Home > Geeking Out
Fun With Tick Clockwork
Credit: National Tick Collection |
Vicky and I went for a short hike in Chesapeake’s Northwest River Park last weekend, a lovely site filled with marshland and waterways for canoeing, camping, … and ticks. Hot summer days combined with the humidity of the wetlands climate equals lots and lots of ticks, and this hike was no exception.
Except for Vicky. While I had to stop every so many hundred yards to scan my legs for the little bloodsuckers, of which I was literally finding dozens, Vicky found maybe four on her the whole trip. What gives?
Carl Sagan gives a brief description of the life of a tick in his book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and the small set of instinctual rules that command its life. Lacking eyes, ticks must find each other to mate by detecting the pheromones C6H3 OHCl2. Then:
After mating, the female climbs up a bush or shrub and out onto a twig or leaf. How does she know which way is up? Her skin can sense the direction from which light is coming, even if she cannot generate an optical image of her surroundings. Poised out on the leaf or twig, exposed to the elements, she waits. Conception has not yet occurred. The sperm cells within her are neatly encapsulated; they’ve been put in long-term storage. She may wait for months or even years without eating. She is very patient.
Makes the tick sound like a tiny clockwork machine, doesn’t it? It’s possible to have some fun with this instinctual behavior too. As when Vicky and I put a blood-engorged tick in a sealed vial, where it soon laid a bazillion eggs, which hatched a few months later.
Credit: Vicky |
The baby ticks all climbed to the top of the vial. When the vial was turned over, they all climbed to the highest point again. Over and over again, until they eventually stopped moving (Don’t tell PETA). It was like some twisted version of an hourglass, appropriate for some Tim Burton film. Try this sometime, it makes a great conversational piece when you have guests over that you’re not very fond of.
Eventually, the right stimulus comes along the forest path, triggering the tick to drop, hopefully (for her), onto something full of blood:
What she’s waiting for is a smell, a whiff of another specific molecule, perhaps butyric acid, which can be written C2H7COOH. Many mammals, including humans, give off butyric acid from their skin and sexual parts. A small cloud of the stuff follows them around like cheap perfume. It’s a sex attractant for mammals. But ticks use it to find food for prosepctive mothers.
Here’s the clue as to why I was getting bum-rushed with blood-sucking arachnids, while Vicky was passing through the forest virtually untouched, butyric acid. Vicky had showered that morning and put on fresh clothes, while I figured I’d shower after the hike, and put on my workout clothes from the day before. I even wore the same icky socks. Vicky was virtually clean of butyric acid, while I was fairly drenched in the stuff.
So while I like to joke that the ticks preferred me because I was sweeter, in reality, they wanted me because I was stinkier! (Why am I sharing this with you?)
In fact, this basic instinctual set of commands can cause the arachnid to exhibit some buggy (in a software-metaphor sense of the word) behavior, as with the stimulus to trigger her blood-drinking response:
It’s not the taste of the blood that attracts her, but the warmth. If she drops onto a butyric acid-scented toy balloon filled with warm water, she will readily puncture it and, an inept Dracula, gorge herself on tap water.
I think I have plans for some future fun with stinky socks and warm-water filled balloons in my future. : )
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Port Discover’s a Bargain for Elizabeth City
Credit: Bonnie*B |
I am thrilled by City Council’s decision to fund the expansion of the Port Discover Science Center over the next five years. This is a wise and prescient use of public funds that will benefit the local community by further beautifying downtown, contributing to Elizabeth City’s growing intellectual character, and offering children a place where they may immerse themselves in self-directed exploration.
Expanding Port Discover Keeps Downtown Beautiful
The recent migration of the Pasquotank Arts Council and the Encore Theater into the Arts of the Albemarle building has had the unfortunate side effect of leaving a huge, prominent empty space in downtown Elizabeth City’s facade. The mere $15k a year necessary to allow Port Discover to expand into this vacancy is a bargain price for preventing another big empty storefront from marring downtown EC. Display windows filled with beautiful science exhibits and smiling children will create a welcoming atmosphere and experience that visitors will take home with them, encouraging others to visit here.
|
Port Discover Contributes to EC’s Intellectual Character
Downtown EC will have large centers for the sciences and the humanities right across from each other on Main Street, and historical pursuits just a few blocks down the street at the Museum of the Albemarle. Add Elizabeth City State University’s sizeable campus residing just a mile down the road, and you realize there is an incredible amount of academic enlightenment and culture packed into a town with a population of just 20,188 people.
Port Discover Inspires Learning
In Plato’s Republic he argues, “No compulsory learning can remain in the soul… In teaching children, train them by a kind of game, and you will be able to see more clearly the natural bent of each.” Today research shows how true this is, where children will spend hours surfing the web, actively exploring the things that interest them without a clue that they might be learning something in the process. The educational video games, microscopes, and hands-on activities offered at the science center are completely immersive educational experiences. Children will learn more in a few hours of self-directed, hands-on exploration at Port Discover than they would at several days worth of summer school.
