warming" bother me. It's the word "consensus". It sounds more like a popularity vote than the result of research.

Being in the majority doesn't prove your belief is right or wrong, it just means you have a lot of company.

Teens and Choices

Last night I was reading an article, "Is the Teen Brain Too Rational?", in the latest issue of Scientific American Mind. (I'll give you a moment to stop laughing at the idea of teens being too rational.)

A section called "Why Programs Fail" begins, "Traditional intervention programs emphasize the importance of giving teens information about risks and allowing them the freedom to decide for themselves what to do. These programs encourage teens to trade off potentially deadly risks against often transient benefits and assumes that they will see the light" just tell them the risks of HIV infection and unwanted pregnancy, these programs assume, and teens will not engage in unprotected sex."

It goes on to say that the success of these programs is limited and even that is shortlived. Teens do weigh the evidence of risk versus benefits but give more weight to the benefits. Also, if they take a risk without there being any immediate negative consequences, they tend to assume that the risk is lower than it may actually be.

This section is mainly about sex education...and has no mention of programs that promote abstinence. I guess the current theory is that it's still easier to train teens to make good choices (in this case avoiding unprotected sex) than to train parents to be parents. After all, if parents act like parents, it might get in the way of being the teen's buddy and infringe on the teenager's rights.

Newsflash, they have enough buddies and the only right they need is to grow up without messing up their lives. It's the parent's job to teach proper behavior, set down rules, and monitor what they do to make sure they follow the rules. It wouldn't be a 100% fix for the problem. I doubt there is one. But letting them know what you expect and why it's important would be a good start.

Nutrients and Nurturing

A new study has found that babies that are breastfed for longer than six months have significantly better mental health in childhood.

While I think that breastfeeding is the best choice for both the mother and infant, I'm not sure that this study actually proves what the reports on it say it shows. Since I'm unwilling too cheap to pay for access to the original study I can only go by the news reports on it and all of the articles I could find spoke of breastfeeding rather than the feeding of breastmilk. It's unclear to me if this is comparing breastmilk (breastfeeding and expressed milk) to formula or if it's breastfeeding versus any bottle feeding. Is it really the nutrients in the breastmilk or couldn't the study also show that having the mother as the primary caretaker of the child for this time be just as likely a reason for the improved mental health of the child?

C₂₀H₂₅N₃O

A study published in Neurology indicates that small doses of LSD may give relief and be helpful in preventing future cluster headaches.

Their results are startling: the majority (85%) of psilocybin users report that it aborted attacks — better than oxygen, which stopped attacks for 52% of the patients surveyed. LSD and psilocybin were both better at preventing future attacks than conventional medicines.

Given the current policy on drugs - if there's a chance anyone could use it recreationally, we should also try to stop it's use medically - what are the chances this will be studied further?

PTS: A More Believable (but Still Significant) Number

If the estimates had gone up I'm sure I would have heard about this from every media source. As it is, I'm happy it was reported at all.

Far fewer Vietnam veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress as a result of their wartime service than previously thought, researchers are reporting today, in a finding that could have lasting consequences for the understanding of combat stress, as well as for the estimates of the mental health fallout from the Iraq war.

An earlier study had found that about 30% of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTS at some point, about twice the percentage of vets who served in combat roles. The new study brings this down to 18.7% with 9.1% having a continuing disability.

Some people are upset by this new study and are worried that this will lead to cuts in funding for PTS treatment but I agree with Dr. Bruce Dohrenwend, a psychiatric researcher at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute who said, "I’d like to think that this study would help settle the debate, and that both sides would see that this was good science."

Stem Cell Research

“This is not some wedge issue; this is the soul of America,’’ said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, who sponsored the bill Mr. Bush vetoed. “And this is a colossal mistake on the part of the president.’’

It was not a mistake because it was a wedge issue. This bill did more to create talking points for future elections than it would have done to promote embryonic stem cell research.

