News Cut Category Archive: Science

Exploring us exploring the moon

Posted at 3:27 PM on October 30, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Science

The The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter may have solved one mystery.

Does this flag still "wave"?

It's the flag planted by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, the last manned mission to the moon.

The "LRO" has been exploring the site and has determined that the flag -- as well as the lunar rover tracks -- are still there. (Click following image for larger view)

The Apollo landing sites are the only entirely undisturbed historic sites of man's quest to explore, what with there being no air and all. Or are they?

Discover Magazine notes:

Back to the flag, there's a curious thing about it. The flag itself was nylon, and that tends to get brittle when exposed to ultraviolet light -- which is relentless and plentiful on the airless Moon (the thermal pounding it's taken between day and night can't help either). I've often wondered what we'll find when we go back to the Apollo landing sites; I half-expect to see red, white, and blue powder off to one side of the flagpole, and no actual flag left on the pole. This picture, as frakkin' amazing as it is, is still just barely too low resolution to be able to say for sure, I think. The shadow is only a pixel or so in size and so it's hard to say what's what.

There's an extensive online collection of the Apollo 17 landing site.

Do these latest pictures also prove that man really did walk on the moon?

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The Fun Theory

Posted at 1:42 PM on October 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Life, Science

Forgetting for a moment that it's partly a marketing gimmick by Volkswagon, The Fun Theory Web site is offering an interesting perspective on behavior. If things are fun, people will do it.

That was the theory many years ago behind Select A Candidate on the MPR Web site. Give people a little fun -- at that time online quizzes were fairly unique -- and if they become informed voters, so much the better.

The Fun Theory is being used to get people to recycle:

Or take the stairs:

or throw stuff in the trash:

(h/t: Ken Paulman)

There are any number of behaviors to encourage -- voting, or washing hands, for example. It's the how-to-make-it-fun part that's missing.

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What killed the bees?

Posted at 12:03 PM on October 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Don't be saying you're not interested in what has caused the huge die-off of the bee population. A third of the total human diet depends on the critters.

Now, then: Discover Magazine reports we now know what has caused a third of all commercial honeybees to die: Commercial bee agriculture. Bee inbreeding, basically. They once were a hardy sort, with the queen adapting to the variety of male drones with which she would breed.

All that began to change in the early 20th century, when farms and orchards started enlisting honeybees to pollinate their crops. Bees that were adapted to harvesting pollen from a variety of plants suddenly spent a month or more at a time surrounded by nothing but almond or apple trees. Farmers eager to increase their crop yields turned to commercial beekeepers, who offered up massive wooden hives stocked with queen bees genetically selected to produce colonies of good pollinators. These breeding practices slashed the genetic variety that helps any species survive infections, chemicals, and other unforeseen threats.

Ironically, the cause turns out to be the very sort of person who raised the alarm in the first place.

Bee experts are trying to adopt practices that lead bees to lead a more natural life. "Bees have been doing this for 80 million years," one says. "All we have to do is get out of their way."

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What in creation?

Posted at 4:26 PM on September 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, Science

What happens to child stars? Sometimes, they grow up to lead a movement to subvert Charles Darwin Day. Take Kirk Cameron, for example, who starred in the '80s sitcom, "Growing Pains."

Cameron and other activists plan to deliver to schools 50,000 altered copies of Darwin's Origin of Species on November 21st, Huffington Post reported.



In his video, Cameron says young people can no longer pray in public or open a Bible in school, neither of which is true. He also says a survey said 61% of professors in biology and psychology are atheist or agnostic. "No wonder atheism has doubled in the last 20 years among 19 to 25 year olds," he says.

Maybe. Maybe not. A 2007 survey of all institutions and all professors, found , most believe in God. At "elite" schools, the number of atheists was only 37 percent.

Coincidentally, Trinity College released a survey today showing 22 percent of 18-29 year olds "claim the nonreligious label, a jump from 11 percent in 1990." But that doesn't mean they don't believe in God:

Nones may best be described as skeptics. Twenty-seven percent of Nones believe in a personal God. Hard and soft agnostics make up 35 percent of the None population and atheists account for only 7 percent of Nones. Contrary to what many believe, Nones are not particularly superstitious or partial to New Age beliefs. They are, however, more accepting of human evolution than the general U.S. population.

This week, "Creation" opens in the UK.



The movie, however, is not being distributed in the U.S. Science Blog has the review:

"The film has many historical inaccuracies, but that's to be expected when filmmakers condense a life into a few hours. Creation's larger problem stems from the decision to focus on a narrow slice of Darwin's life, arguably one of the least interesting. ... Instead of dramatizing how Darwin traveled the world and arrived at the most explosive idea in history, Creation is ultimately about the world's biggest case of writer's block."

There's little evidence to supportCameron's concerns that evolution might take root in America. A Gallup poll last February indicated only 39% of those surveyed believe in the theory.

In a University of Minnesota biology professor's class survey of incoming freshmen last year, one out of 4 students was taught creationism. "Most students want to know more about evolution," Randy Moore told MPR's Perry Finelli last winter. "They know almost nothing about it when they get here.

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Hubble's eyesight

Posted at 12:28 PM on September 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Science

NASA today released the first images taken by the Hubble space telescope since a repair mission repaired its lens a few months ago.

A nebula around a dying star, a clash among members of a galactic grouping, the crowded core of Omega Centauri, and the birth of a star in the Carina Nebula are the -- pardon the pun -- stars of the release. Click on the image for a better view.

The blog at Discover Magazine does a good job of dissecting what each of these photos is. And when's the last time you used quintillion in a sentence?

Of course, the space telescope actually looks back in time. The telescope's current mission is to look back in time to when the universe was less than 500 million years old. If it works, we'll be able, perhaps, to figure out what to do with a new photograph that shows 13 billion years ago.

It's difficult to think of such things and not get all philosophical on the possible. For example, if we can figure out how to look back in time 13 billion years, what can't we do?

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The moss solution

Posted at 9:48 AM on August 30, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Here's a pretty interesting video from St. Paul's channel on YouTube. Moss as a substitute for chlorine:

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Who gets the flu vaccine first?