A vibrant downtown area is key to bringing visitors and investments into this community. Expanding the Science Center for just $1,250 a month into a vacant building is the perfect use of public funds for keeping EC a place where people will want to visit and maybe even set down roots. Hyper-Mega-Kudos to City Council for their forward thinking in this matter.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Luminaries for Scientists at the Relay for Life
Vicky introduced me to the Relay for Life this year, an all-night fundraising event where teams raise money for the American Cancer Society. We brought some of the neighborhood kids to the event, and much fun was had by one and all. The most impactful moment of the night for me was the Luminaria Ceremony, where a seemingly endless list of the names of people who have died from or are currently surviving cancer is read. The names Patrick Swayze and Farrah Fawcett both came up, and that added to the impact, but also a name I that took me by surprise; although, it shouldn’t have:
|
Carl Sagan, my biggest hero, died of pneumonia after a two-year battle with bone marrow cancer on December 20, 1996. There is a memorial to Sagan on the planet Mars, where the marker displays a quote from him that reads, “Whatever the reason you’re on Mars, I’m glad you’re there, and I wish I was with you.” I envy the future humans who will get to see that monument in person.
Credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology |
This very thoughtful luminary made me think of another scientist who died of cancer who I would like to see honored. Rosalind Franklin, who’s 1952 Photo 51 captured the basic structure of the DNA molecule, performed her research spending long hours directly in front of an X-ray beam, which almost certainly led to the ovarian cancer that ultimately killed her and prevented her from receiving the Nobel Prize with Francis and Crick for deciphering the molecule1.
Credit: Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology |
Physicist and chemist Marie Curie also deserves a note here. She was awarded two Nobel prizes, one for her research into radiation (she coined the term “radioactivity”), and another for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. She was the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person to win two of them, and one of only two people to have been awarded two Nobels in two different fields. Curie died of aplastic anemia, an illness where bone marrow does not produce sufficient new cells to replenish blood cells, a condition certainly brought on by her over-exposure to radiation; however, she deserves mention here because it was under her direction that the world’s first studies were conducted into the treatment of cancers using radioactive isotopes. Today the United Kingdom charitable organization Marie Curie Cancer Care bares her name in honor of her achievements.
Even if you don’t have anyone close to you who has died of cancer or is currently wrestling with the disease, you could donate money toward a luminary for one of these visionary pioneers whose lives were cut short by it.
1 It is unknown if she would have actually received the prize, but she did deserve to share in it; unfortunately, they do not award the Nobel posthumously.
Note: The Carl Sagan Appreciation Society (this is a staging version of the site) works to maintain Sagan’s incredible legacy.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Don’t Tax Plastic Bags, Tax the Hell Out of Them
|
On June 1, 2008, China joined countries like Bangladesh, Ireland, and Rwanda, and the city of San Francisco in instituting a ban on plastic bags. As a result, China saved 1.6 million tons of oil in the year following the ban, the amount of oil it would have taken to manufacture 40 billion plastic bags.
In addition to reducing China’s dependence of foreign oil, the country is also taking a stand against a form of pollution that has incredible detrimental environmental consequences. Plastic bags make up 10 percent of the debris that washes up on America’s coastline, they are choking whales, dolphins, seals, and turtles that mistake them for food, and are breaking down into toxic petro-polymers which we consume as they enter the food chain.
Credit: Melbourne Zoo |
With all the economic, environmental, and public health benefits of doing away with plastic bags, I made the mistake of thinking State Senator Marc Basnight’s proposed plastic bag tax, which would levy 10 to 20 cents on each plastic bag, the revenues from which would go to pay for college scholarships. Win-win right?
Nope. Dare County Republican Party Chairman Keven Connor has a complaint about politicians who want clean air and water. According to Connor:
They cower to broken science without any consideration whatsoever of the economic consequences to thousands of people and the businesses they depend on for a livelihood.
If a plastic bag ban is bad for the American economy, then why wasn’t it bad for China’s economy? This is a country that is expected to outrank the United States as the world’s largest economy and exporter in the near future. How is reducing America’s dependence of foreign oil bad for the economy? How is preventing toxins from having deleterious effects on the public health bad for the economy? How is sending kids to college bad for the economy?
Why is Connor so confused. Here’s a hint:
This is a textbook example of why science is not perfect; it’s all subjective.