This is why you heard that researchers are leaving the country. (A few have but lack of federal funding isn't the only reason. It also has to do with U.S. patents on cell lines which aren't patented in other countries.) This is why you heard that embryonic stem cells offer the best hope for a cure for diseases. (Studies are confirming a finding by the University of Louisville that adult stem cells can be made to mimic embryonic stem cells.)

The arguments against the bill were based on moral grounds. I understand the objections that some people have but I don't know if a five-day-old cluster of cells that was created in a lab and has no chance of being implanted in a woman's womb should be considered the same as an implanted embryo (naturally or artificially). I tend to think not since it could not mature enough to survive without implantation but I also believe that technology could advance enough in the future where it would be possible for an embryo to mature into a full term baby solely through artificial support. If and when this occurs, would we want legislation setting a precedent that allows life created in a lab to be used for federally funded experimentation? (The bill that was passed, S. 3504, prohibits farming of fetuses but only covers human pregnancies and non-human animals used as a surrogate.) When would the cutoff period be then? Some might say it should never be allowed, others might say before the first heartbeat (about five weeks after fertilization), and others might feel that any time up until term would be okay as long as the perceived need was great enough.

The current restrictions prohibit a lab that receives federal funding from using newer colonies of stem cells. The only ones available for this are from embryos destroyed before Aug. 9, 2001. This doesn't prevent labs from doing the research with private or state funding. There is no ban on the research. It's being done at universities (Harvard has developed 17 new stem cell lines) and pharmaceutical companies. With all of the complaints about drug companies profits, it's a bit ironic to think that there are some who would be willing to subsidize their research with taxpayer dollars.

The problem is that a lab that receives federal funding and wants to do embryonic stem cell research on non-approved lines must have a totally separate section for this. Nothing shall be shared, directly or indirectly, including location, equipment, or maintenance.

If our legislators had wanted to create an effective bill, it would have had nothing to do with what lines are available, it would have simplified the accounting of indirect costs for facilities and administration. I believe this would have had a greater chance of becoming law but laws about accounting don't give them as much opportunity for high profile sound bites. What politician wants to tell how he/she fought for or against making sure that even the brooms used to sweep up in the labs have their costs pro-rated according to their use in federally funded labs and research labs using other funding when claiming to be "for science" or "for life" is a much surer bet to make the evening news?

Another Source of Stem Cells

This is certainly good news but it may have a bit of a "yuck" factor for some people.

Japanese researchers have harvested stem cells from human menstrual blood, a medical conference has heard.

...They were able to obtain about 30 times more stem cells from menstrual blood than from bone marrow, Miyoshi says.

The stem cells were then cultured in a way to induce them to become heart cells.

After five days about half of the cells contracted "spontaneously, rhythmical and synchronously, suggesting the presence of electrical communication" between the cells, Miyoshi says.

I'm a Mutant

Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin

The work raises a raft of new questions -- not least of which is why white skin caught on so thoroughly in northern climes once it arose. Some scientists suggest that lighter skin offered a strong survival advantage for people who migrated out of Africa by boosting their levels of bone-strengthening vitamin D; others have posited that its novelty and showiness simply made it more attractive to those seeking mates.

Yeah, it's always the ones that look freakishly different from everyone else who get voted "most popular" in high school.

If my ancient ancestors wanted to mutate in a really useful way they would have left the skin pigment business alone and grown an extra set of hands. That would have been most helpful when my kids were little and also quite convenient when it comes to wrapping Christmas presents.

Marybeth Ponders Politicizing Psychiatry

Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness

The article begins with a few examples: a recovering alcoholic who won't attend 12-step meetings for fear of encountering a gay person, a waiter who is hostile to black people, a Vietnam veteran who is afraid of Asians, and a woman who thought Jews were diseased and would infect her so she wouldn't see a therapist for her OCD problem for fear that her therapist would be Jewish.

