Recently in the science and mathematics section:

Found via Digg, a beautiful shot of the Space Shuttle in orbit; click the picture for a large version:

Simply amazing.

Evolution explains why LOLCats control your mind. The basic argument extrapolates on this little bit from a Yale study

Since keeping an eye on predators and prey was important during our evolution, Joshua New and colleagues investigated whether animals, both human and otherwise, are more likely to grab our visual attention. [...] As predicted, subjects were faster and more accurate detecting changes involving animals than inanimate objects. If experience were producing this bias, then people should also be good at detecting changes involving automobiles, which as drivers and pedestrians they have been trained all their lives to monitor for sudden, life-or-death changes in trajectory. Yet subjects were much slower in detecting changes to vehicles than to more rarely experienced animal species, indicating that learning is not the source of this difference. The bias for animals, the authors conclude, is like the appendix: present in modern humans because it was useful for our ancestors, even if useless now.

And the captions are one of these changes that people notice in pictures of cute kitties, which is why they catch our attention. That's the argument, at least.

Now they've gone and done it: they've messed with linguistics. When they came for the biologists, I fought... so nevermind that train of thought.

Really, the Language Log entry does a good job of describing what's going on with a new wave of the Edenics phenomenon, which I thought was a rather unique or sporadic theological attack on science because of my Southern Baptist upbringing. But there are books, websites, and pages on Creationist Websites. From the book's author's website:

Here you will discover that ALL human words contain forms of the Edenic roots within them. These proto-Semitic or early Biblical Hebrew words were programmed into our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, before the language dispersion, or babble at the Tower of Babel -- which kickstarted multi-national human history. I congratulate you for investigating for yourself if language is an engineered miracle or merely the evolved gesturing of chimps.

Note that this author thinks that Hebrew is the source of English. Hypotheses like Edenics, i.e. the religious versions of the proto-world language theories, are based on two other hypotheses: Young Earth Creationism and the Tower of Babel As Origin of Language Diversity, a.k.a. Wrathful Dispersion. These religious theories of language origin and theories of language based on them are absolute shite for a variety of reasons, one of which is that living, breathing, speaking people have been around for longer than 6,000 years, much longer, and it's poppycock to think that everybody from the origin and spread of H. sapiens to the time of Babylon spoke the same language, especially when you look at extremely old populations like native Australians, who arrived, conservatively, 40,000 years ago, and who were geographically isolated when water covered the land bridge over which they could have traveled about 8,000 years ago. Also, the original, Edenic language would most definitely not be early Biblical Hebrew, which any cursory glance at a good history book's chapters on Mesopotamia and the preceding time would make damn clear (Sumerian, for example, doesn't fit into any language family, really, like Basque).

Just knowing how long Native Australians have lilved there is enough to dismiss Edenics out of hand, so while I want to read the Edenics book, I don't know if I'd have the patience. I should get it so I can address the phonology-type arguments he has, but, like I said, I don't know if I have the patience, and phonetics isn't a subject I get much joy from.

NASA has coined galaxy 3C321 the "Death Star," so named because the black hole at its center is sending a huge jet of energy at another galaxy close by, punching into the fabric of that neighbouring galaxy:

"We've seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we've seen one punch into another galaxy like we're seeing here," said Dan Evans, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the leader of the study. "This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling."

Being targeted by a jet of high energy particles emitting gamma and X-ray radiation might suck for a galaxy, but it's been suggested that the injection of energy and mass into the smaller galaxy might eventually encourage the formation of new planets and star systems in the target galaxy. A galactic Phoenix effect, if you will.

Update: One of my friends asked me how a jet of radiation could be escaping a black hole and slamming into another galaxy beside it, so I replied with the following mini Astrophysics lesson I thought ya'll might find interesting, in case you have the same question:

Only when you cross the event horizon near the black hole can energy or matter not escape from it. Since black holes are massive gravitational sinkholes, they pull everything around them towards them. This causes massive amounts of matter to be compressed near the black hole, some of this matter reacts because of the presence of other trapped matter and the tremendous compression that goes on and therefore creates massive amounts of radiation.

All this happens both inside and outside the event horizon. The radiation produced outside the event horizon, given enough energy, can escape the gravitational anomaly of the black hole and travel away from it.