It’s obvious that when Connor uses the term “subjective” to describe science, he is confusing the field with his own discipline, politics, where obfuscation, distortion, and spurious interpretations of the facts are required skills for success. Not so with science, where an impeccable, reproducible, and thoroughly peer-reviewed understanding of the truth is mandatory in order to produce complex medical procedures, nuclear power, computer systems, and all the conveniences of modern life. Try making a subjective interpretation of the second law of motion and see how many rocket ships you get into space.
Liberalism in America poses a threat to one of our most basic freedoms: private property rights. They’re already working to ban smoking in privately owned establishments; now they’re trying to dictate how retailers will bag our groceries based on an imperfect science.
This is the most disingenuous part of Connor’s largely entirely unsubstantiated letter, the idea that we are going to have to just keep putting mercury in your food supply, bisphenol-A in your baby bottles, and pollution into the air you breath because to do otherwise would infringe on people’s “property rights.” That’s because, in Connor’s world, your health and well-being are neither property nor a right.
Credit: halflifehalflived |
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment |
Benjamin Franklin’s Electrical Goof
The 1700s were a century of phenomenal progress in the subject of electricity. Luigi Galvani discovered that electricity made dead muscles twitch, inspiring Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Alessandro Volta discovered that electricity was dynamic, flowing through conductive materials like water in a stream, which is why we call it an “electric current.” William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle discovered that running an electric current through water broke the molecular bonds, generating hydrogen and oxygen, linking the stuff of electricity to the very atoms themselves (Asimov, 1985).
Credit: Peter Collinson, Royal Society |
The great American polymath, Benjamin Franklin, made some major contributions to our understanding of the stuff as well. In his Memoirs there is a section Wonderful effect of points.—Positive and negative Electricity, where he hypothesizes, correctly, that electricity is only one fluid, and electric currents, like static electric shocks and lightning, are the result of an excess of this fluid in one place and a deficit in another, which sought equilibrium.
A, who stands on wax, and rubs the tube, collects the electrical fire from himself into the glass… B, passing his knuckle along near the tube, receives the fire which was collected by the glass from A… To C, standing on the floor, both appear to be electrisied… If A and B approach to touch each other, the spark is stronger, because the difference between them is greater; after such touch there is no spark between either of them and C, because the electrical fire in all is reduced to the original equality… Hence have arisen some new terms among us; we say B is electrisied positively; A, negatively. Or rather, B is electrisied plus; A, minus.
We know now that this “electrical fire” Franklin speaks of is a surplus of electrons, and he was correct that static electric shocks were the result of deficits and surpluses of electrons. The problem was that he had no way of knowing where the surplus, the plus/positive, was. So he took a 50/50 guess… and got it wrong. He meant to give electrons the positive/plus/excess charge, and where they flow to the negative/minus/deficit charge.
For most conceptual purposes, this causes no problems with understanding electricity; however, in thinking of electricity as a flowing entity, it does vex slightly. As Isaac Asimov observes, when recounting how the scientist Michael Faraday used it in naming the two poles between a flowing electric current:
The two poles were “electrodes,” from Greek words meaning “electrical route.” The positive pole was the “anode” (“upper route”) and the negative pole, the “cathode” (“lower route”). This visualized the electric current flowing, as water would, from the higher positions of the anode to the lower position of the cathode. Actually, now that we follow the electron flow, the electric current is moving from the cathode to the anode, so that, if we go by the names, it is moving uphill. Fortunately, no one pays any attention whatever to the Greek meaning of the words, and scientists use these terms without the slightest feeling of incongruity. (Well, Greek scientists might smile.)
So, thanks to Benjamin Franklin, electric currents are an excess of negatively charged electrons flowing to the deficit of electrons, where there is a positive charge. Thanks to this labeling, we inadvertently labeled the point from which the electrons flow lower and the point to which they flow higher.
You now have enough background to get the following cartoon:
Credit: XKCD |
I do have to side with those academics who argue Franklin wasn’t wrong in assigning electrons the negative charge. Electrons and protons could just have easily had their respective charges named “up” and “down,” as we do with some quarks, or “black” and “white,” or “male” and “female.” The labels “positive” and “negative” assign no characteristics to the particles except to describe them as opposites.
Okay… maybe it does irk me slightly. But, living in America, solving this problem has to take a lower priority than adopting the metric system or establishing phonetic spelling.
References
Asimov, Isaac (1985). Salt and Battery, printed in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mercury Press Inc.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Port Discover Science Center Needs Your Enthusiasm
Nobody flunks a science museum. - Frank Oppenheimer, founder of Exploratorium
for Knobbs Creek Recreation Center’s Safety Day |
There’s a feeling I get when I find a picture of a living species on Earth that looks as though it belongs in a science fiction film, come across a new mathematical equation that explains some part of the world around me I previously thought unquantifiable, or read the philosophical speculations of a researcher who has spent a decade immersed in the intricate details of some obscure scientific realm. These are discoveries already made known to the world, but I am discovering them personally for the first time, and I come away from them seeing the entire world around me with a new layer of understanding. I’m addicted to this feeling, constantly seeking it out, so that I am perpetually looking at the world in a different light.