Posted at 4:14 PM on August 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

Some scientists are questioning whether the first people to get inoculated against the H1N1 flu should be the ones that are scheduled to.

The current formula calls for the people most likely to die to get the vaccine first. An article in Science Magazine, by way of Time.com, says it should, perhaps, be the people most likely to spread the illness.

"If you can stop transmission, you can protect the people who are vulnerable," says Jan Medlock, a mathematician at Clemson University and one of the authors of the Science paper.

That would be kids and the age group of their parents -- basically 20- and 30-somethings. Those are the people who, not coincidentally, have been the hardest-hit Minnesotans by the H1N1 outbreak so far.

The Minnesota plan for inoculation follows the federal guidelines: Health care workers, pregnant women, young children and people who care for infants under 6 months of age go first.

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Your cellphone's prying eyes

Posted at 4:09 PM on August 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Maybe it's not Big Brother we should be worrying about; maybe it's the little friend in your pocket.

A five year study out today finds "the gadgets we carry day-to-day can accurately record the nuances of our relationships. Using cellphones for social science research could replace interviews, which are laborious and sometimes unreliable, to find out about people's lives."

"There are very serious privacy issues," says Gueorgi Kossinets, who researched online social networks at Cornell University.

Or maybe there's a public benefit to the data your cellphone reveals about you and the people you know. Here, for example, is what happened the night the Red Sox won the first of their two (tainted) World Series championships in recent years:

"Suddenly all our subjects became unpredictable; they all flooded into downtown Boston to a rally in the centre of the city.

"City planners approached us because they wanted to know how people were using urban infrastructure, to know when the people left the rally, how many walked across the bridge and how many took the subway, how many biked or took the bus.

"We can give them some real insight with the idea of helping them build a better city that reflects people's actual behaviour."

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The future of paper

Posted at 1:29 PM on August 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Remember when the computer was to usher in the "paperless society?" The Kindle is supposed to usher in a bookless -- hence, paperless -- world. Newspapers are going belly up.

Mo Rocca, the panelist on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, reports the use of paper doubled after the prediction of the paperless society. It's part of the debut of an online show, The Tomorrow Show.

Watch CBS Videos Online

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Science!

Posted at 3:15 PM on August 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Last month, MPR's Midmorning tackled the question of why Americans are comparatively down on the American scientific community. Just 17% of the public thinks that U.S. scientific achievements rate as the best in the world, according to a Pew Research study.

"Fully 85% see the public's lack of scientific knowledge as a major problem for science, and nearly half (49%) fault the public for having unrealistic expectations about the speed of scientific achievements."

Clearly, we're not blowing up enough stuff.

More science here.

(h/t: Open Culture)

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Exit the butterfly

Posted at 4:12 PM on August 10, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Science

First bees. Now butterflies.

A Minot State University professor says butterflies are declining.

"Everybody I've talked to says the numbers are down dramatically," Ron Royer told the Associated Press, an observation confirmed in the News Cut Perennial Garden.

About six butterfly species found in North Dakota have been considered candidates for the endangered species list.

The Dakota Skipper, for one, may be on its way out. The Powesheik Skipperling probably is already gone for good, despite a few sightings.

It was too cold this year, Royer says. Nature's cycles are out of whack and the dirty little secret of nature is that everything has to go just right for species to survive. The cold weather delayed plants that butterflies depend on. Bugs on land and water showed up too late this year, so there's a shortage of toads, frogs and salamanders, too.

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At the speed of science

Posted at 5:34 PM on July 14, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Science

This is one of those stories that makes you wonder what the world would be like if everything moved at the speed of science. More so than any other facet of our lives, hope doesn't seem pointless when the subject is science.

The heart can heal itself, researchers have written in a British medical journal.

Ten years ago, doctors transplanted a heart into Hannah Clark, but didn't remove her faulty one because "she also needed a lung transplant, and her doctors wanted to avoid doing two risky transplants at once," Discover Magazine reports.

After 10 years with two blood pumping organs, and cancer caused by rejection drugs she had to take, doctors discovered her old heart is new again.

Says the Associated Press:

Miguel Uva, chairman of the European Society of Cardiology's group on cardiovascular surgery, called Clark's case "a miracle," adding that it was rare for patients' hearts to simply get better on their own.

"We have no way of knowing which patients will recover and which ones won't," Uva said.

But you know some day they will.

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In one ear...

Posted at 11:22 AM on June 24, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Science

If somebody ripped off your copy of Naturwissenschafte, let me help you out with the top story:

Hemispheric asymmetries and side biases have been studied in humans mostly in laboratory settings, and evidence obtained in naturalistic settings is scarce. We here report the results of three studies on human ear preference observed during social interactions in noisy environments, i.e., discotheques. In the first study, a spontaneous right-ear preference was observed during linguistic exchange between interacting individuals. This lateral bias was confirmed in a quasi-experimental study in which a confederate experimenter evoked an ear-orienting response in bystanders, under the pretext of approaching them with a whispered request. In the last study, subjects showed a greater proneness to meet an experimenter's request when it was directly addressed to the right rather than the left ear. Our findings are in agreement both with laboratory studies on hemispheric lateralization for language and approach/avoidance behavior in humans and with animal research. The present work is one of the few studies demonstrating the natural expression of hemispheric asymmetries, showing their effect in everyday human behavior.

Sorry. I spilled coffee on the News Cut AcademicSpeak-O-Meter this morning and it hasn't been working quite right. Let's try this again.

You're in a loud and sweaty Italian dance club when a woman approaches you. To be heard over the techno, she leans in close and yells into your ear, "Hai una sigaretta?"

If she spoke into your right ear, you would be twice as likely to give her a cigarette than if she asked by your left ear, according to a new study that employed this methodology in the clubs of Pescara, Italy. Of 88 clubbers who were approached on the right, 34 let the researcher bum a smoke, compared with 17 of 88 whom she approached on the left.

You have to love science. This is the latest study to show that the brain translates things uttered into your right ear differently than your left ear.