An organised jet stream of radiation is a result of the organisation and rotation of the matter caused by the gravitational anomaly surrounding the black hole. It's like a shaped funnel in space.

Reuters has released their slideshow of the 2007 "Pictures of the Year." It's always amazing to see how much can happen in one year.

WARNING: The link resizes your window. I really, really hate it when websites resize my window. It's incredibly bad interface design. Leave my window how I want it, damn it. You're not the only tab open in my window, so hands off!

It always annoys me to no end when a scientific study comes to bad conclusions based on incomplete data, and it makes it even worse when the reporting is just as bad in not criticising the flaws in the conclusions.

Such was the case today with a new study that is making the rounds, and I learned of from PhysOrg. The title of the article says it all: "In fruit flies, homosexuality is biological but not hard-wired."

I braced myself for bad science, and there it was:

To test this, he and his colleagues genetically altered synapse strength independent of GB, and also fed the flies drugs that can alter synapse strength. As predicted, they were able to turn fly homosexuality on and off -- and within hours.

"It was amazing. I never thought we'd be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired," he said. "This fundamentally changes how we think about this behavior."

Basically, the scientists in the study found that if they genetically or chemically altered certain types of synapse activity within a fly's brain, they could "turn homosexuality on/off."

The data showed that otherwise heterosexual flies would start courting indiscriminately if this specific synapse strength was altered, and that's the key part of the data, barely hinted at by only one sentence in the article amidst the sensationalism:

"Homosexual courtship might be sort of an 'overreaction' to sexual stimuli," he explained.

I say hint because the data did not include tests on naturally homosexual flies. There was no control for the experiment and no negative test. This makes their conclusions fallacious and sensationalist.

The conclusion they can draw from the data is that when certain synapse strengths are modified, flies become hyper-sexual and display a tendency to mate indiscriminately in regards to sex. This hyper sexual behaviour fades when the synapses return to normal, and heterosexual flies again assert a preference for mating with the opposite gender.

The conclusion that they can turn homosexual behaviour on and off at will is bad science, and it really grinds my gears.

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter from the NYTimes.

The answer, they say, has to do with the virus itself. It is more stable and stays in the air longer when air is cold and dry, the exact conditions for much of the flu season.

“Influenza virus is more likely to be transmitted during winter on the way to the subway than in a warm room,” said Peter Palese, a flu researcher who is professor and chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the lead author of the flu study.

It's those damn kids, I tell you.

“We know one of the largest factors is kids in school — most of the major epidemics are traced to children,” said Dr. Jonathan McCullers, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. “But that still does not explain wintertime. We don’t see flu in September and October.”

As for the crowding argument, Dr. McCullers said, “That never made sense.” People work all year round and crowd into buses and subways and planes no matter what the season.

Okay, maybe not. How about guinea pigs? They're kinda like children, except you can experiment with guinea pigs.

By varying air temperature and humidity in the guinea pigs’ quarters, they discovered that transmission was excellent at 41 degrees. It declined as the temperature rose until, by 86 degrees, the virus was not transmitted at all.

The virus was transmitted best at a low humidity, 20 percent, and not transmitted at all when the humidity reached 80 percent.

The animals also released viruses nearly two days longer at 41 degrees than at a typical room temperature of 68 degrees.

On top of that, the cold air helps the virus to stay viable and the dry air helps them remain in the air because they're in respiratory droplets.

What can you do? The researcher recommends a flu shot. I'll personally be taking antibiotics to protect me against children.

Top Gear reviews the the tiniest of cars, the 1964 Peel P50:

The Theory of Moral Neuroscience, from Reason Online, found through a science blog somewhere that I've lost track of.

Just like monkeys, it turns out that when we see someone perform an action—picking up a glass of water or kicking a ball—our mirror neurons simulate that action in our brains.

When discussing how this plays out for people with autism

In 2005, researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) compared brain wave activity associated with mirror neurons in high functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and in typical individuals. In normal individuals, mu brain wave activity is suppressed whenever they move their hand, imagine moving their hand, or see someone else move their hand. "The ASD group showed significant mu suppression to self-performed hand movements but not to observed hand movements. These results support the hypothesis of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system in high-functioning individuals with ASD," concluded the study.