It's hard to tell from the summaries but I would suggest that it's likely that the prejudice is a symptom of a disorder rather than a separate disorder in and of itself. It also seems to be taking the focus away from the person suffering whatever delusions or paranoia that result in the prejudice and putting too much emphasis on the object of the bias. Dislike of a group of people may cause more problems in daily life than an extreme fear of spiders but should the treatment really be that different? If the problem is an unreasonable fear or irrational belief, that is what should be treated. The object of fear is irrelevant.

I wonder if psychiatrists will ever ponder whether it's a disorder to classify as an illness all behavior that doesn't agree with the latest politically correct thought.

Experiment at Home

I feel that you're never too old to learn so I think I'll try this science experiment soon.

Tempest Cytokine Storm in a Teacup?

Forbes has a report on avian flu and cytokines (via Instapundit).

As concern mounts over the potential spread of avian flu to humans, researchers believe they've discovered one reason why the infection can prove so deadly.

A cytokine storm is an exagerated immune response resulting in a build-up of T-cells and fluids in the lungs. The experiments that show that this particular virus may trigger such a response may be new but the knowledge of cytokines is decades old. The article makes it all sound pretty frightening, doesn't it?

After infection with H5N1, levels of the chemokine IP-10 in bronchial epithelial cells reach 2200 picograms [a picogram is one-trillionth of a gram] per milliliter, compared with only 200 picograms per milliliter in cells infected with H1N1.

Other than giving possible clues for the treatment of H5N1, I can't tell from this article if the research on the immune reaction is significant. Wouldn't you expect a new strain to cause a stronger reaction than a flu with several variations that have been in circulation for years?

Evolution and ID

In science, the word "theory" doesn't mean the same thing it does when we use it in everyday life. (I have a theory on who raided the cookie jar.; It was a good idea in theory but not in reality.; The media offered multiple theories as to who was to blame for the slow response to the hurricane victims.)

When you make a guess that hasn't been tested, that's an hypothesis. A theory has been widely tested and explains a group of facts or phenomena.

The other day I as flipping through the channels on the TV and saw a show where some men were claiming to discuss ID. It was really a dressed-up version of creationism. If that's what they're passing off as intelligent design, then I'm not having any, thank you.

That doesn't mean that I reject the idea that God was the initial creative force of the universe and of life itself. But that is a matter of faith, not science. It does bother me that people on both sides seem to want us to make an "either/or" choice.

I have one question for the newspapers - How can you print articles that mock people for their lack of an understanding of science and their faith in God when you continue to print a daily horoscope section? I must have missed the memo with the scientific proof of astrology.

The Creeping Storm

An article from the June 2003 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine provides information about the history of land and water management in the Mississippi Delta.

"In the late 1800s Corps engineers began constructing levees of a more permanent type along the river’s channel and cleared sunken ships, dead trees, and other detritus from its outlet to the gulf. With the levees in place, the lowlands beyond the river did not flood as often, and people began building homes in areas once reserved for alligators, mosquitoes, and yellow fever."

After massive flooding of the Mississippi in 1927 "Congress directed Corps engineers to straighten the river in places, add floodgates in others, and increase the height of its levees all the way from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the gulf."

As the threat of flooding from the Mississippi River came under control, the danger from hurricanes increased. Less silt flowing into the delta area means a reduction in marsh and wetlands that would have worked to reduce the strength of incoming storms.

After Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in 1965 Congress decided to appropriate federal funds for a system of levees. The storm modeling that could be done in the 1960s is less accurate than what can be done now and the levees were designed to withstand a fast-moving Category 3 storm.

"In 1986 Congress authorized the Corps to build a system of levees around the southern half of the city, also forming a rough semicircle extending to and from the Mississippi River levees. In the mid-1990s Congress continued to expand the southern protection zone, requiring a total of about 65 mi (105 km) of levees and thereby protecting tens of thousands of homes." The estimated completion date was 2018.