This state of mind, the sense of harmony we receive from comprehending that our reality is orderly and understandable is known as the Ionian Enchantment, a term coined by the physicist and philosopher Gerald Holton, and I’ve always thought the Physicist Richard Feynman best articulated it in this passage:
The World looks so different after learning science. For example, trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into tree. [A]nd in the ash is the small remnant part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth, instead. These are beautiful things, and the content of science is wonderfully full of them. They are very inspiring, and they can be used to inspire others.
A regular visit to the Port Discover science center in downtown Elizabeth City offers a fresh bit of Ionian enchantment each month. Walk into the center one week and you might find a light box filled with rows of sprouting plants, another week might find a new terrarium filled with local plant life, and every month brings new guest speakers to present engaging perspectives on the infinite enlightening subjects science has to offer. This perpetual introduction of new ideas to engage the mind is an attribute of all good science centers.
When volunteers were helping to put the Port Discover together, Director LuAnne Pendergraft kept reminding everyone that we were building a center not a museum. Nearly 50 years ago the Science Center Movement began, a “dramatic shift toward the empowerment of students and individuals to be in control of their own learning,” and creating “new institutions of ideas rather than things.” Yet, despite being a half-century in age, the movement is still in its emergent phase, still catching on; however, as Alan Nursall of Science North argues, centers serve an important need in our communities:
A science center can illustrate to visitors that science is an energizing human activity and that great works of science are as passionate and inspirational as great music, art, and sport… [Science Centers] must provide an opportunity to enjoy science, to do science, to laugh at and about science, to be skeptical of science, and to be awed by science. We need places like that—science arenas—where we can play with our friends and let our minds work up a sweat.
LED Booklights at the Port Discover booth for the Fourth of July |
Port Discover serves this fantastic function in our community, and it does so with a miniscule amount of space. Recently, the space adjacent to the science center became vacant, providing the perfect opportunity to expand; however, in order to do this, Port Discover needs public funding to purchase the space, and is asking for $50,000 each year for three years, which the center will match with equal funds raised through charitable donations:
May 6, 2009 Friend of Port Discover: Port Discover is seeking to expand its operations to the former Arts of the Albemarle space adjacent to the current center location. Exhibits, activities and programs would expand along with the physical space. In order to be most successful, Port Discover is requesting public financial support from the City of Elizabeth City and Pasquotank County. The request from Port Discover’s Board of Directors is not from the general fund, but rather from funds that are restricted to tourism-related projects, for which Port Discover qualifies. If you believe that Port Discover is a positive addition to Elizabeth City and that your family and the greater community would benefit from an expanded space, we need your help. Please express support by communicating about a positive experience related to Port Discover; your feelings about the need for informal science education centers; a family trip planned around a center like Port Discover or the positive effect Port Discover creates for visitors and residents. Or simply say “I support Port Discover and hope that you will too by helping them grow”.Contact your Pasquotank County Commissioner. Information at www.co.pasquotank.nc.us/Departments/manager/commissioners.cfm Contact your Elizabeth City Council representative. Information at www.cityofec.com Write a letter of support to Port Discover at 613 E. Main Street, Elizabeth City Email a letter of support to luanne@portdiscover.org Become a Port Discover member. Download a membership brochure at www.portdiscover.org under “Get Involved.” Send a monetary donation to Port Discover. Thanks for your commitment to Port Discover!
Science centers nurture an environment conducive to free Inquiry, where young minds are encouraged to explore whatever suits their interests, and, by providing the means to explore the world of ideas, the science center tailors learning to the individual, empowering them. In fostering a community curious about the world of ideas around them, science centers can bring us a bit closer to Dennis Schatz’s dream:
I have a fantasy—that someday science will be as pervasive as sports in our society. Just think what it would mean to have intramural science, after-school science, and even that pickup science activity at the local park…. The ultimate test for knowing when science is as pervasive as sports will be when everyone has to rush home to see Monday Night Science.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
42 More Years of Star Trek
“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.” - Introduction to each episode of the original Star Trek series
original Star Trek series Credit: Shannon Lucas |
Many of us will remember the Bush years as the administration under which Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air, an brief dark age when it appeared there would be no Star Trek on the air again for a very long time. Now we have Barack “Hope” Obama as President, and, with his administration, a brand new Star Trek movie, 43 years after the show first aired. The original Star Trek was a grass-roots phenomena, only able to stay on the air for a second and third season because of an unprecedented letter-writing campaign by its fans. The show thrived in syndication, leading to six television series totaling 716 episodes across 30 seasons, 70 million books in print, 40 video games, and this week’s release will mark its 11th feature film.