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Imponderables: Fingerprints

Posted at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Among the day's unanswerable questions -- why can't the Twins win on the road or when will the Minnesota Senate race end, for example -- we add one more this afternoon: Why do we have fingerprints?

Up until now, it's been theorized that fingerprints exist to create friction when we grab things.

Scientists today announced the theory is invalid, according to the BBC.

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Bird sense

Posted at 12:35 PM on June 3, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Great discoveries in science (continued).

Scientists at Aberystwyth University in the UK "have found that male great tits in 20 UK towns and cities sang at a higher pitch to be heard above the man-made noise."

According to the BBC, researchers have also found that the city birds don't understand rural birds very well.

Fill in your own joke.

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Grilled

Posted at 1:40 PM on April 21, 2009 by Than Tibbetts (4 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

MPR's Lorna Benson reports on a new University of Minnesota study that shows eating charred or burned meat may increase your risk of pancreatic cancer by 60 percent.

Nearly four years ago (recognize the byline?) the same team showed an association between people who ate burned meats and a higher rate of pancreatic cancer, which is among the hardest cancers to detect and diagnose early and, as a result, treat successfully.

Now before we haul the Weber off to the dumpster and bang down the doors of the Food and Drug Administration with demands to start regulating barbecues, there's a simple solution for all you carnivorous News Cut readers.

As U of M researcher Kristin Anderson told me in 2005, "Just use common sense; slow down."

Which, by the way, are the two cardinal rules of barbecuing to begin with.

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Itching and scratching

Posted at 3:48 PM on April 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Science

University of Minnesota researchers are on a bit of a roll. Last month, they got some international attention with research showing an inexpensive and common substance could halt the spread of the HIV virus in monkeys.

Today neuroscientists at the U have tackled a more common problem : the itch. They report both the itch and the relief from scratching comes from cells in the spinal cord, rather than an impulse in the brain.

And, again, monkeys are at the heart of the research, the New York Times reports:

In the study, led a postdoctoral student, Steve Davidson, researchers isolated in monkeys cellular connections that run from the surface of the foot to the spinal cord and then to the thalamus, a clearinghouse for sensations in the brain, down through the spinal cord to the surface of the foot. They induced the sensation by injecting histamines under the skin.

The scientists took single-cell recordings in an area at the base of the spinal cord, in the lower back, in so-called spinothalamic neurons. These cells are sprinkled throughout the spinal cord. Most are sensitive to pain, and some to both pain and itch. The cells apparently detected the injection and began firing immediately afterward. And when the researchers scratched the itchy skin on the monkeys' feet, it quieted the cells' activity.

Stories about the findings also reveal this nugget: Scientists don't call it "itching." It's known as pruritus.

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One big step for a Minnesotan

Posted at 7:54 PM on March 15, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Science

It's worth noting that the space shuttle, which launched Sunday night, is under the control of a Minnesota lad.

"It's always the thing that you think you have down, that's routine, that comes back and bites you," Paul Dye, lead shuttle flight director said, according to the blog The Future of Things. "It'll either be routine or it will be heart stopping, like always."

Dye is a Roseville native, whom I profiled a few years ago. We became acquainted because we've both built -- or are building -- our own airplanes.

His family still lives in the area.

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Why are we good?

Posted at 9:34 AM on March 14, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Science

The Boston Globe jumps on the theme we discussed the other night (and was broadcast on Midday on MPR on Friday): the job outlook for graduating college seniors.

It found the same thing I picked up (and wrote about) during the News Cut on Campus tour: that more students are turning toward working for the social good.

Fourteen percent of this year's senior class at Harvard applied to Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that sends graduates to work in low-income urban and rural public schools. The proportion was 9 percent last year.

"There's always that push to make money and be comfortable, but the financial crisis made me think that there's a lot more in life than going to get that corporate job," said Matthew Clair, a Harvard government major who will spend the next two years teaching at an Atlanta primary school. "It gave me a good excuse to take some more time off to do what I'm really passionate about."

But the situation brings up another question: To what extent are graduating seniors heading off in this direction out of a sense of altruism, and to what extent are they heading in that direction because that's where the jobs are?

All of which brings me today to this week's News Cut pick of the week of all the offerings that came out of your radio. It's Thursday morning's Midmorning appearance by Dacher Keltner, the professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, and the author of "Born to be Good." Pay no attention to the misnamed headline on the page ("The science of emotional survival") because the heart of the show (zip ahead about halfway through the audio), was the discussion of altruism, and why we're good (mostly).
It even took on last week's appearance by Richard Dawkins.

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Live-blogging: 'The God Delusion"

Posted at 8:58 AM on March 4, 2009 by Bob Collins (133 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, Science

Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," is on Midmorning this morning. I'm thinking people are going to need an outlet to react to what he has to say, so News Cut will step into the line of fire. Dawkins says atheists should be just as forthright in their views as those who believe God is real.

I'm not in the studio so please don't use the blog to get questions to Dawkins. Use the comments section to discuss his assertions.

9:08 a.m. - Dawkins and Miller mix it up over her assertion that he's recruiting people to become atheists. "In the preface I was stating my wildest dreams, but I hadn't realized the extent to which atheists are in the closet waiting to be called out." By the way, here's his Web site.

9:11 a.m. - "Why is it so important?" Miller asks. "Truth matters," Dawkins says, which brings up a constant struggle for me in matters of religion. Both sides of this equation say it's "the truth." But how we do know?

9:12 - Why does Dawkins choose to describe God as people's "imaginary friend?" He says the claim of a universal power "who put things in motion" is an impingement on science.

Miller says the description of "imaginary friend" makes it sound "infantile." Dawkins says it should.

9:17 a.m. "It's not up to me to provide the evidence," Dawkins says.
He says the idea that Jesus died for our sins is "obvious nonsense." OK, where does this conversation go after that?

9:22 a.m. - Dawkins says believers mix doubt and belief inconsistently. "You have just suggested that somebody who begins by saying 'I don't know,' then says 'and I know Jesus was raised by the dead and born to a version.... It's the Christians who say 'beyond a doubt...'"