"In 1999 the Corps was authorized by Congress to study the feasibility of various proposals for protecting the city against such devastating storms. An obvious possibility would be to raise the current levees to a height deemed acceptable by an AdCirc analysis. That, however, would also require widening the levees, which may not be possible in many areas because of the proximity of homes...[A]ny concerted effort to protect the city from a storm of category 4 or 5 will probably take 30 years to complete. And the feasibility study alone for such an effort will cost as much as $8 million. Even though Congress has authorized the feasibility study, funding has not yet been appropriated. When funds are made available, the study will take about six years to complete."

The article also makes predictions of what would happen if the city was hit by a category 4 or 5 hurricane and notes that the American Red Cross does not provide emergency shelters in the city because they cannot guarantee that the buildings could survive a storm of this strength.

There's a lot more and it's worth reading. If you think that the flooding was a result of funds being diverted to the Iraq War, that building on former wetlands is a recent development, or that it would have been simple just to build bigger levees, don't bother reading it. It would be a shame for facts to get in the way of your opinions.

Bad, Bad Boys

Video games linked to aggression in boys

Teachers of 600 8th and 9th graders, aged 13 to 15, said children who spent more time playing violent video games were more hostile than other children and more likely to argue with authority figures and other students.

Are the games the cause or are children who are already more hostile more likely to play violent games? There's not enough information about the research in the article to tell if there is a direct cause and effect. Just finding that two conditions - hostility and playing violent games - exist together does not prove one is caused by the other.

Have any other similarities among those who are more hostile (as determined by their teachers) been studied? The age of the onset of puberty and an increase in testosterone would be one thing that I think would be worth considering here. How about family background? Or would it be too un-PC to consider that the home environment might have something to do with hostility and violence?

The students attend school. Maybe school causes violence. I bet they also brush their teeth. Maybe fluoride causes violence. What other envirnomental factors do they share? Any genetic/physical factors? What's different among them? Each human life is different. If you can't control (or ignore) all of the variables, how can you be sure of your conclusion?

"[O]nly a handful" of the studies she and colleagues examined found no connection between violence and violent video games.

That's a problem with "soft" sciences. How many studies/experiments do you need to prove or disprove something? With "hard" sciences you only need one good study that has opposite results to make you question the validity of a theory. Science isn't democratic, it shouldn't be a matter of the "majority rules".

Perpetrators of violence go unpunished 73 percent of the time in all violent scenes, the group said. "Showing violent acts without consequences teach youth that violence is an effective means of resolving conflict," said psychologist Elizabeth Carll, who helps direct the group's Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media.

Perhaps they would like to bring back the Hays Code.

More about studies on video games and aggressive behavior here.

A 10th Planet?

An object that is at least as big as Pluto and about three times farther from the sun has been found. There is some debate on whether or not it deserves to be classified as a planet.

The team had hoped to analyze the data further before announcing the planet but were forced to do so Friday evening because word had leaked out, Brown said.

"Somebody hacked our website," he said, and "they were planning to make [the data] public."

Proving that even very intelligent people can do silly things like putting information they want to be kept secret where it can be found by hackers. (Hacking an astronomy site is totally off the scale of geekiness.)

The planet hasn't yet been named. For now it's being called 2003 UB313. The team has submitted a name proposal but hasn't chosen to share it with us yet.

Quick, Henry, the Flit!

Discover Magazine has an article about malaria, Fighting the Parasite from Hell. It discusses the different types of cures that have been used and the search for new ones to combat resistant forms of the parasite. Very little of the article is about trying to combat the mosquitoes, the carriers of the parasite.

Within 20 years, mass chloroquine treatment, along with DDT spraying and other antimosquito measures, removed the threat of disease from more than 500 million people living in formerly malaria-ridden areas.

To be effective, the drugs need to be taken over several days. There would need to be 300 to 500 million treatment courses for one year in Africa and even if the new drug development goes smoothly those treatments won't be available for at least five years.

The article ends with this paragraph:

In waging war against malaria, no weapon has proved perfect, no judgment completely unflawed. For the next stage, it’s worth recalling some wisdom from the native land of qinghao. Centuries before Ge Hang proclaimed its healing power, General Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: “Now in war there may be one hundred changes in each step. But when one sees he can, he advances.” The greatest pitfall in the battle against malaria is inaction.