NASA Recruiter Credit: NASA |
Highly progressive philosophically, Star Trek portrayed a future of world peace for Earth, a united human race venturing amongst the stars. The cast was ethnically diverse, with one of the first major African American characters on an American television series in Chief Communications Officer Uhura, whose name comes from the Swahili word for “freedom,” and who came from the “United States of Africa.1” Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, was persuaded by Martin Luther King Jr. to stay on the show as a role model for the black community when she considered quiting after the first season.
In addition to Uhura, Star Trek included the first positive portrayal of a Japanese character in helmsman Sulu. In the midst of the Cold War, the show featured the Russian ensign Chekov on the bridge. The Scottish Engineer Scotty and country doctor Leonard McCoy rounded out the cast’s cultural diversity.
The show tackled social issues, like slavery and religious freedom in Bread and Circuses, where the crew encounter a planet similar to ancient Rome, complete with oppressed Christians. The episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, where the Enterprise picks up the last two survivors of a war torn planet, each half black and half white, but their colors on opposite sides of their faces, deals with the insane senselessness of racial discrimination. In numerous episodes, America’s cold war with Russia and the war in Vietnam were alluded to in the Enterprise’s encounters with Klingons and Romulans.
With a firm historical, moral, and intellectual grounding in its storytelling, Star Trek was able to become one of the most culturally influential television shows in history. The fans were able to convince NASA to name the first space shuttle orbiter after the USS Enterprise.
the Space Shuttle Enterprise Credit: NASA |
In the episode Who Mourns for Adonais? the crew encounters Apollo, last survivor of a band of space travelers who inspired the Greek gods. This is a theme reflected in numerous Star Trek episodes, as with the Organians in Errand of Mercy, Vaal in The Apple, and the Metrons in Arena. Aliens with godlike powers resembles Michael Shermer’s spin on Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence is indistinguishable from God.”
Star Trek offers the possibility of a similar future to the human race. The show has stood out and remained strong these four decades because of its positive message and vision. With their incredibly advanced technologies and their strong moral character, the crew of the Enterprise are role models for a human race. The documentary Trekkies reveals a fan base comprised of geeks and nerds, but they are also scientists, inventors, and doctors. The USS Enterprise’s name follows a long history of over 26 real-life ships from the HMS Enterprise (1709-1749) to the 1961 Aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) to the 1976 Space Shuttle Enterprise and soon the VSS Enterprise Virgin Galactic’s first commercial spacecraft. The course of human history is one of incredible social and technological improvement, we are reaching further into the stars, where we have Star Trek’s visionary outlook to guide us.
“As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Starfleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.”
1 The original pilot for Star Trek included a woman in the role of second-in-command, but network executives at NBC demanded she be cut from the show. Despite the show’s progressive vision, the mini-skirts and secretarial positions women filled in the show have always been an unfortunate part of its history, and not part of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. Later spin-off shows would put women and other ethnicities in leadership positions.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
The Digital Naturalist
“Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.”
- Chief Seattle
This quote from Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes, is paraphrased by modern naturalists as, “Take only photographs, leave only footprints” (and sometimes adding, “Kill only time.”).
Credit: Matthew Fang |
In the past, Naturalists like Charles Darwin had to collect live specimens of animals, sometimes with amusing results. This method would present a moral dilemma for modern naturalists, as killing potentially endangered plants, insects, and animals is counterintuitive to preserving them.
Luckily, today’s naturalists have a non-destructive tool in cataloging the Earth’s biodiversity, the camera. The World Wildlife Foundation and other scientists have begun deploying Camera Traps, cameras with motion sensors that photograph everything that wanders by, and the technique has caught the existence of many animals not seen in nature for a very long time. Bioblitzes are 24-hour events where groups catalogue all the species they can find in a location, be it a forest or public park, where digital cameras come in especially useful. The wonderful iNaturalist.org website combines nature photography with mapping in such a way that the data will be used in future years to track species migrations in a warming world and the health of various populations.
Credit: Eadweard Muybridge |
Photography also contributes to science in other ways. Time is infinitely divisible, and humans are able to perceive the briefest instant of time, but a sequence of quick events are distorted in our minds. For instance, in 1872 there was a highly debated question about the gait of a galloping horse, and whether all of the horse’s hooves were off the ground at any time during a stride. Photographer Edward James Muggeridge was able to capture a series of images that conclusively resolved the question. Surprisingly, many museums, textbooks, and illustrators today still get the gait of dogs wrong despite having such evidence at their disposal.