9:25 a.m. - "Why do you bother to call yourself a Christian instead of saying you believe in a higher power. He suggests it's more intellectually honest to say one believes in a higher power but can't be sure," he says to a caller.

9:27 a.m. - A caller rejects the notion that beautiful things are a sign of God. "Why can't they just be beautiful in and of themselves?" she says.

9:29 a.m. - There is growing evidence for a kind of universal morality which transcends different religious traditions.Things like The Golden Rule, are -- if not universal -- extremely widespread. There's increasing evidence they're part of our brain heritage.

9:30 a.m. - Caller: "We don't all believe that there was a virgin birth etc., but those things aren't required to believe in the message. You can't lump all believers of God into the Christian fundamentalist camp."

Dawkins, however, says mystery is something to be solved, not something to revel in.

9:33 a.m. - Says some mysteries will never be solved. Pressed on the question of what is "truth," he says he's criticizing the attitude that "I love mystery. You're spoiling it for us."

"Might it be an insolvable mystery?" Kerri asks.

9:35 a.m. -"I believe it's worth working on," he says. He says the answers may come from neuroscience and computers. "Computers are capable of feats of mimicry of mental process. We will have man-made computers that are conscious in the same way we are."

9:41 a.m. Caller: "I'm sick of this nonsense called religion." But says people who declare "God doesn't exist" are as arrogant as those who say "God exists."

"I am not certain there is no God," Dawkins replies. "No scientist should say categorically, 'there is no anything.' You have to doubt everything and be open to evidence. There could be a supernatural being -- I bet there is a superhuman being somewhere in the universe."

9:46 a.m. Relays the story of the night P.Z. Myers got expelled from the Minneapolis screening of Expelled, a film about Creationism.

Here's the NY Times version.

9:49 a.m. - Caller: What came before the Big Bang. Also relays a story about a near-death experience by a relative.

"I'm not a physicist so I can't answer the question," he said about the Big Bang. He says whatever came before is a big mystery and it's not going to be helped "by postulating divine intelligence."

9:51 a.m. - Kerri asks if Dawkins believes his convictions will be as strong on the day he dies?

I'm not convinced of anything. I can't say categorically that there is no life after death. It seems implausible. Brains don't survive death and they evolve over millions of years. He says it is implausible to say that when your brain dies, your spirit goes on.

Dawkins is speaking tonight at Northrup Auditorium at the University of Minnesota.

Audio of today's interview will be available shortly.

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What did the Big Bang look like?

Posted at 9:53 AM on February 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Science

What did the Big Bang look like?

This...

Scientists at Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, have recreated the "Cosmic Dawn" - the formation of the first big galaxies in the Universe.

"We are effectively looking back in time and by doing so we hope to learn how galaxies like our own were made and to understand more about dark matter. The presence of dark matter is the key to building galaxies - without dark matter we wouldn't be here today," Alvaro Orsi, a research postgraduate in Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology tells Science Daily

The green depicts "dark matter", which is believed to make up 80 percent of the universe.

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The Greenwash Brigade

Posted at 1:13 PM on February 3, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Science

I'm not sure how I missed the existence of The Greenwash Brigade, seeing as how it's happening -- more or less -- within earshot of the News Cut World Headquarters. American Public Media's Marketplace has assembled a team of "environmental professionals" to grade the "eco-friendly claims of corporations."

Janne K. Flisrand, the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, spotted a troubling corporate effort. Sharp Electronics employees are volunteering to teach 5th graders about climate change and renewable power, she writes, and has focused it on solar power.

That's not necessarily bad, depending on the larger context. A lesson focused on solar power is appropriate IF the class had already learned about conservation, AND there are classes dedicated to other renewable energy sources. As a stand-alone, it's simply self-interested marketing.

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The space race

Posted at 10:50 AM on February 3, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Sputnik was a little tin can that beeped. "The public feared that the Soviets' ability to launch satellites also translated into the capability to launch ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons from Europe to the U.S.," NASA's history archive says.

"Omid," launched today by Iran, can do a little more. It's a data processing and television transmission satellite, although concerns of dual-use technology and the potential for the combination rocket to be converted to carry a warhead will likely raise fears around the world," an Indian news site says today.

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The LED solution?

Posted at 5:05 PM on January 30, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Energy, Science

The Brits are further ahead of us in the development of the next generation of light bulbs. They've banned the sale of incandescent light bulbs, and they're already -- reportedly -- moving past the newfangled CFL bulbs.

The next step is LEDs. I bought one of those LED worklights a year or so ago and it's heading for the trash. The light, while cheaper to produce and relatively bright, is too narrowly targeted as a work light and certainly as a replacement for home light bulbs.

So I was interested today when the BBC reported that a professor has developed an LED light bulb that will last for 60 years and be appropriate for home use. Alas, it was a most disappointing presentation.

It's easier to develop an eco-friendly light bulb than it is to develop an eco-friendly light-bulb that works well.

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Hope for MS patients

Posted at 3:18 PM on January 30, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

Over the last few months, I've neglected the science beat a bit, but a story out today cannot be ignored.

Scientists have reversed the effects of Multiple Sclerosis... they think.

The research comes from Northwestern, according to the Chicago Sun-Times:

The successful use of stem cells to reboot MS patients' immune systems could be a big step forward in the treatment of the disease, in which the immune system attacks the protective covering of nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord -- the myelin sheath.

Still, Burt cautioned that his results -- being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet Neurology -- need to be duplicated in a broader study. "It's encouraging, but, honestly, it's unproven until you have a randomized trial that proves it," he said.

One of the people in the study was Barry Goudy, 51, of Michigan who now says, "Life is very good. I have no restraints anymore because of MS."

It's only coincidental that the news came on the same day that a company in Toronto announced that its drug to treat MS doesn't work.

Meanwhile, Wendy Booker isn't waiting around. She plans to climb Mt. Everest this spring, becoming the first person with MS to climb the tallest peak on each continent.

"I wanted to show what life with MS is like," she says. "It's a struggle. You can't always get to the top."