It seems to me that the banning of DDT was one of those flawed judgments. It may not be an ideal solution but the controlled use of pesticide beats letting people suffer and die while waiting for the perfect cure.

(The title of the post comes from an advertising campaign for Flit insecticide that was done by Dr. Seuss.)

TED Global

Universe 'too queer' to grasp

Professor Dawkins' opening talk, in a session called Meme Power, explored the ways in which humans invent their own realities to make sense of the infinitely complex worlds they are in; worlds made more complex by ideas such as quantum physics which is beyond most human understanding.

"Are there things about the Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle, ungraspable in any mind, however superior?" he asked.

You can tell this is serious and important because our possible lack of an ability to understand everything has to do with science and humanity. Not at all like those people who attribute the complexity of the universe to God and believe that our lack of understanding has to do with the inferiority of man compared to Him.

I guess for me it's just a matter of semantics.

My teenage son did like the suggestion "that perhaps children should be given computer games to play with that familiarise them with quantum physics concepts." He would suppport anything that had to do with gaming of any kind.

We think that rocks and crystals are solid when in fact they were made up mostly of spaces in between atoms, he argued.

This, he said, was just the way our brains thought about things in order to help us navigate our "middle sized" world - the medium scale environment - a world in which we cannot see individual atoms.

I think I need to know more of what he said than the article reported before I can decide whether or not it makes sense to me. I have a feeling there must be more to it than what was reported. I don't understand how seeing the spaces between atoms would help any more than seeing the spaces between prison bars. It isn't the space that matters, it's the matter between the spaces.

Talk About Processed Meat

Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale

My emotional reaction is "eeeeeeeewwwwwwww". My logical side thinks this could be a valuable source of protein. It could be a good way for countries with limited farmland to produce protein-rich food for its people. The article also mentions this as a possible source for food during space travel. It also mentions producing meat with less fat or better types of fat (Omega 3 instead of Omega 6). I guess that rules out trying to replicate Kobe beef.

(Cross-posted on Mom's Kitchen Weblog)

Annoy Your Friends, Be a Fireworks Nerd

Tonight when you're watching fireworks you can point out that the red is caused by the addition of strontium, blue by copper, green by barium, and yellow/orange by sodium. Aluminum can be golden or white depending on the temperature.

Ooooooh, that strontium, copper, and aluminum combo looks so patriotic!

You can read more about what makes fireworks sparkle here.

The Science Behind the Headlines

The Why Files covers the science behind the news. It's presented by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Science and Faith

I like science. I enjoy the technological advances, the things that make work easier and play more varied. I enjoy reading about the hows and whys things are as they are and feel sadness for those who dismiss scientific study because they feel it threatens their beliefs. I feel even sorrier for those who can only see the mechanics of life and the workings of the universe and are unable to to credit its glories and intricacies to the hand of God.

Take Your Chocolate, It's Good for You

"An ingredient found in cocoa beans was nearly a third more effective than cough medicine in stopping persistent coughs, researchers at Imperial College London found. The ingredient, theobromine, contributes to the bitter taste of cocoa. It works by suppressing vagus nerve activity, which is responsible for coughing."

I made the mistake of reading this to my oldest son who then coughed a couple of times and used that as an excuse to raid my stash of Hershey bars.

The bars only have 74mg of theobromine. It would take 13 of them to get as much theobromine as was used in the study.

RFID Implants

I hate standing in line as much as the next person but I don't think I would go this far...

Clubbers in Spain are choosing to receive a microchip implant instead of carrying a membership card. It is the latest and perhaps the most unlikely of uses for implantable radio frequency ID chips.

The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona offers people signing up for VIP membership a choice between an RFID chip and a normal card. VIP members can jump the entrance queues, reserve a table and use the nightclub's VIP lounge.

My aversion to the idea has more to do with not wanting something implanted under my skin than it has to do with privacy. (The only information the chip transmits is a unique ID number.)