Credit: Eadweard Muybridge |
Digital cameras are cheap. Flickr accounts are free (basic ones at least). I think one of the best ways to introduce children to science and nature is to introduce them to both of these innovations. It’s like collecting beetles, comics, or stamps, only there’s a much larger realm of things to collect, a lot to learn in the process, and a whole Internet full of people to share with.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Post This Cheat Sheet in Your Time Machine
This Time Traveler’s Cheat Sheet is awesome!!! Go back in time! Take credit for major discoveries!
|
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment |
Can the World Live at 350 ppm?
350.org wants to see if we can get the world to live at 350ppm CO2. This site groks with me because it sets an achievable, concrete goal.
|
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
How the Brain Grows Into the Body
Credit: kton25 |
Harvard Psychologist Stephen M. Kosslyn presents a fascinating conundrum concerning the development of a human embryo: In order for the brain to process the two images our eyes transmit to it in 3-D stereovision, complete with the ability to estimate distances accurately, it must know the distance between the eyes; however, at the moment of conception, there’s no way for the genes to know this distance, which depends on bone growth, which depends on the mother’s and infant’s diet.
So how do the genes do it?
What the genes did is really clever: Young children (peaking at about age 18 months) have more connections among neurons than do adults; in fact, until about eight years old, children have about twice as many neural connections as they do as adults. But only some of these connections provide useful information. For example, when the infant reaches, only the connections from some neurons will correctly guide reaching. The brain uses a process called pruning to get rid of the useless connections… …the genes overpopulate the brain, giving us options for different environments (where the distance between eyes and length of the arms are part of the brain’s “environment,” in this sense), and then the environment selects which connections are appropriate. In other words, the genes take advantage of the environment to configure the brain.
So one metaphor for the developing brain is natural selection, producing an overabundance of neurons, and then killing off the ones that aren’t performing. This is just one of many reasons the whole Nature versus Nurture debate is considered silly. Is it genes or environment? Genes and environment are not dichotomous, but rather a feedback loop.
The brain’s need to properly interface with the body is why babies kick in the womb according to researchers:
Rat pups in their litter display frequent muscle twitches and non-directed limb and whole body jerks, which are similar to human fetal movements. By studying the relationship between these movements and neuronal activity in the sensory part of the cerebral cortex, the researchers determined that the information provided to the developing brain by these random movements are critical for creating the proper representation of the body in the sensory cortex. By analogy, spontaneous kicks babies perform during the late stages of pregnancy should perform the same service for the human sensor.
The developing baby kicks, not only to work out the joints and muscles, but also so the brain can wire properly into the muscles. So another metaphor is that the brain is doing science, positing a plethora of hypotheses in the form of neurons, experimenting, testing out the environment of the body, keeping those hypotheses that work, and tossing those that don’t. Not only are scientists, learning to live in the environments we are born into, but our brains, the organ that houses our consciousness, acts as a scientist as well.
Science is in our scaffolding.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Fossils of the Technium in the Anthropocene
Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself. - Edward O. Wilson
In David Brin’s The Postman, greatest post-apocalyptic book ever, the protagonist finds shelter in an old mail truck and keeps warm by making a blanket out of the letters. Recently, Vicky and I checked out the Camden County Jeep Trail, where we came across the old mail truck below, inexplicably wedged between the trees way off the trail, as if it had been dropped from the sky into the wetlands. The style puts it at 50-plus years-old.
(Complete Mystery how it got there) GeoCoordinates: 36 12.197, -76 01.593 Credit: Vicky |
On another adventure, went exploring around the Newbold-White House Recreation Trail. There, on the shoreline, we found the nearly buried remnants of some sort of tractor, or automobile. Suspension springs and a rusting engine block were recognizable, just peaking out of the sand.
Credit: Vicky Sawyer |
Many scientists agree that the Earth has entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene, marked by the profound changes we humans are making to the environment. It begins with the growth of farming 8,000 years ago, but the most dramatic effects have come with the industrial revolution.
The cars we found in the wilderness will quickly rust into unrecognizable dust, but the rubber tires and plastic will have longer lives. Plastic shopping bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose, and if they are buried, they may not decompose at all… at least, not until something else on Earth evolves to get at the energy-rich hydrocarbons, found naturally in crude oil, just as microbes evolved to eat cellulose in plants.
Credit: Vicky Sawyer |
Glass is not biodegradable, and, unlike plastics, does not have any form of chemical energy stored within it. The silicas making up glass are also found in the cell walls of diatoms, but since the chemical compound is the most abundant mineral in the Earth’s crust, it’s doubtful life here will start deconstructing the glass we leave behind for spare parts.
Credit: Vicky Sawyer |
Wired magazine founder, Kevin Kelly, has coined the term Technium to refer the explosion of technology that survives within the unique ecological niche we have created. Modern life requires microwaves, computers, and cars. The best technologies survive and we reproduce them, evolve them to better suit our needs, and in this respect Kelly makes a persuasive argument that they are the “7th Kingdom of Life.”
