Page 3.14 » Evan Lerner

Bjørn Lomborg Switches Sides

Evan Lerner — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:10:05 +0000

Last week, “The Skeptical Environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg announced that he was skeptical no more. Timed with the release of his new book “Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits” Lomborg now says that the world needs an investment of $100 Billion a year to fight global warming. Lomborg denies this is a total reversal of his position, considering he never denied the reality of climate change, just the severity of its impacts and cost-effectiveness of attempts to mitigate it. Nevertheless, Lomborg’s switching sides has made headlines, though Class M‘s James Hrynyshyn wonders if someone who has gotten the science of climate change spectacularly wrong in the past will be a useful ally. To get a sense of Lomborg’s original position, check out these two posts from 2009 that appeared on the earlier incarnation of James’ blog: The Island of Doubt.

Lomborg v Lomborg

Class MAugust 31, 2010

“Much is being and will be written about Bjorn Lomborg’s volte face on climate change. After a decade of denial — not of the reality of anthropogenic warming, but of the threat it poses to civiliation — the Skeptical Environmentalist now says: ‘If we care about the environment and about leaving this planet and its inhabitants with the best possible future, we actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming.’”

Bjorn Lomborg launches campaign against logic

The Island of DoubtNovember 4, 2009

“(Pseudo)-Skeptical Environmental Bjorn Lomborg advises in the Wall Street Journal that spending money on anti-malarial campaigns makes more sense than, and by implication is morally superior to, spending money on cutting carbon emissions”

Sea level rise a red herring?

The Island of DoubtMarch 11, 2009

“There’s a good reason why of all the consequences of anthropogenic global warming, nothing garners as much attention as sea level rise — with the possible exception of those darn charismatic polar bears, that is.”

Rebooting Review, Distributing Data, Opening Science

Evan Lerner — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:00:04 +0000

Though the “publish or perish” life of an academic never rests, it can’t help but be infused with the rhythm of the school year. Perhaps that explains a recent surge in bloggerly analysis of the institutions and infrastructures that infuse this scientific lifestyle. From peer review to data collection, there isn’t facet of this world that isn’t being reconceputalized in terms of openess and transparency. Mike the Mad Biologist has some thoughts on how this might impact the Researcher-Data Producer Conflict, and you should check out this classic from Common Knowledge‘s John Wilbanks over at SeedMagzine, on why the existing publishing system crowds out younger researchers. And with a high profile case of the system breaking down in the national press, there’s no better time to go back to the drawing board.

Could Open Science Resolve the Researcher-Data Producer Conflict?

Mike the mad biologistAugust 26, 2010

“Last week, I wrote about the problems facing genomics and the concept of ownership of data. While I am sympathetic to researchers’ career needs under the current system, I don’t think we can, in good conscience, let that get in the way of rapid data release, especially in applied areas.”

Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review

science is cultureAugust 29, 2010

“‘Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work.’”

The Matthew Effect

Seed MagazineAugust 30, 2010

“When it comes to scientific publishing and fame, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. How can we break this feedback loop?”

Meet the Matamata

Evan Lerner — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:09:35 +0000

When we last left Darren Naish of Tetrapod Zoology, he was analyzing a famous crytpozoological photograph, purported to be an undiscovered species of big cat, or perhaps the last surviving member of a Tasmanian cat-like marsupial. Of course, Naish generally prefers to write about strange and superlative animals that actually exist (or did at one point). In that vein, Naish has added to his series on the matamata, a river turtle with a shovel-shaped head, long, thick neck and a snorkel for a nose. Previous editions of the series focused on the matamata’s evolutionary history and unusual anatomy; now we finally get to see how the turtle makes use of its unique gifts in catching prey. Check out the video in “Turtles that suck, turtles that blow” to watch a matamata slurp up an unsuspecting fish. The video is in super-slo-mo; it has to be, as the whole process takes less than a tenth of a second.

Turtles that suck, turtles that blow (matamatas part IV)

Tetrapod ZoologyAugust 23, 2010

“Once the prey is within range, the Matamata engages in dynamic suction-feeding: a feeding Matamata gapes its jaws really wide (opening them to an angle of about 80°), and rapidly expands its throat to suck in a huge quantity of water – hopefully containing the prey.”

