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Science Friday: driving without headlights

September 21, 2007 7 comments

The Arecibo radiotelescope observatory is a top scientific instrument, unique in all the world.  In addition to looking deeply into the universe, it is also the highest-resolution device we have for mapping Earth-colliding objects.  It can probe the Moon for water, and much, much more.  It’s a tremendous bargain at $8m/yr to run.

And it’s in danger of closing for want of the US contribution of four million bucks a year, or about 20 minutes’ cost for the Iraq war

Why do instruments like the Hubble and Arecibo, which are great bargains, have to go begging for funds, while flashy wasteful projects like the International Space Station go on hemorrhaging our tax dollars and returning nothing?  (Just for comparison, you could run Arecibo for 1,600 years for what it will cost to finish the scientifically useless International Space Station.)  One reason could be that in a jaw-dropping 1994 act of bean-counting foolishness,  the Republican-controlled congress closed the Office of Technology Assessment, the non-partisan scientific auditing arm of our legislative branch.  This is like not replacing the headlights on your car to save lunch money. 

There’s a proposal and a petition to bring back the OTA.  There’s certainly never been a better time to spend a little bit of dough to make sure we’re getting the biggest bang for our science buck.  Check out the link, write your congressman, sign the petition, and help unlobotomize Congress.

UPDATES:

Science Friday post: spiders are your friends

August 31, 2007 2 comments

Imagine a spider web the size of a football field.  Or several, built by millions of spiders in Texas.

“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent at the park that is located about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Millions of mosquitoes dying a horrible death.  I always treat spiders with respect, because I generally prefer the company of the spider to that of whatever it eats.  But damn, that’s a lot of eight-legged freaks…

Science Friday open thread: the Bridgekeeper’s Questions Three

June 29, 2007 8 comments

In joining the new blogging tradition (it seems absurd to speak of “tradition” and “blogging” in the same sentence) of “Science Friday”, I wanted to draw attention to interesting science-related, or even just reality-related posts and articles that I’d found around the net that week.  The problem is in choosing, not finding; I am fascinated by so many aspects of our natural world.

Today, like the bridgekeeper of The Bridge Of Death, I have three questions, and hope to start a discussion:

  1. What in our current education system stands in the way of teaching math and science?

  2. How can we stimulate kids’ interest in math and science?
  3. Would anyone like to share an especially good or particularly bad personal experience in math or science education?

Multiple and conflicting answers are fine; surely it’s a multifaceted topic.

I’ll go first:  once we had a total eclipse of the sun in our area.  Instead of planning for and exploiting the educational value of this once-in-a-lifetime event, the local school district decided to keep all the kids indoors with the blinds drawn.  I took my kids out of school, and we drove to the central point of the eclipse a half-hour away.  There, with correct eye protection and a pinhole solar viewer, we observed the eclipse.  It was amazing, not least because of how the local environment changed – the drop in temperature, the thousands of sun-images projected on the ground through holes in the leaves of trees, animal behavior (quiet), and the eerie light which suffused everything.  But the science education, if any, was performed by nature; all we had to do was be there and pay attention.

Yes, I skipped questions one and two – I hope to find inspiration for next week’s post in your answers.  I’m working on an original science education post based on a photograph and one of my kids’ other science education experiences.

Science Friday: teen sex, transformers, roofing materials, floating houses and a bear

June 22, 2007 7 comments

Five things I found interesting this week:

1) We liberals enjoy crowing about how Abstinence-Only sex education doesn’t work and sure enough, it doesn’t.  Kids who get the “keep it zipped” curriculum – even the ones who take virginity pledges, have sex at about the same rate as anyone else.  But does any sex education work?  In his post, ‘Sex Education, why it doesn’t work’,  Jonah Lehrer of Frontal Cortex quotes an essay that questions whether we have anything to be smug about either, followed by analysis of an R-rated study on teen male sexuality.  Valuable stuff to be sure, but one phrase in particular caught my eye;

You can put an adult in front of a classroom or an assembly, and that adult can emit words, but don’t expect much impact.