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The curse of memory

Posted at 11:44 AM on January 27, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Science

This morning's MPR Midmorning's discussion about forgetting and memory was fascinating in a this-is-the-day-I-figure-out-time-travel sort of way.

You have to give host Kerri Miller credit for pluckiness and persistence because it started out the way too many math classes started when I was in school: Too hard. Checking out.

Early on, one of the guests Dr. Gayatri Devi, director of New York Memory and Healthy Aging Services, tried to differentiate between forgetting and memory, when Kerri asked why we're able to consciously remember something, but we can't consciously forget something?

"Forgetting has to occur constantly and if we had to consciously remember what we forget, we would not be able to function. It would overwhelm our mental capacity."

Like, umm, now.

But James McGaugh, a neuroscientist and founding director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California-Irvine, took another tack in explaining why the brain forgets things. Otherwise, it would be a curse, as in the case of Jill Price.

"She's a prisoner of her memories," McGaugh acknowledged. "She can remember her 13th birthday but when she remembers it, she'll also remember that someone there insulted her... She is able to call up all sorts of good information, in doing so she unearths a lot of unpleasant things."

Give the show a listen:

If you could remember everything, would you want to?

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Flyable cars

Posted at 3:10 PM on January 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Regular News Cut reader Brian Hanf sends me news that, in his words, "My flying car is coming."

His link reveals that a Boston-area company is planning flight tests of a two-seater airplane that doubles as a car.

Either way, it boils down to this: You sit down behind the steering wheel, drive to the runway, unfold two wings and take off. You can fly 500 miles on a tank of gas -- regular unleaded -- and when you land, you simply fold up the wings and drive where you want to go. At the end of the day, you fly back, drive home and park inside your garage.

It's an idea that many have considered but nobody has yet perfected. Judging by an article last May, this project is already behind schedule.

Terrafugia wants to deliver the first Transition to a customer by the end of 2009 and go into large-scale production by 2012. If you were just building a new type of plane or a new type of car, that schedule would be ambitious enough. But the Transition is both--and if, as the company intends, pilots are to land the vehicle on an airport runway, fold up the wings, and tool right out onto public highways, then this hybrid-of-a-different-color will have to meet federal standards for both aviation safety and highway safety.

Of course, the only thing worse than the new-car market right now is the small-airplane market, but putting that aside, what other challenges does this idea face? The skies are one of the few areas where there's not gridlock, and the government seems to have no plan at all for flying cars.

>>The developer points to the new "light sport aircraft" rules as a way to get FAA approval for his machine. But planes licensed under those rules can't fly at night.

>> It's only a matter of time before some neighbor decides the cul de sac would be a great thing to use as a runway.

>> Shouldn't Minnesotans learn how to merge on the highway first?

A lot of the focus of these stories is on the airplane-side of the equation. But it's the car side that's notoriously undependable. On your way home from work tonight, count the number of cars broken down by the side of the road.

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Questions and answers about the salmonella outbreak and flu

Posted at 10:59 AM on January 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

Michael Osterholm, the former Minnesota state epidemiologist and now director of the , the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy is on MPR's Midday (Listen here), discussion the nationwide salmonella outbreak.

I'm live-blogging the pertinent questions and answers. He's also talking about other issues facing health investigators. The other big health story today is the word that Tamiflu may not be effective on this year's strain.

Osterholm says there's actually three strains of flu that float around the world, one of which was an "escapee" from a Russian lab years ago.

Q: Why isn't Tamiflu working?
A: The strain changed in a way that makes it resistant to the flu. The good news is (a) the change may not stay. Next year's strain may lose the resistance, and (b) this year "we have a great match on the vaccine with the strain that's in Minnesota.

Q: Has the possibility of a pandemic or bird flu changed?
A: We're closer to a pandemic today than we were yesterday. When people say "if it were to happen it would've happened by now, H3N8 strain jumped from birds to horses in the 1960s and we have no idea why. The same strain then jumped to dogs and we're seeing problems with dogs. We know little about influenza.

Q: Why are we just hearing about the salmonella outbreak now?
A: The first cases occurred in early October. This has been gaining a head of steam with most cases occurring in the last six weeks. This is a common strain of salmonella. We have the ability to fingerprint the organisms. It took time for the "fingerprints" to be obtained. It has increased in the number of states which tells us a lot about the product involved. It's probably a store-shelf product.

The cases in Minnesota are more recent nature. It's likely that the Minnesota Department of Public Health will be the one to crack it.

Q: Has something changed in the food environment?
A: Even a loaf of Sara Lee bread, the ingredients are likely from 10 different countries. It's remarkably how safe food really is, given how much food we eat. The average person has two food-borne illnesses a year. But we have so many more processes than we had before.

Q: Is food illness more insidious?
A: Think of all the food that you don't cook. Even the things you do cook, there are things you don't cook adequately. Part of the problem is some contamination occurs in plants (such as deli meats) after the cooking process.

Q: When the CDC investigated the "tomato outbreak" (which turned out to be wrong), does the CDC get gunshy about publicizing an investigation?
A: You're right, but having been at the Minnesota Department of Public Health as long as I was, Minnesota doesn't get it wrong and they get it quickly often. When the first outbreak of Salmonella St. Paul was identified in Minnesota, they identified it quickly that it wasn't tomatoes, it was peppers. Had the other states been half as competent as Minnesota, it could've been picked up much earlier.

Osterholm says he's worried the Health Department will "take a hit" in the coming budget cuts.

Q: Is there a fear that publicizing these things too early will hurt industry?
A: Yes, but I don't think that's the case here. Once the number of cases grew here quickly, they (the MDH) jumped on it. I wouldn't be surprised to see this solved in just a couple of days.

Listener questions

Q: What advice would you give to Obama?
A: Osterholm says he's working with the Obama transition team on who to bring in. "I'm excited about the interest in solid science," he said. As a world, we are going to have to take major cuts in programs. What I worry about is public health, which is only 1% of the budget and much of that funding is in jeopardy right now. If you cut out some basic public health programs, you'll pay more down the road. If the pandemic flu hits tomorrow, it'll make everything else seem like child's play.