“Adaptation perfected” (possibly) in a turtle’s head (matamatas part III)

Tetrapod ZoologyJuly 30, 2010

“Some authors have described the skull as ‘arrow-shaped’: the snout is pointed, and the skull as a whole is flattened and light due both to reduction or loss of some elements and to relatively small muscles. The head can thus be thrown forward at great speed.”

The familiar Matamata and its long, fat neck (matamatas part II)

Tetrapod ZoologyJuly 26, 2010

“It’s one of the strangest tetrapods on the planet, and there’s so much to say about it that the previous article ended up being nothing more than the briefest of introductions.”

Matamata: turtle-y awesome to the extreme

Tetrapod ZoologyJune 24, 2010

“This proboscis – superficially similar to that seen in softshell turtles – allows the animal to reach the surface when submerged, and there are lots of photos and paintings that show matamatas engaging in this behaviour.”

Volcano of Superlatives: Etna Week on Eruptions

Evan Lerner — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:35:33 +0000

Do you like volcanoes? Italian volcanoes? If so, it’s not hard to guess the one you’re thinking of: the largest volcano in Europe and one of the most active in the world, Mount Etna. And if you have any questions about this famous fulminator, head over to Eruptions, where guest blogger Dr. Boris Behncke of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology examines Etna over the course of three extremely detailed posts. Starting with the volcano’s geological anatomy, Dr. Behncke moves on to its cycles of eruptions, and finally, the impact these common eruptions and lava flows have on the million people who live in Etna’s shadow. Incredibly, despite the volcano’s more-or-less continuous activity, only about a hundred people are estimated to have been directly killed by Etna in the last 27 centuries. Even if Etna has earned its designation as “the friendly volcano”, it’s hard not to be amazed at the raw power of the forces that shape the face of this planet.

Etna Week (Part 1) – Brief Anatomy of an Exceptional Volcano

EruptionsAugust 16, 2010

“In this exceptionally varied volcanic setting, Mount Etna on the island of Sicily is a volcano of superlatives. But what makes Etna really unique is its incredible versatility in terms of eruptive styles, eruption magnitudes, and eruption locations.”

Etna Week (Part 2) – The current dynamics and activity of Etna

EruptionsAugust 18, 2010

“The recent behavior of Etna is characterized by nearly continuous eruptive activity from the summit craters and eruptions from new vents on the flanks at intervals of a few years to decades.”

Etna Week (Part 3) – Etna’s Volcanic Hazards

EruptionsAugust 20, 2010

“During the last century, three deadly incidents are known, in 1929 (two deaths), 1979 (nine deaths), and 1987 (two deaths); in all cases the victims were visitors to the summit crater who were surprised by sudden steam-blast explosions. Amazingly, many people have escaped unscathed during a number of much more violent explosive magmatic eruptions, which, however, always showed a conspicuous buildup for some time before culminating.”

Cryptic Observations: Photographs and Illusionary Animals

Evan Lerner — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:03:26 +0000

“Photographic evidence” is sometimes taken as shorthand for cold, hard proof. Seeing, after all, is believing, and if we have a permanent record of an image that anyone can examine, what more verification can be necessary? Of course, we can’t really trust our eyes or memories, something that has been exacerbated by how trivial manipulating photographs have become. But even before Photoshop, photographs fooled people. Beyond crude hoaxes, there remains the fact that such images are not simple slices of reality. Intentionally or unintentionally, photographers determine what information from a scene is captured and what is omitted. This phenomenon is a driving force in cryptozoology, the pseudoscientific study of legendary animals. And while Tetrapod Zoology‘s Darren Naish generally writes about animals that actually exist (or did millenia ago), today he delves into a famous cryptid photo of the “Ozenkadnook tiger.” While the truth about the photo is still hazy, what it says about our standards of evidence–and how it intersects with the story of a real Australian animal’s extinction–is worth a closer look.