If we go, the Technium will go, but together we have left a distinct mark on Earth’s timeline. An alien scientist studying the history of our planet millions of years from now will find a thin layer in the geological strata marked by heavy metals, plastic bottles, and a huge surge in carbon dioxide. The Earth will recover from us, but have to make sure we can recover from ourselves.
You can see more car fossil photos here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Computer-Grown “Snowfakes.”
Credit:UW-Madison |
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Nano Journeys
|
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Ada Lovelace Day: Esther Dyson
Happy Ada Lovelace Day! In celebration of Ada Lovelace, only child to Lord Byron and author of the world’s first computer program in 1843 for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, bloggers everywhere are running posts about one of their favorite women in tech.
So this year I’d like to introduce everyone to Esther Dyson:
Credit: Esther |
Dyson attended Harvard at the age of 16, was reporting for Forbes at 25, and was analyzing technology stocks for Wall Street by the age of 30. She co-established the publication Release 1.0, which continues today as Release 2.0 and sells for $130 a single issue. She has backed some of the best start-ups online, including Flickr, del.icio.us, and many others.
She was chairwoman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and boardmember of the Long Now Foundation, blogger for the Huffington Post, and columnist for the New York Times. At the time of my writing this, Esther Dyson is living just outside of Moscow, training to be a cosmonaut.
While TV talking heads ramble on their mostly-wrong predictions, Esther Dyson is a futurist who has put her money where her mouth is. Her article for Wired Intellectual Value, where she talks about companies needing to post content online for free and have to rely on other methods to make money off it, is so much common sense today, but she made the prediction in 1995. Esther Dyson may not be a name the average person will recognize, and that’s because instead of focusing on being famous like so many modern pundits, she has focused on being right.
Always Make New Mistakes Credit: Gisela Giardino |
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Cat Scans of a Cat
(ht chriggy)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Vintage Space Posters
|
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Microscopic Photos inside the Human Body
Credit: David Gregory & Debbie Marshall, Wellcome Images |
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Patterns in the PHP Random Function
When you make the finding yourself - even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light - you’ll never forget it. - Carl Sagan
Inspired by Oranchak’s post on Genetic Algorithms, I decided to revisit a project I left off on a few months back, the end result of which is to attempt to evolve static noise into digital images. As a preliminary step to this, I wanted to write a script where I could draw images, pixel by pixel. So I wrote a decimal to hexadecimal converter, and then incremented the RGB values in HTML to render a table in shifting colors.
(Red is set to 00) |
|
|
|
Pattern A 38F2E4 02F40E CCF6E8 96f8C2 60FA9C 2AFC76 F4FE50 |
Pattern B 86F2FE 50F4D8 1AF6B2 E4F88C AEFA66 78FC40 F2FE1A |
Pattern A and Pattern B were both repeated in the column where they were found, and appeared to continue repeating past this sampling.
Here there’s another piece of the puzzle. I tried changing the image dimensions from 256 by 256 to 128 by 128 and 512 by 512, in both cases, the lines appeared. Changing the image dimensions to 72X72, 154X154, or any other non-binary power appears to remove the patterns completely.
So far, what I’ve been able to find on this is that the geeks at php.net have discussed the shortcomings of the rand() function, the function uses a pseudorandom number generator algorithm (probably something called libc, which is a “multiplicative congruential algorithm”), so it is expected to produce these patterns. For a much more random, but still pseudorandom, number generator, it is best to use mt_rand, which uses the Mersenne twister pseudorandom number generator, based on “matrix linear recurrence.”
I understand what I’ve read well enough to know that I presently lack even the foundational knowledge to appreciate this subject. At this point, I am content to know that human minds out there are aware of the phenomenon, and appreciate them for settling down to become experts in a subject as obscure, yet very important, as the process for generating random numbers, which are crucial to cryptography and playing Dungeons & Dragons.
You can play with a demo of what I’m talking about here. Word of warning though, it takes time for the table to render, could cause weaker systems to slow down, and I’ve had IE quit rendering it halfway down the table.
You can download the PHP file here. There’s an empty single-pixel transparent gif included that holds the table cells open to display the background color.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
The United State’s New CIO, Vivek Kundra
for the “Applications for Democracy” Technology Contest Winners |
Although the mainstream media pretty much glossed over it (because covering our country’s IT infrastructure is too complex for them), I was eager to hear all about President Obama’s choice of federal Chief Information Officer, but even this Whitehouse Press Release was thin on details:
Vivek Kundra will bring a depth of experience in the technology arena and a commitment to lowering the cost of government operations to this position. I have directed him to work to ensure that we are using the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government operations. As Chief Information Officer, he will play a key role in making sure our government is running in the most secure, open, and efficient way possible.