Q: Should people have faith in federal health agencies?
A: I was critical of the CDC in the tomato vs. peppers outbreak, but I also saw the CDC do a great job overall. Is some of it a problem? Absolutely. But it's unfortunate that people label everything dark or light or right or wrong.

Q: What do you think of Sanjay Gupta as surgeon general?
A: He's a friend and his knowledge is exceptional. He'd make a great surgeon general. Having known past surgeon generals, the office has been "dumbed down." The Obama administration wants to restore that to a very strong voice to the world. There's very few health communicators out there than Sanjay Gupta. He's an actively practicing physician. Every Monday morning he scrubs in and does some amazing brain surgery.

Q: What is the health impact of people coming across the border from the south?
A: At Hennpin County Medical Center, they needed to have 65 interpreters to provide health care. Of 65 6.2 billion on the face of the earth, 2 billion have TB. We want to make sure we deal with the populations from their health perspective. We don't want it to spread to others and that's where I get people's concern about people coming in from other countries... there's been very limited transmission of disease to other groups. We see it within their own family. We shouldn't use it as a wedge issue to say "they shouldn't be here."

Q: Why is Minnesota better than other states at finding the answers to food-borne illnesses?
A: In 1965, we had three people who worked in infectious diseases. Over the years we built the group up through outside resources -- research money, grant money -- and since the early '80s, the MDPH has had an ethic of excellence where some of the top people in the country have been trained and have stayed. We have people at the U who are on call all of the time. We can do some testing in three days that takes the state of Texas 6 weeks. Our laboratory is one of the best -- if not the best -- in the country. There's been a sense of excellence that has stayed and we're lucky to live in a state that values that.

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Salmonella outbreak started months ago

Posted at 9:01 AM on January 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed to the Associated Press that, indeed, a salmonella outbreak is racing across the country, puzzling health officials over its source. It sounds like something that just happened, doesn't it? But, no, it started in September, and most of the people got sick after December 1.

After the Associated Press story from the Centers for Disease Control hit the Internet, the Minnesota Department of Public Health confirmed that 30 people in Minnesota have gotten sick from salmonella and one 70-year-old woman with other underlying health conditions has died.

Health officials across the country are scrambling to talk to people who've been affected, hoping to be able to connect the victims to a common source .

But at least in Massachusetts, health officials have been slow on the uptake. One 7-year-old girl was affected just before Thanksgiving, spent 4 days in the hospital, and her mother is upset that health officials still have not contacted the family.

Presumably, the states have known about the outbreak, but until the Associated Press story, there was no public announcement of it. Anywhere. As of this morning, there is still nothing on the Minnesota Department of Public Health Web site about the outbreak, although there is valuable information there .

"It is often difficult to identify sources of foodborne outbreaks. People may not remember the foods they recently ate and may not be aware of all of the ingredients in food. That's what makes these types of investigations very difficult," according to CDC spokesman David Daigle.

Says the CDC's update:

"In outbreaks like this one, identification of the contaminated product requires conducting detailed standardized interviews with persons who were ill and with non-ill members of the public ("controls") to compare foods they recently ate and other exposures," the CDC's update says. "Using statistical methods, the contaminated item is identified as one to which significantly more ill persons than controls were exposed. ... The investigation is labor intensive and typically takes weeks. It is not always successful."

Scientific American says there may be good reason why news of an outbreak that started last fall is just now being made public.

The agency's disease trackers, who were criticized for taking three months to trace another large salmonella outbreak last spring to Mexican Serrano peppers, haven't determined the latest outbreak's origin. They mistakenly blamed tomatoes for last year's scourge, costing growers $100 million in sales.

Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy says an initial suggestion that chicken may be a cause is not correct:

An online newspaper report yesterday that said the CDC had activated its emergency network to investigate the outbreak was incorrect, CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell told CIDRAP News today. She also said a report that chicken was suspected as the source of the outbreak was wrong.

"We're not in emergency status with this," Russell said. As for the source, she added, "We don't know what it is yet. It would be very premature to indicate that it's chicken or anything else."

The Center's director, former state epidemiologist Mike Osterholm will be on MPR's Midday at 11 to discuss the outbreak.

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What's love got to do with it?

Posted at 3:03 PM on January 7, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

An Emory University professor, Larry Young, writes in the journal Nature that love involves a series of neurochemical events that happen in a specific part of the brain.

If true, one will no longer need oysters, chocolates, or even cheap wine and some Barry White to create "a loving mood," as the BBC calls it.

Under Young's theory, scientists, some of whom can't currently get a date, could create chemicals that would make people fall in love with the first person they see, or even refall in love with someone.

"It may actually enhance our ability to form relationships, and so it is a very real possibility that something like oxytocin could be used in conjunction with marital therapies to bring back that spark," he says.

In the future, you may have to take a pill to stay married.

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The power of the pinhole

Posted at 6:39 PM on January 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Reader Derek Schille writes, "For whatever reason this screamed news cut to me."

It's a six-month time-lapse image of a bridge, taken with a pinhole camera. The lines are the travels of the sun in relation to the planet.

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One giant leap for biofuels

Posted at 9:17 AM on December 31, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

In a slow news week, this should've gotten bigger play.

Fuel from the weed jatropha powered an Air New Zealand jet on a two-hour flight today--the world's second flight of a commercial jet on biofuel. One out of the four Rolls Royce engines on an Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400 burned a 50-50 blend of regular jet fuel and a bio-version made from jatropha.

The flight more than doubled the air time of the first biofuel flight--a 40 minute jaunt between London and Amsterdam in February. The plane climbed to an altitude of 35,000 feet and the engine performed normally, according to chief pilot Capt. David Morgan.

Details are in Scientific American.

Of course there remains a big problem:

Biofuels don't contain the oil necessary to help seals and rings in engines swell. So the lief of an aircraft engine would be reduced. That's a big deal. The GE engine on a 777 could go for as high as $10 million apiece.

This issue is playing out in all forms of aviation, including general aviation. I have this thing sitting in a hangar -- a new airplane engine.

