Everyday Scientist

Oh, Snap!

Remember a while back when some guy used fractal analysis to study Jackson Pollock paintings and made a world of bold proclamations, the most important of which was the claim that fractal analysis can be used to refute provenance? Not so much. Apparently all it takes to become the master of “the language of nature” is 5 minutes and photoshop.

Now all that needs to be done is configure our laser jet for a 10×15′ canvas, and I’m richer than L. Ron Hubbard. No flying DC-10 spaceships required.

(Xenu prefers fractional dimensionalities)

bethe talks

Cornell has some cool videos of Hans Bethe talking about quantum mechanics. Here’s his intro: “Quantum theory is the most important discovery of the 20th century. And it has been presented to the public in a completely distorted way, what you hear normally has very little to do with quantum theory.”

There are three 50-minute talks, so you can watch them while waiting for the laser to warm up, the cells to divide, the coffee to percolate, or whatever you do…

another spam—quick, call 911

I was in my home town (Falmouth, Maine) for a few days for a cousin’s wedding. I always read the Police Beat in the local paper. Very funny. This one might top the time some old lady called the police because there was a tennis ball in her yard.

view the satellites

My brother showed me this cool Applet from NASA: you can track tons of satellites! My favorites are the many satellites in geosynchronous orbit—this is called the “Clarke belt” after the author Arthur C. Clark, who discovered/promoted the idea of placing satellites in an orbit with radius 42,000 km. Also, if you click on “Satellite -> Select” and choose “Human Crew” under type, you can see what I presume is the International Space Station. But where’s the type with “Simian Crew,” so we can see how the monkeys are doing?

djerassi debriefing

Today, I had the opportunity to meet with Professor Carl Djerassi—the “father” of the pill—with a few other students. It was an informal 45-minute discussion ranging from our backgrouds, his views on where chemistry has been as a science and where it is going, his time in grad school and as a young professor in the 1940s and ’50s, and literature.

First of all, I sweartogod that he was wearing this exact outfit. He chastised chemists—as the worst among scientist—for not reading literature, not going to the theater, and not immersing themselves in culture while they immerse themselves in science; but he was forgiving. Actually, I was sorta hoping there’d be some juicy stuff to talk about, Djerassi being somewhat of a character, but he was just a nice old man with interesting views.

Powers of Ten – Prepare for the Mind-Melt

Drop everything, hit play.

I first saw this movie, as a wee first year graduate student while killing sometime in the Green library media room. If this doesn’t inspire you to be a scientist, I dont know what will. A high-quality DVD is available from the Stanford media library. From the official site:

In 1977, Charles and Ray Eames made a nine-minute film called Powers of Ten that still has the capacity today to expand the way we think and view our world …

And then there were 8…

Well, the IAU has now decided that Pluto is a planet no more. Resolution 5A passed, which officially demoted the now “Plutonian object.” I have to say I’m very pleased with the outcome. As a scientist, nothing gives me greater pleasure than making children cry. I wonder if it’s too late to get a refund on the New Horizons program…

If I may, a tribute to the far-off, icy land:

Folding in Style

The folding-at-home package has been ported to Sony’s much anticipated PS3 console. The point? None! But, it’ll make Vijay’s group happy and its always nice to see some of our peers get street-cred in the popular media. I hear their groundbreaking cell architecture is a ~10x improvement over your typical PC!

Ah, the irony – this is probably the only software out there that can leverage the PS3’s sweet sweet cpu cycles. Now, if I could only frag more of those proteins … sigh … here is some eye candy:

The official press release from Folding at Home and some coverage from Engadget.

future of biology

Neal sent most of the Chidsey Lab a link to an interesting Charlie Rose interview from last night. It’s loosely about the great Biology discoveries of the past – Darwin, Watson, etc., the merging of chemistry with biology in the 20th century, and the future direction of biology. Check it out – an hour long, but definitely worth watching. Thanks go to Josh “da Man” Ratchford for forwarding it.

Charlie Rose Interview

Thermite: A Classic

There are a handful of reactions used almost exclusively to convince undergrads that chemistry is hip and/or cool. You’ve got your oscillating reactions, exploding hydrogen balloons, and all sorts of pretty colors turning clear. But, the granddaddy of them all is the thermite reaction. (Our friend Dylan at Tenderbutton contributed the melting slot machine).