Rilla Martin’s 1964 photo of the ‘Ozenkadnook tiger’

Tetrapod ZoologyAugust 18, 2010

“Photos purported to show ‘mystery animals’ are always great fun. One of the most perplexing and curious of the lot was taken on a box Brownie camera near Goroke, western Victoria, Australia, in 1964. I’m referring, of course, to Rilla Martin’s photo of a strange, striped, running mammal.”

Really: photos of the Loch Ness monster

Tetrapod ZoologyDecemeber 13, 2007

“Many people have heard that some, or all, of these photos are dubious, or fake. But that’s where it ends for the vast majority of people. I would imagine that – as with the famous Patterson footage purporting to show sasquatch – most people see a given Loch Ness monster photo and think ‘Oh yeah, that’s that famous Loch Ness monster photo. I wonder if anyone’s ever worked out whether it’s a fake or not’. Well my friends, you now need wonder no more, for here I’m going to do a quick run-down of some of the more famous images, and dish the dirt.”

Best lake monster image ever: the Mansi photo

Tetrapod ZoologyJune 3, 2008

“Taken by Sandra Mansi at Lake Champlain (Vermont, USA) in July 1977, the Mansi photo has always been really popular because (unlike so many alleged lake monster photos) it’s not too blurry or ambiguous but clearly shows something that looks very much like a large, long-necked grey aquatic animal.”

On the Origins of Numbers and Recreational Mathematics

Evan Lerner — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:47:05 +0000

Letters and numbers are often mentally grouped together; they’re both simple sets of symbols that are the building blocks for much more complex concepts, and mastering their relationships is a cornerstone of early education. But while illiteracy becomes a major social stigma almost immediately after a young person is introduced to letters, most people can proudly declare their innumeracy (aside from basics, like telling time or counting change) throughout their lives. This is doubly strange, as our ability to think about and compare sets of items of differing amounts precedes our verbal skills. Over at The Thoughtful Animal, Jason Goldman describes how, prior to making or manipulating the squiggles that we’ve come to know as numbers, we can suss out the relationships between amounts in surprisingly abstract ways. If you’re a Martin Gardner devotee or recently picked up Alex Bellos’ new book, Here’s Looking at Euclid, you might recognize the inherent awesomeness of these relationships. And if that’s the case, check out some recreational mathematics at Built on Facts: Matt Springer provides two thorny problems, one involving a tricky ten-digit number and another dealing with a classic word problem in terms of physics.

What Are The Origins of Number Representation?

The Thoughtful AnimalAugust 17, 2010

“Surely, humans have something unique that allows us to do things like multivariate regression and construct geometric proofs, however, but let’s start at the beginning. I will hopefully convince you that there is an evolutionarily-ancient non-verbal representational system that computes the number of individuals in a set. That knowledge system is available to human adults and infants (even in cultures that don’t have a count list), as well as to monkeys, rats, pigeons, and so forth.”

A Conspiracy of Digits

Built on FactsAugust 18, 2010

“‘Find a ten-digit number with the following two properties (in base 10, of course): A. The number contains each digit (from 0 to 9) exactly once. B. For every N from 1 to 10, the first N digits of the number are divisible by N. Thus, for instance, 1234567890 doesn’t work; while 1 is divisible by 1, 12 is divisible by 2, and 123 is divisible by 3, 1234 isn’t divisible by 4.’”

A train leaves Cleveland…

Built on FactsAugust 16, 2010

“The new academic year is starting, and if there’s one thing students love it’s a good word problem. If Sue is four times as old as John will be when Sue is one year than John… So in that spirit I was amused to find basically this kind of problem in a college physics textbook I was perusing for post ideas as I get back into the swing of blogging.”