You think this problem is confined to sex education?  Seems to me it applies to algebra, history, the whole education model.  While we’re up in front of kids talking, learning is incidental to boredom.  Kids (at least when they’re young) are watching to see what interests us and they can tell we’re not interested in the multiplication tables.  They’ve pretty much tuned us out entirely by the time we get to sex education, unless we’ve managed to keep a real relationship alive.  They only pay attention when we say something unexpected.

Kids expect us to say “don’t have sex” and they may appear to pay attention.  They may even tacitly agree, but when Mother Nature plants her 500-foot billboards in their bloodstreams, they won’t ignore her, and that’s the worst possible time for self-deception.  Want your kids to pay attention to you?  As the old saying goes, “If the bishop says there’s a God, that’s all in the way of business, but if he says there isn’t, you’d better listen.”  Tell them the truth they don’t expect to hear from you.  I told my kids, teen sex is like juggling live hand grenades – exciting, but better avoided.  But if you do it, don’t deceive yourself.  Go to Planned Parenthood with your girlfriend beforehand, and pay attention as if your life depends on it.

How to apply the principle of the unexpected to teaching algebra?  Hmmm…

2) I linked a post from Cajun last week, but here’s a couple more that I just found so darn entertaining, about transformers.  Not the idiotic new movie about shape-shifting machines, but devices for changing the voltage of a circuit.  Briefly, you use a soft iron core to rout a magnetic field from one coil of wire to another.  The ratio between the number of windings in the two coils (and a few other things) determines the change in voltage between input and output.  The device only works with oscillating current at a frequency faster than the magnetic field collapse in the core.

Transformers are everywhere – you probably have a few hundred in your home and garage.  Your cell phone charger is a transformer.  There’s a couple in your microwave oven, your TIVO, your TV, your computer, your alarm clock.  There are miniature transformers in circuits that serve impedance-matching functions. The ignition coil in your automobile engine is a transformer.  And so is that large can-shaped object up on the phone pole behind your house.  Larger transformers can be seen at electrical substations. 

When your cell phone charger breaks, you just pitch it in the trash and buy another one.  But some of the transformers in industry are “mission critical” and… well read for yourself.  The demise of an extremely important transformer the size of a half a loaf of bread in Old Crap and another, much bigger transformer in Brotherhood of shared misery.  The latter, sadly humorous in the “glad it happened to somebody else” vein, is Cajun’s 2400th post.  And if you liked those two stories, here’s another.

3) And this one got me thinking because I’ll be needing a new roof in the next couple years:  white roof saves the planet?  It makes intuitive sense to me that a lighter-colored roof – not necessarily white – could save a butt-load of electricity during the roasting-hot Illinois summer.  And, I’m interested in alternative roofing materials, like composite panels and such.  We’re accustomed to shingles, but is that the best way to do residential roofs?  I notice businesses don’t use them.  I should start researching this – materials, building codes, etc.  Might be time for some new thinking on what’s overhead.

4) And speaking of unconventional ideas in housing – New Orleans please take note – check out Saving Holland.  Houses that float?  Might be a challenge securing them against high winds while letting them rise up to four meters with the flood waters, but it’s a neat idea.  “Oh, ho-hum, it’s another flood.  What’s on TV?”  (You’d only be that blase’ if you also had a floating garage, I suppose)

5) Finally, a story about a bear.  When I was a kid, our pets travelled with us.  Once in the Canadian Rockies, a bear came into our campsite.  Our cat simply teleported onto the top bunk of our camper, but our dog rushed the invader, snarling and barking.  “Time to get a new dog,” I thought.  But the bear ambled off into the woods. 