Subsequent experiments by Jaime Pineda and his colleagues at UCSD found that individuals with ASD develop compensatory brain mechanisms that allow them to identify correctly the emotions of others and determine their intentions. Mirror neurons are not absent from the brains of ASD people, but they are misfiring. Pineda suggests that neurofeedback retraining might reduce some of the social symptoms of autism.

Of course, the mirror neurons can't be our only source of moral sense, otherwise you can imagine what trouble people with autism would be. The argument is that empathy or some kind of social metacognition, to borrow an ed psych term, is only one contributor to a person's morality

Empathy, the ability to feel someone else's joy, pain, and gratitude, helps guide our pre-reflective moral values.

I'm personally more interested in how much of an effect mirror neurons have on linguistic development, but I don't know how much of an effect something like a mirror neuron would have on development. I have much more research to do. Expect to hear more about this in the future.

Scientists in North Dakota have found what might be the world's best preserved dinosaur mummy, with intact skin, muscle and perhaps even organs:

Preserved by a natural fluke of time and chemistry, the four-ton mummified hadrosaur, a duck-billed herbivore common to North America, could reshape the understanding of dinosaurs and their habitat, its finders say.

"There is no doubt about it that this dinosaur is a very, very significant find," said Tyler Lyson, a graduate student in geology at Yale University who discovered the dinosaur in North Dakota.

The money quote:

"When I first saw it in the field, (I thought) 'Shiiiit, that's a really well preserved dinosaur.' It has the potential to be a top-10 dinosaur, globally."

Gotta love it when scientists show their human side.

NASA has released details on the manned Mars mission:

A 400,000kg (880,000lb) Marship would be assembled in orbit using the Ares V cargo launch vehicle for a 900-day mission to the red planet, according to details that have emerged about NASA's new Constellation programme's manned Mars mission.

The spacecraft would take a "minimal crew" to Mars in six to seven months, with the crew spending up to 550 days on the surface, according to the programme's design reference architecture 5.0, currently in development.

NASA's released a huge photo of Niagara Falls as seen from space. Whoa.

The recent Australian elections, which ousted conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and brought in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have led Rudd to pledge that Australia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Australia is the only other major developed nation besides the US to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

A neat video on solutal convection by New Scientist, using cream and Tia Maria:

The Telegraph and New Scientist report on a new Unification Theory by a penny-less surfer and theoretical physics doctorate published recently called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything":

Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"

What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.

An interesting read, and when the LHC is finished next year, we'll see if the theory pans out against current favourite, String Theory.

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything [The Telegraph]

Is mathematical pattern the theory of everything? [New Scientist]

Are you a wine-sipping hippie? (like me?)

Perhaps you'd be interested in the carbon foot print of your wine, as researched by Dr. Vino. The really interesting part is the wine-carbon line that runs down the US:

There’s a “green line” that runs down the middle of Ohio. For points to the West of that line, it is more carbon efficient to consume wine trucked from California. To the East of that line, it’s more efficient to consume the same sized bottle of wine from Bordeaux, which has had benefited from the efficiencies of container shipping, followed by a shorter truck trip. In the event that a carbon tax were ever imposed, it would thus have a decidedly un-nationalistic impact.

I'm going to have to add a few bottles of Bordeaux wines next time I'm out shopping.

If you're tuned into the geeky side of the blogging world, you're no doubt familiar with the obsession over the "plane on a treadmill" problem:

Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off?

The problem has divided physicists, pilots, and bloggers alike, inspiring this Joy of Tech comic that sums up the fervour nicely.

Well... Mythbusters to the rescue! In an episode airing in December, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman will finally lay this problem to rest:

"... We just finished one that has confounded us our entire careers.''

"We put the plane on a quarter-mile conveyor belt and tested it out,'' says Savage about the experiment using a pilot and his Ultralight plane. ``I won't tell you what the outcome was, but the pilot and his entire flight club got it wrong.''

I'm so stoked for this episode. The Physics geek in me can't wait.

Following up on my previous chemistry related post, kottke brings this video of 20,000 lbs. of sodium being dumped into a lake in the 1940s:

Boom.