It runs on fully leaded gasoline, which is being phased out. It may be a huge paperweight in a short period of time. These engines can run on auto fuel, but Minnesota's ethanol content will rot the seals and reduce its life.

Researchers are trying to solve problems like this but so far there doesn't appear to be a solution. Most of the small airplanes you see in the air are flying on borrowed time.

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Not ready for prime time

Posted at 1:40 PM on December 30, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Science

The Israeli consulate is holding a "press conference" via Twitter this afternoon in what surely is a first. People post messages with the @israelconsulate address in the message.

The format has a way to go before it becomes valuable, however. Unlike most press conferences, with this one you have to read the answers first and then work your way back to find out the questions.

However, the "answers" so far, make the questions as obvious as the answers are predictable.

Here are some of the major points highlighted so far (with the actual answers):

Isr. left Gaza in 2005 to send message of peace. Ans. more rockets

Since Isr. completed barrier almost no terr.attacks took place

Purposely targeting innocent civilians, like Hamas does in firing 10000+ projectiles since 2001

Targeting Hamas installations, located w/in civilian areas. War is w/Hamas not civ.

A better way to follow things is by searching #AskIsrael, but then you have to read through miles of posts of people writing, "I'm typing up a question to ask the Israeli consulate."

Sometimes, the old media is a better forum. If there's one issue that can't be explained in a series of 140 character messages, this one is it.

It was a nice try, however.

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The longest day

Posted at 7:35 AM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Apparently, I don't have enough to worry about. The economy stinks. The Wild look like an expansion team. I don't remember how to drive on dry pavement.

Now this: The earth is slowing down. It's gotten so slow that the Department of Time is going to add a second to 2008, which has already been acting like the drunken relative who didn't know when to leave.

The second will be added on Wednesday at 5:59:59 p.m.

According to the experts, the earth is slowing because of the braking action of tides, snow or the lack of it at the polar ice caps, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms, although I've always suspected the Foshay Tower was somewhat responsible.

At the present rate, it'll be billions of years before the earth stops rotating -- around the time the Minnesota U.S. Senate recount ends -- and inhabitants of Planet Earth engage in the interstellar version of Wheel of Fortune.

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Alzheimer's

Posted at 11:02 AM on December 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

Ten million of us baby boomers are going to develop Alzheimer's. Expect coverage of research to increase. Let's begin with this one that's out today.

At Northeastern University in Boston, researchers say the disease may get its start by an insufficient blood flow carrying sugar to the brain. They suggest that exercise -- now -- may be the answer.

Meanwhile, a researcher at McGill University is out with a study today that says patients who frequently kick or cry out in their sleep may be at an increased risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

There's no simple test for Alzheimer's. The Alzheimer's Foundation of America is suggesting a five-minute test, which others say is hugely controversial. Why? Take it and see if you can figure it out:

Tell someone three random words: car, pencil, banana. Then have the person draw a clock with the correct time, as a distraction. A little later, can he or she recall the words?

As a Chicago Tribune article pointed out, "Failing such a test doesn't mean someone has dementia. But it signals there might be a problem with short-term memory that should be checked by a doctor. Maybe it's something fixable, such as depression or thyroid disease. Maybe it is an Alzheimer's warning sign. Or maybe the person just isn't a good test taker."

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The final frontier

Posted at 9:29 AM on December 12, 2008 by Than Tibbetts (3 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Science

Everything about being the incoming administration is tough, and President-elect Barack Obama will have no shortage of tough decisions about science policy.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that NASA is already digging a moat, lifting up the drawbridge and preparing for a siege.

NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is "not qualified" to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned.

...

Griffin's resistance is part of a no-holds-barred effort to preserve the Constellation program, the delayed and over-budget moon rocket that is his signature project.

NASA's budget is small potatoes compared to some recent government programs — at around $17 billion is only about 40 times smaller than the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. But, it sets up an interesting question.

Are the programs worthy scientific endeavors, a critical pseudo-extension of our national security and national pride into the great beyond and a extension of the infrastructure the Obama administration says should be invested in?

Or are they an overindulging slate of geek hubris, a chronically over-budget and poor investment when money would be better spent on more terrestrial matters?

NASA has had its share of successes and failure, and a higher failure rate is probably more tolerable when working at the extreme limits of human exploration and knowledge. And while President Bush laid out his Vision for Space Exploration plan in 2004 with ambitious goals of returning humans to the moon by 2020 and putting people on Mars shortly (in NASA terms) after that, the burden will be on Obama to determine what is a worthy investment and what's a waste of money.

My guess is that greeting the transition team with a mix of confrontation and paranoia isn't going to help your chances in preserving your programs.

Soon after, [Obama space transition team head Lori] Garver and Griffin engaged in what witnesses said was an animated conversation. Some overheard parts of it.

"Mike, I don't understand what the problem is. We are just trying to look under the hood," Garver said.

"If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar," Griffin replied. "Because it means you don't trust what I say is under the hood."

Aside: If you've ever wondered about the breathtaking scope of the U.S. federal budget, spend your coffee break looking over this massive interactive graphic.

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The conjunction

Posted at 5:53 PM on December 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

We've got a conjunction up there. Venus, Jupiter and the Moon are all near each other as viewed from terra firma, creating a "frown," as National Geographic puts it. But in the above picture from Kenya, it looks more like a smile.

We haven't done this since the the eclipse months ago (Good grief, it was February! Was it really February? It seems like only recently.) and I probably should've asked earlier today but if you take a picture, send it to me and I'll post it.

Update 7:23 p.m. Just took this from the runway at South St. Paul airport. Lame camera, though. And ignore Flight 837 from wherever.

The conjunction is not only a frown, but appears to be crying, in this picture from Sharon Stiteler. It's actually quite Van Gogh-like.

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Just one more thing to worry about

Posted at 5:38 PM on November 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Science

The Current's Mary Lucia and I were chatting a bit ago about what we would do if we learned an asteroid was heading for earth. Today, a conference got underway in Vienna to try to set up a global plan for diverting an asteroid heading for earth's midsection.