A funny story, but here’s one that could have turned out a lot differently.  A bear wanders into the campsite, the 6-year-old kid (as dumb as my old dog) throws a shovel at it, and the bear charges the kid.  And what does dear ol’ dad do?  Let’s just say, he’s getting one hell of a father’s day present next year…

Science and lunch, for the birds

June 15, 2007 3 comments

Science isn’t all big research programs and laboratories full of equipment.  Sometimes, it’s just observation – just a guy sitting on a pier with a camera.  As Richard Feynman said in his memoir, What do you care what other people think?,

“See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush. But in Italian it’s a chutto lapittida. In Portuguese it’s a bom da peide. In Chinese, it’s a chung-long-tah, and in Japanese it’s a katano tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. Now, let’s look at the bird and what it’s doing.”

I have run across a lot of interesting bird lore this week:

  • Cajun is watching a really big bird, and some humans too in a just-plain-interesting view of the waterfront on While I was at lunch.  (And while you’re there, you might enjoy his combination of technical acumen and high-voltage storytelling: Ouch!)

  • You may have wondered what a “Hummer nest” looks like, here is a series.  (Tiny hovering birds that drink nectar from flowers, not giant SUV’s that drive up gas prices) Be sure to page through the development stages – these are amazing photos. (from A Normal Backyard, who has some telephoto shots of a black and white downey woodpecker.
  • Some raptors are being delisted from the Endangered Species roster.  But they’re probably not out of danger of extinction – the delisting is for other reasons.
  • Blog Around The Clock reviews an ecosystem modeling article that doesn’t look so good for our feathered friends: Birds are in trouble.  Short version: as local ecosystems become more fragmented, bird life cycles are interrupted.
  • And a Mother Jones report on the result: Common birds are disappearing.

In other news…

  • Given the stakes on global warming, real data on the Earth’s albedo should be at a premium.  Since the satellite would just about settle the climate question for everyone, you’d think the government would be in a hurry to launch it, but they’re not.  It is suspicious that when other governments said; “We’ll pay to launch it” our government said; “No thanks.”  Maybe it’s because we’re too busy spending all our space money on idiot stunt projects and the white elephant (space station) in the sky.
  • Since the satellite is going nowhere, wouldn’t it be nice if a rationale for action could be found that didn’t depend on whether you believe in global warming or not? Check out the thought-provoking video, Global warming risks made simple
  • In other satellite news, Bob Park notes:
    The Associated Press this week quoted a letter from the chief of NOAA to a Florida Congressman warning that although the aging QuikScat satellite could fail at any moment, replacement plans have been pushed back to 2016. Loss of QuikScat would seriously degrade predictions of the intensity and path of hurricanes. It was launched in 1999 with a design life of two to three years.

  • In science education news, Don at LCA has a clip and a link to one of the last interviews with “Mr. Wizard” Don Herbert, who passed away recently.  I hope every generation has someone who cares enough to get in front of a camera and present science in an interesting way for kids.  I miss the show 3,2,1 Contact with its wonderful spoof on Dragnet

While I was writing this, Webs05 came up on his awesome new mountain bike.  He will surely review it on his blog.  I’ll update this post with a link when he does.  If he doesn’t kill himself on it first ;-)   (MrsDoF is uncomfortable with that jest… she suggests; “If he doesn’t break his typing arm on it first”)  I am unfamiliar with the concept of a “typing arm” but the point is well-taken.  Don’t kill yourself, Webs.

Science Friday potpourri - just some neato stuff

June 8, 2007 1 comment

Lots of assorted fun this week.  First, some popcorn.  I’m kinda spoiled: MrsDoF is an artist with the lightest, tastiest theater-style popcorn imaginable. (It’s better than anything I’ve ever had in a theater)  Yet most people seem satisfied to toss a bag into a box and push a button.  I can’t stand the stench of microwave popcorn and now I know why – that stuff will kill you.  Don’t believe me?  Check out The Pump Handle on “Does Orville Redenbacher know if popping popcorn at home is dangerous?”  It turns out the artificial buttery flavor isn’t something you really want to be breathing.  Nor, it turns out, are the emissions from the packaging all that great either; the PFOA flourotelomer coating degrades into some nasty carcinogenic stuff. 