One of the summer classes just fired off this classic reaction, and I happened to be there to record it. Check it out.

Impressive Caleb, but check out the masters.

I, for one, welcome our new kitten overlords!

I was reading this blurb on slashdot:

“San Diego-based company, Allerca, said that using a technique known as genetic divergence, it has ‘bred the world’s first hypoallergenic kitten, opening the doors and arms of millions of pet lovers for whom cuddling a cat has, until now, been a curse … After identifying the genes of kittens with proteins that provide less of a reaction in humans, they selectively bred litters over several generations to end up with an allergy-friendly super cat.’ The company says its customers are expected to take delivery of their $4,000 hypoallergenic kittens in early 2007.”

Except for one thing – its bullshit! Apparently these boys are also working on GFP imbued flourescent deer, you know, to avoid car accidents. Oh , and by the way, why not just check out the all-natural alternative?

nature’s peer review trial

The journal Nature has decided to perform a new trial peer review process. Check it out here. During a trial period, authors who submit articles to the journal for publication can opt to have their manuscripts available on an open forum, where the whole world can read and comment on the preprint. The normal review process would occur in parallel, but the editors (and presumably reviewers) can read the public comments and take those into consideration in their decision to publish.

I think this is sorta weird. I mean, do we really want the entire world reading our preprints before they are accepted? I mean, there’s a reason we try to keep the entire public out of the loop a little: there are a lot of crazies out there! For instance, I don’t really know anything about Ivor Catt, but he sure seems crazy. Well, I guess it will be sorta like arXiv. I’m not completely opposed to the idea, I just don’t think it’s the best first step in correcting the peer review process.

The first thing I would do is change the half-blind style of reviewing: reviewers know who wrote the paper they are reviewing, but the author never knows who accepted or rejected their manuscript. This is silly. Reviewing should either be fully double-blind or fully open. I lean toward double-blind, anonymous reviewing: I can’t think of any good reason either the reviewer or the author should know the name of the other. The alternative (double-unblind?) would mean more accountability, but might encourage personal vendettas. The current scheme means that the reviewer isn’t accountable—and can either let vendettas fly or let a manuscript slide in by the merits of the author.

Well, I admit that I haven’t really thought about this enough. There’s a lot more to discuss on this topic, but maybe that could be for another post, another day. Or we could head over to the Nature discussion forum on peer review.

Ahh the Onion, so funny it hurts!

This administration has lost its sanity when it comes to “national security.” This story from the Onion is a little dated, but feels more applicable than ever:

Physics T.A. Not Born In U.S.

September 18, 1996 | Issue 30•06

AUSTIN, TX—Scandal rocked the University of Texas Monday, when it was learned that Bin Lu, a 28-year-old physics teaching assistant, was not born in the U.S., but rather in China. “We are investigating this matter fully,” said C. Thomas Brady, Director of Administrative Affairs at the school. “How a foreigner infiltrated our system, and got through our exhaustive set of security clearance checks, is a question we must answer.” Brady vowed to get to the bottom of the matter.

and the original link.

co2 = life … the cei lies to us

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced a few ads promoting CO₂ and carbon-producing fuels in general. Go watch them, they are ridiculous. “Energy” tells us that CO₂ is a wonderful thing and it implies that politicians want us to stop breathing.

“Glaciers” is even better. It flashes two Science articles that have the word “Growth” in the title and claim that there’s credible science out there that shows that the ice caps are actually growing—not shrinking, as the fearmongers would have us believe. But I looked up these two articles (here and here), and CEI flat out lies to us. The articles only report on a small region in which snowfall has increased. But that in no way disputes that our ice caps are melting and that our globe is warming. In fact the acticles acknowledge global warming, even as a factor in the increased snowfall. One article’s abstract states: “Winter elevation changes are shown to be linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation,” which is sensitive to global climate change. A citing article states: “Atmospheric modeling indicates that increasing snow accumulation has been important over the last decades, perhaps in response to weak warming, especially in coastal regions.” The other paper claims that the increased snowfall might mitigate immediate sea-level rise, a statement that inherently acknowledges global warming as an Earth-altering trend.

The real deception of the CEI ad is that it claims there is disagreement in the scientific community over global climate change. Not only is that claim false, these two papers fail to support that view, regardless.

The worst part is that CEI’s tactics will probably be effective in confusing naïve people (which is most of us).