It appears there was some surprise at the Kundra pick, as many assumed he would be Obama’s choice for the new position of Chief Technology Officer. After spending some time learning about Kundra’s accomplishments, Kundra seems like the perfect pick for CIO. As Washington DC’s CTO, Kundra made a wealth of useful data freely available online in a variety of formats complete with RSS feeds.
Kundra also came up with Apps for Democracy, a competition that invited developers to program applications that weave the District’s data into useful information services. The two winning programs Carpool Mashup Matchmaker and DC Bikes, Your Guide to Biking in DC, would have cost millions in taxpayer dollars for Washington DC to build in-house, but through Kundra’s initiative, they were built for a tiny fraction of that. As Kundra explains the success of harnessing emergent phenomena, “You have Darwinian innovation in the consumer space, and that fundamentally lowered our operating costs.”
Vivek Kundra’s IT for Government philosophy is part of his efforts to build a Digital Public Square. This concept is synchronous with the concept of democratizing government data. That is, the government should simply give us all the raw data and leave it to citizens to extrapolate information from it. Don’t just give us a graph of world warming trends or tablespoons of temperature data, give us the whole shebang*.
How will this play out in the federal government? Soon America will be getting a another domain name to add to the list of new URLs President Obama’s been adding to our online resources, data.gov. This site will offer a very different solution than President Bush’s National Information Exchange Model, which focuses on federal agencies making data available to each other, Kundra’s website should simply dump as much data as possible produced by all federal agencies in its rawest form, with tags, search capabilities, and RSS feeds.
Wired magazine has set up a wiki for brainstorming the best practices data.gov should implement, outlining the data already out there and examples of sites that serve as working models of what to strive for.
This is a very exciting initiative. Data itself is not information, but I am certain that once this ocean of data is freely available to American citizens, the IT geeks of the world will discover the information within it.
Note: Watch this space for positions to open in the federal government hiring to work on this project.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Science Slaying Beautiful Hypotheses
The great tragedy of Science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. - Thomas Huxley
The recent news of scientists identifying the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II’s missing children, confirms they were executed in 1918 and ends nearly a century of fanciful stories and speculation about the possibility of his youngest daughter, Anastasia, escaping the rest of the family’s fate. A woman in Charlottesville claiming to be Anastasia was really just crazy, and the imaginative, lovable 1997 Don Bluth film romanticizing her life is now overcome with this grim reality.
|
Science has a long, distinguished history of taking beautiful ideas and smashing them to bits. Take, for instance, Zeno’s Paradox, which states that in order for a person to walk from point A to point B, they must cross point C, halfway between them, and point D, halfway between A and C, and point E, halfway between A and D, on and on until a person must cross an infinite number of points to get to B. How are we able to travel through space if we must cross an chasm of infinity to go anywhere?
|
More than 2,000 years after the question was posed, calculus solved it. As the points a person must cross approaches infinity, the distances between them grows infinitely small; thus, an entire school of philosophical thought was rendered irrelevant.
As are so many other seemingly profound questions. Nature or Nurture? It’s both. The plasticity is innate, and the innateness is dynamic. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? They co-evolved. Next question. Did Adam and Eve have navals? Mitochondrial Eve did. Now shut up and sit down.
This slaying of fanciful ideas makes science out as a villain of sorts, crushing the dreams and aspirations of great thinkers. This characteristic of science contributes to the Two Cultures Divide between the sciences and the humanities, where the scientist stereotype finds the humanities stereotype ungrounded in reality and the humanities stereotype finds the scientist stereotype cold and unimaginative. Science always seems to be telling the humanities people what isn’t possible.
But that’s just the stereo type. The reality is that science has expanded our horizons, opened more doors of possibility than it has close. One need only compare science fiction literature to fantasy to see that this is true. Science has shown us the edge of the Universe, given us vitual worlds, extended our lifespans and our horizons. When we abandon our fanciful notions, science rewards us with more inspiring visions.
Latest comments
Люди в таких вот случаях так говорят - Без косы сена не накосишь. ;)
... read the full comment by Bebeshka | Comment on Evolution of the Whitehouse Website Read Evolution of the Whitehouse Website
Удачи вам! Я думаю у вас все получится :)
... read the full comment by Борис Милюков | Comment on Evolution of the Whitehouse Website Read Evolution of the Whitehouse Website
Отличная статья. Краткость явно сестра автора ;)
... read the full comment by Глеб Рубин | Comment on Evolution of the Whitehouse Website Read Evolution of the Whitehouse Website
Большое спасибо вам. Ваш сайт это хороший повод найти приятных и начитанных людей, способных к конструктивным обсуждениям и критике. :)
... read the full comment by Владислав Голованов | Comment on Evolution of the Whitehouse Website Read Evolution of the Whitehouse Website