(And yet The Onion reports that Buttery goodness is now America’s top domestic product.)  ;-)

I do love a good graphic representation of statistical reality.  How about all the plastic bottles the US uses in five minutes?  Or thirty seconds worth of aluminum pop cans, arranged as a classic pointillist painting?  Check out the awesome gallery in Running The Numbers; an American self-portrait. (From The World’s Fair)

And finally, it is true that evolutionary concepts can be taxing for some.  Would an explanatory visit from God Almighty be too much to ask? In web-comic form, perhaps?  Asked and answered:  Genesis 2, by Dan Beeston Actually it IS a no-foolin’ high-quality exposition of evolutionary selective forces acting on species.  In comic form.  No word if Dan Beeston really got a visit from God but I won’t be looking for this in the next RSV bible. (from Evolving Thoughts)

Science Friday: how kids learn scientific thinking, and what happens if they don’t

June 1, 2007 2 comments

In the May 18th issue of Science was a review paper that started a lot of discussion around the web:  Childhood origins of adult resistance to science.  The paper is academic but has deadly serious political implications that the authors leave to the readers.  Some thought-provoking insights arose among science bloggers in response:

  • From ‘Adventures in Science and Ethics’, Janet Stemwedel is trying to figure out how to talk to her kids about science in Resisting scientific ideas

  • Mixing Memory asks; why is it so difficult for some people to understand or accept the reality of evolution as a biological mechanism for speciation? Thinking about evolution
  • Coturnix at ‘Blog around the clock’ explores the whole “intuitive model” aspect more deeply in More than just resistance to science

Another big science news item is that Bush’s NASA head, Mike Griffin, trotted out the old “hey, how do we even know global warming would be a bad thing?” canard this week. Apparently he hasn’t been paying attention to his own scientists or even stopped to think… well, that pretty much covers it.  But ‘Dynamics Of Cats’ delivers the smackdown on that particularly inanity: the arrogance of the privileged, and a follow-up in Moral consequences.  And tangential to that is an elegant way of saying an important truth about economics and ecology: Quantity has a quality all its own.  Science journalist Michael Oppenheimer collects some science community reaction to Griffin’s blathering in More reaction to Griffin’s laid-back approach to climate change

‘Evolving Thoughts’ is cooking up a really cool series on “the universe as it would be if the Bible were an accurate science book”.  Here’s the first installment: The World according to Genesis: The cosmos

Finally, there’s this $50m skull.  How wierdly fascinating.

Science Friday, one day late: old ideas in optics with new applications and far-reaching consequence

May 26, 2007 2 comments

When I was a kid I carried a small magnifying glass and also a 10x jeweller’s lupe around with me everywhere.  When our family went on vacation, I brought my microscope along. I could learn so much more from a bug or a leaf if I looked at it under magnification.

  1. Check out this 3D camera the size of a shirt-button.  The article says “the technology is not new”, which is an understatement considering flies have been doing it for some time now.  But what is new is putting it all on a chip.  Think machine-vision applications for this one with lots of industrial spinoffs.

  2. The new James Webb space telescope (which won’t be a straight replacement for the Hubble) has an innovative multi-segment beryllium mirror.  It is a cool idea for a cryogenic mirror, but I hope they have some pretty ferocious safety guards in place, because that’s a metal you don’t want to breathe. 
  3. Solar concentrators are not a new idea, but here’s a nifty connection to improve the efficiency (and thus reduce the cost) of electricity from solar cells
  4. I love the idea of adaptive optics where a mirror actually changes shape, and is connected to other mirrors under microcomputer control, compensating for atmospheric turbulence to give super-sharp images from the ground.  (This is also not a substitute for the Hubble telescope)  But I never would have guessed that it would be enhancing human vision.  They were working on helping visually-impaired people but wound up with the germ of a system that could “dramatically improve vision even for people with normal vision”:
    Williams has found that the visual acuity of the human eye can be somewhere around 20/10. While adaptive optics may someday help patients approach that level, he says that acuity isn’t the most noticeable improvement. Adaptive optics improves eyesight most under low-light conditions, such as night-time driving. MacRae, the laser surgery expert, estimates that a driver sharing the road with a bicyclist at dusk could see the bicyclist from roughly twice as far away if he or she were equipped with adaptive optics correction.