The slow and utter death of real chemistry sets is something that's bothered both myself and my mom (who is a chemist and science teacher.) Their contents have become more and more barren and mundane, killing their usefulness in learning about chemical reactions and the basics of the scientific method to kids everywhere.

12 Angry Men writes at length on the decline of the once wonderful chemistry set:

Some of Gilbert’s original sets included such items as sodium cyanide, radioactive samples (complete with a Geiger counter), and glass blowing kits. I will freely admit that one of the first things I did with my chemistry set was to attempt to make an explosive. I remember mixing up chemicals that evolved free chlorine gas and having to evacuate the house. I remember mixing potassium nitrate and sugar to make rocket engines and quickly evolving to higher specific impulse fuels. I remember the joy of finally obtaining some nitric acid which allowed me to nitrate basically everything in the house (cotton for gun cotton, glycerine and alcohol for nitroglycerine). So yes, I have to admit that there is a risk involved. But this is how people learn. Sometimes knowledge comes with pain — one-shot induction.

Today however, the Chemistry Set is toast. Current instantiations are embarrassing. There are no chemicals except those which react at low energy to produce color changes. No glass tubes or beakers, certainly no Bunsen burners or alcohol burners (remember the clear blue flames when the alcohol spilled out over the table). Today’s sets cover perfume mixing and creation of luminol (the ‘CSI effect’ I suppose).

Via /.

Professor Orzel of Uncertain Principles writes on the difficulties faced by solar energy production:

As best I can reconstruct it, the argument went like this: In order to meet the energy needs of the US entirely with solar power, we would need to cover 0.2% of the land area of the United States with photovoltaic cells, roughly equal to the area of paved roads in the US. And that's using solar cells with an efficiency of 50%, not too far below the theoretical maximum for a single-layer device.

To give even more context, researchers at the moment are aiming for producing a solar panel with 20% efficiency. Even worse are the production problems faced with providing that many solar panels to feed the energy needs of the US. Solar energy just isn't economically feasible by any stretch of the imagination as an overall solution.

Wired Science reports on new ways to beat drug resistant strains of tuberculosis. The new procedures involve using a drug cocktail that weakens tuberculosis's own defences, so that antibiotics can once again attack tuberculosis directly.

I myself had a case of tuberculosis infection some years back and the threat of having a drug resistant strain was a scary prospect during the six months I had to take antibiotics. I was lucky I didn't have a drug resistant strain. Via /.

A provocative article that lays out much of my own viewpoints on the dumbing down of the American education system, and how it's churning out a lot of children completely unequipped with an understanding of basic concepts:

He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it."

But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.

I'm amazed every day by how little incoming freshmen at the college I work for know - from basic scientific principles like the behaviour of forces, to how to write an analytical essay. It's ridiculous.

Discover Magazine had a contest for best two minute video explaining String Theory to the masses. The winner is very good:

Astronomers at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland have discovered an Earth-like planet with favourable surface temperatures (0-40C) for life.

It orbits Gliese 581 in the Libra constellation, and is a mere 20 light-years away, with a size of 1.5 Earths (does it say how much of a sci-fi geek I am that I automatically wrote "1.5 Earth norm" as the description for its size?) This is the same team that has been making other planetary discoveries (mostly gas giants due to the accuracy of available measurements) on distant solar systems. It seems their system keeps getting more and more refined.

How I missed this back when it was first published, I have no idea.

A delightfully geeky article on the calculus involved in determining the right time to say "I Love You:"

The Engineer, delightful and rational fellow that he is, made it clear that he would not be saying “I love you” until he was sure. Otherwise, he might waste this very important statement by saying it too early in the relationship, when his love was still growing rapidly, thereby taking away the significance in later weeks/months when his love was much, much greater.

Judy, obviously disappointed by this response, pressed and asked WHEN exactly that would be. His response: when dLove/dt = zero.

The article goes on to analyse his statement in humour akin to the brilliant XKCD. Thanks for the link, Clarke.

The winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize have been announced: Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change

As pointed out by Prof. Orzel of Uncertain Principles, it is traditional for American recipients of the Nobel Prize to be invited to the White House for dinner. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that festival of awkward.