Mary said "at least it will be quick." But maybe not. Theoretically, according to experts, it should be possible to determine 15 years ahead of time that an asteroid is heading our way. Fifteen years. In fact, there's one roaming around around out there right now, experts say, that could hit us in 2029 if it goes through a small "keyhole" of space enough to deflect its orbit right into us.

I'll be 75 then, and not terribly concerned, although it may make me rethink the whole "long term" strategy for dealing with the stock market.

Oh, one of Mary's many listeners sent this video in which has nothing to do with asteroids but must've been frightening on its own. It happened in Edmonton last week and was captured by a dashboard camera on a police car. (link fixed)

You have to give credit to a cop who doesn't even slow down while driving toward a fireball from space that sure seemed as if it was heading straight for him.

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From toilet to tap

Posted at 1:02 PM on November 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Science

There are some headlines you just can't ignore.

Like this one from the BBC today.

Nasa jubilant at urine solution

If you haven't been following this closely, NASA is testing a system of providing drinking water to astronauts that is filtered from their urine. And if you have been following this closely, well, don't tell me you haven't been thinking about this because I know you have.

"Not to spoil anything, but I think up here the appropriate words are 'Yippee!'," space station Commander Mike Fincke told mission control early on Tuesday morning.

He supervised work on the malfunctioning water regeneration system - which distils, filters, ionises and oxidises wastewater including urine, perspiration and bath water, into drinkable water.

Nobody's taking a swig of anything yet. The sampled brew will be tested by NASA when the astronauts return. But let's be indelicate here for just a moment in the interest of science. Suppose this thing works, and the thing spits out lovely drinking water in bottles that say "Pluto Springs." What if at some point in the future, it breaks again. How will they know?

This concept is not limited to space. More and more communities are considering tapping their sewage treatment plants as a source of drinking water.

In California, a plant is already working, as described by the New York Times in an August article:

When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The "new" water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

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The cold facts

Posted at 1:48 PM on October 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

File this in the "news you'd hear if it weren't for politics" file.

At a conference on infectious diseases today, University of Virginia researchers released a study of the common places where people pick up colds.

The researchers started with 30 adults with early symptoms of colds and retraced the things they touched in the previous 18 hours, using DNA tests to hunt for rhinovirus, which causes about half of all colds.

"We found that commonly touched areas like refrigerator doors and handles were positive about 40 percent of the time" for cold germs, said Dr. Birgit Winther, an ear, nose and throat specialist who helped conduct the study.

The culprits:

Salt and pepper shakers

Refrigerator door handles

Light switches

Remote controls

Telephones

Dishwasher handles

The researchers also figured out that a person touching these items could catch the cold virus even if it had been 48 hours since the person transmitting the cold had touched them. This, apparently, is not true for the flu virus.

Why can't we cure the common cold? The Buffalo News has a sensational article analyzing that today. The short answer? There's too many viruses. Another answer: Viruses are smarter than we are. For example, the reason a cold isn't more severe than it is is because the virus needs you to walk around infecting other people

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Scotch Tape science

Posted at 10:23 AM on October 23, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Science

On one of yesterday's visits with Mary Lucia on the Current, I mentioned the finding that under the right circumstances, you could use a roll of Scotch Tape to make an X-Ray.

Here's the story on Nature News.

As long ago as 1953, a team of scientists based in Russia suggested that peeling sticky tape produced X-rays. But "we were very sceptical about the old results," says Escobar (the researcher). His team decided to look into the phenomenon anyway, and found that X-rays were indeed given off, in high-energy pulses.

When the researchers placed a small plastic window in their vacuum chamber, they were even able to take an X-ray image of a finger, using a dental X-ray detector. Their results are published in Nature.

What can science do with this newfound knowledge? "The researchers suggest that the high charge density generated by peeling the tape could be great enough to trigger nuclear fusion," the article said.

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Mining the moon

Posted at 11:07 AM on October 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

India's planned spaceshot to the Moon is an easy one to ignore -- it's just another country not named the United States ramping up its space program while the only country to actually land and walk on the moon seems increasingly content to keep its feet on terra firma.

"When completed, this mission will put India in the very small group of six countries which have thus far sent space missions to the moon," said Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, a member of the Indian parliament, reinforcing the narrative that this is about prestige and a place at the scientific table.

And maybe it is. But tucked into the New York Times story today is this nugget:

The Indian mission is scheduled to last two years, prepare a three-dimensional atlas of the moon and prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium, a coveted fuel for nuclear power plants, according to the Indian Space Research Organization.

The moon as strip mine? It's not that far fetched. A 2004 Popular Mechanics article from former astronaut Harrison Schmitt.

It is not a lack of engineering skill that prevents us from using helium-3 to meet our energy needs, but a lack of the isotope itself. Vast quantities of helium originate in the sun, a small part of which is helium-3, rather than the more common helium-4. Both types of helium are transformed as they travel toward Earth as part of the solar wind. The precious isotope never arrives because Earth's magnetic field pushes it away. Fortunately, the conditions that make helium-3 rare on Earth are absent on the moon, where it has accumulated on the surface and been mixed with the debris layer of dust and rock, or regolith, by constant meteor strikes. And there it waits for the taking.

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Science: What if?

Posted at 7:33 AM on October 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Science

It's always a bad idea to get too far ahead where medical research is concerned, but it's hard not to play "what if" with a science story being reported now.

Researchers have found monkeys, taught to play a computer game, can regain use of paralyzed muscles and even learned to use muscles that previously had nothing to do with wrist movement.

The significance? According to the Associated Press:

Remarkably, the monkeys regained use of paralyzed muscles by learning to control the activity of just a single brain cell.

The result is "an important step forward," said Dawn Taylor of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who studies the concept of using brain signals to overcome paralysis. She wasn't involved in the new work.

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The tipping point

Posted at 6:34 PM on September 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Here's a new video that's recently been uploaded explaining climate change and, more precisely, a recalculation of the "tippping point."

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

The script is posted here. The author says the answer is to consume less, which is never going to happen, at least in my lifetime.

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