    In the past, Williams has used the system to look into the eye. In a series of papers in such journals as Nature, Williams’ team has published the best images ever obtained of the living human retina. Last year the team was able to differentiate the three types of cones in the living human retina. Detailed information of the eye is helpful to ophthalmologists monitoring patients with diseases like age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy.

    While the current set-up is too bulky to bring the experience of enhanced vision or super vision to many patients, MacRae is confident that that day is not too far off.

    “Someday you may no longer have to sit and answer patiently when you’re asked repeatedly whether lens No. 1 or lens No. 2 is better,” MacRae says. “Someday you may just look into a wavefront sensor as David has developed, and in one quick second we’ll have all the information needed to improve someone’s vision dramatically.”

  5. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the long-term implications of this one: using visible light to pump x-ray emissions for tabletop x-ray microscopy.  It could be as big a revolution (on a smaller scale) as CAT or MRI.  As in: examining that lump in the breast at a microscopic level without doing a biopsy

What will kids’ science-toys a century from now look like?  For that matter, what will we all be seeing?  What will we know?

Science Friday: climate special

May 18, 2007 7 comments

This has been a week to find really interesting articles about climate – except for one that I found several weeks ago and have been waiting for an occasion to post:

  1. With the passing of Jerry Falwell, it is worth noting that Evangelicals split on global warming – a schism for which Falwell himself bears quite some responsibility.  After all in the Christian legend, sustainable stewardship of the Earth was the very first instruction of God to man, right before “stay away from that tree”.

  2. Given the amount of denialist misinformation there is floating around on climate issues, I’m thrilled to see New Scientist magazine has a compendium of answers to global warming myths in “Climate Change: a guide for the perplexed”.  Useful enough that I’m putting it in my permanent science links in the sidebar.
  3. The South Polar Ocean has stopped absorbing carbon dioxide, forty years ahead of the time predicted by various climate models.  For anyone still unclear on the concept, this is a bad thing even if you are pleased by flaws in climate models.
  4. For a good example of why we need to present the case as clearly as possible in a way that will be accessable, look no further than Senator James Inhofe spewing the same old FUD on climate as if a political agenda were the same thing as truth.  It’s painful to watch, but instructive.
  5. One common climate canard is that “it was warmer during the time of the dinosaurs”.  Which has exactly nada to do with how things are today, and the Climate Blog explains why. (From LCA)
  6. …speaking of whom, Don at Life Cycle Analysis features a documentary movie, The Plough That Broke The Plains about the North American high plains and the dust bowl.  The 1936 style is slower, more measured, and far less polemical than the documentaries that are made today – which is interesting in itself.
  7. And while this isn’t really a climate link, Deep Sea News reports explorers have found a half-billion dollars in colonial-era gold and silver coins, 17 tons worth.  Be sure to check out the picture – wow.  What can I say, but “Yarrgh!  Shivver me timbers!!!  But in a painfully predictable move, a lawsuit has been filed by Spain, claiming “Yarrgh!  The booty be ours!

‘Til next week, which will be either neurology frontiers or astronomy (because I’ve been running into a lot of cool articles on both).  Unless I can figure out a way to combine the two. ;-)


Updates:

  • Just to make things interesting, one source of ambiguity in the data and early climate models is that global warming effects are partially masked by global dimming, which (due to particulate matter in the atmosphere from incomplete fossil fuel combustion) reduces the sunlight reaching the ground.  Thing is, fuel-saving jet engine design results in less particulate matter high in the atmosphere,  which is a good thing and all… except then the dimming effect reduces and the greenhouse-warming effect slingshots.  The embedded video in the link is sensationalistic media stuff but the article also has a Wiki link that is very good.