Musical Science and Scientific Music: A (Very) Brief History

Evan Lerner — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:12:50 +0000

The science song is a strange beast; people have surely converted information to rhythms or rhymes as a mnemonic device for millennia, though the idea of “educational music” as a genre has only recently crystallized. Its target audience has oscillated since then; while Tom Lehrer was playing for adults in the 50s and 60s, a renaissance of children’s television in the 70s, from Sesame Street to Schoolhouse Rock!, marked the style as child’s play. Those children are now grown up and making music of their own. Frank Swain of SciencePunk provides two video examples: Amoeba to Zebra’s “Shake your Backbone” (on the evolution of vertebrates) and One Ring Zero’s “Venus” (from their concept album PLANETS, where every track is a celestial body). Over at Seed Magazine, editor Lee Billings has an interview with One Ring Zero’s Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp about their influences, ranging from Francisco Goya to (naturally) Gustav Holst. Their near-centennial revisiting of the latter’s most famous work may be a harbinger of things to come; legendary hip-hop producer Dr. Dre is looking to get into the act with an instrumental album about the planets.

Amoeba to Zebra: pop songs about natural history

Sciencepunk August 16, 2010

“‘As a band, we all share a fascination with the wonders of the natural world and the evolutionary processes that have shaped the flora and fauna of our planet. We decided to use our combined creative talents to do something truly worthwhile – to tell an incredible story that will stimulate the imagination of young people and leave a lasting impression’”

Indie band sings about the solar system

Sciencepunk August 15, 2010

“The album features guest performances by Mark Feldman (Masada), Hamilton Berry (Vampire Weekend), Curtis Hasselbring (Slavic Soul Party), and guest lyrics by Rick Moody (The Ice Storm). Here’s the video to “Venus”.”

Music of the Spheres

Seed MagazineAugust 17, 2010

“When they began their musical collaboration in 1999, Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp were both college students working part-time as instrument-repair technicians in Virginia. Now, more than a decade later, they live and work in New York City, and their ensemble band, One Ring Zero, has become a celebrated fixture of thoughtful, eclectic ethno-pop music. The band’s latest album, PLANETS, is a paean to the solar system and the scientists and spacecraft that have helped explore it.”

Making Atoms Cold

Evan Lerner — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:36:14 +0000

While the superstar of the particle physics world, the Large Hadron Collider, gets all of the attention (and the glamor shots), there’s plenty of interesting science that can be done on the atomic level within an otherwise ordinary laboratory on the campus of an update New York university. Consider, for instance,the lab of Uncertain Principles‘ Chad Orzel, who has recently taken his readers on a four-part tour of his scientific specialty: making atoms extra cold. While the LHC sends protons whizzing through miles of underground beam pipes in order to more spectacularly crash them together, Chad deals in much lower-speed collisions. Through a combination of vacuum pumps and lasers, he slows atoms down to the equivalent of “something that scuttles under the fridge when you turn on the light.” It doesn’t take billions of dollars or an city-sized ring of multi-ton electromagnets to play with the fundamental forces of the universe, just a little focused light and a “doomsday device“.

What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 1: Vacuum Hardware

Uncertain PrinciplesAugust 11, 2010

“There are a lot of different components that go into making a cold-atom experiment, so we’ll break this down by subsystems, starting with the most photogenic of them, the vacuum system.”

What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 2: Lasers and Optics

Uncertain PrinciplesAugust 12, 2010

“The primary technique used for making cold atoms is laser cooling, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise that this requires lasers, and where there are lasers, there must also be optics.”

What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 3: Test and Measurement

Uncertain PrinciplesAugust 13, 2010

“The third category in our look at lab apparatus, after vacuum hardware and lasers and optics is the huge collection of electronic gear that we use to control the experiments.”

What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Appendix: “No-Laser” Methods

Uncertain PrinciplesAugust 16, 2010

“It’s possible, though, to make cold atoms without using laser cooling, using a number of techniques I described in two posts back in January.”

Charismatic Megafauna in Captivity and the Wild

Evan Lerner — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:18:45 +0000

From “quantum teleportation” to “Superconducting Super collider”, there’s nothing like an unusual word or intriguing turn of phrase to draw someone into a science story. Yesterday, the New York Times’ lead tech writer Nick Bilton took a shine to “charismatic megafauna,” after reading a post on The Thoughtful Animal about social cognition in polar bears. For those still scratching their heads, the post’s author Jason Goldman translates: “in other words, ‘really cool animals.’” These are the kinds of creatures you might see anthropomorphized in a cartoon, or starring forlornly from a wildlife conservation group’s literature or logo. Indeed, these animals are so amazing, and in many cases, so endangered, that they act as stand-ins for the whole of the natural world. While their ambassadorial status might draw more support or funding than the star-nosed mole, too much attention can be a bad thing. Jason’s post, after all, was about the avoidance behaviors polar bears exhibit in captivity, considering their solitary lifestyles in the wild. And earlier this summer, James Hrynyshyn of Class M wrote about the carbon cost of ecotourism to see these animals in their natural habitats.

Social Cognition in Polar Bears

The Thoughtful AnimalAugust 12, 2010

“Perhaps owing to the scarcity of available resources in the wild, polar bears live most of their lives in isolation. Aside from brief encounters for mating purposes, they live and hunt alone. The longest that polar bears are known to live together is for three years while mother bears care for their cubs. Their solitary lifestyle makes social encounters between individual polar bears extremely uncommon. And yet in captivity, polar bears are housed socially, with several individuals sharing the same space. Given their size and strength, aggressive interactions between individuals could be dangerous and potentially deadly. For these reasons, it is important to understand the social behavior of polar bears, in order to best design their zoo enclosures to minimize conflict and maximize health and quality of life.”

Loving the polar bears to death

Class MJune 23, 2010

“Ecotourism. Sounds so responsible, or least, non-exploitative. But let’s face it: Anyone who flies long-distance to get close to some endangered piece of nature at risk from climate change is doing their bit to push those species that much closer to extinction. A paper published recently in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism tries to quantify the irony. ‘The carbon cost of polar bear viewing tourism in Churchill, Canada’ looks at the carbon footprint of the polar-bear viewing industry in which, despite its remote location on the western shores of Hudson Bay, is still the cheapest option for almost everyone to see the species in its natural habitat.”

Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

Evan Lerner — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:12:29 +0000

Every August, the Earth passes through a patch of space that’s a tad grittier than usual; the planet’s orbit intersects with that of the comet Swift-Tuttle, the latter being filled with the cast-off from the slowly melting ice-ball. When this detritus hits Earth’s atmospheres, the massive energy of the collision is enough to produce a light-show we colloqually call “shooting stars.” While this explanation of the Perseid Meteor Shower’s origin might be enough for some; Ethan Siegel stays true to his blog’s name and Starts with a Bang!. Tracing the comet’s origin to the Kuiper Belt, the Kuiper Belt’s origin to the formation of the Solar System, and so on, Ethan connects these ephemeral streaks of light to the birth of the universe itself. If you want to experience them firsthand. The USA Science and Engineering Festival Blog has some viewing tips courtesy of one of their partner organizations, EarthSky. Your best chance is after midnight tonight, so happy meteor hunting!

Where do Meteor Showers come from?

Starts with a bang!August 11, 2010

“Where should you look? The same place you look every year: towards the constellation Cassiopeia, easily visible from most places on Earth! You most certainly won’t be sorry. Not only can you check out the photo gallery from last year’s Perseids, here’s a long-exposure photo with a fisheye lens of a meteor shower over the course of a couple of hours. But where do meteor showers come from in the first place? I’ve been asked to start at the beginning, so let’s go all the way back to the early stages of the Big Bang.”

Check out the Famous Perseid meteor shower

The USA Science & Engineering Festival BlogAugust 11, 2010

“The 2010 Perseid meteor shower – August’s famous ‘shooting stars’ – will peak in this coming week, on the mornings of August 12 and 13. The shower has been gradually rising to a peak since early August. Any night this week, you might see Perseid meteors. The Perseids are considered by many people to be the year’s best shower. They often peak at 50 or more meteors per hour, and 2010 is a great year for watching them. This year, the slender waxing crescent moon will set at early evening, leaving a dark sky for this year’s Perseid display.”

I had a chance to do a little stargazing last week when I was on the peaceful and pristine Block Island, though now that I’m back on a slightly more densely populated island there’s almost no chance I’ll see any of the Perseids outside of a computer monitor. If you’re more fortunately located, give us a report back tomorrow.